Yet Another Self e-Publishing Query

Daleno

Hey guys,

I'm looking for information on self e-publishing a novella. I'm on the second draft of my first one and currently awaiting some criticism from a number of test readers. I was considering approaching an agent or publishing house purely for the fact that to me it seems more official.

Now I'm thinking I may have a better chance of doing it myself with e-publishing. Since it's a novella it may be recieved better than a full length and may offer me a chance to get my name out there whilst I work on something bigger for full publication.

I was just wondering if I were to go down that route what I would need to do. A link to an article would be good but advice based on similar experience would be even better.

What's the best site to publish on, Amazon, Lulu etc?
Is there any inital cost?
Can I sell it on more than one site?
Can I publish a physical copy (solo or with a publisher) even after selling it on-line as an e-book?
Should I infact go through a publisher that deals with e-books?


I've got lots of questions, but that'll do to start with. Thank you for any information you have.

Cheers.

pickarooney

Have you an editor and/or any marketing expertise?

EileenG

Publish on Amazon and Smashwords. Amazon is a huge site, and Smashwords gives you access to sales through Nook and Sony e-readers etc. Lulu seems only useful if you are doing print books.

There is no cost from Amazon or Smashwords, but you may well find it useful to pay someone to format your book to their specifications. It would probably also be worth paying an editor and a cover artist.

There are some publishers that deal with e-books, but the better ones have the same sort of acceptance rate as traditional publishers.

What genre is your book? What's the length? What's the target market? Have you had it properly edited?

Kinski

Personally, I think you're wasting your time and effort going down the e-self publishing road. Your work will lack the input of experienced professional editors, proofreaders, designers, and marketers (bar what you're willing to pay for yourself, and you could easily wind up handing money over to some shyster).

There are many unattractive aspects of the traditional publishing industry (much has changed over the past twenty years, not for the better), but at this moment in time they remain the best bet for wannabes.

We may well be witnessing paradigm shifts in both the way books are published, and the media through which readers consume them. The popularity of ebooks is rocketing, while traditional publishers and bricks-and-mortar bookstores are in crisis. Discussion forums and creative writing blogs right across the web seem smitten with the idea of self-publishing cheaply-produced texts for free on sites like Amazon, apparently assuming that this will develop into some form of Youtube-like free-for-all, with the sites reliant on user-generated content and the whims of the public determining who gets the most sales.

I think this view is probably little more than wishful thinking. The Youtubes and Facebooks rely on advertising to make money, while Amazon generates revenue by selling things, so it's unlikely they'd want their entire ebooks section (and their proprietary platform, the Kindle) dominated by 99cent titles self-published by amateurs. Amazon are currently dipping their toes in the publishing waters themselves, and I doubt it will be long before they dive in head-first. A situation may well develop over the next 10-15 years where Amazon become the biggest publisher in the world, and if that does become the case, they won't be allowing Johnny Self-Published's titles pride of place alongside works by those authors who've signed up with them.

But that's all speculation. For the time being, I'd say go with the slow and frustrating process of submitting to respected publishers, or enter a competition such as ABNA.

Memnoch

Kinksi paints a rather bleak picture. The winds of publishing certainly seem to be shifting. Traditional publishing is actually suffering the same revolution that has hit television and media and their resistance to change hasn't helped them.

The stigma of self-publishing has been going down a lot. In many cases, self-publishing success is leading to people being published by more traditional publishers. In many circles traditional publishing is now being started to call legacy publishing.

I'm not saying that you should definitely self-publish. There are pros and cons with both.

I strongly recommend visiting www.absolutewrite.com/forums
There is an entire forum dedicated to self-publishing and e-publishing where you will find a wealth of useful information.

Personally, I think a lot depends on your genre. Certain genres like romance, paranormal (vampires, werewolves etc), paranormal romance, erotica are flourishing online. Women seemed to be happy to buy these for their kindle readers and there is a lot of success there.

I'd say that if you are writing genre fiction your chance of success on e-publishing is much higher than if you are writing literary/contemporary/mainstream fiction, simply because it'll be much harder for readers to find you online.

Traditional publishing is getting harder and harder for unpublished authors. The economic environment means that publishers are much less likely to take a risk on someone unknown. It's not simply a matter of attaining a standard, it's about how marketable they feel the story is, and is it worth their investment to publish it.

That doesn't mean that you can't find success with the same story. A publisher might have to spend 10-50,000 bringing your book to market. You can e-publish for practically nothing.

Currently I have a completed contemporary fiction novel that I'm planning to send out to publishers.

I am also working on a sci-fi action/thriller that I will PROBABLY self-publish. I plan to pay an artist 100-150 euro to do a cover. I also plan to spend a further 100 euro for an editor.

If you do self-publish make sure you get the manuscript cleaned up to eliminate grammatical errors and typos as this is one of the main problems with self-published work, their lack of polish.

Also pricing is changing for self-publishing. People are moving away from cheap 99 cent reads to 2.99 and above. Kindle readers are becoming more discerning now that the initial glut is over. But I don't see anything to suggest that there will be any kind of reversal.

Good luck either way.

scoped

Hi Memnoch. I was quoted 1000 euros for an editor and as a result havent quite finished the book. Also, not sure where/who to get a cover designed - I wonder if you can suggest a link or contact for either ?
I was told that there is a company here in Dublin who will do editing, cover and help you with self-publishing too (getting formntted for kindle etc) but didnt find them yet. You know?
Thanks for any info.

EileenG

Florence19 wrote: »

I'm looking for information on self e-publishing a novella.

Mod Note: The the original of this quoted message has been deleted for containing hidden tracking links.

Specifically?

Do you have a properly edited novella ready to go? Do you have cover art? Can you format it for Kindle, Smashwords and Google books?

Memnoch

scoped wrote: »

Hi Memnoch. I was quoted 1000 euros for an editor and as a result havent quite finished the book. Also, not sure where/who to get a cover designed - I wonder if you can suggest a link or contact for either ?
I was told that there is a company here in Dublin who will do editing, cover and help you with self-publishing too (getting formntted for kindle etc) but didnt find them yet. You know?
Thanks for any info.

As pointing out above, there are dangers/pitfalls in self-publishing. There are lots of people hanging around looking to make easy money from writers. I would be very careful about how much money you invest. This is supposed to be the advantage of e-pub, cheaper to get to market.

Covers: I plan on using www.digitalwebbing.com/forums. It's a place for comic book artists. There are some really talented artists there who are looking for work. You can advertise on their 'Help wanted/paid jobs,' section and I think for 100-150 euroes (you should quote the price in dollars though) which is like 150-200+ dollars you should be able to get a fairly talented artist to do the job for you. Just make sure you do your due diligence etc and are careful about handing money over.

As for editing. I'd suggest asking around on absolutewrite.com/forums on the e-pub section. It all depends on the level of editing your looking for. If you want to hire a novel style editor to help you with the story and everything else, well that is a subjective issue and getting someone good can be expensive. I'd rather have some do a copy edit for me to just make sure the grammar/spelling is polished and rely on beta readers and feedback swaps with other writers for the meaty stuff.

You can find readers on here or on absolutewrite forums also (though you'll need to register and log in over there to see the share your work feedback forums.)

Good luck.