Self Publishing & You

There seem to be mixed opinions on Self Publishing, or being an ‘Indie Author’, that run rampant among both readers and other authors. Regardless of where you are in your publishing journey, you’ve probably already considered doing it all yourself—and if you haven’t, that day is coming…

First of all, if you’re expecting me to tell you that self publishing is better or worse than traditional publishing, you’re about to be disappointed. Every author is unique, so every single one of them will have different experiences with their publishing process. Just because traditional publishing did wonders for Author A, doesn’t mean Author B will see the same level of success. Vice versa for self publishing. Ultimately, whether or not you self publish is a choice for you and you alone.

However, if you do choose to self publish, there are a lot of things to consider and you’ve got a lot more work ahead of you than your traditionally published peers if you want to do it better, and break through the stigma. That is what this article is for. If that is information that might be valuable to you, then you should keep reading.

Self Publishing Stigmas — A Matter of Quality

There are certainly those in the publishing industry—not nearly all of them, mind you—who turn their nose up self publishing. That can be easily explained away and ignored in some cases. After all, if you’re self publishing that means Traditional Publishers don’t get their cut. If they perceive and treat you as having less value, it props up their position as the only real way to be a “published author”, which ultimately improves their business model.

You can also see this in some authors, who proudly profess that their way is the only or best way to publish. Some will even boldly declare that you aren’t a real author, because you didn’t choose their path. It’s as if because they got validation from an agent and publisher accepting their work, that you are somehow less an author for not achieving the same thing.

In reality, that’s a petty view of the world, and thankfully not all that common. In truth, there is no right answer on which path is best, because we aren’t all publishing the same books to the same markets with the same agents and the same publishers (what a boring world that would be). Just as one-size-fits-all is bullshit in the clothing industry, it’s bullshit in publishing.

So where does the real stigma come from, and what is it? Well, I’m glad you asked…

The Stigma: It’s a simple matter of quality.

Now, I’m not saying that you can’t write a quality novel and self publish. You certainly can. Unfortunately, plenty of people don’t. It’s like anything creative, really: the more effort you put in, the higher quality product you produce.

The problem is that services like Amazon KDP don’t do anything to force anyone to produce a quality product… so they generally don’t. It’s free to publish through them, and you aren’t required to edit anything. In other words, the 'Barrier for Entry’ is extremely low… as in, non-existent.

Cast your minds back to before these services existed, and try to publish a novel. You had to produce quality writing, a compelling story, and put effort into cleaning it up before anyone would even take you seriously. Furthermore, you had to query and pitch to find an agent, and that agent had to put in leg work to find you a publisher. Even then, you’d be assigned an editor and go through the ringer to ensure your work was as near-perfect as they could help you make it.

Traditional Published authors today still jump through those hoops. As a result, TradPub novels tend to be of much higher overall quality on average than their self published counterparts.

What’s stopping Self Published or Indie Authors from doing the same?

The answer is easy, even if some of you find it offensive…. it’s you.

A large portion of the self publishing world simply doesn’t do the work. Could they engage several proofreaders? Yes. Could they hire an editor? Yes. Could they go through a cycle of beta readers that aren’t biased friends and family? Yes. Some authors do all of these things, and I commend them for it. However…

The free books that flood Kindle Unlimited are proof that these things aren’t being done by everyone, because far too many of them are full of simple errors, incoherent stories, or very poor writing in general. If you need more proof, you need only join a writing community on any social media platform and watch… eventually someone will post about having to pull their book down to fix a pile of typos and grammar mistakes—or even adjust their story—in response to negative reviews (at that point, by the way, the damage has already been done).

I’m sorry if that offends you, but at the same time I’m really not. Why? Because it’s something that is completely under your control. You, as an author, control the state in which your work hits the public eye. You, as an author, control how much effort you put into the things that happen after you’ve finished your first draft.

Let me be clear, here… writing your book is a very small part of the process. Or at least, it should be. If writing your book is the most challenging and time consuming part of publishing your book, you’re either skipping steps, or doing something wrong… or you’re just that good (wouldn’t that be something?). So… this may be time to either flip me off and walk away, or self analyze, give this some thought and consider what I’m saying objectively.

Let me give you an example of how my writing journey has played out so far:

Bathed in the Blood of Ravens

• Concept - 1993
• Worldbuilding through pen & paper RPGs - 1993 - 1999
• Casual story building & concept development - 1999 - 2020
• Actual writing - June 2020 to September 2020 (yes, 224k words in a few short months)
• Self editing - June 2020 to January 2021, five passes (2 through ProWritingAid)
• Proofreading & Editing - June 2020 - December 2020 (chapters were sent out as I wrote, and full work again after I finished… twice)
• Beta reading - October 2020 - January 2021
• 20 beta readers, of which I knew 2 in advance
• 4 finished by the deadline
• 6 others sent rave reviews later, and apologized that life got in their way
• Two more rounds of edits - January 2021 to February 2021

And that doesn’t include all of the other work I’ve done outside of writing. So, if you want to break through the stigma… put in the work.

The Levels of Self Publishing

Self Publishing can be as simple as blindly tossing your work onto KDP, or as complex as… well, what I’ve done. How deep you dive will depend on your capability to do the work, the time you have available, how serious you are about your publishing journey, and the cash you have on hand to make things happen.

In light of the stigma I mentioned above, you might think I have an outright distaste for KDP and would recommend you avoid it. That’s not the case at all. I think KDP is a fine platform, at its core. The challenge you’re going to face, though, is differentiating yourself from the authors who don’t put in the work to produce quality.

To a random reader, you’re just another author throwing your work to the wind (if you are KDP Select, IE: amazon exclusive). You don’t stand out as better, or worse; you get bundled in with the mass of low effort works. The more people read absolute rubbish in that pile, the less favorably they’ll see your book when they eventually stumble on it. Your book might be amazing, but new readers aren’t necessarily going to know that. In fact, they likely won’t.

If you have the means, you should do everything you can to make yourself stand out. Some of the steps are surprisingly easy, they just require a little bit of time. Others require a little bit of cash. And the rest will make you pull out your hair and make you think you’re going insane.

Narrow Publishing, E-Book Only

There are, as I mentioned above, No Barrier to Entry services like KDP. So, you can quite easily finish your book and just… upload it. Boom, you’re done. Not much formatting is involved at all, especially if you wrote directly in something like Word or Google Docs and can easily export to PDF (though I recommend using Draft2Digital to make your epub, which is free). Since you’re not doing print, you just need a simple rectangular cover image… and guess what, they have a builder for that too, to make even that easier.

If you do this through KDP you also have a choice to make. Go exclusive, and join Kindle Unlimited? Or don’t. Honestly, if you’re only publishing through KDP anyway you should probably just tick that little box and be done with it. But, now you’re in that big pile of low-effort books. So, make sure you’ve done your due diligence on quality and put in the extra effort on PR and marketing. Or you can just upload it and hope, like it seems so many other authors choose to do… your choice.

Fair warning, though. If you indicate that you want to be part of KDP Select, you cannot legally sell your e-book through any other service, even your own website. Let that sink in and make an informed decision.

If your narrow choice is KDP, you chose wisely. They have the largest market share (by miles). That said, you won’t sell very well at all if you don’t put in the extra legwork to let people know your book exists. And if you’re pushing people to go read your work, you better hope it’s not full of mistakes… or they won’t stick around for your next novel.

Wide Publishing, E-Book Only

If, like me, you don’t want your work exclusive to a single platform then you’ve got more work ahead of you. This is no longer a simple matter of tossing a PDF at a single site, but actually formatting your work through a solid service/app (like Draft2Digital, which is what I used) and then manually uploading to multiple services for sale. You’ll also have to buy your own ISBN codes to go truly wide. Some services offer their own, sure… but not all of them. And it’s better if your e-book has the same ISBN code in every online store. So, set some money aside for that while you’re at it.

I can’t even tell you every store that carries my e-book. The reason for that is I used two aggregators, in addition to manually uploading to two stores myself. That means that almost anywhere someone looks for my book, they can find it… and that extends worldwide (even to libraries).

Why go wide?

Poll your friends and family and you might be shocked. Not all of them use Kindle. Some intentionally avoid it. In fact, there’s a growing trend to avoid anything Amazon. In my specific experience, less than half of the people I asked actually used Kindle. Many used Google Play, others used Apple, some used Scribd… the list goes on and on.

How do you go wide?

KDP gives the highest margins, if you qualify for their 70% plan. So, always upload to them directly. That means specifically telling your aggregators not to distribute to Amazon.

Google Play has a large reader audience, and many self-pub authors who go wide state that they get significant sales on that platform. So, upload to them directly as well.

Draft2Digital is an aggregator who pushes to a large swath of online stores and libraries. They also allow you to format your e-pub file on their site FOR FREE … so you should probably be using that, at the very least. I do recommend you use them for everything they offer outside of Amazon, though. Yes, they take a cut… but it saves soooo much time and effort once you realize how many places they distribute to.

SmashWords is an aggregator and fills in the gaps that Draft2Digital doesn’t distribute to quite well. But you should also make sure NOT to tell it to distribute to places that D2D is already handling. Double check everything, but I recommend you use their service as well.

You will need an ISBN code.

An International Standard Book Number, or ISBN, is a code that uniquely identifies your work. Places like Amazon KDP have their own version, which are only usable within their network. If you want to truly distribute to a wide market, you’ll need to procure your own code. I got mine from Bowker, because I live in the USA. If you live elsewhere, such as Canada, there are other means to acquiring your ISBN that may even be free.

In my case, I published in multiple formats, and you need one per format. So, I purchased a 10-pack of ISBN codes, and my first novel uses five of them (epub, mobi, paperback, hard cover, audio book). I couldn’t actually find any discount codes, so this cost me $289

You should Copyright your work.

I don’t know how this works outside the USA, but registering a Copyright here is fairly simple. The process is easy, even if the web page is clunky, and cost me $65.

Do you need a Copyright? I saw a lot of debate about this online. Consensus seems to say that if you’re a USA resident, the moment your work becomes public you own it and it’s illegal to copy. Meaning, you shouldn’t actually have to register a Copyright before you publish. But, I believe this may vary by state. I also read somewhere that you can register your Copyright just before a court trial if you had to sue someone. However, I’m not one to leave things like that to chance. So, I went ahead and registered one.

Finally, you’ll have to format your own epub file.

This is easy with Draft2Digital. I know I’ve mentioned that a few times already, and that should tell you something about how great their site is. It’s really easy to use, and all you have to have beforehand is a doc with nothing in it but your book’s interior content.

I used a DOCX file (MS Word) and made sure my Chapter titles were all set to the style Heading 1. I also removed the title page and all “front matter” and “back matter”. After that it was a simple matter of uploading, choosing a format, downloading the epub file, and then continuing on to set up price & distribution choices.

Once I had that, I took the epub file I exported from D2D and uploaded it to Smashwords, Amazon KDP, and Google Play. The whole process for all four sites took about two hours, because I was setting up the accounts as I went. None of this part of the process cost me any money.

Print Publishing

This is where things get a little tricky, because you really have to pay attention and put more effort into the process. First, you’ll have to format your book so that it can be printed. A simple word doc won’t do, especially for larger books. Why? Because you have to be concerned with your Binding and Gutter.

Pick a print format

5x7, 5.25x8, 6x9… there are many sizes you can print in. Which one you use depends on which service(s) you print with, and what your preferences are. The new standard, thanks to KDP, seems to be 6x9 for paperbacks. I personally don’t like paperbacks that large, and find that they get floppy and unwieldy to hold while reading.

That said, the larger your book’s page size, the cheaper it usually is to print. So, this decision is a balancing act, and one you might want to play with a bit. I went with 5.25x8 because it’s closer to the paperbacks I fell in love with during the 80’s and 90’s. It also feels wrong to me for the paperback and hard cover to be the same size, but that might just be a “me” thing.

You’ll also need to focus on Font, Font Size, “Leading” space, Indent size, line spacing… it’s a lot. My book is fairly large, so my paperback is using Google’s Lora font at 9pt with 10.8pt leading and 0 line spacing or paragraph spacing, and a .23 inch indent for the first line. Yeah, it takes some tweaking to get it just right. As for margins, I used .38 inch outside, .5 inch footer, .75 inch header, and .8 inch gutter/inside. This gave me the room I needed for header text such as book title, footer page numbers, and the room I needed for my binding to not hide my text at the center of the novel. All of this is why my next point is so important…

Formatting for Print

You’re going to want your book formatted in PDF for this process. While you can accomplish that in programs like Word, or Google Docs, they aren’t your best option. Not even close, actually. Your best bet is to find a program like Adobe InDesign (what I use), Vellum (for mac users), or Affinity.

These programs are designed for publishing. That means they’re going to handle page sizes, margins, gutters and formatting far better than their simple word processing counterparts. For my processing, I exported a DOCX file from Scrivener, then split it into 1 file per chapter, and followed this splendid Youtube video by Becca C. Smith to get the ball rolling.

Format your cover

This is also more complex. It’s no longer just about a great image, it’s about bleed and binding width. My own personal process is probably convoluted, but it works for me. I can do a more in depth article or video on it later, if I get enough comments requesting that. But, in short:

I use IngramSpark’s cover generator to produce a template PDF

• Load that PDF into Adobe Photoshop
• Drag layers into position and scale them
• Crop to the extents of the Bleed area
• Export to JPG
• Load MS Word, and adjust a new document’s paper size to the same inches Width and Height
• Insert the JPG into the dock as “In Front of Text”
• Click the Save to Adobe PDF button (provided by Adobe Acrobat DC being installed)

You’ll also need ISBN codes & Copyright

See above for brief instructions and a few links. That is, unless you’re only publishing your paperback on Amazon KDP… which is an option.

You’ll need to choose where to publish the paperback

As I mentioned above, you can easily get away with putting your paperback directly on Amazon KDP. That’s fine, but even that comes with choices. KDP can publish your paperback with wide distribution. Guess what… if you do that through KDP, they use Ingram Spark to fulfill that wide distribution. You heard that right. And they take a cut on top of Ingram Spark’s cut. So, why not cut out the middle man?

Going wide with print

I use Ingram Spark for print distribution. I figured, why go indirect when I can go direct? There are plenty of competitors, like Lulu, but I don’t have personal experience with them. The choice is up to you, as with everything. However, if you want wide print distro, and maybe also want hard backs and pre-orders… you’re best bet is going to be Ingram Spark. Fair warning, though… it’s $49 just to upload your book & cover, and $25 for each any time you need to do revisions. So, be sure you’re as close to final product as possible before you even take the plunge. That can add up quickly.

Another Way to Differentiate Yourself

Set up a publishing imprint of your own! Sure, you’ve put in the work to produce a quality book with well formed prose, great grammar and spectacular spelling. Awesome. Do readers know that at a glance? No. And if they have a bad impression of self-published works due to the sea of laziness that floods Kindle Unlimited, how the heck do you even convince them to give you a chance?

One thing a lot of those books have in common is they’re all published by Amazon, or by the Author. If you set up your own Imprint, that’s no longer the case. I’ll give you an example:

• Bathed in the Blood of Ravens, published by Amazon
• Bathed in the Blood of Ravens, published by R.L. Parker
• Bathed in the Blood of Ravens, published by Ayrelon Press

Which one of those looks more professional? I mean, after all, that’s what we’re after here, isn’t it? #1 says I threw my book at the 10,000lb gorilla. #2 says I care about my image, but I am clearly self published. #3 says there’s an official company involved in the publishing process.

Yes, I own Ayrelon Press. It is, in fact, me. And if anyone visits ayrelonpress.com, it quickly becomes clear I’m not trying to hide that fact. This is all about at-a-glance perceptions (well, and taxes). If someone is browsing a list of new books and sees mine, it isn’t instantly recognizable as self published or “indie pub”. Which means I’ve differentiated myself enough that they might take a gander, read the preview and then decide whether or not to buy before dismissing my book outright.

Furthermore, if they double check the Imprint and google it or visit the website… that brings them here, to a site full of writings, sneak peaks, updates, blog entries and purchase information & links. In other words, my chances improve because I put forth that extra effort.

All of that said, what was my publishing path?

This is easier if I just give you a list, so that’s what I’m going to do. Read it, and share in the headache. ;)

• Wrote the novel
• Paused halfway through to edit, and build this website
• Purchased 7 domain names on GoDaddy
• Set up the site/account on SquareSpace
• Built the websites, and did DNS forwarding for 6 of the domain names
• Wrote 23 blog articles over a weekend, and scheduled them to release two per week for the first few months
• Resume writing
• Finished, and sent it to be edited
• Set up a Facebook author page
• Registered Ayrelon Press as a legal business entity
• Acquired my federal EIN (tax code)
• Acquired my state tax code
• Got beta reader feedback
• Incorporated their feedback
• Edited two more times
• Set up a bank account for Ayrelon Press, to keep the money segregated
• Purchased license for Adobe Creative Suite
• Purchased ISBN codes (x10)
• Paid to register Copyright
• Used InDesign to format the print book, and got things ready
• Used Photoshop & Word & Acrobat DC to lay out the cover
• Used Draft2Digital to format the ebook
• Got my ebook up for preorders everywhere
• Submitted the paperback to Ingram Spark at 5x7
• Ordered a proof
• Set up a Twitter author account
• Got the proof, and needed to make changes
• Reformatted to reduce print costs, increase page size, and fix some formatting issues
• Reordered proof
• Set up pre-orders for Paperback on my site
• Wrote this article

That’s somewhat simplified. Some of those steps took a while, and it’s been quite exhausting on top of a day job. I also wrote 3 short stories in there, and started a novella, and started book 2 in the series.

In Summary

You get out of things what you put into them. As you can see above, I’m putting everything into my publishing journey. I have no delusions of grandeur here. I’m a realist, and I fully understand that my chances of even breaking even financially are slim. I am not writing to be rich.

In fact, I don’t even have an expectation of writing full time anywhere in the near future. Sure, I’d love to do it. However, I have a 30 year software developer income that would need to be replaced. Do you realize how many books I’d have to sell to accomplish that? Yeah, I won’t be holding my breath on that pipe dream.

No, I do this because I love my creation and I hope you will too. I do this to share what I’ve built, and my only goal is to get it out there in front of as many people as possible. That’s why I publish wide. My need to be in control, and my lack of patience to find an agent and publisher, are why I’m self published. It’s not that I’m inherently against traditional publishing, it’s that I want this done now, my way, without compromise. In my eyes, the only thing I could hope a traditional publisher would do for me is swoop in and find a way to reduce my printing costs, so that my books are cheaper for my readers.

If you’re just starting out and you’re writing to make money, you’ve already got the wrong motivation. That won’t normally come until way later; after you’ve established an audience, and a voice. Then you can worry about cutting sweet deals, doing kickstarters for limited edition box sets (no offense Mr. Sanderson), being optioned for movies and TV series (nor to you Mr. Martin), etc. For now, worry about your story, the quality of your content, and putting in the legwork to make your dreams a reality.

Besides, none of the legwork for PR and marketing goes away when you get “that big traditional publishing deal”. You still have to do that stuff. Just as you should still put in the time and effort to edit properly before you self publish. Doing the one doesn’t get you out of the other… or at least, it shouldn’t.

So, break the stigma. Put in the work, and don’t shortchange yourself and your readers.