| Self Publishing - My Experience |
| By Pamela Grandstaff - author of the Rose Hill Mystery Series |
(I wrote this in 2008 and continue to update it with new information.) How I decided to self-publish: When I wrote the first book of the Rose Hill Mystery Series I tried the traditional publishing route: after a lot of diligent research, I picked the 50 best agents for the mystery genre under which my books seem to fall, sent my highly polished query to each (using the submission guidelines each stipulated), and they all promptly replied that none of them were taking on new clients. At the time, the publishing industry seemed to be going through the same free fall as the music industry. 'Okay,' I thought, 'now what?' After much soul-searching I realized that it was actually the creative process I enjoyed most. I knew I could do (or contract out) the actual paper publishing; I just couldn't afford much marketing. I decided that going "indie" was preferable to giving up, sticking the book in a drawer, and being disappointed about it ever after. I called it "my little book experiment," and was determined to take it as far as I could on my own. I chose a self-publishing company: I did some research on publishers and settled on Booksurge, now known as Createspace. Amazon had just purchased the company, so it turned out to be much easier to get on Amazon by using their services. They have $100 discount promotions every few months, so I waited on one of those and then locked in the lower rate. Their customer service has not only been consistently excellent, it has exceeded my expectations each time. Update: You can upload your own PDFs of cover and book interior for free - see below: Book content quality: I recommend getting skilled professional assistance in copy editing and proofreading. It's hard to be objective about your own work, and there's no substitute for someone who is very good at this. I've been lucky to have friends who do this for a living, and so far they have volunteered their services. I find mistakes in almost every book I read, even those from big publishing houses, so I know it must be hard for anyone to achieve perfection. My books still have mistakes in them, but at some point you just have to call them “done.” If I did my job right, and the book is interesting enough, most people won’t notice small errors. I'm still learning, I'm always looking ways to improve my writing, and I hope with each book I get better. The printed paper publishing process: For the first book, I uploaded a word document version to Booksurge (now Createspace) and paid them to lay out the interior. Update: For Iris Avenue I taught myself to do the interior layout and uploaded a PDF. The more you do yourself the more money you will save. I enjoy designing the covers myself (using Photoshop, Publisher, or Indesign), and I submitted them as PDFs as well. From the submission of PDFs to a paperback being available on Amazon is approximately a four-week process. It has taken me a year to write each book. I get the ISBN # from Createspace as part of the package, but you can buy your own for $125 at bowker.org and be your own publisher if you like. I apply for copyrights through copyright. gov - it costs $35 per title and you can do it electronically. Update: (January 2012) paper book sales seem downright sluggish compared to e-book sales. Making a paper version now seems more like the vanity project than making an e-book. E-books: Amazon Kindle: Making an electronic version of a book was not as difficult as I thought it would be. Through Amazon's digital platform I uploaded a text file of the book and they converted it to Kindle format for free. They pay me a 70% royalty for every e-book sold versus the 40% royalty on paper books. (I sell more e-books at $7.99 than paper books at $15.00 by about 30:1). Royalties are electronically deposited into my bank account every month and in January they send me a W-9 form for my taxes. On my web site there is a link to each version on the book profile page. Update: (June 2011) you now have to submit an e-pub file to upload your book to the Kindle platform, but if you follow their directions and use the free mobi site it's not that hard. Smashwords does not have an agreement with Amazon. You might want to do some research on digital rights management; Kindle requires it. Update: (January 2012) I lowered the price of my electronic books and sales immediately increased. $2.99 seems to be the sweet spot of e-books from unknown self-published authors (me). Update: (March 2012) Since the launch of the Kindle Fire (which is wonderful-I love mine) my sales have increased every month, with all the sales taking place on Saturdays. Apple and Other E-book Readers: Since I don't own a Mac I went through an approved Apple "aggregator" to get my books on iBooks. I chose Smashwords based on Internet research on recommendations, and after testing the waters with another company (that I just didn’t like for what are no doubt terribly subjective reasons). It was ultra- cheap and easy to format and upload. If you’ve successfully uploaded a text file to Kindle you will have no problem. Smashwords converted my word document (formatted to their specifications) to EPub format and submitted it to Apple IBooks, Barnes & Noble, and a few other EBook retailers. There were no upfront charges - their cut is a low % per sale plus the retailer's cut and I'll still make $5 on a $7.99 retail ebook. I retain all the rights. I paid Smashwords a one-time $9.95 for a new ISBN for each book (I'm the publisher: ERDT Books). They deposit the royalties into my Paypal account every quarter. There are other options for publishing, including pdf and word files, but I'm sticking to the formats used by the big book sale sites for now. Update: (January 2012) When I lowered the price on my Kindle books I also lowered them on the other bookseller sites. (See Kindle update above). Marketing: Google Adwords: With Rose Hill I invested in some advertising, albeit with a limited budget. I bought a subscription to Google Ads, where you pay only for ads that are "clicked" by consumers. You set a budget for a certain amount per day, and as soon as you reach that limit your ads disappear. I designed the ads using their online tool, and chose the websites on which they would appear. Martha Stewart site ads were the most expensive at $3 per click. I got the best return on investment from my electronic ads on Goodreads.com and LibraryThing.com, which cost around $1.00 per click. Update: I got a $100 credit from Google Adwords and promoted June Bug Days and Firefly Nights over the Memorial Day (four-day) weekend 2011. I set a daily limit of $25 and created an ad with the book cover as the image with a button leading to my web page. I didn't sell many JBD&FFNs but I sold a bleep-ton of Rose Hill mysteries that weekend. I don't know why; you tell me. I have a Firefox filter that screens out ads, so I couldn't see them. The ads started running at 6:00 am and were all clicked out by 7:00 am. That seemed kind of sketchy to me. Update: (December 2011) I did a Black Friday Weekend experiment with Google Adwords and it was a complete and total waste of money. They didn't put my ads on the sites I chose, instead stuck them on junk sites no one has ever heard of, and I will never do that again. I am guessing I get the majority of my sales from "people who purchased this also purchased ..." on Amazon.com. Update: (January 2012) Anecdotal evidence: I tend to sell more Rose Hills, but the majority of Rose Hill purchasers buy all the subsequent books in the series. I was hoping for a big bump in sales after the Kindle Fire came out and it seems to be happening. Lots of new e-book readers are now looking for new authors. I continue to be realistically optimistic. Book Review Sites: I participated in a book give-away on LibraryThing and Goodreads; I got some good reviews on Amazon out of it. I also sent complimentary copies to several book bloggers who specialize in my genre. The combination of advertising on book review sites and visibility on book blogger sites brought me the most sales. It is considered dishonest (not to mention tacky) to review your own book on a bookseller website. Better to take the high road, write as well as you can, and hope for the best. Book review sites: http://www.goodreads.com/ http://www.librarything.com/ http://www.shelfari.com/ During my research phase I googled "mystery book bloggers" and "book bloggers" and went from there. I also googled "top ten mystery book review blogs" and other variations of those terms. I spent time wandering through blogland via recommended links to other blogs, and when I found someone whose writing I enjoyed, who seemed to like the kind of books I write, I emailed her (in my case they were all female) and asked if I could send a book. Many bloggers are looking for fresh content, so I've written a few "interviews" with myself that they could adapt and use on their sites. I also wrote some short pieces on how I got started writing after my parents came to live with me, and many readers can relate to this issue. The bloggers most often plug my book and have a giveaway contest for it. There are such things as blog tours, set up for you for a fee, but I didn't do that because I just couldn’t afford it at the time. I do think they are worthwhile. Some bloggers love free stuff they can give away to their audiences. I ordered cheap, padded envelopes from Uline.com that fit my book exactly, and mailed them media rate. The majority of book bloggers turned out to be loyal readers who supported my subsequent efforts. They check in to see when my next books will be out and give me free plugs on their websites. They are generous, kind people and I always send them complimentary copies. This reminds me that librarians are good advocates for books and they have web sites as well. I found several by googling "librarian blogs." I figured the worst that could happen was they sold my book to raise money for the library instead of putting it on the shelf. Book clubs are good resources. I emailed a bunch of contacts for book clubs I found on http://www. readerscircle.org/ and offered to send them one free book for every one of mine they bought on amazon. com if they chose my book for their club. I got two clubs to do this. Website urls and web hosting: I bought the urls for RoseHillMysteries.com and PamelaGrandstaff.com ($13 per year each from 123cheapdomains.com) and built a website using the Sitebuilder tool through web host Yahoo. The website costs me $12 per month and I get more space than I need and two email addresses. For an additional fee I could add a Yahoo shopping cart and sell the books myself, but by selling through Amazon via print on demand and also as ebooks I don’t have to invest in inventory or pack and ship. Website design: Sitebuilder is provided by Yahoo for free with my web hosting account. Instead of using their ready- made templates I started from a blank page, and they make it incredibly easy - you don't need to know html to do it. It's a fun toy to play with, and I have completely redesigned the site with each book. I can change it as many times as I want whenever I want. Yahoo also provides analytical reports so I can tell what pages get the most hits; that helped me streamline the site to what people seem most interested in. I can also resubmit the site to all the major search engines every few days through Yahoo, and then see where I show up in the results. Book Trailers: Book trailers were a thing for awhile, so I bought Adobe Premier Elements and learned how to do that. I purchased the images (for the trailer, my website, and book covers) from istockphoto.com and shutterstock.com; the image rights are really inexpensive. Note: Don’t use anyone’s images off the internet without permission – that’s stealing. I bought the music from shockwave-sound.com. The hardest part was syncing the image changes to the music. The final product is not perfect but it's decent. I've had over 900 views on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FJc1jxYN4I. Honest Self-Evaluation: If you're detail-oriented, can follow directions, and have enough self-discipline to stick with a project until you get it done, then you can probably do the self-publishing work by yourself. It takes a special kind of nerve, however, to promote the results. I love, love, love all the creative, nerdy aspects of this process: the writing, website design, cover design, trailer creation, and book layout. I also enjoy helping other people learn how to do these things and talking about the process. On the other hand, there's this: when I was a bookstore manager I found there were few things as sad as a book signing where no one showed up. I felt so sorry for the poor, humiliated authors, who either pretended not to care or bitterly blamed my corporate overlords. I spend most of my workdays engaging with people: emailing, calling, talking, and listening. I’m good at it and I love it. Conversely, I would rather have root canal surgery than subject myself to the agony of a self-published book signing. It’s just too masochistic. I had a blog for awhile but I'm self-aware enough to know I'm just not that interesting. Obviously this limits the extent to which I am willing to market my books, which leads me to... Realistic Expectations: Self-publishing, or indie publishing, still suffers from the lingering stench of the old term “vanity publishing.” It's more than likely that no mainstream, traditional book reviewer will read your book if it's self-published. Luckily, the book readers who actually buy books care more about good reviews on blogs, Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, etc. and word of mouth recommendations. The challenge is to get the message to them. Amazon's "if you like this you may also like ..." and "customers who bought this also bought ..." is very helpful in this regard. I give away a lot of books, and if the reader likes them he/she will usually purchase the next ones in the series. I encourage people to share my books and then give them to the library. Any kind of circulation is good. Let’s keep those books moving, people! Just my opinion: Publishers themselves don't know how to make a blockbuster. Marketing a new book is high stakes gambling. Sometimes they get lucky, and a confluence of buzz, money, and synchronicity will result in big sales. Sometimes they pay a $2 million advance for a sure thing that ends up selling 10K copies regardless of the multimedia blitz. If you have lots of marketing dollars with which to work, you can gamble on your book just like the big publishing houses do. Just know that there is no guarantee you will get a big return on your investment. There's a lot to be said for following your bliss (sanely), doing what you love believing (but not counting on) the money will follow, doing what you would (reasonably) do if you (reasonably) believed you could not fail, and dancing like there’s no arthritis, etc. ... but I'm a realistic optimist. Still ... Then indecision brings its own delays, And days are lost lamenting over lost days. Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute; What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it; Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. - Goethe If, like me, you just want to hold a book in your hands, to be able to say "I wrote this," then self- publishing is one way to accomplish this. Related links: https://www.createspace.com/ http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting/ https://dtp.amazon.com/mn/signin https://itunesconnect.apple.com/WebObjects/iTunesConnect.woa/wa/apply http://www.smashwords.com/about/how_to_publish_on_smashwords I hope this helps. Best wishes! Pamela |