On Self-Publishing
For me, writing is like preparing a meal. After toiling for days or months, I want to be the person who serves the hot dish. I want to be the one who says, Be careful. It’s still hot. I want to be the one who watches with a kitchen towel thrown over her shoulder, arms crossed across her chest, bags under her eyes, smiling as my guests say, This is delicious. What spice is this? Words.
Main Dish. Ingredients for writing Tuesday Tells it Slant: three weeks, 65,000 words, six to eight cups of coffee a day, four to five hours of sleep each night.
After twenty-one days of repeating the above ingredients, I was spent. I saved my Word document a thousand times, compulsively, as I didn’t want to lose a single word. Then I slept. I slept for days. When I arose, my head was free enough to begin the editing process. Some authors outline before they begin to write. I tend to outline once I reach a certain point in the story: a kind of reverse outline, to attempt to protect against major plot holes.
Soup and Salad. Ingredients for editing: a solid week of coffee, a few colorful pens, post it notes, two to three black ink cartridges, two reams of paper and the ability to look at your words without remembering the sweat behind them. I print my work, read over it with a colorful pen in hand to fix errors that can’t be seen on my laptop screen and return to the original document to correct the errors I caught. Once I do this, I print again, pouring over the second draft before finalizing the document.
I wrote soup and salad because the above process is most efficient when repeated. May as well get two dishes out of it.
Before I move on to dessert, I have to say that this is the point of the process when I realized I was going to self-publish. I had the desire to share my work with others immediately. I was proud and excited. I still believe that self-publishing doesn’t signify the end in the publishing world. Today, it opens doors.
Dessert. Cover creation and description. This is tricky. A great chef doesn’t necessarily equate to a brilliant baker. A major force throughout Tuesday Tells it Slant was a diary. I decided to make a cover that mimicked a diary with a casual font and doodles. Make the cover relate to the book. Most readers do judge a book by its cover.
This is also the part of the process where you will create the book’s description. Keep it simple, yet detailed enough to grab a reader’s attention. Don’t be afraid to give away too much. A reader doesn’t need to be surprised at every turn of the page. They need to know enough to hook them before they start reading.
Setting the table with eBooks. Amazon’s Digital Text Platform allows authors to upload their work, cover, and description easily. After uploading, name your price. I priced my work at $0.99 to start. At this price, Amazon pays a royalty rate of 35%, though this figure is flipping to 70% for all eBooks priced at or above $2.99 in June. In as little as twenty-four hours, your work becomes available to Kindle owners for purchasing. As an independent author, you can also utilize Smashwords to make your work available in multiple eFormats (Sony Reader, Barnes and Noble Nook). The royalty rate for authors using Smashwords is 57%. These services are free for authors. There aren’t any set-up fees or gimmicks. They merely make your work available for download.
Proper serving ware. Paperbacks. If you want to serve your readers traditionally, Amazon’s CreateSpace is the way to go. There are no set-up costs involved and the process is fairly simple to make your work available as a paperback on Amazon. Your books are printed as needed. When a reader purchases your book from Amazon, the book is then printed and shipped to that reader. Traditionally, an author would pay thousands of dollars to see their work in print. Using Amazon’s CreateSpace, a copy of your own 400-page book would cost about $4.00. Though CreateSpace offers certain (pricey) services to its authors, these services aren’t required to publish your work.
Serving. Marketing, marketing, marketing. This part of the process comes easily for some. For others, it is the most difficult part of the course of self-publishing. Between press releases, reviews, social marketing and developing a readership, the road to success can be rocky, and it all depends upon the work that you put into it. For eBook sales, I recommend joining online forums dedicated to certain eReaders. The Kindle has multiple forums where authors are welcome to post their book and description. For paperback sales, consider giveaways, blog tours and obtaining reviews from reputable sources. If this seems overwhelming, you should consider hiring a publicist to help build an arsenal of marketing material.
More writers are looking at self-publishing as a viable option to getting their work out there. Currently, fewer publishing houses seem willing to take on a work by an unknown, unproven author. According to Publishers Weekly, over 760,000 titles were self-published in 2009: nearly double the total from 2008. Traditional publishers printed less than 290,000 books in 2009.
With the publishing industry gradually failing to keep up with the times, it seems as if the new game is self-publishing. This leaves more power in the hands of the author, instead of the hands of the publishing houses.
July 8, 2010
