How To Self Publish, Part 2

Part one here!

So there I am, figuring I have to pay to have my awesome superhero novel formatted and edited and fitted with an awesome cover.  What's a brokeass writer to do?

I ran a Kickstarter campaign, which was both wonderfully gratifying and painfully awkward.  I've already written about how I did that.  Check it out if you're curious.

So now, here I am, money in hand, ready to publish my book.  How did I do it?

Formatting:

I used Pressbooks.com.  It runs on Wordpress, so you pretty much paste your chapters in like blog entries, and then it automagically spits out a ready-to-publish ebook.  They've even got tons of themes for you to choose from.  Ten bucks for the ebook files, and a hundred to get a PDF, which I needed in order to make hard copies.  More on that in a bit.  

Cover:

I networked through the Kickstarter, reaching out to people whose work I liked and asking other people if they knew anyone who would be good for the project. I was very lucky to find Erik Evensen, who illustrated and designed the amazing cover for 500 bucks.  I consider it a tremendous bargain. You can get a cover designed for much cheaper.  But that often involves someone slapping your name and title over the same stock image that's on a hundred other books.  Erik did both the design and the illustration, and the cover pretty much defines eye-catching.

Here's how it worked: Erik and I talked about what my ideas for the cover were and what elements of the book I wanted to highlight.  He sent me three sketches, and I thought the one of Julie looking at the Red Talon mask by moonlight really captured the mood and setting of the book perfectly--you know it's a superhero book, but the cover suggests that there's more to it than just kicking bad guys in the teeth.  Though that happens too.

Editing:

I've known Deborah Bancroft for longer than either of us would probably like to admit. She's done beta reading for me in the past and has always given me great specific and helpful feedback. I also know her to be a fantasy fan, so I knew she would get what I was trying to do.

She's been freelance editing for a while now, so she was a natural fit for the project. If she hadn't been available, I know she would have referred me to someone else who would have done a good job.  So, yeah, networking again. I paid Deb 850 dollars.

Deb's edits were invaluable,  in part  because she helped me to see where things that were clear to me because the whole thing was in my head weren't necessarily clear to the reader.  She never tried to make the book safer; she just made it better.

Printing:

I had initially hoped to print this through the Espresso machine at Harvard Book Store, but the price was just prohibitive.  I wound up using createspace, where the setup was free and I can order copies for my use for about 3 bucks a pop.  I bought 75 copies to send to Kickstarter backers.  This cost about 300 dollars including shipping.

I then spent between $2.50 and $25.00 per book to mail copies to backers throughout the world. I felt kind of bad charging an extra ten bucks for international shipping on the kickstarter; it turns out that wasn't  nearly enough. It was like 16 bucks to ship to Canada, which is a freaking five hour drive from here. Same price as Australia, which is ont the other side of the world! Go figure!

The Final Product

I wound up with a book I am incredibly proud of.  A book that looks exactly the way I want it to look (except maybe for the interior paper on the hard copy, which is a little too white for my taste) and says exactly what I want it to say.  Deb and Erik didn't worry about anything but helping me make exactly the book I wanted.  So I got to keep in the drug abuse and child sex trafficking that are key elements of the story without worrying how that would play in the marketplace.  And the cover pleased me perfectly though I never did any focus group testing to see if people would like it.

Simply put, Enter the Bluebird is exactly what I wanted it to be.  

But now I faced my biggest challenge:  letting the world know it existed!  Tune in Monday for Part Three!