Publishing

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The Problem With The True Cost of Self-Publishing

by • Publishing

I came across a recent story that went into great detail what it costs today to publish a book.

This is a good thing to know. Before you publish your first book, you need to understand what it takes and how much to pay.

The writer was very thorough. She was thorough in listing the categories, down to office supplies and postage. She gave precise numbers.

It was also unrealistic and a little misleading. Someone new to the profession could look at the list, total up the numbers, and say, “I don’t have that kind of money.”

For example, she suggested that you could spend on editing anywhere between $600 and $18,000. At the low end, with a manuscript in good shape, it would be for proofreading only. The high-end price was for five levels of editing: manuscript assessment, developmental, line editing, copy editing, and proofreading.

That, in a word, is insane.

But before you write that check, you need to ask yourself some even more important questions:

1. What is my goal? To publish this book or to publish a lot of books.
2. Why am I writing? Is it to give a voice to my imagination or to tell a story? Or do I want to make money at this?
3. Finally, how much do I want to spend? How much am I investing in this project.

The answer to each, taken together, will give you some idea of your victory conditions.

My what?

Right, your victory conditions. It’s a term I picked up from when I played wargames. These games recreated a battle, or a campaign, and it would end after a set number of turns. Unlike chess or Monopoly, the game didn’t end when there’s one person’s pieces still on the board. So, you needed the victory conditions to tell you who won.

The same concept can be applied to self-publishing. If you know when you’ve won, you have a better idea what to do to get there.

For example, if the answer to the first question was “to publish this memoir,” then that determines what services you’ll buy and which ones you can leave alone. If the answer to the second is that you want people to read the memoir, whether you may money or not, then that determines what kind of marketing services you want to buy. You may want to give the book away, or for a low price. And if the answer to #3 is “$10,000,” then you can buy a lot of editing and design services to make the book as attractive as possible.

But if you’re goal is to publish a lot of books, make money at it, and you have only $500, that’ll result in a different answer. You may choose to write to what’s selling now, join a writer’s group and use beta readers to whip it into shape, spend a hundred bucks on a genre-appropriate cover, and learn how to format the book yourself. You may buy a book on using KDP ads or get Kindlepreneur’s free course on AMS ads and use the rest of the money there while you write the next book in the series.

Different goal, different plan.

The problem with answering the question “How much does it cost to self-publish” is that it’s too variable for just one post. So that’s why I’m going to break this down for you over the next month. Once a week, I’ll talk about a different aspect of publishing, what you can do yourself, and what it might (and I stress might) be better to get someone else to do.

By the end of the month, you’ll have a much better idea of the options available to you, and you’ll be able to make a much better informed opinion.

Three Bits of Indie Publishing Advice

by • Publishing, Writing Advice

I had planned on writing about the best Amazon book page I’ve ever seen, but it wasn’t finished in time. So here’s some indie publishing advice inspired by a post from Jane Friedman’s site.

While “Three Critical Things You Won’t Learn in an MFA Program,” by Susan DeFreitas addressed traditional publishing, her gems of wisdom also works, with some tweaking, for indie authors.

If you’re interested in MFA programs, DeFreitas’ post is worth reading. For indie writers with no intention of going near one, here’s how I rewrote her bullet points for indie authors:

1. Peers and mentors don’t read the same way readers do.

One big difference between indie and trad-published authors is in the use of beta readers. Indie authors love to rely on them, while trad authors probably treat them the way movie makers look at preview audiences and studio notes.

staking vampire
How directors wish they could handle test audiences

Having someone else look over your manuscript – whether they’re friends, members of your writers group, an editor-for-hire, or another writer – is a great way to get feedback on your work.

The thing to keep in mind, however, is that you’re in charge of the book. This doesn’t mean rejecting every suggestion or observation that doesn’t align with your vision of the book, but it doesn’t mean accepting every suggestion, either.

In the writers group I attend every month, we have a good range of readers, which means a wide range of responses. We have readers (like myself) who look for grammar and spelling errors. We have people who have expertise in particular subjects. And everyone reads and can lend their perspective as a pretty unbiased audience. The critique can be hard to take at times – I still shake when one person said my romantic hero looked and acted like Danny DeVito – but it’s never personal. And I made sure to DeVitolize my lead.

Having a number of people read your manuscript can also give you an idea of what observations and suggestions to follow up on. There may be one person who dislikes something; that you can ignore if you think you’re right. If everyone thinks that the fight scene was badly done, or dislike your hero, you might want to think hard about tweaking the character.

But no matter how much feedback you get, in the end, it’s your story. Learn from your critics, but don’t let them steer you wrong.

2. It’s a numbers game.

DeFreitas was talking about submitting manuscripts, with the idea that the more you do it, the greater the chance of succeeding.

This also applies to self-publishing. If you want to succeed in turning your passion for telling stories into a full-time job, you have to keep producing stories.

This seems obvious, but I’ve seen a number of first-time authors ask online what they can do to increase the sales on their sole publication. Yes, it’s possible to advertise. It’s possible to hop on social media and tell everyone about your book. You can even arrange for booksignings.

But the best way to sell books is to keep writing more, especially if you’re writing commercial fiction. In fact, next week’s post will show you someone who’s doing just that.

3. “Comps” aren’t just for the marketing department.

DeFreitas makes this point when dealing with agents and editors, so I’m just repeating what she advised authors to do.

“Comps” are a list of books that are in the same genre as yours, that are closer to your title than the majority of books in that genre.

For example, fantasy is not just fantasy. There’s high fantasy (“Lord of the Rings”), heroic fantasy (“Conan”), comic fantasy (Discworld), dragon fantasy (Anne McCaffrey), and dynastic power-struggle fantasy (“Dune” and “Game of Thrones”).

Where does your book fit in?

This can be a touchy subject. We’d like to think that our book is original, that it can’t be compared to anything that’s come before.

Hogwash.

All artists build on the work of previous artists. We can’t help it, and it’s useful to recognize and acknowledge it.

Comps are also useful when deciding what you want to write next. This is business-type thinking, and many authors are resistant to it. But it’s also realistic thinking. If you want your books to sell, if you are seriously about making money as a writer, then you have to understand what the market wants.

Put it another way: Every successful author knew the genre they were writing in. Stephen King knew horror. John Gresham knew legal thrillers. Nora Roberts knew romance. They knew the types of stories they wanted to tell. They knew what emotion effect they wanted to inspire in their readers.

How is knowing your book’s comp titles any different?

As you learn about the business of writing, you’ll find that this knowledge applies to the craft of writing. If your goal is to reach out to readers, you’ll need to make decisions about your plot and characters. Sometimes you may choose to adjust to the demands of the market; other times, you won’t. Getting a clearer picture in your mind of the risks and rewards will help you make decisions you can live with, and profit from.

How I Learned to Love IngramSpark

by • Publishing

A few years back, I wrote a post about what I saw were IngramSpark’s shortcomings and why I wasn’t going to use it.

This month, I hit the button and “The Best Sherlock Holmes Parodies and Pastiches: 1888-1930” was published.

So, as the Talking Heads sang, how did I get there?

Let me explain. I’ll also go into detail how I was able to publish a book there without using InDesign, the latest version of Photoshop, or any other expensive piece of software.

There were two reasons why I objected to IS:

1. Cost: Uploading a book was too expensive. First, $49 for a “set-up” fee (which was a way for IS to generate revenue), and a yearly fee to keep the book available. You also had to pay $25 for each subsequent upload, so you better get it right the first time, bucko.

Worse, you couldn’t even test-drive the website by putting up a book and not printing it. You needed an ISBN, which in the U.S. cost at least $125.

So, just to familiarize myself with IS, I would have to play nearly $175 for one book. Not worth it.

2. Insufficient documentation: If you work for a book publisher and have access to InDesign and Adobe, you were set. You were also trained and experienced enough to understand the documentation. For those of us used to CreateSpace, we had a harder time making sense of IS’s demands.

That’s it in a nutshell. It was too much trouble to make the effort for potentially little return, and all of my loading mistakes would deepen the hole in my bottom line.

Whereas, CreateSpace didn’t charge a set-up fee, let you upload files without charge, and offered interior and exterior templates to make it easy to format and upload your work.

IngramSpark Gets A Clue

But that was then. Over the last few years, IS made some changes. It’ll still charge you $49 for a set-up, but there were plenty of discount codes that made it go away (for example, PUBLISH2019 works up until the end of the year).

They offered interior and exterior templates, which increased the chance of a successful upload.

The third change was on our part. As a result of a contretemps with Amazon over our Complete, Annotated books that is too dull to go into, Peschel Press bought a block of 100 ISBNs. At $575, the price went down to $5.75 each, and since we’re now at 20 books, it seemed like a good long-term investment in the business.

Suddenly, experimenting with IS made sense.

How to Publish a Book with IngramSpark

Let me walk you through the procedure for how I published “The Best Sherlock Holmes Parodies and Pastiches.”

As with CreateSpace (overrun and destroyed by KDP, which I’ll use from hereon), there are two parts needed to create a book: the interior PDF file, and the cover PDF file (which includes the front cover, back cover, and the spine).

Interior Template PDF

1. This book was first published through KDP, using its 6-inch by 9-inch interior template, so no changes were made to the file.

EXCEPT: IS wants the file to have an even number of pages. The book had 389 pages, so I added a Page Break to create the blank page.

2. Whether you’re working with KDP or IS, you want to make sure that all inside art is set at 300 dots per inch (dpi). When Word saves a file, it automatically compresses images to 200dpi.

(Make sure you sized your interior art so it’ll fit on the page at 100% — no shrinking and especially no enlarging — and at 300dpi.)

To stop Word from compressing the art, immediately before you create the PDF, find the Compress Picture panel. In Word 2007, you right-click on a piece of art and click the the Format Picture button. Or, when you click on a picture, the Format tab will appear, and you can click on the Compress Pictures option that way. Select Option, then uncheck the compression command box.

3. Using the free PDF995 plug-in, I “printed” the PDF. Don’t use Word’s Save As function to make the PDF. Other PDF plug-ins might work, but PDF995 works for me.

Exterior PDF

This is the tricky part. I’m assuming that you learned how to make a cover PDF for KDP. The procedure is the same, but IS requires your software to use the PDF/X-1a:2001 or PDF/X-3:2002 plug-in when you export the PDF version.

PDF/X-1a:2001

These plugins make sure that your file is configured for the printing process. It may be that your software already has them. I use an old, old version of Photoshop (CS2), and it also already had one of the two plug-ins installed. You just need to make sure your software has it as well.

What about color density?

What do you mean?

It’s mentioned in Ingram’s documentation.

Don’t worry about it.

You sure?

I published four books successfully without worrying about it. Let me explain.

Without going into too much detail, IS wants your dark colors to look dark, but not too dark.

IS sets an upper limit on the density art, expressed in a percentage. The maximum density you can have is 400%. Printing a color page requires four plates: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. The maximum color density of each plate is 100%. Four plates times 100% equals 400%.

According to its documentation, IS wants the maximum color density to be no higher than 240%.

Now that you know that, try and forget it, because IS doesn’t enforce this rule.

For my “Best of” book, I know that sections of the cover are well above 240%. It passed their process without a problem.

So, back to the process: Once I knew the page count of my book, I went to IngramSpark and downloaded the proper exterior template (make sure you know if the pages are white or cream; cream pages are thicker and the spine will be wider).

When I was done designing the cover, I used the Save As function to create the JPG file, then —

Wait a second. What’s the JPG file for?

Oh, I forgot to mention, you use the JPG file to create the PDF file.

Why?

I don’t know how it works for you, but when I tried to make the PDF directly from the original Photoshop file, my computer crashed. The original file was so big that converting it to a PDF was too much for my 10-year-old-plus RAM to handle. Saving the original file as a JPG, then loading that file and converting it to a PDF worked.

Anyway, during the PDF-making process, a panel appeared with a number of selections. The Adobe PDF Preset was already set to the PDF/X-1 plug-in. All I needed to do was make sure was that the Standard option was set to that as well.

That’s it.

Now I have four books up — “The Best Sherlock Holmes Parodies and Pastiches,” “The Dictionary of Flowers and Gems,” “The Complete, Annotated Mysterious Affair at Styles,” and “The Complete, Annotated Whose Body?.” Without advertising, they’ve sold a couple dozen copies in six weeks. And all it cost me was $575 for the ISBNs, which I’m also using on the trade paperbacks on KDP.

Is it worth it? It raw dollars, no. But somebody is buying Peschel Press books through Ingram, and if they like them, maybe they’ll seek out our other books. And I’m making more money per book than they did through Amazon’s Extended Distribution.

Not only that, but IngramSpark also allows me to print books in hardcover, with either a case jacket or a full dust jacket. If I want to make a limited edition collectible out of, say, The Complete, Annotated Mysterious Affair at Styles, and sell it at Subterranean Press prices, I can.

And that’s good business.