1 Topic by Apricots (edited by Apricots 2022-09-13 04:01:25)

Topic: Published!

I have just self-published my fantasy novel, Starlight Jewel! Also known as Broken Glass on here. I didn't want to confuse people and change the placeholder title while folks were still reading. For anyone interested, it’s available for purchase on Amazon in paperback and ebook format (preorder, available Tuesday), and it will also be available in Kindle Unlimited on Tuesday. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BDXVT9B3?re … _397514860

The hardcover will be available at some point, but Barnes & Noble Press is being difficult to work with and I may be switching to IngramSpark.
I would have never considered publishing without the help of TNBW. I came here to learn to write better in the hopes that my writing would not be so unbearable to me. I didn’t think my book could be fixed to the point where it wouldn’t embarrass me. I’m elated at how much my book improved with the help of those here and with how much I’ve learned.

1 year of writing, 1.5 years of editing/learning how to write again.

I did not attempt to find agents or publishers. It’s my first book, I felt like that might be stressful, and I really didn’t want an editor mucking around in there. I feel like I’m still developing my voice and skills as a writer, and I kind of want to continue on that trajectory of learning and growing at my own pace without the pressure and interference.

I’m not putting any pressure on myself through this process as I need to take care of my health and I don’t want writing to become a chore. It’s my indulgent compulsion, and I want it to stay that way.

I have an Instagram to advertise on (@lyons_pen), an author website (lyonspen.com), and I’m getting some ads in a few places. On social media, you can connect them all so posting in one place will automatically post to others.

Some points of interest in the process of self publishing:

Making a cover: You can’t make a book cover until you know for certain how long your book will be as the spine width determines the dimensions of the template. However, I did have the art done digitally before that, and had the artist send the layers over so that the cover designer could play with them. The artist is a friend, the cover illustrator is a coworker who does website management and website design. Neither of them have ever done a cover before and neither spoke to the other. Despite that, I think they did a great job. Lyonspen.com/books has the cover, the map, the frontispiece made by another friend, and character/world descriptions.

Make sure your artist/designer has all the formatting/template/dpi information required by KDP (or whatever place you’re using).

The templates for ebook, paperback and hardcover are all different sizes even if you’re getting the same size book. I chose 6x9 for both hardcover and paperback as even after major cuts, when using 12pt Garamond font, the book is 493 pages long.

KDP does not have linen/cloth/leather hardcovers or dust jackets. They only have case laminate. The main options for books with jackets are Lulu, IngramSpark, and Barnes & Noble Press. Each have pretty hefty drawbacks.

B&NP has no option for cover text, just a blank book under the jacket, even on the spine. They keep your book in limbo if you want an author proof—but they don’t tell you that until you already click the button. A 1-2 week review if you want to think about ordering an author proof, which prevents you from being able to edit the book or publish it in that time. Another 10+ days if you actually want to go through with the order of the author proof after the review, and again, you can’t edit or publish the book in that time. That’s where my hardcover is now, on its 5th day of being printed. Who knew it took 10 days to print one book? Again, there was no indication when ordering the proof (after the review) that I wouldn't be able to publish during this time. If I had not made the order for the proof, the book would now be available. This is all baffling since there’s no review process to actually publish.

The other options: Lulu is very expensive. IS is not user friendly and makes you jump through a lot of hoops just to get started. There’s a lot of agreements to sign, nothing seems to work properly, and it’s a pain. I’ll probably switch to them anyway since B&NP support is terrible and I can't imagine working with them for the rest of this series.

Paperback author proofs take 6 days to arrive from KDP, and hardcovers take a few weeks.

A list of pre-publication things:
Pen name/DBA (required by the state of VA)
Sole proprietorship (required by the city of Virginia Beach)
Author site
Cover templates
Covers (1 for paperback, 1 for hardcover, 1 for ebook)
CoverCritics Evaluation
Blurb
Atticus for formatting (like KDP, this just takes out a lot of the work and stress)
Fantasy map
Frontispiece art
KDP account
Barnes & Noble Press Account
IngramSpark Account
Author proofs
Author plates
Instagram account
Facebook account
Twitter account
Ad designs
Run ads

Post Publishing:
Amazon Author Page
GoodReads Author Page
More ad designs and ad running
Sending out books to reviewers/family
Updating author site with links and such
Other stuff I probably haven’t thought of yet

The amount of mishaps from the start to end of this list are pretty numerous. My facebook account is currently restricted from running ads and they won’t tell me why; my poor designer has had to resize and reformat a plethora of images because of page count changes or to fit different social media requirements (currently he needs to redo the map and frontispiece to 600ppi for IngramSpark); I spelled my real name wrong while submitting my DBA paperwork and had to cancel it and buy it back with my name spelled right—just to name a few of them.

However, I feel it’s gone pretty well overall and am excited to face the judgment of fantasy readers everywhere. Thank you to everyone at TNBW for taking time out of your lives to be generous reviewers!

Quote Post 1

Re: Published!

Congratulations, Apricots. And thank you for the detailed summary of what you're going through. It makes me want to run and hide, but I'll keep writing. Maybe mine will publish itself. :-)

Quote Post 2

Re: Published!

Dirk B. wrote:

Congratulations, Apricots. And thank you for the detailed summary of what you're going through. It makes me want to run and hide, but I'll keep writing. Maybe mine will publish itself. :-)

Thank you! And it hasn’t been so bad as it seems all together like this, I got a lot of it done early so it wouldn’t all need doing at once. Definitely going to be making a lot of changes in how I approach book 2, namely, having a lot of the advertisement graphics done some months in advance. I’m probably also going to make packets with various ad sizes and formats for each platform.

Best decision I made was insisting on the digital art layers from the cover. The designer has been able to use them ti make ads, wallpapers, and an author plate. Plus it gave us tons of alternate cover options.

Quote Post 3

4 Reply by Seabrass (edited by Seabrass 2022-09-13 02:39:28)

Re: Published!

Hello, Apricots.

Celebrate! A first book only happens once. And you done did something a vast number of aspiring writers don't do--finish a book!

I pre-ordered to be a Verified Purchaser, and will drop a review. Thems gold, them reviews. Accumulate as many as you can.
Did you round the price up for a reason? Just curious. I plan to price mine at 5.99 due to inflation. Novellas at 3.99 still. And my short stories at 1.99. Now and then I'll offer discounts through KDP Select. I don't plan on offering anything for free. I want people who are interested to value my work, and a good way to do that is by making them drop some cash, even if it's just .99. They're more likely to read the story, and maybe leave a review.

Get that mailing list up and running!

I also bought Atticus but I ain't yet used it. I think it has potential. I'll have work to do uploading my chapters, getting all the styles right. If it's too much work, I'll stick to WordPerfect. Did you know the Kindle Previewer lets you create a MOBI files from an EPUB through the Export feature? That could come in handy. So many choices...

If you get a chance, look up Heinlein's Five Rules of Writing. I'm not too keen on #3, as I get some of my best ideas after the first draft. Otherwise, they seem an interesting set of shackles. I'm sure they work. I'm just not at that point yet.

Again, congratulations!

Quote Post 4

Re: Published!

Seabrass wrote:

Hello, Apricots.

Celebrate! A first book only happens once. And you done did something a vast number of aspiring writers don't do--finish a book!

I pre-ordered to be a Verified Purchaser, and will drop a review. Thems gold, them reviews. Accumulate as many as you can.
Did you round the price up for a reason? Just curious. I plan to price mine at 5.99 due to inflation. Novellas at 3.99 still. And my short stories at 1.99. Now and then I'll offer discounts through KDP Select. I don't plan on offering anything for free. I want people who are interested to value my work, and a good way to do that is by making them drop some cash, even if it's just .99. They're more likely to read the story, and maybe leave a review.

Get that mailing list up and running!

I also bought Atticus but I ain't yet used it. I think it has potential. I'll have work to do uploading my chapters, getting all the styles right. If it's too much work, I'll stick to WordPerfect. Did you know the Kindle Previewer lets you create a MOBI files from an EPUB through the Export feature? That could come in handy. So many choices...

If you get a chance, look up Heinlein's Five Rules of Writing. I'm not too keen on #3, as I get some of my best ideas after the first draft. Otherwise, they seem an interesting set of shackles. I'm sure they work. I'm just not at that point yet.

Again, congratulations!

Thank you! You contributed so much time to the book and suffered through it when it was still quite rough, so extra thanks!

As to the price... I understand that there is psychology behind the .99, but I'm hoping it won't matter all that much. My feeling is that if the book is $15, it makes sense to me to price it at $15, and I couldn't bring myself to make $14.99 or $15.99. My coworker suggested I price it at $16.99, but I felt that was too much for the current hard times in the world.

As to short stories, I decided I'm going to start publishing those (Tammy Lynn stories) through Kindle Vella once I get a few more down and some cover art. The pricing there is set and per word, but it seems like an easy route to take and a lot less stress than the route I took for SJ. You can also consolidate them into regular books from Vella later on so it has that extra shortcut.

Atticus has been super easy for me to use and I've really loved it. I went with one of their premade themes, deleted the title page off that, and inserted a better one as a full page image, and used a matching scene break throughout the book. One thing to note, if you leave your full page images titled "full page image" in Atticus, then when you upload the epub onto KDP, it'll only show one of the full page images, so be sure to title all the images you insert. If you run into any issues with Atticus, it seems the solution is almost always to log out, close the program, open it again and log back in.

And yeah, number 3 seems a bit too much. I pretty much rewrote SJ 4 times over it seems. Though I expect I'll have to do less rewriting in book 2 now that the world is set and made.

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Re: Published!

Well done, Apricots. The details of your quest for publication, if they weren't so real, could be a humorous source for a short story. Locating and using online resources can be vexing.

My first book went almost exactly as yours did, however I waited through my upper limit of 50 rejects before going the way of KDP. It was relatively easy for me to produce a cover as my daughter is an accomplished designed who was currently working as a freelance scene designer for a major game producer. The major drawback to self-publishing is advertising. Mine went out right at the beginning of the COVID lockdown and suffered from lack of exposure. Mostly the same for my second novel. Now that things have eased somewhat, my third might be easier to sell.

Bill

Quote Post 6

7 Reply by Lauren (CB Laurence) (edited by Lauren (CB Laurence) 2022-09-13 16:45:34)

Re: Published!

Woohoo!! Congrats!! Thanks for the detailed rundown, too - can never have too much knowledge about self-publishing/marketing I'm learning.  I'll be publishing my 12-book series starting in February, and I'm sure I'll be referring to your post for publishing steps. CoverCritics is already a new one on me. (Hope my covers pass as they are already done!) Wishing you all the very very best for your launch!!  (and for your health - take care!)

Lauren

P.S. - your website is beautiful! Did you do that yourself? If not, can you send me the name/price of your designer?

Quote Post 7

Re: Published!

Apricots,
I went to the Amazon page, and it looks awesome. Nice job. Did you price it at $15.00 for a particular reason? Number one down and hopefully many more to come. Curt

Quote Post 8

Re: Published!

Many congrats!

Quote Post 9

Re: Published!

Congratulations, may you earn lots of money. And thanks for the info.

Quote Post 10

Re: Published!

B Douglas Slack wrote:

Well done, Apricots. The details of your quest for publication, if they weren't so real, could be a humorous source for a short story. Locating and using online resources can be vexing.

My first book went almost exactly as yours did, however I waited through my upper limit of 50 rejects before going the way of KDP. It was relatively easy for me to produce a cover as my daughter is an accomplished designed who was currently working as a freelance scene designer for a major game producer. The major drawback to self-publishing is advertising. Mine went out right at the beginning of the COVID lockdown and suffered from lack of exposure. Mostly the same for my second novel. Now that things have eased somewhat, my third might be easier to sell.

Bill

It definitely has some humor when I take a second to step back from it--a very exciting adventure. I also got lucky as my boss/friend/coworker is a web designer. He made my website, my book cover (using cover art from another friend), my map, my title page, my scene breaks, my ads and my downloadable content. Even with that help, it's been a ton of work. I can't imagine what a mess things would've been without his assistance, but advertising is definitely the worst part!

Quote Post 11

Re: Published!

Lauren (CB Laurence) wrote:

Woohoo!! Congrats!! Thanks for the detailed rundown, too - can never have too much knowledge about self-publishing/marketing I'm learning.  I'll be publishing my 12-book series starting in February, and I'm sure I'll be referring to your post for publishing steps. CoverCritics is already a new one on me. (Hope my covers pass as they are already done!) Wishing you all the very very best for your launch!!  (and for your health - take care!)

Lauren

P.S. - your website is beautiful! Did you do that yourself? If not, can you send me the name/price of your designer?

Thank you! Hopefully my missteps help others. And I did not do the website myself lol. I have no visual or computer skills. My day-job boss does websites as a side hustle. I'm a caregiver for his wife, so it ended up being a sort of "bonus" for 12 years of awesome service--though I did pick up a good many extra hours at work the last few months. I'll message you his email address and what little I know about his pricing. He also did my covers (using art made by someone else, but you wouldn't recognize the art after he finished with it. Click on the art tab on the books page of the website to see the original art), all my ads, my downloadable content, my fantasy map, my title page, scene breaks (to match the title page). His background is in corporate design, but he seems amenable after this project to switching to more "creative" projects.

On your covers being already done,

Quote Post 12

Re: Published!

Curt Kaltsukis wrote:

Apricots,
I went to the Amazon page, and it looks awesome. Nice job. Did you price it at $15.00 for a particular reason? Number one down and hopefully many more to come. Curt

No particular reason aside from just not liking .99 thing. I know I should change it. Thank you!

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Re: Published!

Thank you George and Bill!!!

Quote Post 14

15 Reply by njc

Re: Published!

If you don't like the 99 cent thing, use 50 or 75 cents.  Or 25 .

Quote Post 15

Re: Published!

Congrats!!! If you're happy with the even dollar pricing, keep it. Just my opinion.

Quote Post 16

Re: Published!

Thanks Don! I ended up changing it, sometimes I just have to fight my own stubbornness.

Small Update: Hardcovers are now published and on Barnes&Noble. Pricing wise, B&NP is the best value for readers and SP authors with hardcovers+dustjackets, however, they are a pain to work with. I wanted to switch to Ingram Spark, but even charging readers $7 more I'd be getting less in royalties.

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