Self-Publishing Support Thread

[APodPerson]

Hi all,

Following a number of other threads suggesting this, I thought I’d set up a support thread for us self-publishers (although traditionally published are welcome too of course).

The purpose would be for us all to support each other, share our books, tips and tricks that have worked, and anything else self-publishing related.

MNHQ have given us the go ahead, although of course we need to make sure we behave ourselves, and if it ends up being nothing but spam it'll get pulled.

So, Rule 1: No spam!

I suggest one post introducing yourself with a link to your books, and goodreads profile, twitter, fb page, website etc, but then no further links or any kind of self promo unless it is directly related to a question from another poster.

Glad it's useful, UmbrellaBird.

I have to say, I have found the self-publishing community (whether you connect with them on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads or here) absolutely lovely - as a group of people it's developed a very warm and supportive culture and people have been so, so helpful.

TheCountessofFitz - can I ask - what part of the typesetting of your book are you not happy with? Is it indents, or more complecated?

I have had a photographer come round and take some shots of what I want, and am waiting for them back, ready for photoshopping.

I think I'm going to go for matt finish on the cover and cream paper.

A friend of mine has white paper, and I don't think it looks right. It's annoying because on print on demand - the white is too white and the cream is too cream!

I think I should have chosen a different font, and I shaved too much off the margins because I was trying to save pages.

Hello all,

I've just found this lovely little corner of MN, and I hope you don't mind if I join in. I have next to no idea about self-publishing, but what I do have is an almost-completed first draft of a novel. (It's at 70,000 words and is YA so not going for much more.) I've always written but this is only the second 'book' I have written (I am also working on a non fiction book at present.)

I've started to read round about the whole rigmarole of looking for agents, and then thinking about self publishing, which is doubtless where I'll end up - and is fine, as this is only a tentative toe in the water. I need to get some opinions but won't let anyone read it until I feel sure it's ready and I'm scared it's crap

DD will be my first critic, being the right age. I plan not to tell her I wrote it in order to get objective criticism. If she likes it, I plan to ask some of her friends to read it.

I just wondered what advice you can give me about starting out. I know it's going to take me a good few weeks to finish it off and get it edited as far as I can, and then the whole typesetting issue. I've been doing this as I go along as far as possible but realise that typesetting for Amazon is a whole different ball game. It seems like a minefield.

Would also really like to get into the self publishing/writing community to get to know others, encourage and support and so on. What sites would you suggest?

Have had a read through this thread and really impressed at what many of you have achieved through self publishing. Did all of you attempt to go through the agent route first or did some of you choose to go straight to self publishing? If so, what reasons did you have for that choice?

Sorry for all the questions - I need to start getting my head together on all of this.

Madhairday - I'm new on here too. Personally I tried around 20 agents and a couple of publishers and got two nice replies - a near miss. The rest were just no or my worst case was just a compliment slip! I would prefer to be published traditionally - but I don't think it will happen. I am looking into self pubilshing on Create Space. I have had to change my word document to a PDF which I did using Foxit. At the moment I am working on the cover of the book.

Good luck x

Thank you hello

Sounds like you're really close to publication, that's exciting. Are you doing your own cover? I think I'll have a go at mine as I'm fairly OK at digital art. Not sure how professional a look I can get, though. I think it is important the cover looks good - rubbish ones put me off a book.

What''s your book about?

Is Create space the kindle thing?

I feel very new and green, I probably should have done a lot more research before starting, but I had an idea and kind of had to go with it. I wrote 10,000 words last year then left it, then came back to it only two or three months ago and it's all come rushing out since. Getting a bit stuck on the ending right now, want it to be really good and can't get it right, it's so frustrating.

Would anyone be kind enough to look at my thread, also in Creative writing? I started it as a separate thread as my OP was rather long.
Thanks.

I'll have a look, wordy.

Has anyone used 'Completely Novel' for self publishing? It looks quite good, but being so new to this it might be a complete scam.

here

Hello lovely writers,

Can I just ask for those of you who have made the wonderful leap into SP-did you do it all yourself? I have had a look at the first few steps and it seems very tricky! Especially the formatting part? Is there an easy guide out there somewhere..

Hi Madhair, sorry for the delay, only just logged back on. I am attempting to do my own cover, I haven't made much progress with anything since I last wrote on here.

I sent my first three chapters and synopsis off to ten more publishers/agents. I had two who wanted the full MS but I haven't sent it as I googled them and the look like vanity publishers in disguise! Austin Maccauley and the other one is Olympia. Has anyone had any dealings with them?

Also I've been sent some more rejections (two were nice ones). So I will get on with the cover and aim to self publish.

Hope everyone has had more success than me! x

Hi everyone, glad to have stumbled across this thread.

I self published a book last year on Amazon, mainly as a bit of experiment really and because I wasn't patient/optimistic enough to try and get it published the traditional way. Experiment went pretty much as expected: sold a few copies initially then nothing much since. But I didn't spend much time promoting it - pregnant at the time and now with a four month old to look after! Really getting the urge to write again though now that the baby brain fog is beginning to lift. If I ever find the time! Would be great to hear from any other writers with young children ... Is it possible?!

As for formatting, I wrote my book in Scrivener which produces a mobi formatted file. I got the cover from 99designs. Very happy with result though not the cheapest option.

Would be interested to hear from anyone who has used a proofreader or editor. Any recommendations?

Thanks!

Hi helloeveryone. I've just looked up those two organisations and yes, they are vanity publishers. Are you sending to publishers before agents? I don't think many are interested unless an agent approaches them.

I hope you have better luck with the others.

Imperial - I didn't bother with the vanity publishers in disguise!

I have decided to self publish on Amazon through create space. My friend took a photo for the front and back and my brother adapted it and put the blurb, title etc on. I have ordered a copy of the physical book which should arrive in the next day or so for me to proof before I go live!

I didn't use a proof reader/editor, just beta readers. I hope it doesn't look too amateurish!

Once I go live I'll post a link on here so you can look and see what you all think.

In the end I chose cream paper, and a matt finish for the cover. I can change that though if I don't like it when it arrives.

Anyone else got any links for their books?

Hi helloeveryone

Good luck with the book! It's exciting isn't it? I didn't get mine proofread either. Starting to think I should have done as I've since realised there are typos in it (despite my very best efforts!) and I don't want to promote it until they're fixed.

I think I'm going to hold off for now though. I'm working on my next book, so when that's nearly finished I'll get the first one proofed and promote them together. The common theme I'm hearing with self-publishing is to have more than one book out so that any promo work done on one filters through to the others. I'm guessing it's easier to sell 3 books to one person who likes your work than convince 3 different people to buy one book.

Yes, 'write more books' always seems to be the first piece of advice given to people asking how to promote self-published books. I've heard of people who say they do well by being active on fb or Goodreads, but it can be time consuming and not guaranteed of success.

One of the great benefits of e-publishing is that all your books are always available, so if one book does well the others can benefit. Unlike in trad publishing, where unless you're a big name, each book has a limited shelf life.

Good luck with your next book.

Well, I have self published now! My book 'Swaying' is available as a paperback and ebook version.

Here's the links - The first one is the UK link to Amazon, and the second is the USA link to Amazon.

www.amazon.co.uk/Swaying-Lucinda-Blanchard-ebook/dp/B014ZIBO7U

www.amazon.com/Swaying-Lucinda-Blanchard-ebook/dp/B014ZIBO7U

That looks really interesting, hello, and a good cover too. Have bought it and will leave a review :)

Madhairday,

Thank you so much! The cover is me, my friend took the pic on her mobile and I painted the eggs with the kids paint haha! I hope you enjoy it. x

Hello all.
Excellent job on the cover, HelloEveryone!

I have had a small bump in sales now I'm back online after being away over the summer, which is nice. Trying not to get sucked back into the constant checking of the Amazon ranking, though.

Did everyone else see sales falling off over the summer or is it a healthy time as long as you keep promoting?

Madhair - have you read my book - what do you think? I have had two reviews by people who I don't know so far haha!

The countessoffitz - I'm so new at this so I'm not sure if my sales are going well or not? So far in the 3 weeks my book has been live on Amazon I've sold 15 paperbacks and about 32 ebooks. I was in the Island Echo online promoting my book, then onthewight.com and also the Isle of Wight County Press this week too. And then BBC Radio Solent got in touch (because it's a controversial subject) so I was on air yesterday morning and they plugged the book from 6.30am until 10am so that was good. Scary doing radio - but not as bad as I thought it would be, and the questions were okay. So that's my five minutes of fame over and done with! Since the radio show I have sold 5 more on KDP and 1 more on Createspace - so not a huge amount extra really.

What does everyone else do to get their book 'out there' ??? I have just had loads of postcards printed and it's been agreed I can leave them in the bar area during the Isle of Wight Literary Festival in October. I've also booked a Christmas Fair stall which I'm sharing with my author friend so we are having to order in 50 books of ours from Createspace - which with postage from US is quite expensive - and doubtful we'll even sell a fraction of those during the 2 day event (19th & 20th Dec - so very close to Christmas - last minute panic buy presents - signed by local authors? That's what I'm hoping!)

Anymore suggestions?

Thanks x

Countess, my sales dropped over the summer. Crept back up a bit in the last couple of weeks, but not back up to where they were. I think it may be partly that the book that was doing best is now tailing off.

Have you found a method of promoting that works for you? I find with day job, writing and general RL stuff, time for promoting tends to get squeezed out. Haven't even updated my blog for a long time.

So fascinating reading about all of the writing you are all doing.
Can I ask an incredibly nosey question about what percentage you get paid for your Amazon sales when you have self-published.

Also does anyone have any Facebook groups they would recommend?

Insert, it depends what price you set on your books. Up to (I think) USD 2.99 the author gets thirty per cent of what's left after VAT has been deducted. Above that it's seventy per cent. Author can choose to set the US price and let Amazon calculate what it should be everywhere else, or set a separate price for every market. (That info is all publicly available on Amazon's Kindle publishing site.)

Just for comparison, traditionally published authors authors get about ten to fifteen per cent of the cover price of their books.

Can't help with Facebook, I'm afraid.

Helloeveryone - sorry I hadn't got round to a review yet, life has been a bit crazy. I have read the book, and it kept me gripped from start to finish, such an interesting storyline - and as you say, controversial. I liked the main character (and really disliked Bella, but I guess that was intentional - felt sorry for her, too...)

I do think it needs more close attention in terms of copyediting - hope you don't mind me saying that - but I always say I'd prefer people to be honest. Spelling is good but there are some grammatical errors (the odd apostrophe in the wrong place and quite a few places where you need a comma.) It also might be worth going through one of those lists of 'overused words' (I did this and was amazed how many I had overused.) - I found this one really helpful: Sluggish Writing - in fact, that page has loads of ideas about how to edit your work to tighten it all up.

I wonder as well if you could tighten up the character of Ian a bit. He seems a little underdeveloped - someone suggested to me that I write a page biography on each main character, all about their history, foibles, habits, good side, how they'd react in any given situation. If you really know the character I think they take on more dimensions.

I think you have a basis for something really good there, a unique selling point and some interesting characters. :)

I've been reading this brilliant thread for the last hour - I'm only up to July 2014. The suspense! Back soon.