YA author and blogger Lorca Damon shares her perspective on self-publishing and how it can (sometimes) be about more than just selling books. Her experience as a parent inspired and informed the writing of her book, Knowing Autism. But the path to writing the book she knew she had needed as a parent wasn’t always an easy journey…

The Long Road of Self-Publishing

When I found out my daughter is severely autistic, I did what any normal person would do: I raced to the bookstore for information. Unfortunately, the book I wanted wasn’t there, mostly because it had never been written. I didn’t need a reference book to understanding the theory or history of autism, and the only personal memoirs were pie-in-the-sky stories from people who had the wealth to hire their own teams of therapists to work with their children in their homes. I live in rural Alabama, and we just got a Publix grocery store this year; it’s a pretty safe bet that we didn’t have the kinds of therapies that were listed in those books.

So I wrote my own book for parents based on information I learned in the first few years of my daughter’s life. It was filled with step-by-step instructions on how we handled potty training, how we introduced new foods into her very limited diet, and even how we took vacations. It discussed the things that did and did not work. Sure, I vented a lot of frustration, too, but I hope I also armed people with information and a little bit of humor.

I never even queried the book to agents or publishers because it was so unlike anything that the industry was producing at the time. When self-publishing opened the doors to whole new types of writing, I threw my book up on all the platforms and waited to see if anyone bought it.

To say that the public responded is an understatement. No, I’m not a bestselling author, but it felt good to see people not only buy it, but also to see the reviews from parents who literally thanked me for writing the book they needed. Sure, there were some really painful reviews too, but I have to admit that I took them to heart and learned from what those parents had to say. I even incorporated some of those directions into my second book on autism.

What really amazes me about self-publishing is this giant divide that still exists in which authors of different publishing routes point fingers at each other and argue over statistics about who makes more money. What those critics fail to see is that book sales and money and even self-esteem boosting reviews are all nice, but what really motivates me as an author and as a mom is knowing that my book is sitting on a virtual shelf, never to be removed…and waiting for the woman whose autistic child isn’t even born yet.

My book is a few years old now, and yes, sales are slowing down somewhat. But that doesn’t matter to the parent who is going to get the diagnosis next week, or next year, or even in ten years. Self-publishing and digital publishing have taken away the concepts of print runs and shelf space and simply made great books available for readers.

Lorca Damon is a former teacher in a prison and is the mother of a severely autistic child. Her work in the classroom and with her daughter led her to write two books on autism, Autism By Hand and Knowing Autism. Her next book, Speaking Autism, is due out in November 2014.