I intended to write this article last September but life got in the way.
Before I start this essay I want to make something very clear – this is not a post to bash epublishers. They do a good job most of the time and the majority of their writers are very happy with the service they receive (although there are a few issues about which the authors have expressed dissatisfaction and those include: reversion of rights, timely and accurate royalty payments, as well as the percentage of royalties paid). To further complicate the relationship between publishers and their authors, when a few publishers went belly-up over the past couple of years due to financial problems and/or piss-poor management this gave epublishers in general a black eye, as it took a long time for the authors to become disentangled from their contracts and get their rights back.
Partly as a result of these unsettling times there is a new player in town in the world of digital or electronic publishing and it’s self-publishing. “Doin’ it for themselves” or self-publishing is not new, except it was called vanity publishing decades ago because famous people who couldn’t get their books published wanted to see their names on the cover of a book (many of them had to have their stories ghost written because they couldn’t write worth a damn). The other difference is that those were print books, not electronic. In this digital age, for the longest while it used to be that the only way to get an ebook published was to submit a manuscript to an epublisher who would either accept or reject it, and writers had no recourse if their manuscripts were rejected other than to shop them around to different publishers to see if there were any takers. Now the pendulum has swung in another direction by giving control of their stories to authors. For those authors who want to try publishing, in addition to writing, going indie may be their best option as some of them may feel that the extra work is worth not having to share the profits with a publisher. Anyone with a computer, whether or not s/he has any writing talent, can be a published author through the magic of digital publishing which seems to have taken hold of the publishing world in a big way.
Is this a good or a bad thing? Only time will tell.
Sometime ago when I saw how many self published books were being sent to this site for review I was initially concerned about the quality of the product in terms of story content and editing. Then I read some of the books and realized that the majority of them were edited at least as well as most of the books released by epublishers – if not better. The stories ran the gamut of “should never have seen the light of day” to “wonderful”, which was on par with what was being released by traditional epublishers. The one constant was that the majority of these books were professionally put together – from the cover art to the editing and the formatting. So I decided that this site would review self published books because there was no reason not to, as long as the quality of the product remained constant and did not deteriorate. Now that there are so many more authors trying out digital publishing I’ll have to wait and see if there is any negative impact on the books.
Selfishly, one reason I wanted to write this post was because I figured that authors doin’ it for themselves was here to stay, but that there was a huge issue in terms of potential indie authors easily sourcing the necessary resources in one place, and as someone who loves gay romance I wanted the best product possible for my money. My thinking was that accessing credible information as well as professional resources would improve the quality of these stories; therefore I decided to do my own research and give our authors the benefit of that research. The best part? They don’t have to pay for my services. 🙂
When Jay Bell learned I was writing this post he offered to share his first experience in the dark and murky world of self publishing so that other authors would benefit from it and not be taken unaware. If you’re an author who is contemplating publishing your own books there’s lots to learn from Jay.
Here’s his story
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Jay
An embarrassing disaster: That pretty much sums up my first book release. I live in a far away land called Germany (far away from the USA 😀 ), and it’s not always easy for the postal service to reach me, so I didn’t get to hold my debut book until a week after its release. I opened the big ol’ box, expecting to be moved to tears. The cover looked good, graced by my husband’s art. Then I opened the book, feeling a little perturbed by the huge margins and tiny font. Regardless, I started to read. And I stumbled. Something had gone terribly wrong. Random spaces had been inserted into many of the words:
Humid nig ht air danced acr oss the rippling green wa ters of the lag oon, bringing with it the sm ells of su mmer and the sou nds of night.
Being the calm, well-adjusted person I am, I flipped the fuck out. All I could think of were the people who had spent money on this absolute mess. For once, being a nobody in the writing world had its advantages, since it’s not like thousands of copies had been sold. Only those nearest and dearest to me were buying the book, and honestly, that felt even worse. Never one for despair, I set about finding a way to fix the problem. Due to the time difference between countries, while I was freaking out my publisher was snug in her bed. I sent tons of emails. I might have tried calling. Then I started messing with the files to figure out what went wrong and where. I found the problem, but didn’t have any authority with the printing press to implement the solution. Despite my increasing heart palpitations, I had to wait until my publisher woke up and had returned from her day job. Even then I’d lost confidence that she could handle fixing the problem. I felt helpless. What was supposed to be one of the most magical milestones in my career was anything but. As I said, an embarrassing disaster.
Despite this problem and many more, the folks behind the first and only publishing house I worked with were kind, likeable people. They gave me a chance when no one else would and did the same for many other authors. Regardless, I suspected I could probably do a better job on my own. I made a half-hearted effort to get my second book, Something Like Summer, published. When there were no takers, I leapt at the excuse to strike out on my own. I taught myself InDesign to give my books a professional layout. I delved into the HTML of my ebooks to get the formatting just right. I wined and dined my husband into providing a book cover that continues to get its own fan mail. I hired professional editors, did a million rewrites, found test readers, and ordered a slew of prototypes before I dared to push that publish button. I did everything I felt a good publisher would do, and my efforts and hard work were rewarded. Happy ending? Well, sort of.
“That’s why I don’t read self-published books!” Comments like these are disturbingly common. People trash a book they don’t enjoy—nothing unusual or wrong about that—but if it’s an indie release, someone inevitably replies with a comment that generalizes all self-published books as sloppy, thrown-together garbage. Naturally I find this a little irritating. There are good publishers, and as I experienced, there are bad publishers. Likewise, there are indie authors who do their best to release a product that is professional in appearance. Then there are indie authors who run spell-check, upload the book, and call it a day. As readers, we judge publishing houses on an individual basis. Indie authors—one person publishing houses—deserve the same treatment.
Haters gonna hate, so I try not to let negativity get to me, but it is discouraging to see review sites that won’t accept self-published books. I don’t understand this. A publishing house is by no means a guarantee of quality. These days, anyone can buy a domain name, use a template to create a web site, fill out paperwork, and call themselves a publisher. I considered doing so when I first started out, but it seemed dishonest. I knew I wouldn’t be publishing any books aside from my own, and didn’t want to pretend to be a company when I’m just some guy. A guy who works nights and weekends sometimes, who constantly updates his back catalog whenever a problem is discovered, and who gets really tired of worrying about everything being the best it can be but can’t sleep otherwise. I care about my books more than anyone, more than any publisher would—no matter how awesome they might be. I’m not perfect and my books aren’t perfect, but I pour my heart into every project I work on. If that’s a good reason not to read or review a book, then to each his/her own.
The cool thing I’ve discovered over the last seven book releases, is how many people simply don’t care. They look at a cover and blurb, and that’s what determines if they’re along for the ride or not. Most readers simply want a good story, and unless you give them reason to wonder about the company or individual doing the publishing, they might not ever know that it’s just some guy who really needs to get those dishes done before feeding the cats.
Jay
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To continue, here are a few items that might interest you ……..
I think you will find this excellent article by Hugh Howey titled Self Publishing is the future – and great for writers, published in April in Salon magazine very informative and revealing. Hugh is an indie science fiction author whose self published series Wool sold in the hundreds of thousands in North America alone and it is now optioned to 20th Century Fox:
Many authors have contemplated self publishing and a few of them have actually dipped their toes in these waters, going by the responses to my post on author royalties. The authors who emailed me as well as those who commented on the post complained about the amount of upfront work involved in being both publisher and writer, so I’m going to give them a little help by providing links to a few more articles and a list of resources, which should be enough to get them started and reduce some of the upfront labour. You guys can thank me later. 😀
The most popular way to self-publish currently is through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing which pays 70% royalties plus or minus a few percentage points, but I would strongly recommend that authors read the fine print on the contract carefully before they commit so that there are no unpleasant surprises. For example, Amazon wants to keep the prices of self published digital books below $10 so it pays only 35% royalties if the book is priced above $9.99 – see enclosed article by Tom Whitehead in the London Telegraph. In addition, Amazon does not encourage rock bottom pricing and consequently does not pay 70% royalties on books priced under $2.99 – it pays 35%. Authors should also note that while they do not have to grant foreign rights to Amazon, if they do, those rights must be exclusive in order to receive the 70% royalty. Otherwise, again they’re knocked down to 35%.
Amazon is not the only game in town. There are other self-publishing services available such as Barnes & Noble’s PubIt! which is now re-branded as Nook Press. Here’s a link to the information about Nook Press and what it offers authors in royalty payments.
Kobo’s Writing Life is another alternative to Amazon. I have linked this site so that authors can find out their royalty structure and how to use the services to get their books published.
Another excellent resource for self published books is Smashwords which claims to be the largest indie ebook distributor, with over 200,000 titles published by over 55,000 authors. Smashwords returns 85% of net to authors and distributes books to Barnes & Noble, Apple iBookstore, Sony, Kobo etc.
As many of you may know, one of my pet peeves in the romance genre is the lack of excellent editing in these books. Authors have argued with me that there are as many editing errors in print fiction as there are in ebooks however, generally it has been my experience that the error rate is much higher in epublishing. Part of the reason for this probably has to do with the considerable investment in editing resources by the major print publishing houses; It could also have to do with the short time frame between when a manuscript is submitted to an epublisher and its release (Samhain may be the only epublisher with an extended time-frame from submission to publication).
Last year David Vinjamuri wrote a really great article for Forbes magazine called Publishing is Broken : We’re drowning in Indie Books and That’s a Good Thing in which he lauded the trend of self-publishing over traditional publishing. I agree with a lot of his points in this article but with the current popularity of self-publishing and the lack of excellent editing resources to go around, I’m wondering how this will all play out with more and more authors going this route, especially if a large number of them opt to self publish when their current contracts expire in the next year or two. Whether or not the editing resource problem will be exacerbated by self-publishing, again only time will tell. Readers love inexpensive books (a lot of self-published books start at $2.99 compared to $4.99 or $5.99 from regular epublishers), but if indie authors don’t invest in professional editing resources readers may throw these books back. To be successful, a self published author has to get everything right out of the gate or there may not be a second chance. As we all know, readers are very fickle.
12 years ago Karen L. Oberst wrote an article about self-publishing in which she offered up advice to the wannabe writer on how to make it in this field. Here’s a link to her post and as you can see, the list is endless if you want to do it right.
My last link is to Joel Friedlander’s site, The Book Designer, which is excellent. The information on the site is totally up to date with the changing standards and methods in the industry. The author who recommended this site to me (Jordan Castillo Price) said you should pay particular attention to the “Start Here” section in the left sidebar. Mr. Friedlander has a free booklet on his site called 10 Things you need to know about Self Publishing which has lots of valuable information and links to Editors’ Associations in the the US and Canada. If you’re serious about self-publishing I would urge you to download the booklet and read it from cover to cover (it’s only 25 pages).
I think authors have more than enough information in this post and the attached list of resources recommended by their peers to get started. For those of you who have already self published a few books, this additional information may confirm what you already know.
To summarize:
If authors decide to go the indie route, it is important for them to understand that they can’t do it all themselves because they don’t possess most of the required technical knowledge or expertise. Epublishers hire outside resources because they don’t have in-house expertise and an author undertaking this job herself or himself has to be just as smart. While the story is very important it is also extremely important to release a professional product overall, which means authors must outsource most, if not all of the “publishing” jobs. Please don’t attempt to design your cover art unless you have the necessary technical skills. The same comment goes for the critical job of editing – always hire a qualified professional, and proofreading is not editing. Some of you may be like Jay and are fluent in HTML so you can probably do your own formatting, however, unless you’re an expert I would strongly recommend that you outsource this job. The cost is minimal and proper formatting can make a huge difference in the finished product. I know all of this seems like a lot of work and upfront financial investment, but if you’re serious about going down this road authors, people who purchase your books deserve the best product you can give them. Typically only the first book will be as labour intensive because everything is new, but this will pay off because you will be able to breeze through subsequent books as, for the most part, you will be reusing the same (or similar) resources. The only new element will be the manuscript for your latest literary work of art. 😀
Thanks to Jay Bell who rocks on every level. Also my sincere thanks to Josh Lanyon who gave me some valuable advice, as an experienced indie author, on the first cut of this document (I know when I should seek outside help). 🙂 Thanks also to the authors who helped with the list of technical resources: Jordan Castillo Price, Josh Lanyon, Val Kovalin, Josephine Myles, Kaje Harper, Aria Grace, Ava March and K.C. Beaumont. Aunt Lynn, as always thanks for the formatting help. My apologies in advance if I forgot someone.
Good luck.
to add from a readers point of view :
I love self-published books, I love smashwords. They bring me DRM-free ebooks for a good price, and the author gets paid too !
I used to like amazon, mostly because of the size of their collection and the convenience of buying there. The whole DRM-thing and their weird price-differentiation and geolocation policies have since turned me off them. To clarify : I’m dutch, and _must_ buy through amazon.com. I cannot buy through amazon.co.uk. WTF ? Also : I regularly see different prices because of this, the most recent one being an ebook priced at $2.99 in the UK, but being $6.04 for me. Even browsing the .com version I sometimes see different prices depending on being logged-in or not (because being logged in identifies me as being ‘a foreigner’ I presume).
So, given the choice, I always buy at smashwords (like Jay’s books, which thankfully are sold there). I think I might even do that if smashwords’ version were more expensive than amazon’s 😉
Hi Peter
I, too, love indie books. Jordan Price is one of my very favourite indie authors as well as Josh before as well as now that he has joined the band. 🙂 I have been buying from Smashwords for a long time and I love their books because I can get every format and, as you pointed out, their books are DRM free and inexpensive.
Living in Canada I can appreciate your frustration with Amazon’s pricing in different countries. Canada and the US share more borders than any two countries in the world yet the pricing structures are so different, which is why I continue to buy my ebooks and print books across the border.
What a useful post, Wave & Jay. I love that list of resources! I think I’ll be reading those additional articles all weekend. 🙂
I’m hoping other copyeditors out there might chime in. I use Sasha Knight, who is also my editor at Samhain, but she’s in huge demand!
Thanks for the kind words J. As you know, this post took a long, long time because of all the research involved so I hope the authors consider it worth their while. I’m hoping that more authors will email me with new recommendations that I can add to the list of resources. I don’t understand why there aren’t more copyeditors. Maybe it’s a skill that other editors need to develop.
Those articles are very interesting. I learned a lot and I hope you have the time to read them over the weekend.
Looking forward to your next release.
I refuse to believe any of these articles can teach Josh Lanyon something about publishing that he doesn’t already know. Unless you mean to spend the weekend reading them so you can laugh at how wrong they are. *That* fits with my world view just fine. 😉
Hey, I am ALWAYS looking for new resources! And this article has them!
😀
What a great post! I could have used this list of resources a few months ago when I was working feverishly to publish my first indie title. I had my reasons for going solo: mostly, I wanted to know how hard/good/bad the indie experience was before attempting a non-fiction titled under my real name. I also just wanted to give it a try. 🙂
I have to admit, I’ve invested more time, money, and effort into this new indie release than any of my other projects through e-publishers. More hours devoted to editing and formatting. More money in a quality cover (thank you, Reese Dante!!) and GOBS more in advertising and promotion than I’ve ever done before. I am deeply satisfied with the end result–and yet I do think I’ve put more expectations on this story to be the ‘breakout’ novel for me–because of all the work, the time, the money. I don’t think those expectations are realistic. I don’t think I have the kind of time to invest in self-publishing to make it really work–reading all the blogs on price manipulation, and tagging, and running around doing all the promoting. I realize that all these things are important regardless of any work that you publish, but the onus of it falls entirely on you when you self-pub.
Frankly, I’m exhausted. In a good way, to be sure, but I do have serious doubts as to whether I will tackle a self-published project again any time soon. Unless I can field out all these tasks (each of which adds to the cost of publishing a title), then I think my time would be better spent writing the next story…
Here’s the deal Sarah. Self publishing is like setting up your own business, and many authors don’t realize that when they decide to go that route. They don’t have a business model and in most cases they fly by the seat of their pants and find out too late the job is too much for them to do alone.
When I left a secure, well paying job to become a business consultant I knew that it would be tough, but I prepared for it and so I wasn’t “surprised” by much. Sure the work was hard because I had to do all of my own research and client presentations (something I hated) but I outsourced some of the work to sub consultants I trusted and I even had to hire an accountant (just like your cover artists, editors etc.) Once the money started coming in I was able to hire a better quality of sub consultants and my clients benefited by getting a better product from me and I made more money
Your experience is not something I would recommend because you were inexperienced in the “publishing “aspects of your new job. You knew about promoting your book because I’m sure you had done it before when you were with a publisher so that should not have been difficult, but everything else was new to you, even figuring out how to get your book reviewed. The lesson here is that self publishing is like any other business and you have to know when and how to outsource. Outsourcing takes money but if you technically lack the skills to do something then there is no option. Readers are quick to point out where something went wrong such as editing or formatting or cover design. I’m sure that reading Jay’s experience gave you some insight into what to do and what not to do. We all learn from our mistakes, me especially. 🙂
Last example, when I started my blog 5 years ago exactly it was so small I used to wish for someone, anyone, to drop by to read my reviews. At first there was maybe one visitor a week and then gradually the reputation of the blog made a few more people stop by, until a year later I realized that I had to do something or close it down because there were too many visitors and I couldn’t handle the chaos. Christian offered to set up my website (because I was and still am technically incompetent) and I asked a few readers to write reviews for the new site. It took off and Lynn joined us. Both Lynn and Christian have the expertise I lack and obviously I now have a product that other readers and others like. But, the key is I can’t do it on my own and wouldn’t even try because I would fall flat on my face.
*nods* Yes, you are right about it being a full time job–and needing to outsource the skills you don’t possess or don’t have the time to do yourself. And I did outsource a lot of things that were just beyond my skill set. I also took online courses that made it sound so easy–and it did seem like it was, right up to the formatting. Then it was ‘follow this guide, kaithxbye’ and you’re on your own, kiddo. At least, that was my experience!
I think because everyone kept telling me how easy it was, I thought it was something I could tackle with assistance in key areas. Yeah, not so much. 🙁 So lesson learned. I’m glad I did it. I will probably do it again–but I will do it more intelligently the next time (one hopes!).
Jay is a great example. Also talk to Josh who now has a lot of experience in this area. They were both very helpful to me when I got things wrong in this post. Good luck on the next indie book. If you weathered the first one, you can do a whole lot better now with a lot less stress. 🙂
Wave, this is a terrific article — an invaluable resource! I especially appreciate how you’ve centralized all the information in a downloadable PDF document. It’s clear that a LOT of research went into this, and it can only help our genre. Thanks also to Jay Bell for sharing his experience. (I love that his cover art gets its own fan mail!)
As for my self-publishing experience, I can say that it’s a huge amount of work and cost up-front with most of the cost going to editing (though it’s worth every penny). Still, there is every possibility that an author may not ever make that money back in sales. Everything that Sarah mentioned in her comment made me nod in recognition, especially that part about promotion.
What I like about self-publishing is having more control over my product than I would through epublishing, particularly pricing and schedule and output. For example with output, I can publish as much as I want to about my characters without running into restrictions on series length or wordcount. With pricing, I can offer parts of my series for free or at 0.99 cents. With schedule, it just depends upon me and my editor and I can get the story out much faster than if I were to have to fit into an epublisher schedule.
I’d like to do maybe 50% selfpublishing and 50% publishing with a traditional epublisher because there are advantages either way. With the epublishers, there is that huge built-in readership, which means less time has to go on promotion, and that, as Sarah mentioned, frees up more time to write the next project. 🙂
Hi Val
Thanks Val for the nod. I appreciate it, especially as I was still finishing this post at 4.00 A.M. 🙂 Thanks again for all your help on the resources. I hope that the other authors contemplating self publishing at some point will use these resources. As I receive more recommendations I will keep updating the list of resources. One of the areas where authors need a lot of help is, as Josh said, in the area of copy editing and I hope that we get some recs. at some point.
Everyone’s experience in this area will be different because it’s so new for the majority of authors, although I do remember receiving self published books from Claire Thompson and a few other authors years ago. I think that recent events have kick-started indie publishing and now everyone wants to take a crack at it. You list a lot of the advantages that come with indie publishing and one important one is control over the final product which is something many authors mentioned to me when we started discussing self publishing. Your reason for doing this is definitely in sync with theirs and I hope you continue doing so because it looks like you have it nailed.
Looking forward to reading your next release Reach for the Moon Val.
Have a great weekend.
Looking forward to reading your next release Reach for the Moon Val.
You’re going to read it? That’s awesome! I hope it gives you some good escapism. 😀 You have a good weekend too.
The first stories I self-published were a couple of freebie shorts but even with those I felt the importance to put out a polished product. It was very satisfying when some reviewers actually remarked on it. I’ve put out a novella in last December and have another one coming out this month. The plan is to split my books between my publisher and self-publishing. I’ll be honest, my last self-published title didn’t sell as many copies as my Samhain one does, and I don’t expect it to be any different with the next one. However, I believe it’ll work out on the long run.
Imo, of all the tasks associated with self-publishing formatting is the easiest one to do yourself. I don’t blame those who’d rather farm it out, but if you want to save money you’r better of doing it with formatting than editing or cover design. I’ve heard of people paying hundreds for formatting. I’m moderately technical and I’ve gotten pretty proficient in this area, and I try to share the things I’ve learned on my blog. I do most of my formatting and conversion using Scrivener since I already use this software for writing, but recently someone recommended Jutoh, so I downloaded it and gave it a whirl. My impression is that it’s a straightforward, easy to use software that delivers.
Hi Lou
It was amazing how many authors recommended your cover art skills. 🙂 Obviously a lot of your peers like your work.
Samhain is a hard act to follow. I have a lot of respect for this publisher since Angela was their chief Editor. Re your concern about the sales of your latest self-published book, one of the best parts of publishing ebooks is that there is no remainder pile and your backlist will work for you when you least expect it.
You’re absolutely right that formatting is the easiest (for most people) of all the difficult jobs associated with publishing, but I could never do it as technology is an area where I have long decided I have no competence. However some authors are very skilled in technology and if they can do this so that it looks professional, good luck to them.
Great post, Wave. Thanks for putting all the resources together.
I save self-publishing for short stories (including anthologies of older shorts with rights reverted to me), as most publishers don’t give shorts much love in terms of cover art/editing, yet still charge $1.99 or even $2.99 for them. I like to be able to get shorts out there cheaply (or even free), so that readers can try my writing out to discover if it suits them.
That said, self-publishing is an awful lot of work and you do need to spend some money up front. I do all my own formatting, JL Merrow gives me great content edits, and Lou Harper produces gorgeous cover art. I pay for copyedits and proofreading. Even after all this help, I find there’s still a full day’s work to put in getting the final product looking good and uploaded to all the different sites. No matter how many times I do it, it just seems to take this long!
I wouldn’t say self-publishing is easy, and I don’t think the sales are as good as you can get with a publisher, but I do love the creative control it gives you and the ability to set your own prices.
Personally, I don’t think a whole day’s work is much sacrifice if it means keeping a full cut of the royalties. One day sounds fast to me. I’d say I sacrifice a couple weeks of work, if not more, when it comes to getting a release ready and then promoting it. That includes creating a paperback version though. I also wonder if your impression of publisher-backed works selling better comes from them being full-length. From surveys I’ve read, short stories generally sell less well than a full-length novel, whether indie or not. Smashwords has one such study up now. http://blog.smashwords.com/
The day’s work is simply in preparing the different file types and uploading them to the different booksellers. There are many more days involved in promotion, editing, and of course writing the stories in the first place! I’ve never tried making a paperback version, though.
I did self-publish one novella but it hasn’t done as well as the novella I had out with a smallish epublisher a couple of months later. Of course, there could be all kinds of other factors at play. That said, I don’t think I’d reach as many readers through self-publishing a novel as I can through publishing with Samhain, and I’m perfectly happy to sacrifice a cut of the royalties for all the support they give me 🙂
Shorts can do great as freebies, though. Pole Star has had over 40,000 free downloads in the last eighteen months. I’m still flabbergasted by that figure!
I think this is true, particularly in the romance genre. Readers prefer longer works. That’s pretty much the rule of thumb.
Thank you so much for posting this article, experience, and links. One of my publishers is closing down so I’m getting five titles released back to me. I’ve been toying with the idea of self-publishing since before I first submitted a manuscript to a publisher, and now that I have more experience with the editing process and sales site, I’m seriously considering that option. Maybe self-publish short stories and short novellas and leave the bigger ones for the publishers. I put as much work into my short stories as I do in my novels, but I won’t have to pay as much money for short story edits as opposed to novel-length works.
Hi Erica
How are you? It’s tough to take back 5 stories. Several publishers seem to be having difficulties recently. At least you have your rights back and can make a decision about what options you want to pursue. Your books are already edited and formatted since they were published so if you want to self pub. at most you would have to get new covers and do some packaging, as well as decide whether to use Amazon, Smashwords or try another publisher. At least now you have a list of resources from which to choose. Good luck and keep in touch. 😀
We review self-published books on my blog as well, and like you I have seen a wide variety of quality. Some fabulous, some not so fabulous, just like with books that come from publishers.
I will say that with the books that don’t work so well, the problem very often boils down to editing, or lack thereof really. There are many pieces that go int publishing a book – editing, copyediting, formatting and layout, cover art, marketing, etc As Jay mentioned, just because you are self-publishing doesn’t mean you don’t still want qualified people working with you on your book. Some people can probably do quality covers, marketing, and layout on their own, but I think just about everyone would benefit from getting outside professional editing and copy editing. It is just too hard to do this well on your own writing. Exceptions to every rule, obviously, but as a reader/reviewer of hundreds of m/m romance books a year (as well as an editor in my EDJ) I’d say that my #1 piece of advice is not to try to do everything yourself and hire good people to help you.
I totally agree with your #1 piece of advice. Being “indie” might give the impression of doing it all yourself, but it’s much more about cutting out the middleman. Publishers hire talented editors, cover artists, etc. There’s nothing stopping an author from doing the same. That having been said, a good publisher brings experience and reputation to the table, and also fronts the money for the expenses. I don’t want to downplay the value of that, but it’s also up to each author to evaluate if those resources are worth sharing a cut of the loot. 🙂 Despite being indie myself, I still have a team of 7-8 people helping me with each release.
Interesting article – I’ll save the links and the resource list .
Of course, there are other resource people who didn’t get on the list – presumably Wave wanted multiple recommendations for all the listed services. Two cover designers who are fairly new to the art, but who were good to work with and have provided me with wonderful and inexpensive covers for my freebies, are Enny Kraft and Ren Brennan. I’ve also seen several other artists recommended in writer groups, so if you don’t see what you like with the first artist or two, look around some more. There is some wonderful cover art available (so no excuse for kluging your own, like I did with my first self-pub, unless you have the artistic chops.) Consider looking at the portfolio for an artist you like for recent covers, and contacting an author or two about their experiences with the artist too. There are times when a wondeful artist may be way behind schedule or otherwise hard to work with.
Given that you can add or subtract a star from your book’s ratings by the quality of the formatting, and especially the editing, I’d agree that those are worth getting good help for. If I ever self-pub more than freebies (or the rare quasi-freebie on Amazon) I would definitely seek out and be willing to pay for help with those aspects. For now, I’m happy with the support of epublishers for my commercial books.
Thanks for putting this together, you guys did an awesome job.
It’s interesting how our goals change according to our circumstances. Five years ago, I told my writing partners that self-publishing was like admitting defeat.
Today, I wouldn’t do anything else.
Besides the well-known reasons discussed here, I simply can’t take the stress of a deadline. I just missed one, but I was able to deliver the product within the extension. However, it nearly killed me.
Now, for those who can do deadlines successfully, the best it’s to publish both ways, traditionally and by themselves.
This is a wonderful post, Wave. Jay’s experience & input as well. I’m not an author, but this is all good information.