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To indie-publish or not?
When I finally gave up sending The Evergreen in red and
white to agents and publishers, and got sick of the lack of even the
smallest courtesy of a reply, I was faced with a decision: do I bin several
thousand hours of work or do I somehow go ahead anyway? Indie-publishing is
growing, but it is still better in my opinion if you can get a publisher – it
is not an easy option going it alone, especially if you are serious. The
mainstream publishing industry still hold nearly all the cards when it comes to
getting publicity and exposure. On your own you are left with a hard slog unless
you get lucky.
This is a tough decision for a writer – and at this stage
you must recognise that you are probably suffering a combination of elation at
‘finishing’ your project, dejection that it hasn’t made the Booker shortlist by
now, paranoia, resentment and confusion. In short you are in no position to
make that decision. You should therefore rely on the smartest, most honest
people you know and ask them to help. It is possible after all that what you
have produced is a pile of shite and that the best thing all round for your
sanity is to start again on another book, treating that as a rehearsal (plenty
of writers do that) or just to accept that you write to give pleasure to
yourself and/or those around you and leave it at that.
You need to know if what you have written is worth anyone
paying good money for. After all, there are so many books now being published:
more in 2013 than in the years 1800 – 1950, apparently. Yours may have been
rejected by the publishing industry but it still may be as good in its niche,
if it has one, as mainstream published books. You need people to tell you what
is wrong with your book – you don’t want friends to tell you it is marvellous.
Ask them to be honest and to tell you how it can be improved. (You should
already have done this before you sent it out to agents, but before you embark
on indie-publishing you need that honesty.) Let’s be a bit brutal: as well as
some corkers, there are some truly awful self-published books out there. Do you
really want to add to that stinking pile?
Right so you’ve decided there is some merit in publishing
your work. First of all you need a budget. What is realistic for how many
copies can you sell? If you are lucky a few hundred in the first year is
possible. You may expect to make about £1.25 on an e-book or between £1.50 – £ 2.00 on a paperback depending on how you sell it: so don’t give up your day
job. There are plenty of sharks out there who will be happy to help you, happy
to charge you for proof-reading, typesetting, editing, setting the whole thing
up on Kindle, designing a cover, advertising, tweeting on your behalf etc. etc.
So you might just break even after about 6 years if you can maintain sales. (Of
course you could just gamble that you are the next E L James, or you could
spend £1000 on lottery tickets which might be a safer bet.)
As well as some sharks there are also some indie-publishing
heroes out there to help you avoid expensive mistakes: without them I couldn’t
have hoped to get The Evergreen off the ground. I started from the point
of view that I wanted to avoid the label of “vanity publishing.” That meant
making, not throwing away, money – even if the target was no more than to at
least break even, and then any ‘beer and skittles’ money generated on top of
that was a bonus.
You can get a book into paperback and in e-book format for between £25-and 200 (or, if you are prepared to sacrifice something on royalties, for nothing). Here’s how:
Editing and proof-reading.
This is something you should
have done before you even sent it to agents, really. Once you’ve finished your
draft, put it to one side and forget about it for as long as you can: at least 6
months I reckon. Then read it aloud to yourself: if you stumble over sentences
they probably need a re-write. Get your smart, literate friends, or even
better, friends of friends, to read it and tell you what is wrong with
it. Then once you’ve edited it, read it again. Then read it again. And again,
and again. I was still finding mistakes in The Evergreen after about 8
reads – and they are still there in the final thing – damn! One way to do it is
to put it onto your Kindle (see below). (If you haven’t got a Kindle that is
probably a necessary expenditure). However, early on, it is probably best
printing off a copy and scribbling on it as you go.
Learn how to format an e-book.
This sounds scary but here
the first hero comes to your rescue: Guido Henkel: http://guidohenkel.com/2010/12/take-pride-in-your-ebook-formatting/
, Notepad ++ http://notepad-plus-plus.org/
, and Calibre http://calibre-ebook.com/
(These people are heroes, they make their stuff available for free. Once you
start making money, perhaps consider putting some their way, or make a donation
to them up front so that they can continue their work.) Some people use Amazon’s own Createspace software to upload Word
documents. Some people advise against this as the formatting on these can look poor. (However, some say that it works for them.) Perhaps it depends on how tight your use of Word is and whether you want anything fancy doing. The conversion software is getting better. Have a look at some e-books out there: you could look at The Evergreen: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Evergreen-red-white-Steven-ebook/dp/B00I0F78VQ/ref=pd_rhf_pe_p_img_6 : download the sample to your Kindle, or my book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Skippers-Wooing-annotated-WW-Jacobs-ebook/dp/B00HX7M074/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1415369469&sr=1-1&keywords=the+skipper%27s+wooing Compare those to something like (taking a
book at random, that I know nothing about – it could be a great read for all I
know): http://www.amazon.co.uk/Englewood-Fireside-Tales-Jean-Airey-ebook/dp/B003DQPLL6/ref=sr_1_38?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1415358478&sr=1-38
It is worth the effort to get it right: you may be taking a
DIY approach but there is no reason you can’t do a better job than many of the
lazily produced commercially published e-books (see my review of Ours Are
the Streets for example at: http://stevek1889.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/sheffield-novels.html
)
Have a look at Guido Henkel’s stuff and then have a play
with your book on Notepad++ and Calibre. Follow Henkel’s instructions on
cleaning up your formatting and transferring your text to the programme editor
(I used Notepad ++ but there are others). Deal with your special characters as
described (if you need a £
sign you need: £ by the way. ) Clean up your formatting on Word first using the find and replace facility, before pasting it into your editor. Find rogue spaces at the end of paragraphs for example with: find: press space bar then type ^p and replace with just ^p
To then turn it into an HTML file you need to wrap the text with HTML headers etc. You can even make up your own <p> tags. Try cutting and pasting the following at the start of you Notepad++ document instead of what Henkel has:
To then turn it into an HTML file you need to wrap the text with HTML headers etc. You can even make up your own <p> tags. Try cutting and pasting the following at the start of you Notepad++ document instead of what Henkel has:
<?xml version="1.0"
encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0
Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<head>
<style type="text/css">
html, body, div, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5,
h6, ul, ol, dl, li, dt, dd, p, pre, table, th, td, tr { margin: 0; padding:
0em; }
p
{
text-indent: 1.5em;
margin-bottom: 0em;
}
p.first
{
text-indent: 0em;
margin-bottom: 0em;
}
p.firstlone
{
text-indent: 0em;
margin-bottom: 1.2em;
}
p.extragap
{
text-indent: 1.5em;
margin-bottom: 10.2em;
}
p.chapter
{
text-indent: 1.5em;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: 1.5em;
page-break-before: always;
margin-top:3em;
margin-bottom:1em;
}
{
text-indent: 1.5em;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: 1.5em;
page-break-before: always;
margin-top:3em;
margin-bottom:1em;
}
p.sub
{
text-indent: 1.5em;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: 1.5em;
margin-top:0em;
margin-bottom:2em;
}
p.newpage
{
text-indent: 0em;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: 1.5em;
page-break-before: always;
margin-top:3em;
margin-bottom:2em;
}
p.centered
{
text-indent: 0em;
text-align: center;
}
span.centered
{
text-indent: 0em;
text-align: center;
}
p.titlepage
{
text-indent: 0em;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: 3em;
text-align: center;
page-break-before: always;
margin-top:5em;
margin-bottom:2em;
}
p.indent
{
text-indent: 3.0em;
margin-bottom: 0em;
}
</style>
{
text-indent: 3.0em;
margin-bottom: 0em;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
(PUT YOUR TEXT IN HERE}
</body>
(PUT YOUR TEXT IN HERE}
</body>
I don't always use all the <p> tags in each of the
books I've done, but I'll try and explain what I use them for. Some of
these I made up and they seem to work (a proper programmer will probably have kittens though) :
<p class = “first”> removes the first line indent
from the first paragraph after a heading or a * gap (like in a proper book).
<p class = “sub”> allows a subheading under a chapter
number without showing up on the contents list
<p class="firstlone"> allows a paragraph on
its own left-aligned, with a gap afterwards – so for a first left-aligned
paragraph where you want a break in the story after that first para.
<p class="centered"><span
class="centered">*</span></p> This places an asterix
in the middle of the page. It is best to follow that with left-aligned text for
the first paragraph
<p class="titlepage"> creates a titlepage:
the title on its own on a page.
The following example lets me end the page with
"...fill me again" then start "Rab Howell...perhaps" on a
new page half way down in italics:
<p
class="extragap">On Good Friday 1898, Sheffield United beat Bolton
1-0. Sunderland lost to Bury by the same score and Sheffield United secured the
English Championship for the only time in their history… so far. Come fill me
again!</p>
<p class="newpage"></p>
<p><i>Rab Howell…
perhaps ........................
This is the start of the book, following
straight on after the HTML header above:
<p class="titlepage">The Evergreen in red
and white</p>
<p class="newpage"></p>
<p class="first">First published in 2013 by
1889 books.</p>
<p class="first">Copyright © Steven R Kay
2013.</p>
<p class="first">The moral right of the author
has been asserted.</p>
<p class="first">Cover: Greg Whitmore and
Steven Kay.</p>
<p class="first">This e-book is licensed
for your personal use only – it should not be re-sold or given away to other
people. If you are reading this book and did not pay for it, please purchase
your own copy – thanks for respecting the hard work and thousands of hours that
the author put into researching and writing this. </p>
<p class="chapter">Author’s Note</p>
<p class="first">In 1894 Rabbi Howell
became the first Romany to play football for England. I have never believed the
accounts in the club’s history books of what happened in 1897-98: a pivotal
season for him. My research led to what I believe to be as close to the truth
as is possible. This is a fictional account based on what facts that can be
gleaned.</p>
<p>The glossary contains Romany and dialect words,
should the reader wish to know exact meanings.</p>
<p class="chapter"> </p>
<i>I don’t know exactly what Howell is made of, but
he is an acrobat and I believe if he were standing on his head he would somehow
get his kick in, and the ball would be picked up by one of his side. – Free Critic, Athletic News, January
1898<p></i>
<p class="chapter">CHAPTER ONE</p>
<p class="firstlone">Saturday 17th April
1897</p>
<p
class="first"><strong><big><big>Rab</big></big></strong>
took the little…
An extra gap can be added after a paragraph by adding </br> at the end of a paragraph after the </p>.
An extra gap can be added after a paragraph by adding </br> at the end of a paragraph after the </p>.
Uploading an Epub file to Smashwords can be a little frustrating. The Notepad++ version of you book needs to be very clean before it will be accepted: it is worth doing this even if just uploading a MOBI file to KDP. Down the left hand side of your screen there are may be little minus signs. Look out for these and eliminate them: every line needs to open with <p> and end with a </p>. If you have blocks of italics running over more than one paragraph, each paragraph needs tagging. Eliminate empty lines and any lines which are just "<p></p>" - these may appear for some reason. Get rid of lines with carriage spaces at the end: within Notepad++ you can search for {space}</p> and replace with just </p> (Word won't let you do this). Uploading to Smashwords will also not like filenames uploading with spaces between words in the file name: rename it just before uploading it. And you should follow their copyright page guide.
Once you have uploaded onto Calibre and created an e-book you can put it straight onto your Kindle to check it.
Once you have uploaded onto Calibre and created an e-book you can put it straight onto your Kindle to check it.
See post: http://stevek1889.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/how-to-insert-pictures-to-mobi-file.html for how to include pictures in your e-book.
I will also do another post on endnotes/footnotes.
I will also do another post on endnotes/footnotes.
3) Getting a paperback published.
By all means shop around to see what you can do on price. Fast Print Publishing: http://www.fast-print.net/ did my first edition of The Evergreen. They are not
rip-off merchants, and the book looked good. You pay for what you get – can’t complain about that. If you
want add-ons from them, they sell each of those separately so you can make up
your own package. Other so-called “self-publishing” companies don’t let you do
the basics yourself and some take a cut of every sale on top. Fast-print don’t
do that. For £150 I got The Evergreen set up as a Print on Demand book
and £49 for them to keep it topped up on Amazon as “in stock.” I also bought
200 copies off them at a price that allowed me enough margin for retailer
discount. (Retailers want at least 40%, so on a £7.99 paperback the retailer gets get £3.20 leaving
your profit as the difference between printing costs and £4.79 – that makes it
very tight to turn a profit, but you can perhaps squeeze about £1.80-2.00 per book). To do the £150 package you need to send them a
typeset PDF of your book. Next step learn to typeset on your PC: don’t panic.
Newer versions of Word can be used to convert to PDF, but you need to watch you don't lose formatting. I found out the hard way. You could of
course pay for software such as InDesign or Adobe writer (but why would you
unless you are a professional?). Alternatively Apache Open-Office: https://www.openoffice.org/ can be useful and exporting as a PDF seems to work well. Study
paperback books you like and see how they are laid out. This is what you are
aiming to replicate. Paste your document into Open Office docs and then start
fiddling. I suggest you set it up with two pages per screen: recto and verso. The
Evergreen is not my ideal layout: it is rather densely set out, the font is
size 11, using Garamond, which is quite economical with space, and the margins are as squeezed as I
could make them: but at about 105,000 words, and in order to keep costs down, I
had no option: more pages more cost. I went for a standard page size of 197mm x
132mm. I set the Open Office page width at 12.70 and height at 19.80 – the
closest I could get it. This when exported as PDF using Open Office’s facility
came out as PDF that was 5.19 x 7.76 inches which was close enough. I set the
inner margin at 1.40 and the outer at 1.20, top at: 1.30 and bottom at 1.93.
The page layout is mirrored which gives you the recto and verso. Just fiddle on
is my advice.
Amazon's Createspace platform is an alternative that I have used for print versions of Spirit of Old Essex and A Skipper's Wooing. It depends how many you think you can shift as to how the economics stack up. Createspace will give you about 17-18% on each sale. The advantage is that there is no up-front cost. You can also use their cover design templates: though they often don't look great unless you have some design experience to draw on yourself. It is certainly the easiest and safest option if you don't think you don't want to risk not being able to shift numbers in the hundreds.
Another Print on Demand publisher worth looking into is Lightning Source/Ingram Spark, who I used for Joe Stepped off the Train and my Evergreen second edition. (Update: since 2016 my go-to printer.) Do your sums and see what works best for you and the ways you can realistically distribute. For Lightning Source you have to provide your own ISBN numbers: this costs £149 for a bundle of 10 (or £75 for just one!) from Nielsen. How the economics work out depend on whether you propose to indie-publish more than once. From May 2023 Ingram no longer charge a set-up fee so it has become the best option for all indie-publishing, in my view. They are very good at delivering books and it is set up on Amazon by them quite efficiently - you can order a dozen books at little more extra cost per item than 1000. No more depressingboxes of books! You can rejoice in every sale rather than have stock whispering to you how crap you are every time you go near the boxes..
Amazon's Createspace platform is an alternative that I have used for print versions of Spirit of Old Essex and A Skipper's Wooing. It depends how many you think you can shift as to how the economics stack up. Createspace will give you about 17-18% on each sale. The advantage is that there is no up-front cost. You can also use their cover design templates: though they often don't look great unless you have some design experience to draw on yourself. It is certainly the easiest and safest option if you don't think you don't want to risk not being able to shift numbers in the hundreds.
Another Print on Demand publisher worth looking into is Lightning Source/Ingram Spark, who I used for Joe Stepped off the Train and my Evergreen second edition. (Update: since 2016 my go-to printer.) Do your sums and see what works best for you and the ways you can realistically distribute. For Lightning Source you have to provide your own ISBN numbers: this costs £149 for a bundle of 10 (or £75 for just one!) from Nielsen. How the economics work out depend on whether you propose to indie-publish more than once. From May 2023 Ingram no longer charge a set-up fee so it has become the best option for all indie-publishing, in my view. They are very good at delivering books and it is set up on Amazon by them quite efficiently - you can order a dozen books at little more extra cost per item than 1000. No more depressingboxes of books! You can rejoice in every sale rather than have stock whispering to you how crap you are every time you go near the boxes..
4) You can’t judge a book by its cover
But everyone does. This might be the one area worth
spending a bit of money on. I didn’t spend any on The Evergreen,
however. I did the basic idea and then a friend with some slightly more
sophisticated desktop publishing software helped me out and produced the JPEG
for the cover. Fast Print have a guide as to how the cover should be laid out
with bleeds round the edge etc. as do Lightning Source/Ingram. I also paid a few pounds for permission to use
the font: from Galdino Otten (http://galdinootten.com/ ). Some fonts are free to use but you'll need to carefully check the licence. The cover of The
Evergreen is not probably what a commercial publisher would have come up
with, but it works, I think. Another possibility for doing something at low cost
may be to get a design college student to help. It can also be effective just using simple desktop publishing: The Skipper’s Wooing, Spirit of Old Essex, Put Yourself in His Place and Joe Stepped off the Train were all done on Open Office Draw, for example. You shoudl download Derek Murphy's guide even if you are getting help with the cover: https://www.creativindie.com/7-book-cover-design-secrets-to-sell-more-books/ There also are cover design templates out
there that you can use if you: see for example: http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2013/10/20/book-cover-design-ms-word/
Another website worth looking at for all matters
self-publishing is: http://www.thebookdesigner.com/
I suggest setting up a website (I used Wix.com which is very easy to use for anyone with a bit of computer knowledge: it is very intuitive. Postscript - because it is not reknowned for its ethical policy I am not sure I would now start from there, idf stating over.) You should also consider spending a few pounds getting your own domain name: that way search engines are more likely to find you. Use Twitter, Facebook, other social media, and a blog. Look for any openings that make you book special: every book has its own audience and possible openings. Search around for people that will do reviews for free in your genre. You may have to budget for sending out some free copies. Learn how to do a professional looking press release.
Above all persist. You need to keep it up for long enough for word of mouth to start working for you – you need to keep chucking it in the air and you have to hope that if the book is strong enough it will eventually fly on its own (I’ll let you know if any of mine ever do!) Good luck with yours.
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