Self-Publishing
One of the first questions people usually ask me when they find out I self-publish is how difficult it is. The answer is: not difficult at all! Assuming you have a book that’s ready to publish, the Amazon self-publish site practically holds your hand and walks you through the entire process.
If you’re not a fan of Amazon due to their awful business practices and the shitty way they treat their employees, that’s fair, and I wish you all the best in your self-publishing endeavors divorced from the corporation. Between my rejection sensitivity due to ADHD and my severe dislike of leaving the house, until a reasonable competitor comes along, I’m kind of stuck with what Amazon has to offer.
The first thing you need when self-publishing is a publish-ready manuscript. This may mean you have to invest some of your own money in professional edits. Though beta readers can be found among writer friends who work on a quid pro quo basis, editors usually want some money in exchange for the hours spent poring over your manuscript and tweaking its flaws.
I personally have a friend who’s willing to edit my books for $100 per manuscript. This is an insanely low rate. He’s great at finding plotholes and typos, but unlike a professional editor he can’t help me polish the novels to their greatest potential. I feel—perhaps arrogantly—that my work shines well enough on its own, and that it’s more important to get the books out there than to make sure that they’re absolutely perfect. Since I have two books with five-star reviews and one book with a four-star review, I like to think that attitude is working out for me. But depending on your own skills and experience, a professional editor may be an investment you want to make.
My personal writing process is to work out an outline of what needs to occur, write a first draft, let it sit for about a year while I work on other projects, go back and edit it (often while simultaneously working on the first draft of another book), send it to beta readers (I have two I use regularly, who have both proven their worth in giving me nuanced feedback), edit once more with a view to their concerns, then send it to my editor. You might have noticed that this is approximately five to ten drafts fewer than most authors.
If you’ve read my previous posts, you’ll know that this is in keeping with the way I write everything. My blog posts pretty much go up as originally written. When I wrote papers in college, I’d compile my research and then write the final paper in a single draft. This method works for me, but it doesn’t work for most people. Don’t be arrogant and assume that you’re the exception. I only know it works for me because I got positive feedback from teachers on my papers, and feedback from beta readers along the lines of, “Wait…are you sure this is your first draft? It reads more like the third or fourth.”
Beta readers are vital to this process. Find some writer friends who are at the same stage in their careers as you and write in the same or similar genre, and work out an agreement to beta reach each other’s books. At this stage you need to be willing to accept criticism, but also be aware of what does and does not constitute helpful advice. Some of the best feedback I’ve received from a beta reader was, “This chapter is terrible, it feels like it was written by a different person entirely.” But that’s because it was terrible, and it might as well have been written by a different person, since I’d barely edited it from the original version I’d written ten years before.
Self-publishing is much more edit-intensive on the front end than traditional publishing. With traditional publishing, you polish your manuscript to the best of your ability, then send it to an agent, who sees the potential and offers you a contract. Then they submit the manuscript to various publishers in the hopes of getting a publishing deal, at which point you start working with an editor to come up with the final product. In the case of self-publishing, you have to find that editor on your own. Any typos that slipped past you are making their way to the final product unless you pay someone to catch them. Overused words and clunky sentences will annoy the reader if you didn’t hire someone to help you polish the manuscript sentence-by-sentence.
I say this as someone who doesn’t pay for those line-level edits. I’m aware my final product suffers for it, but for various personal reasons, I prefer to publish despite that. So far it’s worked for me. That doesn’t mean it will work for you. I once DNF’d a book in part due to a grammar mistake in the first sentence. Awkward sentence structure or repetitive word choice may be the difference between a reader continuing to the next page or deciding to give up on the book.
The next thing you want to think about is cover art. I work with an artist for custom cover designs. He draws them to my specifications, and the end result is amazing. Amazon has generic designs you can choose from when you go through the self-publishing process, but honestly, it’s worth it to find a real artist to design your cover. Yes, I’ve paid more money for my cover art than I’ve made back from selling my books. But when my books become best-sellers a good part of the reason people will want to buy them is because of the art.
If you don’t believe me, I encourage you to check out the artwork on my books. I dare you to come back and tell me those covers aren’t amazing. If you like the artwork and want something similar for your own books, Kilian’s rates are incredibly reasonable, and he’s more than willing to work with you to make sure you get a design that you and the readers will love.
Once you have a publish-worthy manuscript and cover art (if applicable), all you need to do to self-publish your book is to create an account on Kindle Direct Publishing. After that it’s super intuitive. There’s an option to create an e-book, and another option to create a paperback. Amazon will then ask you questions about the language, genre, title, series, and author of the book. All you need to do is fill in the relevant information. You have to come up with your own book description, so be ready with something that will hook the reader’s interest. For the paperback you need to decide what size to make your novel. I choose 6x9, which means I have to scale the Word document I’m uploading to that size—which is simple in itself; all you need to do is go into the Layout section and click on Size.
Later on in the process, you’ll be asked to choose your price. For the Kindle edition, the minimum price will depend on whether you want 70% or 35% royalties. For the print edition, the minimum price is based on the printing cost of the book.
With the Kindle edition, if you discover a typo in your manuscript, you need only re-upload the corrected version and it will be pushed to everyone who purchased the book. With the print version, any already-purchased copies will naturally still have the error, but you can upload a new manuscript so further buyers are spared.
If you have any questions about any step of the process, feel free to DM me! I’m more than happy to help out fellow writers. The more awesome stories that find their way into the world, the better.
If you’re not a fan of Amazon due to their awful business practices and the shitty way they treat their employees, that’s fair, and I wish you all the best in your self-publishing endeavors divorced from the corporation. Between my rejection sensitivity due to ADHD and my severe dislike of leaving the house, until a reasonable competitor comes along, I’m kind of stuck with what Amazon has to offer.
The first thing you need when self-publishing is a publish-ready manuscript. This may mean you have to invest some of your own money in professional edits. Though beta readers can be found among writer friends who work on a quid pro quo basis, editors usually want some money in exchange for the hours spent poring over your manuscript and tweaking its flaws.
I personally have a friend who’s willing to edit my books for $100 per manuscript. This is an insanely low rate. He’s great at finding plotholes and typos, but unlike a professional editor he can’t help me polish the novels to their greatest potential. I feel—perhaps arrogantly—that my work shines well enough on its own, and that it’s more important to get the books out there than to make sure that they’re absolutely perfect. Since I have two books with five-star reviews and one book with a four-star review, I like to think that attitude is working out for me. But depending on your own skills and experience, a professional editor may be an investment you want to make.
My personal writing process is to work out an outline of what needs to occur, write a first draft, let it sit for about a year while I work on other projects, go back and edit it (often while simultaneously working on the first draft of another book), send it to beta readers (I have two I use regularly, who have both proven their worth in giving me nuanced feedback), edit once more with a view to their concerns, then send it to my editor. You might have noticed that this is approximately five to ten drafts fewer than most authors.
If you’ve read my previous posts, you’ll know that this is in keeping with the way I write everything. My blog posts pretty much go up as originally written. When I wrote papers in college, I’d compile my research and then write the final paper in a single draft. This method works for me, but it doesn’t work for most people. Don’t be arrogant and assume that you’re the exception. I only know it works for me because I got positive feedback from teachers on my papers, and feedback from beta readers along the lines of, “Wait…are you sure this is your first draft? It reads more like the third or fourth.”
Beta readers are vital to this process. Find some writer friends who are at the same stage in their careers as you and write in the same or similar genre, and work out an agreement to beta reach each other’s books. At this stage you need to be willing to accept criticism, but also be aware of what does and does not constitute helpful advice. Some of the best feedback I’ve received from a beta reader was, “This chapter is terrible, it feels like it was written by a different person entirely.” But that’s because it was terrible, and it might as well have been written by a different person, since I’d barely edited it from the original version I’d written ten years before.
Self-publishing is much more edit-intensive on the front end than traditional publishing. With traditional publishing, you polish your manuscript to the best of your ability, then send it to an agent, who sees the potential and offers you a contract. Then they submit the manuscript to various publishers in the hopes of getting a publishing deal, at which point you start working with an editor to come up with the final product. In the case of self-publishing, you have to find that editor on your own. Any typos that slipped past you are making their way to the final product unless you pay someone to catch them. Overused words and clunky sentences will annoy the reader if you didn’t hire someone to help you polish the manuscript sentence-by-sentence.
I say this as someone who doesn’t pay for those line-level edits. I’m aware my final product suffers for it, but for various personal reasons, I prefer to publish despite that. So far it’s worked for me. That doesn’t mean it will work for you. I once DNF’d a book in part due to a grammar mistake in the first sentence. Awkward sentence structure or repetitive word choice may be the difference between a reader continuing to the next page or deciding to give up on the book.
The next thing you want to think about is cover art. I work with an artist for custom cover designs. He draws them to my specifications, and the end result is amazing. Amazon has generic designs you can choose from when you go through the self-publishing process, but honestly, it’s worth it to find a real artist to design your cover. Yes, I’ve paid more money for my cover art than I’ve made back from selling my books. But when my books become best-sellers a good part of the reason people will want to buy them is because of the art.
If you don’t believe me, I encourage you to check out the artwork on my books. I dare you to come back and tell me those covers aren’t amazing. If you like the artwork and want something similar for your own books, Kilian’s rates are incredibly reasonable, and he’s more than willing to work with you to make sure you get a design that you and the readers will love.
Once you have a publish-worthy manuscript and cover art (if applicable), all you need to do to self-publish your book is to create an account on Kindle Direct Publishing. After that it’s super intuitive. There’s an option to create an e-book, and another option to create a paperback. Amazon will then ask you questions about the language, genre, title, series, and author of the book. All you need to do is fill in the relevant information. You have to come up with your own book description, so be ready with something that will hook the reader’s interest. For the paperback you need to decide what size to make your novel. I choose 6x9, which means I have to scale the Word document I’m uploading to that size—which is simple in itself; all you need to do is go into the Layout section and click on Size.
Later on in the process, you’ll be asked to choose your price. For the Kindle edition, the minimum price will depend on whether you want 70% or 35% royalties. For the print edition, the minimum price is based on the printing cost of the book.
With the Kindle edition, if you discover a typo in your manuscript, you need only re-upload the corrected version and it will be pushed to everyone who purchased the book. With the print version, any already-purchased copies will naturally still have the error, but you can upload a new manuscript so further buyers are spared.
If you have any questions about any step of the process, feel free to DM me! I’m more than happy to help out fellow writers. The more awesome stories that find their way into the world, the better.
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