As somebody who is seriously considering the Kindle self-publishing route (one of the people in my writing group has done this with his novel, and it's doing rather well), I'd like to weigh in here. I can understand @Cogito 's point of view, and to some extent I agree with him. However, sometimes it boils down to time. Some of us older writers (I'm nearly 65) don't really want to spend vast amounts of time querying agents, in the hopes that one might eventually take us on, then might eventually actually get us a publishing deal. (Getting an agent is only a first step—the agent then has to sell your book...) Some of us have written books that have been through umpteen edits and umpteen beta readers. Some of these readers are people we haven't even met, who are urging PUBLISH—but our book doesn't fit easily into any genre. Or it's the 'wrong' length, or doesn't contain a currently fashionable plot. If we promote it ourselves via Kindle (with a great cover picture AND blurb), we can categorise it ourselves and target our own readership. The hard work with self publishing comes AFTER it's on Kindle. Then is when you have to work your socks off to persuade people you don't know to read it. And don't kid yourselves, it's quite a task. You do blogs, you contact friends of friends, you advertise on Facebook, you contact groups that might be interested in the kind of book you wrote, you ask readers to write reviews, etc. But at least your book is out there, and people CAN read it. You're more or less in charge of how that happens. And, as others have pointed out, if a miracle occurs and it does sell big, a publisher just might snap it up. I think it boils down to horses for courses. Those of us who are writing because we love to, and are not looking to make a paying career out of being a writer, can see the benefits of self-publishing. I think it's come a long way from the 'vanity' publishing era it sprang from, and I think it's got quite a future. If you're not planning to retire on the proceeds of your book sales, self-publishing just might be the best option to choose. At any rate, at the moment, I think that's what I'll be doing. Worst case scenario ...it doesn't sell and only the people who know me will read it. However, there's a strong possibility I could spend years chasing an agent, and still get the same result. I think I'd rather not bother. Let's just say "I'm getting too old for this."
What I have come across in looking into the self publishing route is that its not so much where you make your book available, but how solid your marketing plan is and how much work you are willing to put into getting it some notoriety after it's been published. To simply throw your book out into the pit of millions of ebooks and expect any sort of pay off doesn't seem to be the right path. Create some buzz, get on social media and talk about your book. Get your book into a few people's hands and ask for some honest reviews. As long as sound marketing plan and your book is worth reading there is no reason you shouldn't give it a shot. Good luck and I hope you find some measure of success!
You keep saying "content is more important than quality" - are you actually saying what you write is the only thing that matters, and the quality of the work doesn't? Because if that's your attitude, your self-published work will very likely sink to the bottom of the slush pile, never to be seen again. You're competing against millions of talented and not-so-talented writers. If you think sheer quantity is gonna do the job, you're sadly mistaken. Judging from your responses, it seems you're only really interested in people telling you to GO FOR IT, and you can't even be bothered to write a decent enough post to clarify what it is you're even trying to do or looking for advice on. Considering this, I'd seriously advice you to make a reality check. It seems you're under the impression that you just have to push the book out and do no work at all and let it rise or fall "on its own merit". If that's your plan, that's fine. It's your work on the line. But it really does sound like you're looking to win the lottery which, if that's how you wanna invest your time, then fair enough, but I do not believe you would find any success.
Read, read and read up on the subject. Do your research. Also, as I'm thinking of self publishing some shorts I'm finding the process is not as easy as some people make it out to be. Or maybe it's cause I want it to look professional, and I'm also a cheapskate, and I didn't have microsoft word to begin with, and I have to make do with OpenOffice. The formatting if you're not computer savvy is a huge headache. I've hit hitches in ever step in the process. Nothing is apparently compatible with everything. Be prepared to invest time, effort and probably a little moolah.
@PaulGresham It does have to be really good. But you don't have to design it yourself, and unless you're a designer, don't. Hire the right designer, and he/she will design a great cover for you. This is where self publishing costs money. You need a designer, an editor, and an proofreader. And possibly a formatter. You also need a marketing plan. You need to invest money in your book or it won't do well.
Having just shopped premade covers it's amazing the array of the offerings out there, and many are remarkably good. Though not top shelf, I bought one that is certainly above average at a cost of $50. I found plenty amazing premade covers for $50-$80. Browse a few of the sites that offer them before you shell out two or three times that for a custom design.
Well, I've had a shot at designing the book cover for my novel, it was quite a challenge but I enjoyed doing it, although it cut into my writing time pretty severely. I wonder if it will finish up on a certain website, that features terrible book covers, if I use it. Maybe that wouldn't be a problem. All publicity is useful, there's no such thing as bad publicity (or something like that,) as the saying goes.
Personally, I've done all my own covers, and, over time, they've gone from absolutely abysmal to not sucking too bad. I think I'm on about the fifth cover revision for the earliest ebooks I released. As mentioned above, premades are probably the best way to get a competent cover for a book if you don't want to spend a lot of money, particularly if you're willing to revise the story to match the cover, rather than spending ages looking for the right cover for the story. For a novel, the cover doesn't have to sell many extra copies to make back the $50 or so it costs. Formatting is much simpler. I've got it down to about fifteen seconds now to take the Createspace paperback file and generate ebook files for all the stores I release to directly.
Is it possible to change the cover after you're published it? Say you go with a premade and it turns out it's a success. Can you look into commissioning a custom cover, then replace the jpg on Amazon?
Yes. You can upload a new cover (or a new version of the book) at any time. The only issue is that people who've already bought the book won't get the new version.
This is just my take on self-publishing since I started in October. lol I was in another forum on marketing and business and of course they are in it for making the money. I suppose this gave me certain lessons. I started with Non-fiction so not a bad think for my future. What I did learn was about marketing, creating a fan base, and looked at as opportunity to learn and experience. What works and doesn't work. I learned about covers, key words, reviews, and how to handle naysayers and fault finders. I learned what to expect when my novel comes out. I haven't decided yet whether I will self-publish or go the traditional route, but either way you still have to have a fan base, no what your up against, and how what is quality vs. crap. I will tell you there is a lot of crap out there. I read to see what I was competing against. And yes there are games being played. Fake Reviews, and of course the key some use is copy writing style of fiction and non-fiction and rich people outsourcing writing tons of erotica if you're into that field. There are authentic writers and those business types that outsource and play the part with a fake name. Bottom line whether people are playing games or not, it really is a mindset. If you really want to succeed as an author you pay attention to what's going on and move around the obstacles. As annoying as it is, the only way to make it to the top is honing your skills and developing quality books are quite unique and different then the rest. What are they looking for? They're looking for books that are unique and stand out from the crowd. Something similar but not the same. I suppose we can all write crap, but it comes with learning to be a writer. You want to be a professional writer it comes down to training, practicing, and having the right mindset. And in my experience becoming a writer brings out every fear imaginable and I suppose I just tune out what others are doing and just put in my time studying, learning, and applying. Self publishing works for some people and the big guys will pick it up if they see you've got loads of people reading it and will give you a contract. It's the crappy short reads that are outsourced that I see doing the most damage. And I suppose although I try to write quality non-fiction so far, I haven't heard that it's crappy. lol It may be to some who believe it is, but I will use the money to support getting my novel properly done. I think putting out fiction too, it really gives you an idea what people think of your writing. I suppose I learned if you use pen names it doesn't hurt because you can pull it down. No harm done. And I learned that right away. I put a few short fiction reads on there and found out I wasn't ready. So I stopped and have been learning more. I think that's the idea of some of us have, and really it's kind of like gambling. Without risk you'll never know the answer. And if you're not taking action and applying you'll never know. I could get caught up in all kinds of fears about which way to publish, but i don't. I just apply and see what's wrong, fix it, and keep going. There is no other way but trial and error. You readjust things and move on. No one can stop you from succeeding but yourself. We're the biggest obstacle. Self Publishing or regular publishing is taking a risk and playing the lottery. There is no guarantee that either will hit big. I suppose for me I'll try both.
Whether you self-publish or go the traditional route, how will anybody find it unless it is heavily marketed? I think marketing is the key, is it not?
Self-publishing is something I've been thinking about, too. Not that I'm ready to jump in and do it, even after almost 30 years of off-and-on novel writing and not much success. Only one publisher ever approached me (after seeing a sample chapter on a website I used to have) and for thirteen years, it was possible to buy two of my novels as ebooks. I've since asked them to withdraw those novels from the market, partly because I think they need some serious rewriting, but also because, after a friend bought both novels and I only got royalties for one sale, I started to suspect someone wasn't dealing honestly with me. There were two publishers involved by then, so I have no idea which one was holding back. To be fair, though, I haven't really tried all that hard to get published until this year. I've been preoccupied by things like making a living and chasing other creative careers. But, with that said, I'm thinking self-publishing is a last resort for me. I've recently decided that I'm going to put in the work to take a novel to its best possible state. When it's finished, I'll work on another while I do my best to attract an agent or publisher to the first one (which is not actually my first novel, but more like my tenth... or twelfth; I've lost count and they're all on my own internal slush pile anyway, so in my mind, they don't count). If, after several years, my current novel still isn't published, it won't be because I haven't put in the work; it'll either be because I still haven't got the knack of rewriting or I'm just not hitting the right publishing trend. At that point, I'll reconsider self-publishing because--ever hopeful--I'd like to think my writing doesn't actually suck and maybe, just maybe, I can find a few hundred or thousand someones who will agree. In the meantime, I'm doing my best to write a novel that agents and publishers will fight over. That way, even if I do end up self-publishing for whatever reason, it'll be worth reading.
Do you (or anyone else, please) know what constitutes a good marketing plan? I sincerely have no idea what that is. I did sales for a while and was pretty good at it, but marketing? No idea. Do we have to learn marketing to make money as writers? Or pay someone to market for us?
??? Of course you can't market books you haven't written, but the marketing caper is a whole different game from writing a book. Unfortunately. I do think this is a discussion worth having. I know I haven't a clue about marketing, other than what people who have had marketing success can tell me. I do have a novel that's ready to go, so I have 'written.' I just don't see how writing another book is going to get my first one published. I'm not going the traditional publishing route (for reasons stated in an earlier post) so I am interested in all the insights people have on 'getting your work out there, and getting it sold.'
Both anecdotally from self-published authors I know, from what I have read by some self-published authors who are doing moderately to very well (see @psychotick as an example, I think), and from some data I've seen, a self-published author''s time is better spent working on their next book and getting it out there than doing a lot of marketing. Having more books available seems, on average, to correspond more strongly with success than doing a lot of marketing. There's some interesting stuff online about this. I'll see if I can find what I've read.
I've seen this in multiple places, but for example buried at the end of this Writer's Digest piece: http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/how-can-the-average-writer-make-money-self-publishing-e-books
Ah, I see what you mean ...I think! I thought you meant not to bother marketing the books you've written. You meant you shouldn't waste too much time doing a lot of marketing? You may well be right, there.
Yeah. It seemed to me a given at first that a self-published author has to market like crazy, but the more I read I'm not so sure. I'm going to do some marketing, but will concentrate my time on the next book.
It always made sense to me that, if I'm a writer, I should write and leave the marketing to someone else... like the publisher (who is far better set up for it than I am and can hire people to do it). These days, it seems that a fair number of publishers are expecting authors to take time away from writing to go do a bunch of marketing stuff and that just seems wrong to me. This marketing stuff seems also to be an area where writers can easily be taken advantage of. Those who market might argue that, without them, the novel never reaches its sales potential and might use that argument to grab the lion's share of profit. What they forget, though, is that without the novel, there's nothing to market. Another argument put forth by publishers is that they take all the risk and therefore should reap the highest return. I don't think that's right, either. Without the novel, there's nothing for them to publish and nothing to risk on. They should get no more than an agent's percentage IMHO.
To be fair, even for an ebook-only deal, they're probably putting in a few thousand dollars up front in editing, formatting, cover design, etc. For a print book, I'd guess you're talking a good chunk of $100,000 by the time they've done a 10,000 copy print run. Some books will make that money back, others won't. Historically, the midlist typically ended up subsidising the books that didn't sell, while the best-sellers got much better deals because there was less risk and their up-front costs were spread over far more books (King, for example, reportedly splits profits 50:50 with his publisher).
