Anybody Familiar With Self-Publishing a Book?

[locomusic01]

I've sorta kicked around the idea of doing a book for a few years now but never fully committed to it. Since I posted my 5/31/85 outbreak article the other day, I've heard from a bunch of people asking me to turn it into a book, so I figured I should at least look into it. I've been involved in editing/ghostwriting a few things before but never the publishing process, so.. anyone here done it? Specifically a print book - I know going the ebook route is easier and cheaper, but most of the people I've heard from are a lot more interested in having the physical object.

I have a friend who published a book a number of years ago (it only occurred to me just now that I should reach out to her, because apparently I'm a little slow.. anyway) and I think it ended up costing her like $3-4,000 altogether, which seems like way too much to spend on something I'm not sure more than a few dozen people might actually buy lol. I guess some kind of crowdfunding thing is also an option? I dunno.

Anyway, interested in hearing if anyone's got any experiences or info or whatever!

 

[Mike S]

I've sorta kicked around the idea of doing a book for a few years now but never fully committed to it. Since I posted my 5/31/85 outbreak article the other day, I've heard from a bunch of people asking me to turn it into a book, so I figured I should at least look into it. I've been involved in editing/ghostwriting a few things before but never the publishing process, so.. anyone here done it? Specifically a print book - I know going the ebook route is easier and cheaper, but most of the people I've heard from are a lot more interested in having the physical object.

I have a friend who published a book a number of years ago (it only occurred to me just now that I should reach out to her, because apparently I'm a little slow.. anyway) and I think it ended up costing her like $3-4,000 altogether, which seems like way too much to spend on something I'm not sure more than a few dozen people might actually buy lol. I guess some kind of crowdfunding thing is also an option? I dunno.

Anyway, interested in hearing if anyone's got any experiences or info or whatever!

I have you some help coming, tonight or this weekend.

 

[warneagle]

Unfortunately I am only familiar with the arcane world of academic publishing, so I don't think my information would be of much use to you (although I'd be happy to volunteer as a copy-editor if you need one since that's a significant part of my day-to-day job).

 

[Sawmaster]

I'm a very good proofreader for spelling and fair for grammar, as well as a fast reader- happy to help- if I can.

On publishing all I can offer is that there's a lot of small publishing companies out there who promise much but deliver little. My sister had her book published with near zero sales. It wasn't really anything which would sell (just don't tell her I said that!) but they made her think that it would just to get the rights in case it did take off. An old friend had a similar experience with his poems (which were pretty good) that were put into a compilation book of poetry of lesser works which held his sales back to near nothing. At worst most of them will give you a small number of hard copies out of the first run; my poet-friend got 3 and my sister 10.

Ask whoever you're looking at for a list of their top 10 or 20 books and authors, then do your own research to see how those are selling/have sold at bookstores, on Amazon, etc. If they're not already a winner, move on to someone better if you can.

Phil

 

[Arcadia]

Mike S asked me to chime in so here it goes:

I have written and published seven books. My fourth book ranked in Amazon’s top 100 in all ebooks sales and ranked top 10 in three categories the day it launched, and its ranking remained steady for several days thereafter. A very hard thing to do for a self-published author at the time who had minimal means of marketing. But what I did have were some dedicated readers with my previous three books, and they were all too happy to share news any time I posted updates about upcoming books, etc. The best marketing will always be word of mouth. Readership is built on readers who read, love, and share your book with friends, family, and coworkers. It takes a minute to build a reader base. And the best way to build one is to write a book you yourself would want to read. The rest is going to be all the things you need to do before you put it into someone else’s hands. 1.) Have it professionally edited—polish your baby, and make it shine. 2) Because it’s something you worked hard on it deserves a worthy cover, so pay a cover artist the cover art your book deserves, one that fits the story inside. 3.) Then, have it professionally formatted for paperback and ebook. 4.) When it’s ready, publish it—yourself.

Vanity Publishers, which are what is being described by some others, will make all kinds of promises—tell you that if you publish through them, you will sell x number of books in the first year. Complete garbage. Because it costs money to hire an editor, cover artist, and formatter, Vanity Publishers trick new authors by telling them that they will take care of all those things, don’t worry yourself over it, let us handle those mundane things for the low low cost of thousands of dollars. It’s a scam. They aren’t doing anything for you that you can’t do for yourself and for a lot less.

In my genre editors typically charge $.007-.009 per word. The last book I published was in 2020, so the rates may have increased slightly. But I write fiction. I can’t really speak for what a non-fiction editor would charge but I can’t imagine it would be that much different. Though, don’t be surprised if you run across some editors charging much, much more. The amount of work an editor has to put into your manuscript will also determine their rate. Do as much of your own editing before sending it to your editor. If a manuscript looks like a 3rd grader wrote it, the hired editor will not be happy, and, yes, they will charge extra. As they should.

Cover art can run you anywhere from $200-$500.

Formatting will cost around $175 for paperback and ebook.

When you have your files ready to publish you can do that directly to Amazon’s self-publishing platform. There are other platforms if you wish to go wide but for a brand-new author, I personally recommend starting out on Amazon’s platform to breakout. I also realize you are just writing this one book and you may or may not write another one, so Amazon is the way to go.

You can reach out if you have any questions. I started self-publishing in 2013. I published my last book in 2020. I needed a mental break from writing because throughout those years I worked full-time and wrote 7 books while also taking care of a family. I get asked when my next book is coming out, but I’ve enjoyed the mental break. Perhaps one day I’ll begin again.

Hope this has been helpful.

 

[bjdeming]

I've sorta kicked around the idea of doing a book for a few years now but never fully committed to it. Since I posted my 5/31/85 outbreak article the other day, I've heard from a bunch of people asking me to turn it into a book, so I figured I should at least look into it. I've been involved in editing/ghostwriting a few things before but never the publishing process, so.. anyone here done it? Specifically a print book - I know going the ebook route is easier and cheaper, but most of the people I've heard from are a lot more interested in having the physical object.

I have a friend who published a book a number of years ago (it only occurred to me just now that I should reach out to her, because apparently I'm a little slow.. anyway) and I think it ended up costing her like $3-4,000 altogether, which seems like way too much to spend on something I'm not sure more than a few dozen people might actually buy lol. I guess some kind of crowdfunding thing is also an option? I dunno.

Anyway, interested in hearing if anyone's got any experiences or info or whatever!

I went through this when getting books together on cats and Decade Volcanoes (the latter of which I'm rewriting now, since I've grown as a writer somewhat -- always tackle something impossibly big but interesting, in my case the Precambrian eon).

I couldn't find any small publishers who fit my budget, and anyway, there are so many people trying to get into print that it's really really hard to break in.

You're wise to look for editors and proofers; I tried to do it all, and it showed, unfortunately.

I saved money, but I have spent SO much time in trial and error as well as in fixing goofs, or as I'm currently at work on, doing rewrites.

Found this British outfit (they take clients from all countries); haven't worked with them yet, but I'm seriously thinking about it for the project that has me wandering at the moment through Precambrian times.

If Where Cats Come From does well when I self-publish it, or even halfway decently, I'll have the confidence to go looking for an agent.

From what I've seen, that seems to be the best route into the print publisher's office.

The Catch-22 is that agents reportedly only take on writers with a track record; can't confirm that yet because I haven't contacted one.

Instead, I went the eBook route, and you should know that this does not rule out print. Here's a blog post from one of my eBook outlets about print on demand. It is part of Amazon's e-publishing, too; I'm not sure about Google Play.

On reading your post about the 1985 event, I knew it would make an excellent book.

Are you sure you want to rule out eBook publishing completely? It has its advantages.

Nothing is perfect, but you have already got excellent and well-deserved word-of-mouth publicity -- yeah, it sounds commercial, and is, but one has to think of such things.

That support will buoy you up no matter what route you take.

Do it, please, print, eBook, or both - it would make a great book. Just remember: PG Wodehouse was right, for nonfiction, too, when he wrote, "It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar to that of a man who drops a rose petal down the Grand Canyon of Arizona and listens for the echo.”

 

[locomusic01]

Crap, I wrote a response quite a while ago but apparently I never actually posted it. Sorry about that.

Anyway, thanks so much to both of you for sharing your advice and experiences! I reached out to a couple of editors I've worked with before (I'm a freelance writer) to see if they'd be interested and get an idea of what it might cost me. Well, I already have a pretty good idea, so I guess what I mean to say is I reached out in the hope that one of them might give me a bit of a break lol

To be honest, I don't really have any expectation of success. It's a very niche topic and something that frankly isn't particularly engaging or well-written. I probably wouldn't even be looking into it if it weren't for the fact that a bunch of people asked about buying a physical copy. I suppose mostly I'm just trying to figure out how much more work it'd be and whether I could realistically make back whatever it'd end up costing to get it done.

(That sounds kinda cynical on rereading it, but c'est la vie.)

 

[bjdeming]

Very understandable right now, but please don't let it completely go yet. It is engaging; it is well-written; and, well, I wish I had had people asking me where to get a copy back when I first started.

Maybe you're still just "all wrote out" after that major effort. Give the well a little time to refill and then ... well, you'll do okay, whatever you decide on.