Recently a couple of beginning novel writers asked me about my self-publishing journey. They wanted to know why I decided to go the self-publishing route. Had I ever considered going the traditional route? Getting an agent?
Let me start by saying that I’m still a relative neophyte myself, with only one novel, “Survivor”, out there in the world (but more coming soon!). Nevertheless I’m happy to share what I’ve learned in getting this far. My only attempt at being traditionally published happened a very long time ago when I submitted a manuscript to Harlequin. Needless to say, it came back to me promptly with a standard rejection letter. I wasn’t particularly surprised. I was aware, deep down, that I didn’t know what I was doing when it came to writing a novel.
The World of Self-Publishing
Four years ago, when I became serious about being published, it was a different world. The internet and the rise of self-publishing companies like Kindle Direct Publishing now provide alternatives to the vanity presses that were the only option back-when. Self-publishing has become easy. For the following reasons, I didn’t even consider traditional publishing or finding an agent.
First, it was to save myself the grief and frustration that several writers have expressed about their traditional publishing experiences. The complaints have seemed to focus on either remuneration, or lack of promotion resulting in lack of sales. As a result, these authors have switched to self-publishing. To be fair, these negative experiences have seemed to involve small-press publishers. My sample size is small, and many authors are obviously happy with their traditional publishing experience. One positive aspect of being traditionally published is the credibility it gives the author – a validation of the quality of their writing. It’s been my observation that, compared to traditionally published works, the quality of self-published books is highly variable, ranging from excellent to not-so-good.
Second, I didn’t want the pressure of having to meet a publisher’s deadline expectations. I spent my life in a career fraught with pressure and demands. I don’t want to do that anymore. Now that I’m retired, I want to enjoy the journey.
Advantages of Self-Publishing
Self-publishing has the advantage of giving me total control over the process, from writing, to picking the cover, to publishing, to promotion. Whether I succeed or fail, it will be on my own terms.Writing the book is the first step, and like all writers, I write because I love it. But writing well has been a long journey for me. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I love wordsmithing: putting the perfect words together to create the perfect image. But learning to write a story has been hard. Writing a good story, harder still. Even after publishing “Survivor”, I’ve taken four years to learn to write better stories, and write them more quickly.
How to Become a Better Writer
This has involved taking writing workshops at a stage in my life when I thought I’d surely taken all the writing courses and workshops a person could ever need.It has involved realizing that there’s always more I can learn from books on how-to-write-a-novel. (Check out “Downriver Writing: A Five Step Process for Outlining Your Novel” by Jane Ann McLachlan, and “Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting” by Robert McKee).
Most importantly, I’ve had to learn to accept criticism without feeling my soul being shredded in the process.
Self-Publishing: the Book Cover
The next step: selecting a book cover. Since I can’t afford or even justify the price for a custom cover, I’ve used online sources for ready-made covers. When I published “Survivor”, I picked a cover that I loved. I still love that guy’s face. I love the green colour motif. But does this cover hint at what the book is about? The genre of the story? No. How many people have noticed the barcode which I paid extra to put on his cheek? Or the biohazard symbol embedded in the “o” in “Survivor”? Probably no one. Especially when the cover is reduced to a thumbnail, which, I’m told, is the format in which most e-book covers are viewed.
When I recently worked up the nerve to ask for feedback on this cover from a large Facebook page for science fiction and fantasy authors, I only received a couple of replies, but they were awesome! One responder urged me to use a larger font for my name, and to go with bolder fonts. Another kindly observed that the cover was amateurish, and as a professional illustrator and graphic designer, he’d be willing to give me some tips. Now I know a lot more about principles of design. It still isn’t much, but will hopefully be enough to steer me towards covers that will represent my stories more successfully.
Self Publishing: the Title
My new illustrator friend also pointed out that the title must help to sell the book. The title should intrigue the prospective reader, and provide some hint as to what the story is about. This should be numbingly obvious, but I didn’t really understand until he used the following example. The one-sentence summary of a book is, ‘Dinosaurs are resurrected with genetic engineering to create a theme park, and everything goes wrong’. Perfect title: “Jurassic Park”. Of course.
Writing a single-sentence summary of one’s own book is surprisingly hard. For “Survivor”, I’ve come up with, “A handful of humans that are genetically created to protect humanity from pandemic diseases must find a way to free themselves from their makers”. Would a reader get any hint of that from the title, “Survivor”? “Survivor” suggests outliving some catastrophe which could be anything from a car crash to a marriage break-up to an earthquake. It doesn’t remotely hint that it’s a science fiction story dealing with pandemics. But what about, “The Immunity Bond”?
Where to Publish
Publishing “Survivor” as an e-book on the Kindle and Kobo platforms was quite easy. I plunked the formatted Word document into their software which converted it to the required e-book format. Some writers pay to have their books professionally formatted (e.g. fancy images for scene breaks, special fonts etc.). Software packages like Vellum and Scrivener allow you to do it yourself. I am considering this option for the future.
Why did I pick Kindle and Kobo? I chose Kindle because Kindle Direct Publishing is the single largest e-book publishing platform in the world. I picked Kobo because I’m Canadian, and Kobo, formerly a Canadian company, still has its headquarters in Toronto, Canada.
There are many other platforms which I may explore in future, but first I will have to decide whether to publish ‘wide’ or ‘deep’. ‘Wide’ means publishing on a lot of different platforms, maximizing your exposure. ‘Deep’ means sticking to a single publisher like Kindle Direct Publishing and taking advantage of their special exclusivity programs like Kindle Unlimited. ‘Exclusive’ means you can’t publish with another company. KU readers pay a flat monthly fee to read as many books as they want. Authors are paid per page read. One author friend has told me that all her profit comes from KU, which indicates the degree to which this program can deepen a book’s reach.
Behind the Scenes: Keywords and Categories
Publishing an e-book involves selecting keywords and categories that will lead searches to your book. I sounds as simple as picking, for example, Science Fiction/Genetic Engineering. But this doesn’t factor in considerations like how many other books are in the category, directly competing with your book for attention. Kindle lists the most popular books in each category first, and if your book is too far down the list, the average reader will never see it. I picked totally inappropriate categories for “Survivor”, and will rectify this when I issue the re-write.
I haven’t yet ventured into print books or audiobooks. Print books seem unreasonably expensive to me, so I’m not sure how well they would sell. Audiobooks cost thousands of dollars to produce, so it stands to reason that an unknown author like me would be unlikely to recoup production costs.
Self Publishing: Book Promotion
How to promote? For me, this is the hard part. I love to write. Becoming a marketing specialist – not so much. Maybe the big publishing houses still actively promote your book. But I have it on good authority that the small presses don’t, so it’s up to you, the writer.
It’s therefore imperative for an author to build and develop a ‘platform’ – an online presence.
As soon as I decided to publish “Survivor”, I had a website built and opened a Facebook author page. Many authors build their own websites with free online website building tools, but I paid a professional to create mine. There were two reasons for this. First, I didn’t want the frustration or the time-drain of having to figure out how to do it. Second, my website designer was also a branding and marketing expert, and could do neat things like optimize my site so it would rank high in an online search. (Believe it or not, in a Google search, I am in ‘competition’ with a Louise Spilsbury who is a prolific children’s author in the UK.)
I try to blog on my website at least twice a month, and post to my Facebook author page at least three times a week. I have learned to use a ‘search engine optimization’ (SEO) tool to increase the visibility of my blog.
More recently, I started a newsletter. In preparation for this, I had to compare a number of email-marketing service providers to pick the best one for my needs. Then I had to link it to a sign-up page on my website.
There is a lot more I could/should do to promote myself. Fantasy author Richard H. Stephens is a great example of how to promote one’s books.
Richard has a YouTube channel where he posts promotional videos for his books. He posts often on his Facebook author page, engaging his followers with challenges such as: ‘Name a dragon for my next book’. As he’s editing a book, he reads it aloud and posts the live reading. His Facebook author page also announces his upcoming books, his appearances at conventions, his presence at local fairs. He has developed a powerful brand with a beautiful logo. He wears chain mail to author events, and has a trailer stencilled with the Soul Forge logo. Before Covid, he and his wife, who manages many of the administrative aspects of his business, spent nineteen weekends in a row attending book fairs and other related events where they sold his books from a vendor table.
Last but not least, he hosts a weekly online interview-the-author show, Lurking for Legends, in collaboration with author Christie Stratos. (I’ll modestly mention that I’m scheduled to be interviewed on Lurking for Legends on November 2nd.)
Final Words
So, for those who asked about my journey to self-publishing, this is what it has involved thus far. Beginning this fall, I’ll begin rolling out three books in the “Immunity” series. When I published “Survivor’, only my family and friends knew about it, so needless to say, it only sold a handful of copies. Moving forward, I’ll promote the launch of each book. I’ll use my newsletter and Facebook author page to offer advance copies in exchange for an honest review on the launch date. I’ll pay for targeted advertising. I’m still undecided about making print books available, but I’m thinking about it.Will these strategies will be successful? Who knows? Ask me about my self-publishing journey in another year or two. I’ll fill you in on the continuing adventure.