I went to a self-publishing conference in London, which completely changed my mind about what I was going to do. I'd thought while I was doing the MA that I would go down the traditional route and find an agent and publisher, but listening to lots of people that day, I realised how much life has changed. Publishing is, like everything else, transforming – sure, there are still a lot of authors out there who will want to go down that route and maybe I will in time, but for the moment, I'm going to give self-publishing a go.
It opens up a whole new world to the author; one of control over your book – you choose exactly what you want to do and you go ahead and do it! It's much quicker than the other route – suddenly your book is 'out there' on a public stage, waiting to be read.
It wasn't an easy process though; people implied that putting your book on Amazon was as easy as uploading something to Facebook. No, it's not. I've learned so much in the past few weeks; as the saying goes, it's been a steep learning curve.
I started out trying to do it all by myself – I had a cover photo I'd done in Cyprus and felt was appropriate; I knew enough about formatting, didn't I? I knew where I wanted the book to go, surely? Well, no... when it came down to it, I wasn't at all sure how to make my photo go onto a book (you have to consider the back and the spine, of course). I wasn't sure where I wanted the book to go and there seemed to be all these different platforms and formats required. I read and read all sorts of advice on the internet and just got more and more confused and stressed!
In the end, I remembered what they said at the conference – this is a business, you have to invest in it. So I started googling 'help for indie authors' and I found Ben Galley of Shelfhelp: http://www.shelfhelp.info
Ben was great – knowledgeable and patient and he helped me through the process and I would thoroughly recommend him. I was so relieved that I didn't have to worry about formatting – I didn't want to have to worry that when the book was uploaded, it would come out all wrong. He advised me about which companies to use and what I had to do for each one and then to crown it all, he helped me come up with a cover to be proud of. That was an interesting process; I knew what I didn't want, more than what I did want. He allowed me a lot of to-ing and fro-ing and we eventually came up with the picture, the fonts and the colours that were just right. I'd never have been able to do this on my own; OK, I'm a photographer, but I'm not a graphic designer and it would have looked unprofessional if I'd done it myself.
So, I went with Kindle Direct Publishing: https://kdp.amazon.com in the end – I didn't go for their Select Program, as this restricts you to just them and I'd heard about Smashwords: www.smashwords.com which distributes ebooks to lots of different retailers. I went with Createspace: https://www.createspace.com for my paperback version. This is an Amazon company and I've been really pleased with the quality of the book.
How exciting was that, to see the actual book for the first time?
The great thing about all this is you set your own price – I decided to set mine low for the ebook to start with in order to encourage people to read it. I know what I'm like when I'm looking for ebooks – the price is very influential. The price for the paperback seemed rather high at first; I'd written a long book and the number of pages obviously affects the price when you're doing Print on Demand. I forgot to mention that – nowadays, you don't have to print hundreds of copies of your paperback. They are printed only when required, so you don't have to spend lots of money up front on books that might not sell. So the cheapest price I could sell my paperback for was £10, but now Amazon have discounted it and it's only a couple of pounds more than the average book and there's free delivery. As the author, you can buy it cheaper and of course you don't get any royalties on those copies. The postage is rather high, so it's a good idea to order a few at a time.
I've called this post, "Post publishing Fatigue" because getting the book on the Internet is just the beginning. A book on Amazon would sink without trace if you didn't do some serious marketing and that's what I've been trying to do since it was launched.
I think that's the subject for another Blog post – I'm tired just thinking about it now! When I think back to October 2012, when I first joined the MA at Bath Spa University with just a seed of an idea in my head, I feel I've come a long way. The writing was intense and the publishing was difficult but, it's been worth it.
It's been a great start and I look forward to the next few months, when I write the sequel to the novel, publish some short stories and maybe help other indie writers with the daunting task of getting their book 'out there'. Do ask me about anything...I've been there, done that and got the T-shirt.
See you next time.
