I've decided that I'm definitely going the self-publishing route. I've looked at a few blogs/articles about how to succeed and seen a few books, but I was wondering if there are any specific resources people here would recommend. I'm especially looking for advice on developing a personal website. Also, would anyone recommend keeping my author persona separate (e.g. unable to be linked to my DeviantArt/YouTube accounts)? Thanks!
Okay, well does anyone have an opinion about The Global Indie Author? I know it's a few years old, but it certainly looks good at first glance. I don't want to be a bother asking about this; I just really don't want to jump into self-publishing blind and end up with bad advice.
I think the topic you've raised is a good one. I don't have any answers myself. It seems that every book I've read on the subject seems to be out of date. Lots of them still recommend using CreateSpace, for example ...which no longer exists. I'd be interested if anybody else has an idea. I've seen some websites that purportedly give this kind of advice, but so far I haven't found one that isn't self-promoting. I trust this organisation. https://www.allianceindependentauthors.org/ I have bought one of the books published in conjunction with it. (Joe Giammatteo is the author—can't remember the name of it just now.) However, the book was published in 2017, and is now out of date. Still gives interesting perspectives, though, and for its time it was thorough. However, it's kinda expensive to buy now, and no longer seems to be available for Kindle, which is how I bought my copy. Membership in the organisation isn't cheap, however. I think it's $69 per year, for an associate membership (designed for people who are working on a book and intend to self-publish it.)
Adam Croft's books ...Indie Author Mindset, Indie Author Checklist, and Writing killer blurbs and hooks, are all worth a look (and the accompanying indie author mindset facebook group) - adam also has various mini courses ranging from free to $50... Also Joanna Penn's various books - too many to list but they are listed on the creative penn website (her podcast is worth a listen too) - joanna also has a three part video series on creating an indie author website and going through her link gets you a big discount on your first three years hosting with bluehost on specific things its worth looking at books by David Gaughran in particular the one on book bub ads and if you are interested in developing your mailing list (which you should be), news letter ninja by Tammi Labreque is worth a look. also the self publishing formula pod cast with mark dawson and james blatch and their accompanying facebook group. in terms of being out of date it is very difficult for any expert to keep pace with the rate of change ( I know because ive been trying to write a book like that for two years and every time i think i've nailed it amazon/facebook/etc change something critical) but the basic principals remain sound and you can interpret the advice... like if someone suggests going to create space read KDP print instead
in terms of your second question i suggest using a facebook page instead of your profile (not least because thats what FB say you should do), Personally i'm fairly easy to find but my profile is locked to friends and family only ... whether you want to take other steps to maintain your privacy is a personal question... I don't, but if if you were for example a school teacher writing erotica it would be a good idea as the parents probably aren't ready to learn that after teaching little jonny to conjugate verbs miss smith goes home and writes steamy shifter sex
Thanks for the advice. I'll check out Alliance Independent Authors. $69 per year doesn't sound too bad, depending on what you get from it. I don't think I'll be taking any of Adam Croft's courses that aren't free, but I'll take a look at his books. Same for the other authors you mentioned. Also: -- missed opportunity for "teaching little jonny to conjugate verbs... write steamy conjugal verbs"?
Just an update, the ALLi organisation looks really good. I've signed up for it as it definitely looks to be worth the membership fees. I think the second most promising recommendation might be Tammi Labreque's Newsletter Ninja, as I definitely want to get one of those set up. The website recommendations follow right behind that.
@SolZephyr, I got into self-publishing without any guidance, and it worked out, but concur, get as much info as you can ahead of time. That said, the KDP folks are VERY helpful in the technical details of publishing your book, I highly recommend them. Ingram-Spark, not so much. As far as websites, I built my own, www.lewis-mcintyre.com. I learned that the only thing harder to promote than books is a website promoting your books. I have had much better success with Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/LewisMcIntyreAuthor/?ref=bookmarks. The pinned post on Lewis McIntyre has links to each of my books which have their own pages, and I have two groups on Lewis McIntyre that act sort of like blogs, when I actually post something there. What @big soft moose said: don't use your personal profile to sell your books, it is a violation of FB terms of service, and could get you shut down. Create a commercial page from your profile (lower left hand side near bottom). It is free and easy to do. You won't have posts from friends cluttering your commercial page, through you can invite all your FB friends to like your new page. You can also use Paypal, for viewers to buy signed copies of your book via either your website or FB. I haven't had a lot of success with that, but haven't promoted it much, either.
you can also use payhip who will sort out the Vat for you so you don't have to (no vat on print books, but there is vat on ebooks) and if you want to sell ebooks from your website you can use bookfunnel for the delivery
No, Paypal works fine, but just haven't had a lot of buyers. Also haven't promoted it, just the 'shop' segment on https://www.facebook.com/LewisMcIntyreAuthor/?ref=bookmarks. The difference between this and Amazon is that I will ship a signed copy.
I don't know what sort of scale people on here sell their books on, but you must be doing pretty impressively if you've had to register for VAT! Edit: Unless, I suppose, it's because you're selling via a third-party who are VAT registered? Sorry for derailing the thread with this, the accountant (but by no means VAT expert) in me can't help it
its not to do with being over the vat threshold - the issue is (if you sell books directly) and sell outside of the uk into the EU you wind up having to charge vat on all digital sales https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/08/vat-changes-nuisance-retailers-blow-self-published-authors what payhip did was essentially to become a distributor - meaning that they pay the vat, so that you don't have to fuck with it except in as much as thinking about it when setting prices https://payhip.com/blog/payhip-takes-care-of-vat/
Solzephyr, It's easier and less expensive to get a digital version of your book on the market than to get a print version published. The process is, however, more involved than simply writing your book and uploading it to a distributor. As you work through the steps to prepare, publish and promote your book, keep in mind that... Preparation is about quality—doing things to give your readers your best writing in the best format. People won't buy your book if it's poorly written. Promotion is about quantity—doing things to compete with e-books like yours. People can't buy your book if they can't find it. And there's the rub. Your e-book at Amazon is a tiny needle in a very large haystack, and your website is just one of millions of websites on the Internet. I built my own website because I'm know HTML, but as others have suggested you might be able to use Facebook as your website. Or use one of the free or almost free web hosts like Hostinger or GoDaddy. But publishing your e-book at Amazon's KDP is a much easier process than publishing your book at most of the other e-book distributors. The KDP converter almost never makes a mess of your source document, and it allows you to upload in DOC, EPUB or MOBI. Good luck! Que
There is no more cost to publishing a paperback on KDP than there is an eBook. In fact, I find it easier to generate the paperback first. You select book size, i.e., 5x8 or 6x9 inches, then download that Word template. You simply copy the text from your (hopefully) thoroughly edited, double spaced, ragged right manuscript into the text section as 'match destination', and voila, job done, nicely laid out inside outside margins. There is tweaking to do with the headers and footer, how you want your chapters pages to appear, but that is minor. If you included a table of contents, it will appear also, and will be hyperlinked when you do the Kindle version. I always have more trouble with the front end copyright and dedication section. Use section breaks, not page breaks and select next odd or even pages to keep the text section from getting out of odd and even step. You can preview (in fact you have to, to approve the layout) which is Kindle like viewer so you can scroll page by page. It will also catch errors, such as stuff flowing into the margins. Then you upload the cover, a single image of front back and spine, and job done. At that point you will be asked if you want to generate the Kindle version. If so, it will spit out a word document file with Kindle in ithe filename. I have never been able to find if there are any differences between the kindle doc and the paperback doc, but no matter. You can edit that file, and I always do, because you really don't want a copyright page in the Kindle, and you may wish to move dedication and acknowledgement to the end of the document, so the Kindle opens directly into text. The kindle version will be generated front only from the front/back/spine submitted with the paperback. It will probably take you a week to generate your first paperback, mostly spent learning the terminology. KDP help is excellent, and they will walk you through your first setup. After that, it will take you about a day to setup the manuscript. I set up my second book, The Eagle and the Dragon, a 240K word document with about 30 .jpeg images containing maps, in about a day, which typeset to about 550 pages.
Alternatively, Amazon's free formatting software (Kindle Create) generates a file that can be used both for ebook and paperback. The only changes I make is removing hyperlinks.
After I finished my manuscript, I also thought that I could try self-publishing. I must say, however, that I rather overestimated the effort involved. I wrote my book in German and translated it into English myself. I would like to publish it in both languages. That means I need two editors, have twice the effort for marketing and so on. Let's see if and how I can solve this satisfactorily.