I plan to self-pub a 5,000 word short story soon, but am overwhelmed on research materials.

Hey everyone!

So I'm really close to finishing up the polishing on a short story that I've written, and I'd like to use it to experiment with self publishing. I haven't done a lot of research in this area yet because the more research I do, the more I realize how utterly clueless I am on what I need to research. That said, I'd like to ask the questions that are worrying me the most:

- Is a story this short even publishable (I mean, not for free)? Would Kindle Unlimited be my best bet? I'd prefer publishing it in multiple sources, if possible.

- I recently found out that a lot of self-publishers make their own publishing company and buy ISBNs (I'm American). Do I have to use ISBNs, and if so, do I have to create my own publishing company? This seems like a LOT of work.

- How hard is formatting artwork to fit an e-book cover? I have a brother who's willing to make a cover for me, but neither of us knows anything about computer programing.

- Related to the last question is how do I find a reputable cover artist who knows how to format the cover as well? I'm willing to pay them a reasonable fee, but I can't afford much (partly because of the book's size). I keep reading "try deviantart," but I don't know how to find the right person. They don't have a "cover artists" section, do they?

- Is it hard to program a Microsoft Word document into e-book format? If I can't do it, how do I find someone reputable who can (who's reasonably priced for a book this size)?

- Do I need to divide my book into chapters? I personally don't see a need to, but if readers will expect chapters, I know two places than can accommodate such a division (for up to three chapters).

- I didn't expect it to be this difficult to research because everywhere I read always said, "It's super easy; just a few clicks and you're done!" Well, I'm done all right--falling off the bone done. What and where should I start researching?


One extra question: How do I know what audience I should target? I didn't have any specific one in mind when I wrote it, and I have absolutely no idea how I should classify it. Children, YA, NA, adult--I really have no idea! Do I even have to specify?

 

For a single short story you're unlikely to get significant sales, so I think it's important you do as much as you can yourself.

KU may be your best bet (although they pay you by pages read, so a short story won't make you much) but if you go with KU you can't use any other retailer. You can drop out of KU after three months and distribute more broadly if you want.

If you stick to KU or Amazon in general you don't need an ISBN.

You don't need your own publishing company.

KU makes it pretty easy to upload cover art using their templates. It won't look GREAT, and if it were a novel I'd suggest paying the money to have a pro do it, but for a short story, doing it yourself probably makes sense. If you do decide to use a cover artist, people can probably recommend their own or you can google. There was a post a while back with someone who found reasonable (not gorgeous, but reasonable) covers on fiverr... might be worth searching for that post.

It's not hard to do simple formatting in MS Word - again, KU makes the uploading quite easy, but other distributors aren't much trickier.

I don't think chapters are mandatory, especially for a short story.

You'll want to know the publishing category - I'm not sure how to help you figure this out unless you just tell us what the story is about?

 

I looked at the fiverr person - it was @Stormsong07 - Hopefully she can connect us to her cover artist? I've got a couple short stories myself that I haven't put out because I didn't want to mess around with cover art, but... $5? Yup, that'd be worth it!

 

Self publishing on Amazon is pretty straight forward. There are numerous YouTube tutorials that show you everything from formatting to uploading the manuscript.

How successful you'll be is basically up to you. As with everything else, it's all about marketing.

 

Awesome, thanks for the info! I haven't yet made the summary for the story, but it's basically this:

10-year-old Donny has learned to cope with his inability to make friends by inventing his own imaginary ones. When one day he meets a girl he's sure he didn't imagine and who doesn't match any known fey creature, he begins to wonder if he's losing his mind.

That particular summary sounds a little too ominous for me; the story's supposed to be a cute little story about an imaginative boy trying to both enjoy playing with is new friend and figure out if he's going nuts (the concern of which is planted by his mom, who's constantly worried about him).

ETA: Yeah, while like most people I have some hope of getting rich from this, I'm really not expecting to make much, if anything. I mostly wrote it to get my feet wet and figure all this out. Still, I'd like to at least stand a chance, thus the willingness to pay someone who knows something. Well, that and this is my very first completed story, so I'm quite proud of it and want to do it justice.

 

Don't want to be harsh but if it's the first short story you've ever completed its unlikely to be of a standard good enough for publication. Write more stories before even thinking about self publishing would be my advice.

 

I appreciate the warning, but I'm going to go ahead with it--I've been actively writing for about five years, so I have some hope that it's good.

 

@Elven Candy, you are exactly where I was in December, using my short story, the same length as yours, "Come, Follow Me, a Story of Pilate and Jesus," as my canary in the coal mine to find all the answers you are looking for. You can see the book on Member Publications here to see how it turned out. This was followed by "The Eagle and the Dragon" also on Member Subscriptions which is selling very well. I used Create Space as my primary source, so let me walk you through the lessons I learned, some of them the hard way, none too expensive. Wisdom comes from experience, and experience comes from making mistakes. The best experience comes from learning from others' mistakes.

CreateSpace is hands down the most author friendly site I have encountered. Their site, after you register as a user, walks you through the whole process of getting your book to print on the project homepage, which shows you exactly where you are in the process: green checks for completed items, attention required for things needing your action, and lists of those you haven't gotten to yet. They will get you your free ISBN, or you can purchase one through them from Gowker (I don't recommend this, having done that with my flagship and wasted $100), a Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN) if you want one, selecting book size, which gives you template for that size to upload your Word document in draft layout into final typeset layout, margins already correctly set, for the size and paper selection you made, determining the cover size (front, back and spine, plus 1/8" edging) based on page count and paper type, pitfalls to avoid in cover layout, especially for a small one such as yours and my first, uploading the cover, pricing and distribution, and finally, exporting to Kindle. Wow, that is a run-on sentence! It literally took me one week from initial registration on 11 December, to publication on 18 December, with just a couple of calls to tech support, mainly on terminology. And they have telephone tech support, unlike Kindle KDP which uses e-mail only, with crappy response time and generally canned answers. Fortunately, the CS folks will walk you through the Kindle interface when it comes time to upload the Kindle-ready file they provide after they publish your paperback. You also can upload a revised version of your work at any time after publication to paperback, Kindle or both, to correct SPaG, etc. for free... it takes about 24 hours for the new version to replace the old on Amazon. I made the CFM cover using Powerpoint. It could be better, but that was my canary. I had the E&D cover done professionally by Fiona Jayde (fionajaydemedia.com) and I highly recommend her as reasonably priced, high quality and responsive. She is doing my wife's cover now. E&D languished on my hard drive through January in final form, waiting for the cover. During that time, I paid some close attention to interior details, making sure that each and every map graphic was exactly the right size and position on the page.

Other people have had good experiences with D2D. I was trying to get an account with Ingram Spark before I found out they don't have accounts for the public to view and order their books (mine just came up there on extended distribution), just to self-publish. I found just the registration process to be torturous, and I have read reviews that indicate it is very hard to use their interface for uploading... specialized .pdf formats instead of Word, no templates, no ISBNs, non-responsive tech support. But I have not used either one.

Karen is in the final phases of finishing her WIP, also going through CS, and got hers uploaded in typeset layout format in one night, with me at her shoulder. I also had a poet in our local Writers Group use CS to publish his first book of poems, which turned out beautiful.

Now a word of caution, @Elven Candy. Don't quit your day job and buy that Maserati, anticipating millions in royalties. Ain't gonna happen on your first book, though I am almost breaking even on my advertising costs. But there is nothing in the world like knowing that people you don't know are reading your story and enjoying it. In five months, my two have reached almost 2500 people (OK, 2000 were free Kindle giveaways, but for a few glorious moments, someone somewhere was downloading my books every few minutes in ten countries) and about a third of my sales have been in the UK.

 

That's a lot of great information, @Lew! CreateSpace is Amazon's print-on-demand book company, yes? For a story only 5,000 long, is it worth setting it up for print-on-demand? I see you did, but was that only because you wanted the practice? Is the physical book super thin? How do you know what size cover to make (in case I don't hire a professional--or even if I do. I have to tell them the thickness at least, right?)?

I'm not sure I have the time or energy to figure out both the e-book and physical book versions at the same time, but it'll be good to get this information now so that when I'm ready to go physical I can.

I checked out the website you mentioned and it looks great! Alas! I cannot afford $200 right now. For a novel I might do it, but this is my short-story guinea pig.

Haha, don't worry about me quitting work! I learned from the milkmaid who counted her chickens a wee too early. ;)

 

Mine was about 8000 words 47 pages (with overhead up front) and wound up about 1/4" thick. When you are setting up the cover there is a calculator in the designer for determining the cover based on spine size. Use 12 pt type and cream paper (it is a hair thicker), they give you the paper thickness, multiply by pages. and it all comes out right. It worked the first time for me. Powerpoint will allow you to set non-stanndard paper sizes, then you export it as .pdf and upload. They warn for small books, dodn't get cute with the spine, as there is about 1/16" inch variation from run to run. I had a red spine on the first run, and definitely noticeable. When I updated the cover I made it bigger to wrap around front to back so it wasn't noticeable. l on paper first is a snap, partly because if you get stuck you just call someone. Cost is free. When done, you export to Kindle, make some tweaks there to content... my paperbacks I want a leading blank page, copyright page, acknowledgement page, etc. Kindle version I want to go straight to text, so I edit that out of the exported word document they generate.

You can go to Kindle first, but I feel I am flying blind with them with email only tech support, with turnaround times in hours to days. They also have a beta version paperback, but do to their poor tech support, as a newbie, I wouldn't use it. While CS exports to Kindle, Kindle does not export to CS, even though they are both Amazon subsidiaries.

Karen jumped in and got hers set up in just a few days, she will be doing cover details next, and is talking to Fiona about her cover.

 

ummm...I would have to do some serious digging to find out who on fiverr did my cover, (it was probably 4 years ago now) but you can create your own post on the site and people will make offers and if you don't like it...well, it was only $5, you know? But this is the one I got.

Edited to add...ok, it was surprisingly easy to find out who did it, once I remembered my fiverr login. it was the user "vikncharlie". They still are advertising their services, but have gone up slightly in price since I used them in 2012.

https://www.fiverr.com/vikncharlie/design-you-an-awesome-book-cover?funnel=05b835aa-7e71-42d9-90ee-3924a36e1b7b

 

Thank you!

 

You may have been writing for five years but it's only five thousand words and it's the first story you've managed to finish. To me that says you need more practice.
That's the one downside to self publishing, everyone's in a rush to get their work out there asap.

 

Everyone has to publish their first book sometime, as did I in December. I think we need to take @Wreybies advice and not feed the trolls. @rincewind31, you have gotten your negative comments in twice, and that should suffice. Would you share with us please your voluminously long list of titles published so we can sit in awe of your creative expertise?

 

I'm not really sure failing to give nothing but positive advice actually makes me a troll. I'm just giving a different viewpoint.

Amazon is filled with millions and millions of books that people have rushed to get published only to then be amazed when they fail to sell a single copy.
Publishing a book to get practice just adds another to the slush pile and is another reason why self publishing still isn't taken very seriously.

 

Thank you! I’ll look into going through CreateSpace after all. It'd certainly make it easier to give away copies to friends and family.

 

Thank you so much! Those look like prices I can deal with for this short story. I have some exploring to do .

 

I really appreciate your concern, but I’m confident that I’ve done well on this one. I’ve had a number of beta readers and some excellent critique, so I haven’t taken this lightly—in fact, I’m taking it quite seriously. I don’t want to taint my reputation with a half-baked story! The reason I haven’t finished something by now is because my focus has been on a novel that I couldn’t finish. I finally figured out what the problem is (I went on a tangent—that often gives me writer’s block), so until I can figure out how to fix it, I’m working on some other, shorter stories.

 

And your critique was awesome! I’d be a lot more nervous about publishing this book if I hadn’t read so many warnings from my fellow forumers saying don’t be discouraged if sales are low. Now if they’re low I can say, “Yay I fit in!” and if they’re high I can say, “Muahahaha I’m better than youuuu!” and then take my well-deserved beatings from ya’ll.

(Sorry I had to make so many posts, guys. For some reason I couldn't put all the responses in one, so I broke them up).

 

We are just pleased you have reached the final step. I do encourage you to get as many beta readers as you can, I had about 30, some on this site. Yes, sales will be low. Mine are high enough for me to be invited to share my secrets at our next writing group meeting, though I am losing money on advertising. However, my little short story, well, CFM has not yet found his niche, but he was my canary and I dearly love him... my first-born. And he sells a few per month. After publishing, the next challenge is marketing. My opening line to our group is "If a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, did it make a sound? If the best book every written is posted on Amazon and no one knows it is there, will anyone ever read it?" It is a challenge.

Anyway, kudos for getting this far, and don't let anyone discourage you from taking the next step. Your expectations are reasonable, and you'll do fine. We all have your back!

 

BTW, my canary is ranked about where @rincewind31's book is ranked after only six months, so I guess we are not doing too badly for someone who also impatiently rushed to self-publish.

 

Mine is doing badly. Guess I need more friends, or something.

 

Yes, I've never done that well in the US for some reason. Fortunately both my books are selling amazingly well in the UK. For now at least.

Either way, good luck to the OP.

 

Thanks everyone! I got as many beta readers as I could, but unfortunately my ability to gather a bunch of guinea--uh, I mean helpful critics is very, very limited. Luckily I found a few excellent ones right here on the forums and my mom has been exceedingly helpful.