Tag Archives: self-publishing

What Do We Know?

Over the years contributors and many commentators have shared their experiences, observations, and advice on this blog. I thought perhaps it might be a nice idea to bring it all together for the sake of anyone new to self-publishing who might find their way here – useful, practical experiences and advice from writers who’ve been at it for a while, i.e. people who know what they’re doing. Of course we do.

So what have we learned during our self-publishing journey? What would we do differently today if we could roll back the clock and start over? Any major regrets?

And having asked the question, I suppose it’s up to me to get the ball rolling.

I don’t have any major regrets. I made mistakes, but that’s part of learning.

Self-publishing was all I considered in 2015, at the age of 65, and I chose readership over pocket change. No regrets. I’m not a goal oriented fellow, so I’m mostly surprised at the 20 books I’ve written, and with my sales. Still, they’re never enough, are they?

My major mistake was not recognizing how careless I am as a writer and how special being able to proofread reliably is. I learned this the hard way. I am amazed that with half a dozen volunteer beta/proofreaders, how little overlap there is between the lists of typos I receive back from them. Luckily in self-publishing you can upload corrected copies as needed. My first books were re-uploaded a lot.

I’ve also learned that on-line grammar correcting software can’t be fully trusted yet. But it definitely makes the job of my beta readers a whole lot easier. It is now part of my process.

I’ve always written the way words and stories come naturally to me. I’ve read writing advice pieces just to sneer at them. I never use five words where ten will do, if they add personality. I never kill my babies. This seems to work for me.

I’ve tried different covers on most of my books over the years, and never found any difference in sales. I use a uniform cover design for my book covers as my distinctive “brand.”

I’ve learned never to write sequels unless the first one is a runaway best seller, since each subsequent book sells fewer copies than the one before it. Going forward it’s all stand alone books, with open endings. On the off chance.

I’ve learned that visibility, and perhaps visibility alone is the key to sales. I don’t know how to get it. I’ve never spent any money or effort marketing my books, leaving that aspect entirely to the free price of my books. That’s worked well for me. The cool kids are all into social media in order to create the visibility and buzz needed to sell their books. Maybe it works. Anything is possible.

Lots of people read books on their phones. Make sure your books are on platforms that serve books to phones – Apple & Google. Google has been a gold mine for me, I think for that reason.

Ebooks/audiobooks reach a world-wide market on a number of platforms. A lot of people in the world read English. The more affordable your books are, the wider their potential reach outside of the US is.

Audiobooks now account for between one third and one half of my free sales. $3.99 auto-generated audiobooks on Amazon/Audible haven’t sold for me.

Selling ebooks, even free ones, has grown harder every year. The market is consolidating around a relatively few sub-genre and best selling writers who monopolize the hype. If you’ a’re serious about making money, see below. But if you don’t believe me, do your research thoroughly. Write what sells.

Self-publishing is not a viable business, unless you count buying lottery tickets as a viable business. The odds of winning are about the same. Lottery payouts are far bigger. Just say’n.

I’ve learned that being a writer isn’t likely to impress anyone, if only because most people don’t read much. If you want to be famous and respected, get very rich.

I’ve found a nice community here to share my thoughts with and be part of. A definite big plus.

Your turn.

Solo or Ensemble?

Many forms of art can be practiced either solo or in a creative ensemble. A pianist can play piano solo, in a trio, or in an orchestra. Dancers can dance solo, as a couple, or in a group, as can singers. However, some forms of art, like fine art painting, sculpture, and the like, are usually solo efforts. Movies, TV shows, and plays on the other hand are almost always ensemble creations. So where does writing fit in?

Traditionally published books can be said to be ensemble work since traditionally published books go through an extensive development process, which these days, may start with re-writes requested by the agent even before the work is offered to publishers. Once the book is purchased by a publisher, a team of editors, artists, designers, and publicists , go to work to make the work as commercially appealing as possible.

Because all these publishing house contributions are anonymous, it is hard to say how much of the final shape of the story they have contributed, but judging from the praise authors often give to their agents and editors, (which I’m certain is not a symptom of Stockholm Syndrome) as well as a page or two worth of credit to others who have helped them write the work, one has to wonder just how much of the initial form and words of the story end up on the cutting room floor. Indeed, one gets the impression that if publishing was like music, the book cover would read “Author X and the Z Publishing House Book Staff.”

Which brings us around to self-publishing. One would think that the name itself – self-publishing – would tell you what’s going on in this type of publishing. I suspect that once upon a time, it was actually a true description. Those days may be long gone. My impression is that a more accurate term these days would be “self-financed publishing,” since it seems that a traditional publishing mindset is taking hold in the self-publishing world. While I am sure that self-publishing authors have long sought feedback from other people, and the assurance that they wouldn’t be making a fool of themselves if they published their story, these days it seems that self-publishing authors are expected to employ as many professionals as they can afford to publish their work. All of which makes the only difference between traditional publishing and self-publishing being who pays the wages of all the various professionals involved in producing the book, even as traditional publishers are shedding editors and other staff positions.

This trend annoys me in self-publishing. Especially the case for hiring developmental editors in self-published works. But on reflection, I believe that is because of my particular view of art, arising out of both as a painter and from my age. I started writing all of my published works after the age of 60, when I had read close to two thousand books and knew what I wanted in a story. Thinking about it however, I realize that for writers thirty or more years younger and less read than me, a case can be made for using editors to help these writers find their way, and in a lot less time than it took me.

That said, while I have no issues with writing as an ensemble art form, it simply isn’t my ideal of art. I view my stories like I do my paintings, which is to say a unique expression of me. I want to tell my story, my way. I think it works. I know from my experience in painting that all art finds its audience. The only question is how large of an audience it will find. In art, size doesn’t matter. While iIt does matter if we’re talking about creating a product, as art, no.

And by the same token, I embraced the whole process of “publishing.” As a painter, though not an illustrator, I could nevertheless produce some sort of cover. I also worked in the printing business, so I had an understanding of the requirements for print books. Where I lack the ability – I can’t spell and I’m far too careless and blind in proofreading – I found much-need help with volunteer beta readers. In addition, I’ve been exploring other options to help me produce better books, like adding on-line grammar checkers to my process. All of which is to say, I have pursued both my writings and my publishing, as solo art. And for the same reason – I want my art to be mine. And mine alone.

As I said at the top, I’m not against writing as an ensemble art. It may be necessary for commercial products, though with only a 33% success rate, and that 33% due in no small amount to the promotional budget of a book, one has to wonder just how essential certain aspects of it are. So for me, writing as a solo art is the most authentic form of writing. Which is why I love self-publishing.

Still, where do you guys land on this topic? Are you all in on the traditional publishing method, feeling that it produces a superior outcome? Or are you all in the do everything yourself camp? Or somewhere in the wish-y-washy middle? How much input do you need and use from other people to (re)shape your story? How much of the story do you think this input contributes? As someone who has the mindset that “here’s my work, warts and all, like it or lump it,” I’m curious to hear the viewpoint of writers who are perhaps more of a perfectionist than I am, or who are more open to embracing the cooperative approach, readily incorporating into their work the ideas of alpha, beta readers, and editors.

Failure’s Freedom

“If you ain’t got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.” Like a Rolling Stone – Bob Dylan

Those two lines from Like a Rolling Stone are an anthem for me. I sing them along with Bob every time the tune comes up in my “Liked Music” playlist. I love the insight into freedom they imply. I think they could, and should, be the anthem of the vast majority of author/indie publishers as well. Them’s that aren’t making money at it. With nothing to lose, we’ve the freedom to write exactly what we want to write, how we want to write it. In short, it allows us to;

“Be yourself, no matter what they say.” An Englishman in New York – Sting

Stories are art. They’re also a consumer product, so it’s understandable that we’re tempted to write the stories we think – or hope – readers will buy and enjoy. But if you’ve been publishing stories for any length of time, you know that discovery – merely giving potential readers the opportunity to choose to read your book – is an almost insurmountable barrier to finding readers, and thus, commercial success. So, given the near virtual certainty of commercial failure, unless you’re a social media celebrity or a well heeled and wily entrepreneur, we author/publishers can safely ignore commercial considerations and simply write stories that appeal to us. We can create pure art, art as a unique expression of our creativity, and then publish it for the rare reader who somehow stumbles upon it and appreciates our vision. Their numbers don’t count, though I should point out that every popular genre, sub-genre, trope, and story beat was once a unique and original expression of some author. We’ve nothing to lose by swinging for the fence.

I should also point out that author/publishers can be in a unique position in the publishing world, in that we can actually publish our undiluted vision. In traditional publishing, authors are not trusted to publish the books they write. Books in traditional publishing, and even in indie-publishing these days, if you listen to the experts, are ensemble creations, co-produced with the help of various editors who work to make it better than the writer’s original version. And since these books are definitely commercial products, “better” probably means more salable. Some, maybe even most authors, appreciate this help – in the various acknowledgments at the end of books, they often give a great deal of credit to their editor. Stockholm syndrome perhaps? But as an author/publisher we can, if we’re brave enough, publish our work in its pure form. We can be ourselves, no matter what – any editor – might say.

Still, you’re likely thinking, we must consider the readers. What readers? Well, to be less snarky, let me rephrase that to say that, we should trust readers. All we owe them is an honest blurb, a sample of our writing, and the best book we can write. We need not concern ourselves with their tastes and expectations. We needn’t worry if they’ll like it or not. If I learned one thing in art, it is that someone somewhere will always appreciate anything. There’ll be readers who will like any story we write. And if we write a book that pleases us, we can at least be certain it pleases someone. A bullet dodged.

Given the steep odds against any commercial success, it seems to me that following our unique vision, without compromise, is actually the wisest course to follow. With nothing to lose, why not?

Of course you all do that already, right?

Typos: How May Are Too Many

— A Guest Post by Chuck Litka

As a reader and/or a writer, how many typos are too many? One, you say? We’re talking about self-published books here. Still one? We are talking in this world, not heaven, right? Okay, having no typos is an ideal to aim for, but realistically, how many are acceptable? Still none? Be that way.

Putting an actual number to the acceptable number of typos (more than none) is hard. The real world measure is likely the ratio of typos to the quality of writing, i.e. is the writing and story compelling enough to overlook the errors, or not? Still, let’s see if we can try to put a number in that ratio.

I’m going to compare software code to writing. A line of software code does about the same thing as a word or punctuation mark in writing – it conveys a bit of information. And software has errors – bugs. A line of code usually has more letters – things that can go wrong – then a word, but we’ll make adjustments for that as we go.

It is estimated that a shipping software program might have an error rate of 3 to 5 errors per 100 lines of code. This is eventually reduced to somewhere around 1 error per a 100, to 1 error per 1,000 lines with bug fixes after shipping. For writing we’ll consider misspellings, wrong words, missing words, double words, missing or wrong punctuation, and missing or double spaces as typos. In writing 1 typo per 1,000 words, or about 1 every 3 to 4 printed pages is pretty high. If we cut that rate in half, to 1 typo in 2,000 words, we’d get 5 typos in 10,000 words or 50 typos in a 100K word novel, roughly 1 typo in every 5 to 6 pages, on average. I think that we’re now nearing the ballpark, if perhaps still a little high. However, if we cut that rate in half again, to 1 typo in 4,000 words we’d have only 25 typos in a 100K word novel, which I think is an acceptable error rate.

While 15 to 25 typos in a typical self-published novel might still sound like a lot, a significant number of them will never be seen by most readers, just as bugs in software do not affect most users. I send my manuscripts out to 5 or 6 beta readers after we do our in-house proofreading who report the typos they find back to me. Some find more than others, but time after time their lists of typos have remarkably little overlap between them. Different readers find, and miss, different typos. Hopefully between them they find most of my typos, but individually, most of them find less than half of the actual typos present. And these are readers looking for typos. This suggests to me that most readers will notice significantly less than the total number of typos in a story. There are, of course, natural born proofreaders who see every typo. And some of them get annoyed when they bump up against them – and mention it in a review. However, these readers are edge case readers, and I’m not sure whose problem it is.

In software, it is possible to achieve a zero rate of errors, and it’s necessary when human life is at stake – think of self-driving cars. To do so, however, is very expensive and time consuming. The same can be said for eliminating all typos in a manuscript. Traditional publishing has a series of procedures with multiple editors going over every aspect of the work to eliminate all sorts of problems. But this is an expensive and time consuming operation, and it is reflected in the cost of traditionally published books. Self-publishing authors do not have the resources to conduct multiple edits by different professionals. And even self-publishers who spend the money to do it “right” and hire professional proofreaders still aren’t guaranteed a zero error copy. I’ve seen a review that mentioned the “typical self-published” typos for a book that I know had been professional proofread. Still, there may be self-published books with zero typos. Indeed, I find them all the time, but then, I’m blind to typos.

Being blind to typos, I likely underestimate how annoying typos are to most readers. And as someone who has never mastered spelling the idiotic language of English, I’ve long since realized that for a person to know that a word is misspelled, they must know the correctly spelled word – which means that the misspelled word actually worked – it did the job of the correct word. The reader simply had to spend a fraction of a second to translate it. However, I understand that for some readers typos derailed and bump them out of the story. Ideally, all authors would like to prevent this from happening. Our name is on the cover of the book, and its imperfections are our imperfections. However, given how expensive it is to even get close to zero typos, I don’t think it’s realistic to expect a traditional publishing level of copy in a much less expensive self-published book. As I see it, when it comes to books, one can either be persnickety or cheap, but not both. Self-published books are cheap. Very persnickety readers might be more comfortable with the more expensive traditionally published books.

So to sum it all up, I feel that if a writer has a process in place that reduces the rate of wrong words and punctuation down to 1 in 4,000 words or fewer, they’re as close to perfection as any reader of self-published books can reasonably expect. And that’s a hill I’m prepared to die on. But what about you, dear reader? What do you think is an acceptable rate of typos, either as a writer and/or as a reader? Am I being too cavalier about typos? Am I being too dismissive of the adverse effect of typos on readers? What is your standard?

The Afterlife of Self-Published Books — Is There One?

— Guest Post by Chuck Litka

Have you ever thought about what will happen to your self-published books once you’re no longer on the sunny side of the lawn? Have you ever talked to anyone about looking after your literary estate once you no longer can? Have you made actual plans and shown someone how it all works? Have you looked into the legal aspects of it? Do you have any idea as to what someone will need to do in order for Amazon and the other retailers to pay royalties to a new rights holders? Heck, do you actually care what happens to your books after you die? I probably would have to answer “No” to all of the above. So take that as your baseline. Do you care more than I?

This site’s Mark Paxson is a lawyer, so he might have some insight as to what you would need to do for your books to live on with Amazon and the like after you’re gone. I suspect that unless there is just one heir, or the disposition of your intellectual property is spelled out in a will, it might be a rather expensive prospect to transfer your intellectual property to someone else. Certainly in my case, the revenue stream would be unlikely to be worth the expense, unless someone makes a movie of one of my books very soon.

But that’s just one side of the coin. The other side concerns the ebooks you’ve sold. It seems likely that most ebooks will die with their readers. At the very least, all those books on a reader’s devices – ebook readers, tablets, computers, and stored in the cloud – will face an uncertain fate when their owner dies. Will the survivors even know the passwords to be able to access the deceased’s digital library? And would they have any interest in it, even if they could? I may be a little bitter, but I have a wall of books that I’ve collected since my youth, and neither my children, nor my grandchildren have shown any interest in them, except for the Harry Potter books, so I doubt that many ebook collections will be passed along – assuming it’s even possible. If they are stored in the cloud, it might take legal expertise to gain access to them. And if they have DRM, they may not be transferable at all. All of which to say, It would seem that ebooks are very ephemeral things. I doubt that many of our ebooks will still be around fifty years from now.

That said, pulp magazines were pretty ephemeral things, as well. They were read and perhaps passed along, but they were pretty much designed to be forgotten by the time the next issue was released. Of course fans saved them, and not all of them were tossed out by mom along with the baseball card collection, so that today some of them still exist – as brittle yellow objects in plastic sheaths on the shelves of several hundred collectors, various university libraries, and used book stores. And they still have fans, even 80 to 100 years later. Some of these fans are scanning them and posting the scans on the internet so that they won’t be forgotten. Perhaps something like that will happen with self-published ebooks as well. Maybe the young people growing up reading ebooks today will someday collect and post them on some site as well? Who knows, stranger things have happened.

Our paper books, on the other hand, will have just as good of a chance of living on, as any commercially published book. They will make their way down through history via boxes in the attic or basement, garage sales, thrift stores, antique malls, and used books stores. They’ll be very rare, of course, but who knows, 50 years or more from now, they might be very collectible because they are rare. And the great thing is that you don’t have to lift a finger to make it happen. They can look after themselves. So in the end, I think that it will be our paper books that carry the torch of our creativity, however humbly, into the future. We may or may not be famous after our death, but we’ll still have our name on more things than on a tombstone, which is more than most people can say.


Becoming a Writer

By Audrey Driscoll

It can feel like stepping off a cliff and realizing you can fly. Or crashing to earth with a thud.

Based on my experience, these are the steps.

  • You get the urge to write. You start writing and keep writing, and eventually you have a complete, book-length manuscript.
    Tip: Don’t go telling everyone about your writing at this point. In On Writing, Stephen King advises to write the first draft with the door closed. And, I might add, the mouth. You don’t want the magic to leak out.
  • Find other writers (critique partners or beta readers) who are willing to read your work and give you an honest opinion and helpful suggestions. Be prepared to do the same for them, and to invest some time in this process.
  • Observe how you react to feedback on your writing. Be honest with yourself about how you take criticism and unfavourable reactions. These insights will be useful as you proceed with writing and publishing.
  • Rewrite and edit. Several times.
  • Decide if you want to share your writing with the world. Ask yourself why, and figure out what success will look like for you.
  • If you intend to go the traditional publishing route, start early and be prepared to persist. There is a ton of advice out there about querying, writing a synopsis, researching agents and publishers, and dealing with rejection. Be prepared to work at this and take the necessary time. And prepare to deal with rejection.
  • If you plan, or eventually decide, to self-publish, figure out what parts of the process (editing, formatting, and cover design) you are capable of doing yourself. Your critique partners and other writers may give you valuable feedback. Use Canva or a similar tool to test your design skills by creating images that represent your novel or story. At the least, you might produce something to show your ideas to the cover designer you hire to do the job for you.
  • Decide how much money you can afford to invest in your publishing project. Do not use borrowed money with the expectation of paying it back from the proceeds of book sales. If your budget is small, apply it to things you are least capable of doing yourself. Consider skill swapping with people you know. Be prepared to take time finding the most affordable options.
    Tip: Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick two!
  • The internet is your friend, as well as your greatest distraction. From writing and publishing advice, to encouragement when things get tough, to doing research, to the act of publishing, to promotion, it can all be found or done online. So if you don’t already have them, get yourself a reliable computer and a solid internet connection.

Writing seriously, and especially bringing your writing to the world, is a complex and demanding process. It is also tremendously satisfying and rewarding (although most likely not in the financial sense).

Reading this post may be one of your first steps!

Image from Pixabay