Tag Archives: self-publishing journey

Self-Publishing Journey: Week 9

Wrap Up to the Series

Well, it is tempting to feel that this whole series was a massive waste of time. It certainly didn’t generate the kind of conversations I had hoped it would. For better or for worse, I still accomplished my own goal of thinking through the last three years of our journey here at Serenity Mountain Publishing and setting our sites on the next few years.

Looking at the Week 1 post, there are a few areas I have not touched on yet that can be easily and quickly covered.

Bookstores/Consignments: Most huge chain stores (Barnes and Noble, Books-a-Million) will not touch self-published books. Unless you are really far down the road and seeing huge success, don’t waste your time. There is an application process, and you may wait a year for an answer. Make sure you are offering them a product they are confident they can sell. Sadly, the same lack of interest is pretty true of independent bookstores. They will probably only take your book on consignment, and the few that we tried ended up costing us money, even though some books did sell. There are usually set-up fees. You’ll be lucky to break even. The big exception to this is if you have a personal connection to a bookstore in your town or general area. Then you may find great support and can have a book event and may get your book featured face out (as opposed to spine out among the hordes on the shelves) as a featured local author. If you can pull that off, absolutely go for it. Otherwise, don’t spend lots of time courting bookstores.

Contests/Awards: This can be a very long conversation, but the main thought is that you want to be sure the contest is of some value and will look impressive on the cover of your book. I try to limit my attention to contests with entry fees under $100. There are lots of them. The Writer’s Digest annual contest for self-published and indie-published books offers feedback, and that’s great to have (even though I thought they nick-picked on odd things). Do awards on the cover matter? Would it matter to you if you were going to buy a book by an author you had never heard of? Keep that in mind when you decide to enter a contest. Do you stand a chance of winning? Don’t throw away entry fees. I KNOW that the awards on my book covers have helps make sales, especially the Mom’s Choice Award. That one is nice because it’s not really a contest where you are up against other books. You simply have to meet their standards to earn the honor of putting the award on your book. But I tell you, those entry fees and licensing fees cost a pretty penny, so don’t enter if you don’t think you can earn it. Research the contest. Does it look impressive? Is the cost fair? Make your calls from there.

Write a series for the biggest bang: It is a mantra you will see in every book about self-publishing out there (and hear from traditional publishers as well) – writing a series is the best way to earn a loyal fan base and make money. Even if you don’t write a series, you are going to have to write more than one book. I don’t even care about the genre thing. Just write and publish, and then do it again. By the end of 2016, I will have 6 children’s middle grade science fiction/fantasy books self-published and one adult paranormal/spiritual book plus a non-fiction children’s biography of Betty White published by an indie publisher. I have some picture books I need to send out too. I think being all over the place is fine, just write! Worry about the story and what you have to say, then get it on paper.

And that’s all I have to say about self-publishing. I’m sure there will be more here and there along the way, but that wraps up this series.

Now I’m on to more writing on “Slinky Steps Out” and editing for Pen-L and paperback and ebook proofs for “Max’s Wild Night” and spring break (well, at least the alarm clock won’t go off) in the week ahead.

Happy Spring, Y’all!

Self-Publishing Journey: Week 8

Freebies, Discount Promotions, & KDP

Well, I’ve gotten a bit off my schedule over the last couple of weeks, but my blog pretty much always takes a back seat to other work. It certainly has recently. I did make my word count goal for February, and Pen-L Publishing has two more books done with my proofreading skills. Sadly, however, I wasn’t able to attend the February meeting of the Ozark Writers League (OWL) due to a nasty ice storm that hit the night before. Travel on my mountain roads was out of the question, but in Branson they were able to pull together some workshops in the hotel and then pick up around noon when things started thawing out. Tomorrow I will be attending the Northwest Arkansas Writer’s Workshop meeting in Fayetteville and will hopefully get to see the friends I missed at OWL.

There’s not much left to wrap up on my self-publishing journey evaluation, but one area is really important so I don’t want to let it slide: freebies and sale promotions. Any self-publishing author has got to evaluate the benefits of giving away her work or offering discounted prices. It’s just part of the game. Readers of indie books expect it, but you don’t have to let yourself or your work be taken advantage of. You worked hard to write and publish that book. Freebies have their time when they can get your book into potential readers’ hands.

If you have a series, doing a freebie on Book 1 can result in sales on the other books in the series. That’s the biggest motivation out there, and I have personally found this to be true. Around here, we call “Why Kimba Saved The World” our sacrificial lamb. Doing free promotions on that book have led to increased sales for the other two. Not everyone who downloads your freebie will ever even read your book, but some of them will. Some of them will even like it. Some will purchase other books in the series. Can you hear the field narrowing down as it goes along? So make sure you get enough downloads to have those numbers at the end of the stream be high enough to make a difference.

If you are exclusive with Kindle Direct Publishing in their Select program, you can run 5 free promo days every 90 days. I use those free days pretty consistently for Book 1 in my series. Two or three days at a time is the most productive. The times I do it without much advertising it still gets hits, but when you can loop a free promo with a significant (but not super expensive) advertisement you will do even better.

Example: I was able to get a BookBub ad for a free promo on “Why Kimba Saved The World.” If you don’t know about BookBub, click on the link to find out more right now. This site is key for indie ads. I tried several times before I was accepted, so be persistent. When that ad ran, 14,000 copies of “Why Kimba Saved The World” were downloaded for free. Did you catch that number?? That gave me a big wide field, and yes, the numbers on Book 2 and Book 3 sales rose afterward and there are still months where those two are higher than Book 1.

BookBub is the only ad site I can speak to with the authority of my own experience at this point. Tweeting about a freebie offer has had limited results. @KimbaBaby often tweets about sales because the vast majority of her followers are cats or cat people. This number has doubled since our last promotion, so I will find out soon if I have any takers among her new friends. There are many sites that will ask you to pay for an ad for your freebie. Unless you expect huge results, I wouldn’t try those. Losing money is never the goal.

On March 20-22, “Why Kimba Saved The World” will be on free promo again. I will also offer Book 2 and Book 3 for 99 cents each as incentive to pick them up right then and there when making the free download. This promo will be advertised through The Fussy Librarian. The cost of advertising with this site is inexpensive, but it remains to be seen if the ad will make a difference. I’ll do a specific blog after this sale to let you know where I ran ads and if any of them worked.

Another kind of free promotion I have coming up involves the release of a new book: “Max’s Wild Night.” Through my newsletter, I will be offering a free ebook of “Max” to anyone who has published amazon.com reviews of all three of my Cats in the Mirror books. This is a new strategy for me, but I have heard it suggested by more than one indie-pub helper book. I will lose some guaranteed sales to my fans who follow my newsletter, but I also stand an even better chance of gaining good reviews on amazon.com. That is totally worth it. Maybe they will still want a paperback copy of “Max” as well. I’ll let you know how it goes. Does it sound like an offer you’d like to take me up on? Sign up for my newsletter in the right hand column next to this article (right at the top of the web page) and you can!

Are there downsides to freebies? Of course. The biggest one I have found is that people will download your book who would never buy it and, frankly, it is not anything they should have ever read. Their reviews will be bad and odd and ones you could have done without. As long as this stays within reason, and your other reviews are good, you can weather the storm. It will help get your final amazon review numbers up, and this is good thing. Discerning readers can take the reviews/comments for what they are worth and compare them to the dozens of good reviews you have.

There is also the very real chance that these freebie takers never pay for books. I mean never. They just troll freebie sites. No matter how much they enjoy Book 1, they are never going to pay even 99 cents for your other books. Those are the middle of the field. You don’t really lose anything by them getting your book, you just don’t gain anything either.

Goodreads giveaways must be paperbacks, so you are already losing money. I have done several of these. It gets you on people’s “to be read” list, but I don’t know that it has led to any sales. Tread lightly there.

I have also found that offering a book for free during a blog tour to promote it just means that no one will buy a copy then and there. If they can enter to win a free copy, why would they buy one? By the time the contest is over, they have moved on. You can give away a prize of some kind, but don’t make it that new book you hope to promote. Make them buy it if they want it.

Just a note for those who have been in the game for a while: success in free promos does you absolutely no good in your ranking at amazon.com once the promo is done. This didn’t used to be true. There used to be some carryover. If anything, it might hurt you because you won’t have any sales credited to your ranking for the days of your promo. As far as your number ranking is concerned, free days are just days with no sales. Your numbers will slide. Just be aware of that. You will be listed in the “free book” rankings, which is where those folks who like freebies go, so it’s not all bad, but it all ends with the promo. This could change tomorrow, but that’s where it stands now. I still think it’s worth it. Rankings vary and are affected by many things I can’t control. I don’t worry about them too much in the scheme of things from day to day, as long as they stay reasonable over time.

Discount prices can help boost sales a small amount. 99 cents seems to be the big price point for the most bang, and sales on these discount or “countdown” promos do count toward your ranking. Again, you are going to have to run some promotions if you want it to make a big difference. I did a BookBub ad (yes, I qualified for two, whoot whoot) for Book 2, “Vacation Hiro,” during a 99 cent promotion and sold roughly 380 copies. It was enough to send me to the #1 spot in my category for three days (beating out those Warrior books, finally!) and earn me “best seller” status forever. Totally worth it.

I had talked about KDP select wrapped into this blog, but all I can really say about it is that it works well for me. I tried having Book 1 up at Smashwords and Kobo and Barnes and Noble. Never sold a copy. When you stay with KDP select, you get the free and sale day promo options to help get the word out about your sale just on amazon.com itself. For me, this is the only way to go.

I hope all of that helps you as you make decisions for your own possible free days or sale promotions. It is still an area we are toying with. I’ll continue to let you know what I learn along the way.

Next Week: Week 9 and the wrap up to this blog series on my self-publishing journey.

If you’re in the area, join me Saturday for the Northwest Arkansas Writer’s Workshop event. It’s free!

2015-conference

My winter newsletter goes out in a few days, so make sure you sign up to get that free “Max’s Wild Night” ebook offer. The details will only be in that newsletter!

My writing goal for the month is fairly low: 5,000 words on “Slinky Steps Out.” I have been moderate with that because paperback formatting for “Max’s Wild Night” is well underway with the ebook formatting on the horizon and these require my attention. I also have another editing project coming from Pen-L before the end of March. You will notice, however, that I don’t get a pass for the month or a zero word count goal. Book 4 is not going to write itself.

Just Keep Writing!

 

Self-Publishing Journey: Week 5

Week 5: Where to Publish?

My answer to this is easy: CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing (which are both amazon.com). There are other places (LightningSource and BookBaby are the two main others), but after we here at Serenity Mountain Publishing have evaluated what we have done over the last few years I see no reason to go anywhere else. I did have “Why Kimba Saved The World” up on other sites for a while, but I saw very little in sales (if any) from places like Smashwords and Kobo. Where you sell your book is different than where you handle the publication process, of course, but I am happy just having all of my eggs in one simple, manageable basket at amazon.com.

Many people, especially authors, are all into hating on amazon.com these days because it has such a corner on the book market. It is the big, hairy elephant of book sales. But why hate? My feeling is that I need all the help I can get as an indie-author, so I’m just gonna jump on that big elephant and ride it around until it no longer serves my purposes. We are always poking at other options, I read what other authors are learning in their own journeys, but so far nothing has been compelling enough to drive me away from amazon.com.

Amazon.com publishes two kinds of books as two separate entities.

Let me be clear: CreateSpace = print books     Kindle Direct Publishing = ebooks

My husband still has trouble with this and asks me questions about one when he means the other or calls it all amazon (maybe just to see the look on my face). They are linked, but they are separate files and book covers and set up.

Once your print book is formatted and ready, all you have to do is create a PDF and you are ready to roll. Setting up an author account at CreateSpace for your print books is not difficult. Block out a couple of hours and just go through the steps one by one. It’s better to start this set up before you format your book because there are set book sizes that are easiest to work with, and you’ll want to know what size you are going with before you start formatting. That’s one of those hundred decisions you are going to have to make. I made this error with “Miss Fatty Cat’s Revenge,” and even being off by a few bits of an inch made things a mess that I had to go back and redo. Major time gobble I could have avoided. Things also get tricky with the book cover size and how to format that cover PDF so the spine fits just perfectly and the back text is centered. My cover designer has this art figured out, and I leave it to her.

The ebook account at Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is a separate step. You only need a JPG file for the cover (there is no back of book like in the print version), and the book file will be a totally separately formatted MOBI or PDF file.

With both of these formats, you can update the files as often as you like. When I have put out a new book, I add the name to the “also by” section at the front of the book and “buy” links to the new books at the end of the kindle version. This new ebook won’t go out to people who already downloaded, but it will be available for those who get it from that time forward (or who specifically ask for the new version through customer service).

There is one exception to this. If you discover that there is some MAJOR error in your ebook, KDP may resend it to everyone who has purchased it. Yes, I discovered this the hard way. I made a minor edit to part of the “Kimba” ebook. Somehow, someway that was never quite explained, in the editing process the ebook designer managed to drop the first paragraph of EVERY chapter in the book. I only checked what I asked them to change and then ran a BookBub free promo where 14,000 copies of this awful version were downloaded. It was a few months later when I was going through to update all of the black-and-white photos to color ones that I noticed something wasn’t quite right. I’m sure you can imagine the horror when I realized what had happened. I think there were some tears. Yep.

Fortunately, this is such an egregious error that I was able to contact KDP customer service and they agreed to resend it. This took six weeks. All that time those nasty, missing-text copies were being read (and, amazingly, reviewed well). Sigh. Yes, this is a lesson in always double and triple checking everything, but it is also a lesson in the fact that amazon.com is willing to work with authors when the unforeseen, major errors come into play.

At this time, I’m a big fan of KDP Select. It gives me promotions for my free or discount days, and I get 70% commission on sales. I can also do some free days if I want without trying to trick the system. I do see some activity through the Prime lending library at about the same price that my normal commission would be, so it’s all good for now. Being a part of this program does mean that you cannot list your book for sale anywhere but amazon.com, but I’m okay with that. I never saw any worthwhile activity from other sites anyhow. This could change when we reevaluate again, but for now I’m happy.

I also love CreateSpace’s “print on demand” feature. I can order one copy or 400 copies or 4,000 copies. It all depends on what I need for upcoming events or sales through my web site. No more do you need to order 1,000 copies to start a print book. You can order and fix errors along the way (you are sure to find some) and then order more later on.

I’ll leave the how to make the most of your set up at both CreateSpace and KDP to other sites. I still go in and tweak stuff and add review notes and change categories on KDP to see if it changes my sales numbers. There are whole books devoted to how to make the most of these setups. Mostly what we have learned with that is don’t try to play it too much. Call your book what it is. Put it in the right category. My biggest problem with having a children’s book about cats is that I have the whole “Warrior” series and all of its forms ahead of me in the rankings at all times. They take up around 30 slots. I did, however, beat them all when I did a 99 cent sale on “Vacation Hiro” through BookBub.com and hit #1 for three days straight. Yay, best seller status! Fight it out fairly and sell your book for what it is, not something that has fewer items in the category because it might get you a higher ranking. You may show up earlier, but if you are not what those readers want, they will ignore you.

Be sure you set up an amazon.com author page, claim your books so they show up on your page, and link your kindle and print copies so they show up together on searches. Here’s mine, so you can see how it works. If the thought of all of this freaks you out, one of those book guides we talked about in an earlier blog will be happy to help or talk you through it.

Where to publish has been the easiest part of our analysis of this self-publishing journey. We are thrilled with where we are and have no plans of changing that. For now. It can all change in the blink of an eye, so we stay alert.

Next Week: Live Events & Blog Tours

I’m going to move this one up in the list because I have a live event over the weekend and can share that experience too.

Writing Notes:

Winter is supposed to be my productive time while the guest house and book events are quieter. A book I’m proofing for Pen-L Publishers is ready for the final go-through this week. “Max’s Wild Night” is heading to the editor next week and book cover creation will start mid-month. So exciting! I’ll begin formatting by the end of February. Max will have his day on May 1st.

I have also submitted my MG/YA biography on Betty White to a local publisher. My goal for a busy February is to reach 10,000 words on “Kimba’s Christmas.” I don’t have release for that scheduled until Octoberish of 2016, but there are plot points between that and “Slinky Steps Out” (April 2016) that need unwrangling. I am also working on vocabulary activities for all three Cats in the Mirror books for homeschool and classroom use. I’d love to explore creating audio books for them as well, but time may get away from me. Things just keep moving forward. Never stop writing!

And I’d love to have you join me at the Kimberling Area Library on Saturday, February 7th for their annual Author Event. With over 40 authors, speakers, and fun activities planned, it should be an outstanding afternoon. Come on down!

 

Self-Publishing Journey: Week 4

Week 4: Publish Your Book Like A Professional

There are two kinds of self-publishing authors: those who slap it together themselves for cheap and throw it at an unsuspecting public and those who treat their book as professionally as a traditional publisher would. I stand with both feet firmly planted on the second strategy. I take this publishing step as seriously as I took the writing step. Otherwise, what was the point of working so hard on writing it?

When I made this leap into self-publishing, it wasn’t without serious consideration. What I came to understand was that “Why Kimba Saved The World” was never going to appeal to a mainstream publisher. I just had to face up to that fact. The real photos in the book (which some readers love and others don’t) made it different. I’d never published a book before, so that made me an unknown variable. Without an agent to bang down doors for me, I could spend years submitting and getting nowhere. Probably not even getting read. If I wanted “Kimba” to ever see the light of day, I was going to have to do it myself, but I had no idea where to start.

It was now mid-2012, and self-publishing had become the easiest and least expensive it had ever been. I don’t remember the exact train of events, but I had connections with publishing experience from my years of freelancing. Through conversations with other writers and former editors, I was hooked up with a “book guide.” This is an individual who has even more connections, knows how the self-publishing process works, and can walk you through and help you create a book. I had never met Carol Hohle, but I had rubbed shoulders with her husband during the time I worked in Boston doing research and compiling “Blessings of Forgiveness” for the Writings of Mary Baker Eddy. Her help guiding me through the process was invaluable.

Self-publishing is rather like building a house. I remember my sister griping about having to make a billion little decision on the house she built years ago. “I don’t care what kind of hinges are on the kitchen cabinets!” Creating a book is the same way. You need to be clear on exactly what you want the final product to look like and make lots of little decisions along the way.

What size will the book be? What size font are you going to use? Which font? How large are your margins going to be? What will the chapter beginnings look like? That’s not even touching on what the cover will look like. Don’t forget the text on the back of the book. Hugely important! Then there’s the whole process of getting the book set up on CreateSpace and KDP—just the business end of things. It can be overwhelming, but it has to be done right. A good book guide can walk you through the whole thing.

As we have evaluated the costs associated with the production of my first three books, we have already made some changes to move things in-house. That can save on cost, but I would only do this if I felt the end product would look as professional as it did in other hands. There were MANY discussions, and Scott and I didn’t always agree. There are some corners I refuse to cut, no matter how much he sighs.

Carol was heavily involved in both of my first two books, but by Book 3 I was ready to take on some of that on my own. Frankly, I had to. Formatting using InDesign is a time-consuming process, so it’s expensive to pay someone else to do it. Knowing that we are in this for the long haul, we decided to get a subscription for the whole Creative Cloud package (which also got us the invaluable AdobePro system). As a teacher, I can get it at a great price. I also use InDesign to create flyers and table toppers and ads, so it is a really useful program for the business of creating books and marketing them.

There is one point in the process I will never take in-house. You will hear it said from one end of self-publishing to the other, and I won’t be any different. DO NOT CREATE YOUR OWN BOOK COVERS!!! Unless you have serious cred as a graphic designer and artist, do not do it yourself. This is self-publishing suicide. Readers absolutely judge a book by its cover. It’s what attracts them and gets them to pick it up (click on it) instead of the million other books wafting by. I will pass up a freebie if the cover is for crap. And, sadly, I’ve done this more than a few times. To me, it sends a message that the inside will be for crap as well. That may not be true, but I’m a consumer, just like the rest.

I could write a whole blog on cover design, but that’s not my goal here. You can do your own search on that. My point, for my purposes in this series, is that we are not considering taking cover production in-house even though it is now the most expensive part of the production process for us. It is just too important to take a risk on. Scott is not always in agreement on this one. He really wants me to learn how to use all the programs I now have access to through Creative Cloud. For me, it’s not worth my time – also suspecting that I’ll just end up back with my cover designer to help me clean it up.

As I said, what I have started doing is formatting the text through InDesign on my own. This cuts $1,500 to $2,000 off the production costs. It takes weeks to do, and I messed up the book size on “Miss Fatty Cat’s Revenge” and had to go back through the whole thing. Lesson learned. For me, this was still worth it because the CFO across the hall was ready to put on the brakes on Book 3 for a while. I had to do whatever I could to keep that from happening.

There are lots of ways you can format a book. Word documents can be downloaded to amazon.com. Scrivener has its own system of ebook formatting. Writers I know sing this program’s praises to the moon. Be sure you check it out. I’ll be looking into that more myself in the future. I spend a few hundred dollars having someone create my ebooks, so that program might be helpful. Here’s where the books I am specifically creating are different than adult books or some kids books. I need genuine formatting.

For my Cats in the Mirror books (and Max’s companion book, now in the works) I wanted specific fonts and have fancy chapter beginnings with an icon photo next to the number. There are photos inserted throughout. My books need to be genuinely formatted in a system that will make them look exactly how I want them to look. This was beyond important to me. I wanted to sit on the shelf next to a traditionally published book and look just the same, if not better. Do a “look inside” at amazon.com to see what I mean.

For example, when we first got the ball rolling, Carol asked me what books I thought my books were like. Which books did I want them to look like? After doing some research, I settled on the Humphrey the Hamster series. The cover was like what I had in mind—a real photo mixed with cartoon elements—and it was for the same reading level. That decision drove everything else from the size of the book to the font we used. It helped my cover designer know what style I was looking for.

Humphries

Can you see how similar the style is??

Rezised Facebook Banner Photo

Lesley Hollinger Vernon worked on the cover for “Kimba” with Carol as our intermediary. I never talked directly with her. For “Vacation Hiro” we talked directly to save on time/money. For Book 3, Carol was not involved, but I still went right to Lesley. Developing that relationship and understanding of the style of a series is HUGE! Book 1 went through several stages of cover design and changes to background color and animation. Book 2 had a few changes from the first proof to the final. Book 3 was almost perfect from the first draft. We just tweaked it a bit for color and minor details. We have developed a style for the series, and it never occurred to me to go with anyone but Lesley for Max’s book this spring. Finding that person for your cover design is huge. Don’t skimp on it. I absolutely know that I have sold paperback books, often all three as a set, without the books even being opened. I can talk about the plot, but the covers sealed the deal and sold them. That’s what you need!!

So, in our final analysis, going with a book guide was right for us. Carol saved me tons of headaches and redos, especially in dealing with CreateSpace. But as we have learned and progressed, we were able to take on everything she was doing for us. You may be happy to leave all of that in someone else’s hands. That’s okay too. For us, it was really financial. Carol was worth the money, we just didn’t have it to spend. And, I have to admit, I enjoy doing the formatting myself. I am a proudly professed control freak. I love making little final tweaks to the text as I move it from Word to InDesign. I’ve even changed words so they fit on the page better (never hyphenating words is a decision we made on Book 1). I can end up with everything exactly how I want it. That’s a move I’m glad we made.

Over the next year, I’d really love to learn more about the ebook formatting process and making changes to what is already done. I love the ones I have, and it’s not terribly expensive, but making updates when a new book comes out can add up. It’s also somewhere that design is not really an issue. I’ve already done that. There’s just technology to be learned. I doubt I will have the time to do that before “Max’s Wild Night” is ready to go, but I’ll be poking at it to update the Cats in the Mirror books with links to the new book. Maybe I can figure it out!

There are a hundred ways you can produce your book (ebook or paperback or hardcover). Plot it all out well. Consider everything along the way. Again, are you hoping to make money from this process? You are going to have to take it all as seriously and professionally as a traditional publisher would. You are establishing your reputation as writer and as a self-publisher. Give it 100%.

Do you have a book guide or a cover designer you would recommend?

Next Week: Where to Publish

 

Self-Publishing Journey: Week 3

Week 3: Set Your Goals And Expectations

So now you have honed your writing skills (week 1) and written a fantastic book (week 2). Here’s where you need to decide what your long-term goals and expectations are for this masterpiece. We did that at the start, but instead of goals they were really more like hopes and dreams. We hadn’t taken the time to do research and determine what we could realistically expect. Most of the stories writers hear are the “lightning in a bottle” ones. If your goal is to be that writer, you will end up highly disappointed 99.9% of the time.

You need to be clear about what you are doing, why you are doing it, and what you hope will come out of it. This is where the creative hat needs to be set aside and you need to become a publisher—assuming you want to make any money. A business person. I have run my own business before, so I had some experience with this. My husband has been a CFO, so he rules with a loving-but-practical fist from the office across the hall from me. We weren’t just publishing a book or a series of books. We were creating a business, and it needs to end up being profitable at some point. Otherwise, I can just write articles for magazines.

So, in this new business of self-publishing, what are your goals?

Traditional publishing is still an attainable goal. Maybe you want to exhaust that option first. But it isn’t what it used to be. If you think you really want to go that route come hell or high water so you can have a book tour and tons of money and publicity pouring into the promotion of your book, think again. Obviously, publishers have a vested interest in promoting and supporting every book they produce, but, unlike in decades past, they are going to expect most of that work to come from the author. Publishing staffs are limited. Funds are limited. Only the top few books that come out of that publishing house that year will get most of that staff and financial support.

This is why it is increasingly hard to get the attention of a traditional publishing house. They only want bonafide, sure-thing success. I did attempt that route for a bit with “Why Kimba Saved The World,” but I don’t have an agent to fight for me (and I’m not sure that would have helped). I don’t have proven main-stream success. My book is different and has personal pictures in a science fiction story. What’s a traditional publisher to do with that? The odds were highly stacked against me.

Self-publishing is a fantastic way to go, but you need to be clear about what you expect from the experience. What kind of book have you written? Does it have mainstream appeal? Have you written an autobiography so your family can know your history? Do you think you have the next amazon.com bestseller? Who is your target market? How many books a year do they buy? Where are you going to sell and market this book? How padded is your checkbook?

There are literally millions upon millions of books listed on amazon.com. A larger and larger percentage are self-published (31% was a number I saw recently), with varying levels of skill and talent. It is possible, with very little difficulty, expense, or computer literacy, to self-publish your life story. That’s outstanding, unless you expect to make a million dollars selling it. Expectations here are everything. Set realistic goals.

This is where reading up on self-publishing is a great idea. I’m in the middle of reading Write, Publish, Repeat, written as a team by well-experienced self-publishing authors. They are hilarious to read, first of all, but also able to share their success and failures—rather like I’m trying to do now. You need to know what you are getting into. I’ve read a bunch of books on the subject. Some are helpful, some are pie-in-the-sky.

My hopes and expectations for self-publishing were that I could get my books into reader’s hands, cover my costs in the first two years, and actually make a profit after that so I could quit my day job, so to speak. My long-term goal is to have writing be my sole income source. That may not be how seriously you are looking at diving into it, but, as I said in past weeks, I have been writing and making income from writing for years. I was ready to kick it up a notch.

However, I must admit that I’m glad I had not read the statistic that self-published middle grade level books are the absolutely hardest to sell when we started this journey. My husband would have certainly put on the brakes. I didn’t intentionally write a book for that audience. That’s how the story evolved. You have to go with your heart, but when you are setting goals it’s also good to know what you are up against. I guess. But I’m glad we didn’t.

I know it sounds like I’m contradicting myself, but that has happened a lot over the last few years. When those hopes and dreams are bubbling out of you, it’s hard to even hear the realities of the business side of things. Do your best to find out the facts, but don’t let them govern your whole experience. Just let them help make your goals attainable so you don’t end up heartbroken and frustrated a few years down the pipe.

While we have had good years so far, my dream is still a twinkle in my eye. The realities of it all have helped us to adjust those goals a few more years out, but we haven’t let them go.

Just to give you an idea, here’s my sales numbers for “Why Kimba Saved The World” for the last two years.

  • I’ve sold 424 paperback copies, mostly by hand/face-to-face at events.
  • I’ve had 46 copies borrowed through the Kindle Owner’s Library system.
  • I’ve had free downloads of 14,800 copies through amazon.com promotions.
  • I’ve given away 122 copies to reviewers, contests, and giveaways (like at Goodreads.com).
  • I sold many, many more copies of “Kimba” in 2014 than in 2013, which means sales are increasing. Ding! Ding!
Yay, Kimba!

Yay, Kimba!

If you have researched self-publishing, especially for middle grade children’s books, you’ll know that those are actually fantastic numbers. Many self-published books never sell more than 100 copies. But my sales have come at a price. “Kimba” cost around $3,000 to produce between editing, cover art, paperback formatting (which I now do myself), and ebook creation. The book has yet to break even financially. Don’t even get me started on the cost of some of that booth space for those face-to-face contacts. That will be a whole blog installment on its own. That doesn’t mean, however, that “Kimba” isn’t out there building a name for me, winning awards, and gaining a loyal fan base of readers who pick up my next book without question. That kind of book establishes you as a true writer. This is where writing a series, or at least more books, comes into play. Yes, those free downloads drive the sales of Book 2 and Book 3 in the series. More on that another week.

Sadly, I have not seen all of my goals come to fruition yet. I’ve adjusted some along the way. Yes, it will be a couple of years before I can hit up Scholastic to do a boxed set of Cats in the Mirror books. That dream is still a twinkle in my eye, but it is still a twinkle. You have to have dreams! Dreams and goals can intersect, but the goals should be more practical.

What do you really hope to gain from this self-publishing journey this year alone? In the next five years? Will you stick with it, no matter what? (I have a YES on that one in my heart, but financial reality is another thing.)

There are folks out there living off an income from self-published books, but it didn’t happen in a year. As I am doing, those folks wrote and wrote and built a reputation. Traditionally published authors have to do that as well. I know writers who give away their books all the time. Some just write because they love it, don’t ever hope to see a dime, and just want to share what they have done. Others are hoping to attract fans through those free books. Again, it’s all about your expectations.

Before you jump off the self-publishing cliff, take some time to write down exactly what you hope to gain from the experience. Will you just publish this one book? Are you clear on who it is for? Are you willing to set up booths at craft fairs, pay for advertising, accept honest (maybe bad) reviews, talk at conferences about your subject (non-fiction books require this), and step outside your comfort zone to get your book noticed?

There are many ways to go about this process of self-publishing. We’ll talk about the ways to actually create the book you can sell next time. Being clear on what you hope to gain from the process can help you decide what steps are next. Don’t care if you make a dime? Don’t spend $3,000 on creating the book. Easy-peasy. You want to make this a career? You are going to have to pay some folks along the way, buy some computer systems (like InDesign and AdobePro), and put some cash into it. I don’t regret a penny that we spent on “Kimba” because it looks fantastic and I learned so much in the process. I can do much of that work on my own now, but I would have had no clue without the help and support of the book guide I hired (thank you, Carol Hohle Communications!). More on that later too.

If you are hoping for that writing career track, spend a good chunk of time researching. Know the market for a book like yours. Make sure the title is unique. Make sure the book has something unique to offer. Find where you fit into the world of books and set your goals clearly. Be ready to adjust (I certainly have), but it help to know what road you are running down before you set off on the journey.

Next Week: Publish Your Book Like A Professional