CB’s Blog: What I Know About e-Book Publishing
In the spirit of sharing best practices, here’s some of what we’ve learned about publishing so far:
1. Be at peace with your inner businesses guru
A lot of people will tell you to ‘write from your heart.’ In my experience, that’s asking for trouble. Let me explain.
I come from software marketing, and software engineers are some of the greatest artists around…But they don’t ever program from their heart. They start off with a target audience and a goal and then work towards both. They find creative expression within the confines of that structure. In an ideal world, would we all be able to create whatever we wanted? Sure. But in the world you and I live in, we still have to put food on the table, so that means creating within constraints. And honestly, I don’t see it as constraints. I could write ten different books. I kick one of those ten to the top because it has the best chance to make it possible for me to write another.
Long story short, great publishing results start with business planning. Boring? Yes. But isn’t everything that makes money? There’s a reason accountants make more than freelance writers, as a rule. Part of our reward is in the work itself.
2. Start with your target audience.
Finding this out involves asking a lot of questions. For me, the big ones are:
Who are you writing for?
What do they like to read about?
What other books are out there in your space?
What format does your reader like?
In the case of Ink Monster our answers were 1) girl geeks, 2) kick-ass chicks, 3) not a lot, and 4) ebooks. That sounds easy, but it took months for Aileen and I to hammer that out. We built our business plan for more than a year before we launched our first book.
3. Focus on your distribution channel.
For Ink Monster, our readers are tech-savvy, so that meant we needed to focus on ebooks. Here are some of the things we learned about that market:
Release regularly. Some people swear by small novella releases once every three months. We do two a year on average. That means you need to:
Plan. Okay, planning sucks, but you will hate yourself unless you do it. In a series, we plan three to five books out before we start writing book one. Sometimes we go as far as ten books out. Yeah, ten.
Take time to make a great cover. Some people will tell you to invest in PR or something. Covers are king.
Select your distributor carefully. For us, we debated between Kindle Direct Publishing and INscribe Digital. INscribe has relationships across all the major etailers–as well as a focus on working as a partner instead of an online form–so we went with them and have never looked back. Love you, INscribe!
4. Be brutal on yourself, both as a writer and a business person.
I suppose the writing side is obvious, but I think the business aspect gets short shrift all too often. For what it’s worth, I’d suggest that for every hour you write your first book, you also spend an hour on your business plan. Write out your thoughts. Show your plan to people who are tough and honest. Ask them how to make it better.
5. Be patient and systematic.
For every awesome idea that worked gangbusters for us, we tried out at least two that died. My motto is ‘the first time you fail, it’s just good data.’
6. Be honest about what it takes to run your own show.
Running your own company is a lot of work. Luckily for me, Aileen and I are perfectionists who hate giving up control. We don’t mind the extra work. That said, don’t let anyone tell you that you should or shouldn’t be your own boss. Going with a publisher to handle the business side is the perfect choice for many writers.
Okay, that’s all I can think of for now. Hope you found it helpful! Want to check out other things the Ink Monster team has published about writing? Check out these posts below:
The Best Writing Advice
My Ultimate Enemy
Writing Action Scenes
Everything I Know About Worldbuilding
Resource Round-Up
On Collaborative Writing
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