Book Club discussion
Find a New Publisher/Self-Publish?
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message 51:
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Kathy
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Mar 08, 2012 08:00AM
Whew...and I wholeheartedly endorse Sharon's sggestion!!
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Wonderful news, D! So glad there was a positive resolution to this mess. I'm impressed by how calm you remained throughout it.
Thanks, everyone.@Jennifer - I've been through enough crap in my life that I've learned to be calm through most storms. If I've learned nothing else, I've learned to check things out (and check them out again and again) before I sign anything. I really feel pretty stupid about even signing that contract in the first place.
D. wrote: "Thanks, everyone.@Jennifer - I've been through enough crap in my life that I've learned to be calm through most storms. If I've learned nothing else, I've learned to check things out (and check t..."
Don't feel stupid. I think that a lot of people get very excited about that first contract. :-)
Heck yeah. It's only a bad experience if you don't learn from it
After going through most of this thread, I think the following might be useful to the members of this group: a new thread about reliable and dependable micro-publishers, how to identify them, the right questions to ask, and the issues to watch out for.
Ric wrote: "After going through most of this thread, I think the following might be useful to the members of this group: a new thread about reliable and dependable micro-publishers, how to identify them, the r..."Step one: Check Predators & Editors. http://pred-ed.com/
Seriously.
D - for me, and I know the other authors on the post here will agree with me, here's the real deal of publishing:If you have a publisher, all money flows TO you, the other, not the other way round, or even half and half. All costs incurred in getting the book out is to be borne by the publisher! You, the author, only shell out for promo swag like bookmarks and keyrings, or to pay your travel & accommodation for a book tour, that sort of thing.
If you are self-publishing, you don't need a middleman (though you might need a cover artist, an editor, that sort of thing, whom you pay up front as they're working freelance on your book). You pay for these services, that's all. And no one's between you and those freelancers, or asking you to split costs, like the case here.
Funnily, your publishing lady reminds me of another publisher I've known in the recent past. The strung lies almost made me believe we dealt with the same person!
I wanted to point out that the only way you actually earn any money for the KDP "Free" promotions is by Prime Members "borrowing" your book. You do not receive anything for regular free downloads. I do think that in a situation where the print book is not going to be available for another couple of months, it can help get some pre-promotion information out there so you have a link to tweet and post on websites and FB pages. We have done this where one story was posted out of an anthology as a "teaser" or one section of a novel in the same manner before the book itself is actually available. No, I don't think we have actually made any money off the "lending" program but have used the KDP Select as an experiment. We will now do a full rollout for the next book (Kindle, Nook, Sony, Kobo, etc. and print) to see if there is any difference in the sales curve.We also use CreateSpace and they are really good people to work with. Their support staff is excellent, you can actually talk with a human being twenty-four hours a day, or if you send an email you get a very prompt response. Example: We just uploaded a 360 page book with a professionally designed full color cover and the estimated cost per book is $5.17. You can generate "Discount Codes" for promotional use and set it up anyway you want - either as a percentage discount or a dollar amount discount. Their "sales channels" include Amazon (of course), Baker & Taylor, CreateSpace's own eStore and (if you let CreateSpace issue the ISBN and put their imprint on the book) they can place the book with libraries. We have our own imprint and purchase and provide our own ISBNs and Barcodes, so we are not eligible for the Library distribution, but prefer our own imprint and hope that, as we put out more books, the imprint gains a reputation itself.
Don't forget "Google" as a resource for finding out how to format something when the documentation is incomprehensible (as most is since it appears to be written by software designers instead of people who actually use the programs!). Just Google "How do I format ___________ for Kindle?" and you will get hundreds of thousands of places to go to find simple, explanatory formatting instructions so you can make your book look as good as possible.
The very most important thing about your book is: hire a freelance professional copy-editor/proofreader, get some beta readers (your friends who read will usually do a great job) and hire a professional editor to help you smooth out and pace your work. I see hundreds of ebooks every month where the authors have not done any of these things and it really shows. Your formatting can be perfect (though it usually is not) but if there are spelling and grammar errors in the manuscript and inconsistencies that an editor would help you work out, no one is going to be very happy to buy your work and they will not recommend it to others or give it a good review.
There are still people out there trying to cling to the idea that "self-publishing" equates to "vanity press" where you pay a company to publish your book with no editing or proofing and a terrible 2-color cover, which basically means those typos, grammar errors, consistency problems, etc., just get printed and you get a few boxes of books you basically cannot sell for love nor money. Nothing could be further from the truth since self-publishing means YOU control every aspect of your book from the writing all the way through the finished product and can spend as much or as little as your budget allows for the services that used to be provided by traditional publishers who then generously gave you 15% royalties. Good luck with your endeavor and I hope this may help the next person down the line decide not to sign a contract with a "professional publisher" until you find out if it will actually improve the product and give it professional polish. By the way, Amazon's royalty structure is between 35% and 70% depending on various parameters such as pricing, etc. Those expenses for freelance proofreaders, etc., will be paid for a bit more quickly that way than the approach outlined by the person described in this thread!
Hi Sarah. Thanks for the info. I am definitely getting the manuscript professionally edited. It has been through the first edit already and is on its way through the much deeper, grammar slamming edit now. I am also going the route of purchasing my own ISBN number, but I have a few ways to save some money on the rest of the process. I am a professional graphic illustrator and I have created book covers for print for over a decade now. I also have the software to generate bar codes (including ISBN bar codes). So, once I get the ISBN number, I can generate the bar code at no cost. I've already create the cover. And I have Adobe's Creative Suite, which includes InDesign, so formatting the final manuscript is not an issue. As for the Kindle version, Amazon offers a free InDesign plug in to export directly from InDesign to Kindle's e-book version. I am betting it will not be that difficult to create the other versions, either.
Thanks again. It is always good to hear from real, live people about their experiences with self-publishing. I'm excited about this endeavor. :)
Great! I'm about to try out InDesign also. I was a professional typesetter for 10 years and used dedicated typesetting equipment so I'm hoping InDesign makes me happier than MSWord (Bill Gates is the anti-christ - just my own prejudice! hah!). I work for an author who is reissuing books she wrote 25-30 years ago and we are also publishing books for other people (only 2 so far) but because I have not only a typesetting background but decades of working for attorneys, I am incapable of reading anything without seeing typos, etc. It's just the two of us and so far we are doing pretty well with only having to have the covers done outside. I'll be very interested in seeing how InDesign works with that plug-in. I'll tell you a cute trick, if InDesign doesn't already do this: when you get the files from the Kindle conversion, one of them is the PRC file which is the "book" file. In order to have a MOBI file which is what you need to be able to actually email a file that can be downloaded to a Kindle without going through Amazon, you erase the letters PRC and replace them with MOBI as the file extension! That's it... Calibre (free library program) also is able to convert a MOBI file to an ePub file in about 2 minutes flat and it comes out perfectly! I hope you have really good luck with your book and if you are looking for reviewers, I would be more than happy to help. Best wishes! Sarah
D. wrote: "You do your job and leave me to mine"I know I'm way late to the ballgame, but if any publisher ever told me that, I'd be hot-footin' it out the door.
Hello Mari,Yep. I got away from her as fast as I could, was able to void the contract legally, and am now on my own.
And we just put out our newest book "Rogues in Hell" today on Kindle and Nook and it's one that *I* have a short story in! Yippee! Should be on Amazon in print within 7 days. Yes, it's good to have/be a good publisher, even if we move slowly due to our insistence on quality, what comes out is then a very professional product!
D. wrote: "Hello Mari,Yep. I got away from her as fast as I could, was able to void the contract legally, and am now on my own."
Good! I hope all is going well.
