Adventures in Self-Publishing
Hello! Welcome to my first ever blog post. It’s taken me a while to think of what to write about, to decide what might actually be of interest to you guys out there. Write what you know I’ve always been told and so here it is. I’ve decided to go down the route of a journal of sorts, mostly relating to my writing, and I hope that you will find it to be worth your time reading it, and maybe even useful?!
A quick bit of background; I have been writing short stories and general rambling poetry for a long time now, but they have always only been for my own benefit. I found writing to be a good way of getting (often unpleasant) emotions out in a creative way. Personal trauma certainly enhances one’s creativity. Writing an actual, full-length novel had been a hope for a while but it was such a daunting task that it was not until March 2016 that I actually started, very roughly, knocking together a few chapters. I would write constantly for a few weeks and then become distracted by my day job (I run a catering business at the moment) and not write for a month or more at a time. There were times (many, actually) when I didn’t expect that The Broken Doll would be complete.
In November of that year I had some minor surgery on my foot which meant that I was forced to take a couple of weeks break from work and was virtually bed bound. This was what I had needed all along (aside from the Frankensteinesque foot) as it gave me the perfect opportunity to write, the only other temptation being Netflix which I did well to leave alone. By then end of January 2017 I had a complete first draft, and after two full edits and some serious alteration to the final couple of chapters, I had a book. A complete, fully edited, actually rather good, story.
It was at this point that I realised that I had no idea what to do with it. The chance of me being able to send it off to a literary agent and suddenly be propelled to fame and fortune seemed incredibly unlikely so I started to research self-publication.
After so much time playing about with a manuscript in Word, it was an absolute delight to come across Scrivener. For those of you who don’t know, it is a software package deisgned for writers and has loads of great features. I ordered it from http://www.literatureandlatte.com if you’re interested and you can get a 30 day free trial.
When you have a completed manuscript in Scrivener it enables you to format it in ways which are suitable for ebooks, for Kindle (who use a different format to everyone else, of course), to create PDF’s and Word documents. It really was quite simple (although I did buy Scrivener for Dummies in case I got stuck). This enabled me to open accounts with Smashwords (who distribute to a number of retailers), Barnes & Noble and Amazon. Currently there is a formatting problem with my ebook which means that iBooks and Play Books won’t accept the file and I can’t figure out where the problem lies. However, it is working perfectly fine on Kindle and all other sites so still remains a mystery that I’ll get around to at some point.
I wanted to see a paperback copy, having always preferred these over ebooks, and so discovered CreateSpace, which is an offshoot of Amazon. They allow you to upload a file, use their book cover deign software and create a paperback, all for free! The whole process is quite straightforward, thankfully, as I’m not very good with computers outside of just being able to write. The thing that I find most amazing about CreateSpace is that it allows you to list a paperback on Amazon and when one (hopefully!) sells, they print a copy and ship it to the customer, often next day! Of course cost of printing and delivery has to be taken into account and the royalties I get from my paperback are only 15%, BUT, that’s more than a lot of publishers pay.
So here I was, at the end of February 2017, a published author. On the day I published the ebook to Amazon, I was searching online for advice as to how many books I could expect to sell. If I had done this before finishing the novel, I probably wouldn’t have bothered publishing it. 7-10 copies per year is what more than half of the ebooks on Amazon sell! This put me in a bit of a panic, my dreams of making a living from writing suddenly seeming ridiculous. But people started buying it, from the very first day. In the first week I had sold twenty copies, not a huge amount but certainly a start. From running my own business for a while, I knew it was now a case of getting the name about and so I set up a new profile of Twitter, created a Facebook page, built this WordPress site. I have set up a mailing list so that I can update readers with what I’m working on next and I have also set up a page on Patreon, which is an artists website. The idea of Patreon is fantastic – Patrons subscribe to my page for as little as $1 (about 80p I think) per month and get exclusive deals and short stories. It’s a way that the fans can give a little back if you like my work, keeping me stocked with teabags and feeling appreciated!
One last thing I wanted to mention is Amazon reviews. Once the book was available and I saw that the first few copies had been sold I got nervous. To the point of feeling sick. I was terrified of people hating the book. I was fairly confident about the storyline, certain that it was quite good. What worried me, I suppose, was the use of bad language in the book (essential I feel in order to portray realism) and the rather detailed ‘scenes of an adult nature’. Currently The Broken Doll has seven reviews on Amazon. Six of these are 5-star, one is 3-star. This was what I had needed to see and it really is motivating when people ask you to ‘hurry up and write the next one!’
My plans for the rest of this month include a short story for my Patreon site (I have written a short horror but this has been submitted for an anthology and I will know shortly if it has been accepted, wish me luck!), rough draft of the first four or five chapters of a follow-up to The Broken Doll, as well as working through the wondeful Joanna Penn’s book on How to Market a Book. In next month’s blog I will update you on my progress with these things and any successes / failures I have had regarding marketing.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and if you’d like to connect with me (or share my book!) on other platforms then I’d hugely appreciate it. You can also email me any time with questions, comments, or just to plug your own book or product at pjblakey-novis@outlook.com
The Broken Doll
A quick bit of background; I have been writing short stories and general rambling poetry for a long time now, but they have always only been for my own benefit. I found writing to be a good way of getting (often unpleasant) emotions out in a creative way. Personal trauma certainly enhances one’s creativity. Writing an actual, full-length novel had been a hope for a while but it was such a daunting task that it was not until March 2016 that I actually started, very roughly, knocking together a few chapters. I would write constantly for a few weeks and then become distracted by my day job (I run a catering business at the moment) and not write for a month or more at a time. There were times (many, actually) when I didn’t expect that The Broken Doll would be complete.
In November of that year I had some minor surgery on my foot which meant that I was forced to take a couple of weeks break from work and was virtually bed bound. This was what I had needed all along (aside from the Frankensteinesque foot) as it gave me the perfect opportunity to write, the only other temptation being Netflix which I did well to leave alone. By then end of January 2017 I had a complete first draft, and after two full edits and some serious alteration to the final couple of chapters, I had a book. A complete, fully edited, actually rather good, story.
It was at this point that I realised that I had no idea what to do with it. The chance of me being able to send it off to a literary agent and suddenly be propelled to fame and fortune seemed incredibly unlikely so I started to research self-publication.
After so much time playing about with a manuscript in Word, it was an absolute delight to come across Scrivener. For those of you who don’t know, it is a software package deisgned for writers and has loads of great features. I ordered it from http://www.literatureandlatte.com if you’re interested and you can get a 30 day free trial.
When you have a completed manuscript in Scrivener it enables you to format it in ways which are suitable for ebooks, for Kindle (who use a different format to everyone else, of course), to create PDF’s and Word documents. It really was quite simple (although I did buy Scrivener for Dummies in case I got stuck). This enabled me to open accounts with Smashwords (who distribute to a number of retailers), Barnes & Noble and Amazon. Currently there is a formatting problem with my ebook which means that iBooks and Play Books won’t accept the file and I can’t figure out where the problem lies. However, it is working perfectly fine on Kindle and all other sites so still remains a mystery that I’ll get around to at some point.
I wanted to see a paperback copy, having always preferred these over ebooks, and so discovered CreateSpace, which is an offshoot of Amazon. They allow you to upload a file, use their book cover deign software and create a paperback, all for free! The whole process is quite straightforward, thankfully, as I’m not very good with computers outside of just being able to write. The thing that I find most amazing about CreateSpace is that it allows you to list a paperback on Amazon and when one (hopefully!) sells, they print a copy and ship it to the customer, often next day! Of course cost of printing and delivery has to be taken into account and the royalties I get from my paperback are only 15%, BUT, that’s more than a lot of publishers pay.
So here I was, at the end of February 2017, a published author. On the day I published the ebook to Amazon, I was searching online for advice as to how many books I could expect to sell. If I had done this before finishing the novel, I probably wouldn’t have bothered publishing it. 7-10 copies per year is what more than half of the ebooks on Amazon sell! This put me in a bit of a panic, my dreams of making a living from writing suddenly seeming ridiculous. But people started buying it, from the very first day. In the first week I had sold twenty copies, not a huge amount but certainly a start. From running my own business for a while, I knew it was now a case of getting the name about and so I set up a new profile of Twitter, created a Facebook page, built this WordPress site. I have set up a mailing list so that I can update readers with what I’m working on next and I have also set up a page on Patreon, which is an artists website. The idea of Patreon is fantastic – Patrons subscribe to my page for as little as $1 (about 80p I think) per month and get exclusive deals and short stories. It’s a way that the fans can give a little back if you like my work, keeping me stocked with teabags and feeling appreciated!
One last thing I wanted to mention is Amazon reviews. Once the book was available and I saw that the first few copies had been sold I got nervous. To the point of feeling sick. I was terrified of people hating the book. I was fairly confident about the storyline, certain that it was quite good. What worried me, I suppose, was the use of bad language in the book (essential I feel in order to portray realism) and the rather detailed ‘scenes of an adult nature’. Currently The Broken Doll has seven reviews on Amazon. Six of these are 5-star, one is 3-star. This was what I had needed to see and it really is motivating when people ask you to ‘hurry up and write the next one!’
My plans for the rest of this month include a short story for my Patreon site (I have written a short horror but this has been submitted for an anthology and I will know shortly if it has been accepted, wish me luck!), rough draft of the first four or five chapters of a follow-up to The Broken Doll, as well as working through the wondeful Joanna Penn’s book on How to Market a Book. In next month’s blog I will update you on my progress with these things and any successes / failures I have had regarding marketing.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and if you’d like to connect with me (or share my book!) on other platforms then I’d hugely appreciate it. You can also email me any time with questions, comments, or just to plug your own book or product at pjblakey-novis@outlook.com
The Broken Doll
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