Laura Thomas's Blog: Self-Publishing: A Mean Old Dog (who loves to cuddle) (and might just make you rich) - Posts Tagged "self-publishing"

WISDOM: The publishing industry has been crippled by the economic meltdown; first-time fiction authors have almost no chance of landing a publishing deal; make a name for yourself and THEN try to talk to publishers... These were the things my little birds told me when I asked them whether I should self-publish. And they were right! They are smart little birds! But I forgot to ask the little birds about the potentially crushing downsides of self-publishing. So, for anyone else contemplating a foray into the world of self-publishing, here are a few things I've learned:

1. Self-publishing is a powerful, empowering, and inspiring option. It allows an author to maintain total control of his/her content, publishing date, marketing strategy, and revenue. It's a total rush. But...

2. Wait, er, marketing strategy? Oh yeah, don't think that just marketing the book to your friends and family will do ANYTHING to make a name for yourself. Your friends and family already know your name. And they bought the book because they would've felt guilty if they hadn't. Sure, they may LOOOOOVE the book and tell a friend or two to pick it up. But that won't be enough. About 80% of self-published authors never sell more than a couple hundred copies of their books. You need to think wayyyyyyyyyy outside the box (like, way way WAY outside), and find other ways to get your book out there.

3. Why do you need to think so far outside the box? Because mainstream media wants nothing to do with you. NOTHING. You won't be able to get major papers or magazines to review your book unless you sell thousands of copies. And you won't sell thousands of copies until you get the mainstream to start paying attention to you. Check this out - I even tried to HIRE a book publicist (that's right, I was going to GIVE HER MY MONEY) to get my book into the hands of some media outlets for review consideration, and the book publicist told me she couldn't take my money no matter how good my book was because it's virtually impossible to get the mainstream media to pay attention to self-published authors.

So, ahem, here I am on Goodreads, writing a blog, making new bibliophilic friends, spreading the Shadow Swans gospel here in this little box that's way outside "The Box." And I'm playing around in various other "outside the box" boxes. And people are reading the book. Not thousands of people, yet, but hundreds, for sure. I'm curious if some of you out there might be curious about my forays outside the box. If so, I'll share my successes and failures here, so that some other deserving self-published highly-motivated right-brainer out there might have fewer frustrations than I have had.

Can people even make comments/responses to my blog posts on this site? Will anyone ever read this post? If not, no biggie, maybe I'll write more anyway, just musing away to myself. But if you're interested in what I have to say/rant/teach, shoot me a line and I'll write it all down. We'll be friends here in this box. Maybe we'll drink wine together. Maybe we'll smoke a totally imaginary and therefore harmless cigarette together, and we'll look cool without getting stained teeth.

In the meantime, I'm going to go to the Shadow Swans page on Amazon for the third time today to read my 19 fantastic life-affirming reviews. This is what I do with my free time. I stalk myself. Or really, I stalk my reader reviews. It's awesome.

Cheers to our tiny or gigantic destinies,

LT

If you’re going to self-publish, the first thing you need to find is someone to print your masterpiece, right? Lucky for you, the print-on-demand business is booming. All the motivated, prolific li’l writers out there are tired of banging on the doors of the creaking-in-its-casket publishing industry. Newly-written books are languishing tragically, gathering the proverbial dust. So, there you are, brushing off the proverbial dust, giving the proverbial finger to all the agents who turned down your brilliant book, and screaming at your computer, “FINE, I WILL DO IT MYSELF.” You look so cute when you’re mad!

Now, down to brass tacks: There are a lot of companies out there that want your self-pub business, which is extraordinary considering that the VAST majority of self-published authors will never sell more than 200 copies of their books. But for the Print-On-Demand printing houses, that’s about $1,000 of revenue per customer, which isn’t bad if they have a big pile of customers.

How do you decide which P.O.D. house to use? You could go with a small local one – there are plenty of those – but personally I don’t recommend it because they don’t have a direct line to the major online selling platforms like Amazon.com.

I’m sure there are other sites that are just as good (feel free to email me your experiences), but I can only tell you what I know about two of the most popular P.O.D. websites: Lulu (www.lulu.com) and Createspace (www.createspace.com). This is a great simple article that lays out some of the pros and cons of each: http://www.publetariat.com/publish/lu... .

Personally, I went with Createspace and I was very happy with it. Here are my reasons for choosing Createspace:
1. Createspace is Amazon’s self-publishing arm. This means that it’s SUPER easy to get your book on Amazon once it’s finished. And believe me, YOU WANT YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON. That’s where I do about 99% of my sales. Anyone who hears about your book will look for it on Amazon, so you’re at a major disadvantage if it’s not there. Lulu books get on Amazon as well, but I’ve read that it takes slightly longer to accomplish this.
2. It’s free (so is Lulu)
3. Customer service was great (I’ve read otherwise about Lulu, but let me know if you think I’m wrong).

Createspace will keep about 30% of the book’s list price (the exact amount depends on how long your book is, and whether it’s full-color). This is a good deal, considering there’s NO cost to you for printing. Plus, you pick your own list price! If you want to make a lot of $$, you can sell your book for 20 bucks, although nobody aside from your parents and your BFF likes you enough to pay 20 bucks for your self-published book.

Createspace will get your book on Amazon.com, which takes another 40% of the list price. So, what this means in practical terms is that you have to set your list price at a minimum of about $7.50 just to be able to cover Amazon’s share and Createspace’s share. This sounds like a lot, and it is, but remember, someone out there just printed hundreds of pages and a glossy cover for you at no cost to yourself.

I set my list price at $7.99 because I don’t care about making money – I just want people to read the book. I recommend this path unless you’re convinced you’ll have a big readership. You can also change your list price whenever you want. So you can start out selling your book for 20 bucks (which give you about $18 profit per sale), and then when your parents and BFF have already purchased the book and nobody else will, you can lower it to $7.99 (which gives you about 50 cents profit per sale) and then people who like you, but not quite as much, will buy it.

One thing I have learned for sure: The closer your product is to “FREE,” the more you will sell. I didn’t believe this at first, but it turns out to be true.

If anybody reads this blog, I’ll post another one next time about what you need to do to get your documents ON the Createspace interface. If nobody reads this blog, I’ll post another one next time with an absolutely glowing review of my own book. Maybe I’ll do that anyway. Maybe that’s the key to my own gigantic success.

To anyone still reading, I think you are the bees knees. Fuzzy cutest knees ever!

I have the tech savvy of a squirrel. Computers make my brain hurt, and technological issues quash my soul. But even one as technologically small-brained as myself can format and upload docs to self-pub sites like Createspace. Those sites offer paid services (Createspace’s service is $249) that will do the formatting for you, but I think that’s a waste of money. Here’s what you need to do:

First, pick your fonts. Someone advised me that for paper books (as opposed to e-books), you should use serif fonts. I went with Cambria for the body of the book, and Futura for the chapter headings. Other fonts that were suggested to me: Palatino, Garamond, Baskerville, Caslon, Minion, FF Scala… I went with 1.25 line spacing, which looks nice on paper, but if your book is super long, you could go with 1.15.

Second, format the book. You’ll want a blank page (front and back) before the title page, copyright info on the back of the title page (keep in mind that you’ll be using 2-sided pages when you format). Then if you have a dedication, you can throw that in. You will then need a blank page on the back of the dedication page so that your first chapter starts on the right side of the book.

Createspace has templates that tell you the margins you’ll need in order for your book to look good on the page. I found that I needed more space than was recommended in order for the page numbers not to be partially cut off on the bottom of the page. You’ll also need a “gutter,” which allows for the extra room on the side of the page where the book is bound. My book was 5X8, and the margins I used were:
Top: .75
Bottom: .85
Right: .5
Left: .5
Gutter: .3

Once your book looks great, you’ll need to save it as a PDF. Then you can upload it to the Createspace website! After you upload your cover art (which I’ll talk about in mah next blog), you’ll be asked to order a “Proof” copy of the book, and if there are any formatting problems you can fix them ASAP. It takes about 5-7 days for the proof to arrive, during which time you’ll be staring out the window constantly waiting for the mail man to arrive with your precious proof package, but I can tell you that you shouldn’t even start your mail vigil until 4 days after you order the proof. You’ll just be tormenting yourself.

I gotta say – my Createspace-printed book looks fabulous. Super professional, good color on the cover, pages clean and well-cut.

You are delightful. Have a cookie. Head south for the winter. Mwah!

Hi friends! You have such a rosy glow from all your Thanksgiving indulgences! It becomes you. Now down to bizness:

Once you have your book formatted properly (see my last post), there are a few other things you’ll need to do before your book can be published. Namely, you’ll need to buy an ISBN, create your cover art, copyright your book, and decide how rich you want to become. So, here’s a li’l how-to guide for each of these:

ISBN: The official U.S. ISBN-selling agency is www.myidentifiers.com, and it’s super easy to buy an ISBN on that website. It’ll cost you $125, but that’ll be just about your only cost for self-publishing.

Copyright: You can upload your book directly to the U.S. Copyright Office website at https://eco.copyright.gov/. You’ll have to register a username and password and then follow the instructions, which aren’t entirely straightforward, but I was able to figure them out, so I reckon that means that just about anybody can do it. Your book copyright will cost you $35.

Cover Art: With Createspace, you have a few options. You can use their free “Cover Creator” at https://www.createspace.com/Special/H... (You may have to create an account with a username and password in order to view this page). I didn’t use the Cover Creator, so I can’t say whether that’s an easy tool to use. Alternatively, you can have someone design your cover for you, and you can get a template for your chosen book size online (my paperback is 5X8, which is a great size for a paperback). On this page, you enter your book dimensions, you’ll be provided the template: https://www.createspace.com/Help/Book.... Another FANTASTIC option is to use CrowdSpring (http://www.crowdspring.com/). On this website, you enter the name and synopsis of your book, how much you can pay a designer, and then designers COMPETE to win the right to design your cover! Designers will submit artwork for your review, and you pick the best one! If my fabulously talented friend John hadn’t been willing to design my book for me, I would’ve used Crowdspring.

Royalties: The good news is that you can choose your cover price! So, if you want to make a zillion dollars, you can set your list price at $100,000 per book, and you will be rich if you can find a sucker who will pay your price! However, one thing I’ve learned is that the CHEAPER your book is, the MORE you will sell. So, I recommend setting your book price as low as possible. If you want to use Createspace to sell on Amazon, you should be aware that Createspace is going to take the first five and a half bucks per sale (they’re printing the whol thing, so this is reasonable), and then Amazon will take an additional dollar and a half (ish). So, for example, my book is priced at $7.99. If I sell a book directly from the Createspace website (www.createspace.com), I get paid $2.21. If, however, I sell from Amazon (which is where I do the VAST majority of my sales), I only get paid 61 cents. This is fine with me, because I have MORE than paid my costs for publishing the book, and I’d rather sell lots of books than make lots of money. That’s a personal choice, and you might make a different one. But since most self-published authors never sell more than 200 copies, and I wanted to sell a LOT more than 200 copies, I figured I’d do everything I could to make that happen. And it worked.

Createspace will walk you through the steps for uploading your ISBN and cover art and selecting royalties. Now you are ready to publish, YAY!!!!! DO IT!!!! Your book will be available the next day on Createspace, but it might take a week or two for it to show up on Amazon. Be patient – it’s cominnggggggg!!!!!

Next week I’ll write about how to publish to Kindle, Nook, iPhone, etc… Til then, have fun being you.

Today is one of those days when I am loving that my book is out there, self-pub style. Sold about 10 books in the last few days, got some superpositive feedback from another reader, and I feel powerful like volcano. Like bull. Like bull-shaped volcano.

So, your turn: Here are some tips for getting your brilliant new manuscript onto Kindle/Nook/iPhone, etc.

First, let me say that I didn’t use BookBaby (www.bookbaby.com), but I hear good things about it. I’ve used their partner site, CdBaby, for the digital distribution of my albums, and they’ve been great. For $99, BookBaby will convert your book to ePub, and it’ll get your book on Nook, Kindle, Sony eReader, and Apple iBookstore. If I were starting this process again from scratch, I’d use BookBaby even though I got my book on those sites for free. I think BookBaby would save a fair amount of time, plus ALL your digital sales are managed from one source. So, if you can spare the $99, I recommend Bookbaby. Here’s a list of prices for additional services like cover art, use of graphics, etc: http://www.bookbaby.com/pricing

If you wanna save some money, you can do it the way I did: You can upload directly to Kindle and Nook. People can put the Kindle file on their iPhones as well. Here’s how to upload to each site:

Kindle: Go to Kindle Direct Publishing (kdp): https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishin.... Get a username and password. Go to “Add New Title,” and enter the relevant info. Then you’ll have to choose your rights and pricing. Most of the time, your proceeds will be 70% of whatever your list price is, and you can choose your own list price. However, if you price your book BELOW $2.99, you’ll receive only 35% of the list price.

Nook: Go to http://pubit.barnesandnoble.com/pubit.... Again, go to “Add a Title,” enter the info, and pick your royalties.

The best advice I can offer here is for you to price your book as LOW as possible. I started off selling my eBook at $2.99, which I thought was SUPER cheap, and I sold a decent number. But when I lowered the price to 99 cents, my sales LITERALLY DOUBLED. I think that people perceive 99 cents as almost free – it’s almost no money – so they’re willing to give away that amount of almost-no-money-at-all.

If anyone disagrees with any of this advice I’ve been puttin’ out there, please let me know! By no means is my method the only one, or even the best one – I’m just telling you how I went about self-publishing because I found it easy and rewarding. Next week I’ll offer some suggestions for marketing your book, and I would LOVE to know what suggestions YOU have!

Me loves you. I hope you enjoy the snot out of this December.

I give the finger to everything. You win, mean old world.

So, the book is published, hundreds of people have read it, everyone has delightful things to say about it, yay, etc. People stay up all night reading it, can’t put it down, wish there were a sequel, blah blah. This type of feedback gives me moments of high-on-crack elation. Followed by moments where I want to run away to Costa Rica forever. Because I can’t figure out how to turn hundreds of readers into thousands. Because being creative and putting out a good product isn’t enough. In addition to creating things, you also have to have the Best Business Brain Around in order to make ANYTHING of your creations. And in a cruel twist of human nature, creative people often have the business acumen of a sandfly (myself included) – we’ve just used up all our juice making things. No juice left to figure out how to trick people into buying things.

And here’s the worst thing about being a self-published author: the media wants nothing to do with you. I can’t get ANY magazines to review my book, including my own university’s magazine! Including dinky little local papers! Including book blogs! Mainstream media wants nothing to do with self-published books, which I’m certain will change over the next few years (self-pub is the wave of the future), but unfortunately we 2011 self-pub authors are just to early on the uptake. And we’re screwed. For now, at least.

I couldn’t even get a book publicist to TAKE my money. She told me that the media is still so wary of self-pub writers that no matter how good the book is, she can’t get an author ANY press, and she wouldn’t want to take my money for nothing. Good on her for not robbing me blind, but I GIVE THE FINGER to the shortsightedness of mainstream media.

So instead I’ll just try to network my way from hundreds to thousands. If I can get some big-name endorsements, perhaps that’ll get a bigger ball rolling. I just need to meet some famous people who I can convince to read my book (because I know they’ll dig it). Or maybe I can just run into Oprah and smile so charmingly that she’ll automatically give me her book-club-gold-star. Cinchy. No problem. I’ll just start calling up famous people.

[she throws a pillow at the wall, yells “I hate everything,” sits down to write new blog]

Sometimes, this endless cycle – create something, try to figure out how to promote it, discover inadequate business acumen, accept that product will likely never bring widespread recognition – takes me so low that I don’t know how I can ever create anything ever again. But then I remember that when I’m not writing or recording or performing, I’m only a withered shell of myself, and so I do it all over again. I’ll write another motherf***** novel and record another motherf**** album. Because I have to. Because that’s who I am. Tortured and rowing ever-forward into the roiling, venomous sea of creativity.

The brilliant angry insightful Charles Bukowski understood me (and every other aspiring author), like nobody else:

so you want to be a writer?
By Charles Bukowski

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.


if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

I’ll be honest: promoting a self-published book sucks. Local bookstores don’t want your book unless you get articles in local magazines/newspapers. And newspapers/magazines treat self-published authors like dirty beggars. This will change in time, but for now, self-publishing requires a massive dose of self-confidence, a lot of outside-the-box marketing efforts, and a ridiculous amount of hard work. I haven’t cracked the code yet on how to make mahself filthy rich, but I’ve done a few things that were successful. Part of me wanted to keep these successful efforts close to my chest, so that other people wouldn’t start doing what I’m doing and thereby dilute the power and uniqueness of my efforts. But then I realized that if I didn’t share my ideas, I’d be as much of a dickwad as the newspaper editors who don’t want to help self-published authors. So, here are my suggestions for self-pub book marketing. And please please PLEASE feel free to suggest other ideas – I need them!

1. Goodreads is phenomenal for self-promotion. You can offer your book as a “Giveaway,” and people will sign up to receive your book for free. Each time I sign up for a “Shadow Swans” giveaway, about 500 people apply for the free book, and about 100 of those people put my book on their “to-read” shelves. That’s great exposure, and only costs me one paperback copy plus postage. Once the giveaway is over, I write to the people who didn’t win the giveaway to tell them that my Kindle book is only 99 cents, and they can find that here: http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Swans-eb... (see how I just threw in my own self-promotion there? ☺

2. Self-promote relentlessly. Make a list of every email address you have, friends, family, and coworkers, and send a note to all of those people with a short summary of your novel, a couple of impressive press quotes, and links where the book can be purchased online. I sold a few hundred copies right off the bat with that kind of email.

3. Author talks: as I mentioned, a lot of bookstores won’t want anything to do with you. BUT, your high school will be willing to hold an author talk for you. I sold a lot of books at an author talk at my high school, and it’s a fantastically supportive audience. Also community centers will host author talks. You can also do author talks in peoples’ homes.

4. Libraries: Most libraries will stock a copy of your book if you send it to them. This is a great way to get exposure and costs you next to nothing.

5. MOST IMPORTANTLY, network! I’m still working on this portion. I’m trying to meet anyone I can who works in publishing (if you work in publishing, please email me at laurabama@hotmail.com - I want to talk to you!). I want to meet magazine writers, book editors, bloggers. I’m signing up for writers’ conferences where I can meet publishers and editors and other writers.

I can vouch for the success of the first 4 things, and I’m hoping that #5 will take me even further than the first 4. Keep your fingers crossed for me. And your toes. Legs. Arms. Eyes, maybe even? Cross it all. I need it. And if you work in publishing, holla!!!!