I promised to chart my e-publishing adventures, and here I am to make good on that promise.
First, let me say this: writers have excellent resources when it comes to self-publishing. Stepping into the indie arena, I had no idea the tools at my disposal. From CreateSpace to Smashwords to BookBub, authors have the ability to reach and interact with thousands of people. Granted, it takes time, money, and hard work, but it's definitely possible.
A brief rundown of the indie author's utility belt:
CreateSpace: A print-on-demand service that prints and distributes physical copies of your book. Rather than paying them up front, they take a percentage of every book sold. For example: The print edition of my book is priced at $9.59. I make $2.38 for sales via Amazon, and $4.30 for sales via CreateSpace. You may think those prices are low, but considering they print and ship it, you're getting a good deal.
Kindle Direct Publishing: (KDP) allows an author to publish their work on Amazon. It's extremely straightforward, easy to use, and when I had a problem, a quick email to Amazon was all it took to clear things up. Amazon's staff are friendly and quickly to respond. All in all, I had a great experience with KDP
Smashwords: A one stop shop to distribute you work to Nook, Kobo, Apple, etc. Smashwords allows you to list your book price for free, and if you ever make changes to your story, readers who've already purchased the book can download the updated version for free.
The biggest downside to Smashwords is actually uploading you work. It is difficult, and a single mistake can prevent it from uploading/uploading correctly. They do have a downloadable guide to help with formatting. I followed it and managed to upload my work. When I went to update it a week later, I mess something up and the formatting got all wonky. In frustration, I pulled it from the site and enrolled in KDP Select. I'll try again later, but I'm not looking forward to it.
All in all, Smashwords is a great tool. I just wish it wasn't so complicated to use.
Sigil: Sigil translates your text into HTML code which is the base for ebook files. It can also generate a table of contents and run the HTML of your book through a validator that makes sure all of your HTML code is correct. This is a must have program for publishing ebooks. Here's a video tutorial.
Calibre: Considering most of the grunt work is done by Sigil, Calibre is used for fine tuning. It can rescale font sizes, ensuring the output
e-book is readable no matter what font sizes the
input document uses. It can automatically detect/create book structure,
like chapters and Table of Contents. It can also insert
the book metadata into a "Book Jacket" at the start of the book.
(Pulled from site)
Midnight Whimsy: A book cover designer who does EXCELLENT work on custom book covers. She designed the cover for My Best Friend Death (as seen in the upper left corner). She's an amazing gal to work with.
CCR Book Cover Design: An equally wonderful sight for premade ebook covers (for the more cost conscious). Cheryl designed the cover for my yet-to-be-released episodic work DeadEarth: Mr. .44 Magnum. She has a huge array of premade covers, and the turn around time is twenty-four hours (excluding weekends).
Now that you know the tools at your disposal, you need a rundown of two other very important aspects of ebook publishing: time and money.
Time: Trust me when I say you spend A LOT of time doing menial things. For example, before I moved my story from Word to Sigil, I had to chart all the italicized words in my novel (Sigil removes the formatting of your story), and once I had them charted, I had to then re-italicize them in Sigil. Talk about BOR-RING
Want another example? Page numbering. Sounds easy, right? WRONG. Numbering the pages for the physical print of my book took me hours and a lot of Googling. The reason: Headers. In the physical print, odd numbered pages (recto) have the title of my book, while even numbered pages (verso) have my name (or maybe it's the other way around). The only pages that don't have my name or title of the book are the pages that start a chapter (they don't have a header at all).
To format the Word doc that way, I pretty much had to tweak my doc to restart the page numbering at every chapter (as if every chapter was a new document). After I did that, I had to go chapter by chapter and manually change the numbering. Let me repeat that... MANUALLY CHANGE THE NUMBERING. If you mess up once (like I did) you won't know until you finish, and then you have to start over from wherever you messed up.
It was a nightmare.
There are a lot of little things like that that will take up hours of your time. And Smashwords is a vicious, time-consuming beast on it own. If you can't tell by now, I have a love/hate relationship with Smashwords.
In short, if you want to epub, make sure you give yourself the adequate amount of time needed for formatting. You want to look professional, so don't cut corners in the interest of saving time/money. It'll hurt you in the long run.
Money: I kept the receipts for every epublishing related expense (for tax purposes), so I can give you an accurate rundown of what I've spent.
Cover design: $170.00
Premade Cover design: $55
Edits:$435
Net Galley: $80
Website: $99
Domain Name: $9.90
Business cards: $39.46
ARCs: $14.14
Total: 902.50
Pending expense:
Bookbub: $250
I also had to pick up a new laptop and printer, but I won't include those in this tally.
As you can see, it's not particularly cheap (especially considering you may not make back what you've paid), but it's not extremely expensive either.
Well, that's all for now. In my next post, I'll get into sales and my personal experiences. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments. I'll answer them in the next post.
Showing posts with label Self-Publishing Journey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Self-Publishing Journey. Show all posts
Jun 22, 2014
May 4, 2014
The Journey Continues
So you know how people say self-publishing is time consuming and difficult? It is. But don't get me wrong, I'm having a blast!
I never imaging how many subjects I had to become a professional in during my journey to self-publishing. Not only that, but there are sooo many little things that are just so tedious and boring, but they must be done (Like adding tags to all my blog posts. *le sigh)
I've got about a month left before my novel, My Best Friend Death, hits Amazon, and I'm on cloud nine right now, but this next month will be hell. Not only am I working on edits and retouching my novel before a final proof, but I also have to juggle Query Kombat, which will start soon. Throw in working on my site, two jobs, and my personal life, and you can see why I'm spread thing.
Going though and accepting or rejecting edits to my novel is easy... but time consuming. My editor is amazing. Amazing. Amazing. Amazing. Her edits are insightful, well researched, and clearly written. She takes the time to explain why she made specific edits, and is incredibly supportive of indie authors. She also gave me some invaluable advice. Because of the content and subject matter in my story, she recommended I add this disclaimer to my blurb on Amazon: *This book contains strong subject matter that may not be appropriate for some readers, including suicide, school violence, and teen alcohol and drug abuse.*
I would never have thought to do that, but it's brilliant. That simple sentence could save me from bad reviews by readers who don't like the subject matter.
As for the cover design... I am bouncing off the walls right now. I couldn't have imagined a better cover if I tried. She's going to get back to me early next week with a mock up including some suggests I made.
I never imaging how many subjects I had to become a professional in during my journey to self-publishing. Not only that, but there are sooo many little things that are just so tedious and boring, but they must be done (Like adding tags to all my blog posts. *le sigh)
I've got about a month left before my novel, My Best Friend Death, hits Amazon, and I'm on cloud nine right now, but this next month will be hell. Not only am I working on edits and retouching my novel before a final proof, but I also have to juggle Query Kombat, which will start soon. Throw in working on my site, two jobs, and my personal life, and you can see why I'm spread thing.
Going though and accepting or rejecting edits to my novel is easy... but time consuming. My editor is amazing. Amazing. Amazing. Amazing. Her edits are insightful, well researched, and clearly written. She takes the time to explain why she made specific edits, and is incredibly supportive of indie authors. She also gave me some invaluable advice. Because of the content and subject matter in my story, she recommended I add this disclaimer to my blurb on Amazon: *This book contains strong subject matter that may not be appropriate for some readers, including suicide, school violence, and teen alcohol and drug abuse.*
I would never have thought to do that, but it's brilliant. That simple sentence could save me from bad reviews by readers who don't like the subject matter.
As for the cover design... I am bouncing off the walls right now. I couldn't have imagined a better cover if I tried. She's going to get back to me early next week with a mock up including some suggests I made.
Apr 15, 2014
The Waiting Game
Alright! My editor is currently working on my novel. I'm psyched!
Just like with traditional publishing, you play the waiting game with self-publishing as well. Currently, I'm in a holding pattern when it comes to publishing My Best Friend Death. Without a cover design available, doing a promotional blog tour isn't a wise idea, so all I can do now is plan and do as much research as possible about marketing an promoting a self-published novel.
I take that back. Planning isn't all I can do. I'm also working on my next novel, The Thieves Guild. With a little luck (and a bit less procrastinating) I can e-pub it sometime between September and November of this year. That's my goal anyway. I'm a little under halfway done with the first draft. I hope to finish it by the time My Best Friend Death is published. Wish me luck!
Just like with traditional publishing, you play the waiting game with self-publishing as well. Currently, I'm in a holding pattern when it comes to publishing My Best Friend Death. Without a cover design available, doing a promotional blog tour isn't a wise idea, so all I can do now is plan and do as much research as possible about marketing an promoting a self-published novel.
I take that back. Planning isn't all I can do. I'm also working on my next novel, The Thieves Guild. With a little luck (and a bit less procrastinating) I can e-pub it sometime between September and November of this year. That's my goal anyway. I'm a little under halfway done with the first draft. I hope to finish it by the time My Best Friend Death is published. Wish me luck!
Mar 18, 2014
Book Cover, Editors, and Friends
A lot has happened over the last two weeks. I must say that, at this point, I'm more committed to self-publishing than I was before. Why?
Monetary investment.
The beauty of publishing traditionally is that there are no expenses for the author. Editing, marketing (to a degree), book cover design, print, etc are expenses the publisher takes on. That's not the case with epublishing.
So far, I estimate I'll spend about $550 for a book cover and an editor. Cover designer costs $150 USD, and the editor costs $435 CAD (That's about $400 USD). Admittedly, I could have easily spent twice that for the same services. Easily. But I'm not made of money, and the cover designer and editor seem topnotch, with great reviews and happy clientele.
My cover designer is Annette Tremblay aka Midnight Whimsy. I found her by accident while browsing the AQC forums. I saw some of her cover designs, and read customer reviews. The designs blew me away, the reviews were icing on the cake. Her process is straightforward: you make a $50 advance payment to hold a spot, then you pay the remaining balance when you choose a concept/mock-up. Just after you pay the deposit, Annette sent a very detailed questionnaire to gain a better understanding of your story and what you're looking for in a cover.
My editor is Cynthia Shepp. I found her via Google. First thing that caught my eye was her prices. Charging $0.0065 (Max) per word is a great deal. Admittedly, I've found individuals who charge less (and more. So so so much more) but her experience and customer reviews were the reason I contacted her. I hired her because of the detail sample edit I received. Which leads me to my next bit of advice: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO EDIT YOUR OWN WORK FOR PUBLICATION! YOU NEED A KEEN/EXPERIENCED SET OF EYES!
I had JUST finished a round of edits to kill time. When I got my chapter back from her, you would think it was my first draft. She makes excellent suggestions, and explains why she made those suggestions. I'm super eager to officially start working with her. She start my manuscript on April 10th, 2014. Annette starts working on my cover on April 28th.
My plan is to publish on June 8th, 2014.
The last person I want to give a shout out to is Nicole Conway, author of Fledgling. We met in the chat room on AQC. She was a previously self-published author who sold an impressive number of copies of her book. With her success, she found a publisher and an agent. I message Nicole because I wanted to know what she did differently, and how she stood out in the crowd. I expected an email interview, but she gave me her number instead.
Just speaking with her lifted my spirits. She's very personable, eager to share her experiences, and genuinely excited about telling stories. We talked for about half an hour, and though she didn't reveal any trade secrets (not that she had any to tell), she did share what she felt added to her success. She also gave me advanced knowledge of things I should prepare for, and what to do in the event of being contacted by a publisher. You can expect everything she told me and more to be shared throughout this blog series.
In other news, I made it into the second round of the ABNA contest, and Query Kombat discussions have started. Great things to come.
Monetary investment.
So far, I estimate I'll spend about $550 for a book cover and an editor. Cover designer costs $150 USD, and the editor costs $435 CAD (That's about $400 USD). Admittedly, I could have easily spent twice that for the same services. Easily. But I'm not made of money, and the cover designer and editor seem topnotch, with great reviews and happy clientele.
My cover designer is Annette Tremblay aka Midnight Whimsy. I found her by accident while browsing the AQC forums. I saw some of her cover designs, and read customer reviews. The designs blew me away, the reviews were icing on the cake. Her process is straightforward: you make a $50 advance payment to hold a spot, then you pay the remaining balance when you choose a concept/mock-up. Just after you pay the deposit, Annette sent a very detailed questionnaire to gain a better understanding of your story and what you're looking for in a cover.
My editor is Cynthia Shepp. I found her via Google. First thing that caught my eye was her prices. Charging $0.0065 (Max) per word is a great deal. Admittedly, I've found individuals who charge less (and more. So so so much more) but her experience and customer reviews were the reason I contacted her. I hired her because of the detail sample edit I received. Which leads me to my next bit of advice: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO EDIT YOUR OWN WORK FOR PUBLICATION! YOU NEED A KEEN/EXPERIENCED SET OF EYES!
My plan is to publish on June 8th, 2014.
The last person I want to give a shout out to is Nicole Conway, author of Fledgling. We met in the chat room on AQC. She was a previously self-published author who sold an impressive number of copies of her book. With her success, she found a publisher and an agent. I message Nicole because I wanted to know what she did differently, and how she stood out in the crowd. I expected an email interview, but she gave me her number instead.
Just speaking with her lifted my spirits. She's very personable, eager to share her experiences, and genuinely excited about telling stories. We talked for about half an hour, and though she didn't reveal any trade secrets (not that she had any to tell), she did share what she felt added to her success. She also gave me advanced knowledge of things I should prepare for, and what to do in the event of being contacted by a publisher. You can expect everything she told me and more to be shared throughout this blog series.
As always, if you have an questions or comments...
Leave them below.
In other news, I made it into the second round of the ABNA contest, and Query Kombat discussions have started. Great things to come.
Mar 3, 2014
By Hook Or By Ebook
As you can tell, I've changed some things.
In preparation for my self-publishing venture, I wanted to update my blog to make it brighter and more inviting. After a lot of research, I discovered that something like 70% of people preferred brighter webpages to darker ones. Trivial in the scope of epubing, I know. But every little bit counts. I think it will be interesting to see if my daily page views increase. Either way, I'll keep you posted.
For those who don't know, the title of the work I'm going to epub is My Best Friend Death. Below is a brief summary of the novel for those interested (This is also a subtle attempt at marketing, but don't tell anyone).
Damien Crown dedicates his life to being his little brother's superman. Like all superheroes, he's constantly at war with a formidable adversary: his brother's depression. Instead of going out in a climatic battle as the comics suggests, Damien dies at the screech of tires and the blare of a car horn. Sadly, it's in his last moments that he realizes he hadn't quite gotten around to taking off the cape and living his own life.
But all that changes when he meets Death.
Waking up in someone else's body is...odd, but having Death volunteer to be his life-coach takes the prize for the world's screwiest conundrum. Given one year to make the most of life as a new kid in his old school, Damien seizes the opportunity to shed his superhero persona and live among the ordinary. With Death guiding the way, he discovers a new side to life among a zany and lovable group of friends.
At least, until his brother comes to school with bandaged wrists and bruises.
Damien wants to don his cape once again, but Death warns that the laws of nature forbid him to make contact with his old family. Stuck between living his new life and fixing his old one, Damien has a choice to make: put on his cape and die for his brother, or hang it up and live for himself.
Along with my manuscript, the above pitch was entered into Amazon's ABNA contest. Self-publishing is still my plan A (because I have terrible luck with contests) so I'm going to proceed accordingly. My goal is to publish just before Query Kombat (so mid to late May). Blog traffic will be high so that means more potential readers. Genius right :o)
Back to the subject at hand:
Self-publishing takes time and money. How much time? I'm still not sure, but I clocked about twenty hours last week (I'll get into that more later). How much money? Conservative estimates: $200 for ebook cover design, $500-1000 for editorial services, and $20 for a domain name. That's all the expenses I've discovered so far. If I find more, I'll let you know.
Time: Redesigning my blog took a lot of time, a lot of trial and error, and a lot of Googling. I'm not a web designer so everything I've learned about HTML and CSS code are the product of extreme dedication. EXTREME. I spent about four hours on this blog. It may not look like it, but the few things I added (header, updated contact page and bio, social icons (I have RSS now!), larger profile image, etc) were time consuming. That doesn't even take into account the things I tried to do but failed at. My Google-fu was no match for my high hopes.
My website (which I will reveal when it's finished) took about twelve hours. Going the cheap route, I purchased a domain name and redirected it to second blog (And ho-ly shit. Redirecting is way more complicated than it needs to be).
I'm currently in the process of completely restructuring my second blog so that it resembles a regular website. Is it hard? Sort of. Is it time consuming? Yes. Is it worth it? I don't know. I think epubing is a game of luck and preparation. If I'm going to dive into this pool, I'm going to prepare as much as possible, and pray that lady luck is on my side.
More next week.
In preparation for my self-publishing venture, I wanted to update my blog to make it brighter and more inviting. After a lot of research, I discovered that something like 70% of people preferred brighter webpages to darker ones. Trivial in the scope of epubing, I know. But every little bit counts. I think it will be interesting to see if my daily page views increase. Either way, I'll keep you posted.
For those who don't know, the title of the work I'm going to epub is My Best Friend Death. Below is a brief summary of the novel for those interested (This is also a subtle attempt at marketing, but don't tell anyone).
Damien Crown dedicates his life to being his little brother's superman. Like all superheroes, he's constantly at war with a formidable adversary: his brother's depression. Instead of going out in a climatic battle as the comics suggests, Damien dies at the screech of tires and the blare of a car horn. Sadly, it's in his last moments that he realizes he hadn't quite gotten around to taking off the cape and living his own life.
But all that changes when he meets Death.
Waking up in someone else's body is...odd, but having Death volunteer to be his life-coach takes the prize for the world's screwiest conundrum. Given one year to make the most of life as a new kid in his old school, Damien seizes the opportunity to shed his superhero persona and live among the ordinary. With Death guiding the way, he discovers a new side to life among a zany and lovable group of friends.
At least, until his brother comes to school with bandaged wrists and bruises.
Damien wants to don his cape once again, but Death warns that the laws of nature forbid him to make contact with his old family. Stuck between living his new life and fixing his old one, Damien has a choice to make: put on his cape and die for his brother, or hang it up and live for himself.
Along with my manuscript, the above pitch was entered into Amazon's ABNA contest. Self-publishing is still my plan A (because I have terrible luck with contests) so I'm going to proceed accordingly. My goal is to publish just before Query Kombat (so mid to late May). Blog traffic will be high so that means more potential readers. Genius right :o)
Back to the subject at hand:
Self-publishing takes time and money. How much time? I'm still not sure, but I clocked about twenty hours last week (I'll get into that more later). How much money? Conservative estimates: $200 for ebook cover design, $500-1000 for editorial services, and $20 for a domain name. That's all the expenses I've discovered so far. If I find more, I'll let you know.
Time: Redesigning my blog took a lot of time, a lot of trial and error, and a lot of Googling. I'm not a web designer so everything I've learned about HTML and CSS code are the product of extreme dedication. EXTREME. I spent about four hours on this blog. It may not look like it, but the few things I added (header, updated contact page and bio, social icons (I have RSS now!), larger profile image, etc) were time consuming. That doesn't even take into account the things I tried to do but failed at. My Google-fu was no match for my high hopes.
My website (which I will reveal when it's finished) took about twelve hours. Going the cheap route, I purchased a domain name and redirected it to second blog (And ho-ly shit. Redirecting is way more complicated than it needs to be).
I'm currently in the process of completely restructuring my second blog so that it resembles a regular website. Is it hard? Sort of. Is it time consuming? Yes. Is it worth it? I don't know. I think epubing is a game of luck and preparation. If I'm going to dive into this pool, I'm going to prepare as much as possible, and pray that lady luck is on my side.
More next week.
Feb 22, 2014
Changing Directions
I've been neglecting both Twitter and my blog as of late. Why? Because I'm neck deep in writing another novel while juggling two jobs, a family, querying, and the prospect of being the uncle of twins. TWINS!
My brother is a year-and-a-half older than me (I'm 23) and he's the first of my generation to have children. To be honest, that got me to thinking a lot about my life. Now, I still feel I'm too young to have kids, but my rationale for as long as I can remember was, as soon as I accomplish my dream of being a published novelist, I'll close my laptop and for a bit and enjoy life.
The fact is, it's easy for me to spend an entire day (or week) living in a world of my own creation. Ifeel felt that throwing all of myself at my dreams would be worth the moments I miss. The time that I lose.
But... it's not.
As a writer, I've sunk so much time, energy, thought, and emotion into seeking the validation of someone with the title Literary Agent. I've cried, scream, begged, and prostituted myself (not literally) with hopes that an agent would validate my talents. But none have. So...what does that mean?
NOT A DAMN THING.
You know why? Because I'm a good storyteller. I don't need an agent to validate that. With every novel I pen, I'm getting better and better. For a long time I forgot that the only two people that truly matter to me (as a writer) is myself and the reader.
That realization led me to making a decision that I never though I would make: self-publishing. I thought about it for a long long time, and it was only until recently that I realized what my true passion is. I want to tell stories. That's it. Agents, publishers, editors, query letters...all that is background noise for what I really want to do.
So, as I begin my journey to self-publishing my first novel, I'll chronicle the highs and lows on this blog for all to see. I'll chart the money, time, and energy spent to get my book publish-ready. I'll publicly celebrate my first sale, and cry when days/weeks go by without any downloads.
It's going to be a long, hard road, wrought with potholes, setback, and maybe even failure. But you know what? I'm okay with that. I really am. To clarify, I'm not giving up on traditional publishing, I'm just not putting my eggs in one basket anymore. I'm taking charge of my dreams, not passing the reins to someone else.
Wish me luck :o)
My brother is a year-and-a-half older than me (I'm 23) and he's the first of my generation to have children. To be honest, that got me to thinking a lot about my life. Now, I still feel I'm too young to have kids, but my rationale for as long as I can remember was, as soon as I accomplish my dream of being a published novelist, I'll close my laptop and for a bit and enjoy life.
The fact is, it's easy for me to spend an entire day (or week) living in a world of my own creation. I
But... it's not.
As a writer, I've sunk so much time, energy, thought, and emotion into seeking the validation of someone with the title Literary Agent. I've cried, scream, begged, and prostituted myself (not literally) with hopes that an agent would validate my talents. But none have. So...what does that mean?
NOT A DAMN THING.
You know why? Because I'm a good storyteller. I don't need an agent to validate that. With every novel I pen, I'm getting better and better. For a long time I forgot that the only two people that truly matter to me (as a writer) is myself and the reader.
That realization led me to making a decision that I never though I would make: self-publishing. I thought about it for a long long time, and it was only until recently that I realized what my true passion is. I want to tell stories. That's it. Agents, publishers, editors, query letters...all that is background noise for what I really want to do.
So, as I begin my journey to self-publishing my first novel, I'll chronicle the highs and lows on this blog for all to see. I'll chart the money, time, and energy spent to get my book publish-ready. I'll publicly celebrate my first sale, and cry when days/weeks go by without any downloads.
It's going to be a long, hard road, wrought with potholes, setback, and maybe even failure. But you know what? I'm okay with that. I really am. To clarify, I'm not giving up on traditional publishing, I'm just not putting my eggs in one basket anymore. I'm taking charge of my dreams, not passing the reins to someone else.
Wish me luck :o)
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