Spiderwize's Self Publishing Blog

Today’s post is by guest speaker Rosie Milton:

People decide to self publish for various reasons. It may be that numerous publishers have rejected a book for not being commercially viable enough, or that the meagre royalties offered by a publishing house don’t sound appealing. Whatever the reason, self-publishing has never been easier to do. With e-book services such as Smashwords, publish on demand services such as Lulu, and retailers like Amazon, nearly anybody can format and release a book for sale.

Just because you no longer need a publisher, doesn’t mean you should necessarily do everything that a publisher would have done yourself. Whether it’s a non-fiction book on banking and getting the best savings rates, or a thriller, mystery or romance novel, publishers don’t just take a manuscript and slap it between the covers of a book before they release it. All processes happen before a book is released, and in self-publishing, these processes can’t and shouldn’t all be done on your own.

Quality Matters

One of the most valuable processes a traditional publisher does to a manuscript before it is released is editing. Editors don’t just check for errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation, although they do this too, but also they check to ensure the story flows well, that the characters are convincing and that there are no holes in the story.

Releasing a book to the world which is full of such errors is a sure fire way of receiving one-star reviews and having all your hard work go to waste. Nobody wants to read a bad book, but without an editor, it can be nearly impossible for a writer to identify all the possible mistakes in his or her own work. Hiring an editor is the best solution for anybody considering self-publishing, but this isn’t cheap, and not everybody can afford to have their manuscript professionally edited, but there are other ways of ensuring the book is as good as it can be.

Get Honest Opinions

Beta readers can help identify mistakes in both syntax and plot. Getting as many people as possible to read you manuscript, will help with the proofreading and also help to spot holes in the story, poor characterisation and other weaknesses. While you will have proofread and checked the manuscript you intend to self-publish dozens of times just to make sure it’s perfect, you won’t find everything yourself as you are far too close to the work. You may not have noticed that your main character has left the house in red shoes, only to get her blue trainers wet in a puddle a page later, but a fresh pair of eyes might. However, these people need to be unbiased.

Simply giving your manuscript to all your friends and family is not going to get you honest opinions. Most people close to you would be worried about upsetting you if they didn’t like something about your manuscript, so it’s far better to find people you don’t know as beta readers. Using critique groups and writer’s resources such as Baen’s Bar or Writers Digest is a great way to find people that will give honest opinions and help identify errors, plot holes, bad pacing or unrealistic characters.

Judging a Book by its Cover

While we’ve all heard the old saying, ‘Never judge a book by its cover,’ the truth is that people do. Good covers sell books, bad covers don’t. This is true for both hard copy books in bookshops and those bought on the internet. A good cover should represent what is within the pages of the book, but also be visually appealing. Unless you know what you are doing, creating your own cover could damage any future sales so you need to find somebody that can help.

Not everybody has a degree in graphic design or fine art, and not everybody can create his or her own book cover. Again, if you can afford it, hire a professional artist, ideally somebody that specialises in book covers. If not, try to find somebody that has some background in art. It’s important you explain exactly what type of book it is otherwise the cover may clash with the work. If possible, get several covers created and get different people to give their opinions of them and choose the most popular one.

Editing and cover design are just as important for a self-published book as one that is published in the traditional way, so before you submit all your hard work to the world, don’t try to do it all yourself. Get outside help, as it will give your work the best possible chance of being successful and prevent all that hard work from going to waste.

Today’s post is by guest speaker Rosie Milton, enjoy:

Whilst it might be appealing to imagine that you’ve written such a wonderful book all you need to do now is list it on Amazon, kick back on your recliner sofa and wait to become a bestseller, it sadly doesn’t work that way for anyone.

Even the most well-established authors still have to put the time and effort into promoting their books so that readers know it’s out there for them to buy and read, so if you’re just starting out in your writing career, you’ve certainly got some work to do.

When you make the decision to go down the self-publishing route, you should know that this means you must also become your own publicist. Of course, if you’ve got the funds to hire an expert, that’s great. But the majority of aspiring self-publishers won’t have that kind of money and will have to do some DIY platform building.

Getting Started

You’re probably already familiar with the basics of platform building on the internet. Most of us have a Facebook account, maybe a Twitter account, etc.

If you use Facebook, you can create an author’s page so that people who aren’t on your friends list can ‘like’ you and follow your updates. This is a good idea if you don’t want to add just anyone to your friends list. Many writers like to keep their personal online presence separate from their author’s presence. To create a page, sign into your Facebook account and follow this link.

Many writers also have a website or a blog which they use to promote their work.

Joining writing communities such as Critique Circle and Authonomy is a wise idea too.

Basically, any way in which you can create a stronger web presence is a good thing.

Yet there’s an important element to platform building which is often overlooked.

You Reap What You Sow

A lot of new authors make the mistake of thinking that all they need to do is get the word out about themselves and their work as much as possible. But there’s more to building a platform than endless self-promotion. A big part of the process is making friends and connections with other writers, not just so you can tell them about your work, but so you can help to support them with theirs too.

Its common sense – if all you’re focussing on is getting your name out there and expecting everyone to come to you and buy your book, and every other author is doing the same thing too, not much is going to happen.

It’s easy to talk about yourself all the time. Lots of people are doing that. But it’s important to get involved with what other authors are doing. Read writer’s blogs, leave comments, join forums and read other self-published books. Talk to other writers on Twitter and Facebook. Post links to writing you’ve enjoyed.  The more involved you become in the online writing community, the stronger the platform you’ll be able to build. If you can make friends with other authors, they will be more likely to help you promote your book. Many authors write book reviews or post blog entries from guest bloggers, so build relationships with people you can share those processes with.

Be Authentic

It does take time, and you need to approach online networking with authenticity, because it will be obvious if you’re just commenting on someone’s blog to earn back-scratching points from them.

Connect with authors whose writing you’re interested in, rather than simply targeting anyone and everyone. If you spread your net too wide, you’ll end up having to trawl through a lot of stuff that isn’t helpful, let alone enjoyable.

Authenticity is also important in a wider sense. Your online presence needs to reflect who you are. If you’re trying too hard to be something you’re not, people will see through that. It also creates more work for you if you’re having to ‘keep up appearances’.

Have Fun with it

Although it requires some work, try to relax and enjoy the process. Remember that you’re making new friends, not just promotion buddies. Writing is often a lonely profession, so it’s nice to talk to other like-minded souls. Connecting and communicating with other writers is also bound to help improve your writing anyway.

Overall, the best advice for any author trying to build an online platform is: Be yourself, and be sociable; just as you would need to be in real life.

Just a quick post today to let you know that we have re-launched our manuscript editing service. The main differences is that we now first edit 5,000 words of the manuscript and send this back to the author to review, this used to be 2,000 words. This helps the author to see exactly what our editing service provides – if the author decides after seeing the 5,000 words editing sample that they don’t want to proceed then the author is free to not proceed and at no charge.

Also instead of charging a fixed editing fee the editing service is now charged at 1.2p a word (£0.012).

For more details about our editing service please view our editing page or contact us.

The other day I was talking about the fact that writing matters, regardless of financial success, or whether you are published by a big firm or prefer to go the self publishing route instead.  Today I thought I’d continue this little theme, since frankly, I’m just getting warmed up.

Another reason why writing matters is that it is an absolute fact that your writing can live longer than you do.  Think about it – even if you never become a bestseller, whatever writing you do can still last a long time, providing both entertainment and an insight into your own self for generations of your family to come.  If you do manage even a modicum of success, your work has the chance of being discovered and celebrated, and of affecting people for potentially hundreds of years after you yourself have departed this mortal coil.

Affecting people is actually yet another important reason why writing matters.  Writing can touch people you’ll never meet, in places you’ll never go.  Even something as simple as a blog with a very limited readership can still reach out and touch someone, affect their lives for the better.  Even fan fiction, often a form of writing sneered at by many can produce some often beautiful, haunting, touching pieces of prose that can genuinely affect and move another human being, perhaps in another country, or many years after it was actually written.  That’s power.  That’s writing.

p.s. Writing can change lives.

We’ve probably all been there, the point when you begin to wonder why you ever started this writing lark in the first place.  You can’t get taken seriously by your friends or family, you enter endless short story competitions which never win a thing and you spend an eternity writing a novel that fails to interest publishers, and you’d go down the self publishing route but for all the people telling you it won’t work and doesn’t count anyway.

The fact is, what you are writing matters, for a variety of reasons.  For one, even if you aren’t getting paid at the present time, at the end of the day no one becomes a writer for the cash anyway.  It’s a nice thing if you can get it, to be sure, but writing is not just a career, and it certainly isn’t just a “hobby”.  Writing is a calling.  It sounds terribly pretentious, I know, but how many of us, when we first picked up a pen, did so because we envisaged great riches or just to pass the time until something more interesting happened?  Very few, I’d wager.  We write because we don’t have any other choice.  It’s more than what we do, it’s what we are.  So published or not, paid or not, the fact that writing is such an intrinsic part of our identity as an individual human being is what makes it matter.

p.s. Writers are writers, regardless of success.

Many writers, be they in the self publishing field or otherwise, can find writing fiction a great challenge.  Not that I’m suggesting non-fiction is a walk in the park, but to be out on your own and trying to create a story that will grip people is certainly no mean feat.  The thing to remember is that it is not just the story but also the characters that are important in keeping the reader interested.

After all, a TV show lasts about an hour while even the longest “Harry Potter” movie lasts 2 ½ hours at the most – a book, on the other hand, takes up to ten hours for the average reader to get through.  Ten hours is a very long time, so those characters – whether they’re good, evil or somewhere in between – had definitely better be seriously interesting in order to justify your reader’s investment.

Another tip is simply to write like you.  This simply means to develop your own style of writing and not to try to emulate someone else’s.  If you have a sense of humour (and if you don’t, you have bigger problems than trying to self-publish a book, let’s face it) that humour should bleed through into your characters and your work.  If there is a big idea in your work, make sure it’s an idea that you are taken with.  This isn’t just for your readers’ sake – it’s for your own.  Trying to write a novel about something you don’t care about in a style that isn’t your own is practically guaranteeing failure before you’ve even started.

p.s. In writing, as in life – be yourself.

This self publishing game is okay, some of you – especially newcomers to the field – may be thinking, but can I actually earn any money at it?  After all, unless it’s a real personal project where the author only wants a few copies to show his family and friends and for his own personal pleasure, the great majority of writers would like to see something for their efforts – something such as decent money, mainly.

Unfortunately, there is no hard and fast rule for how much you can earn as a self published author.  Book authors do not get a salary – how much they earn depends on how many of their books they can sell and what royalties they then receive from those sales.  Some self published authors have been successful enough to earn something like 100,000 US dollars inside of six months.  Others would be lucky if they earned that much in a lifetime.  Some self published authors, of course, can end up selling not so much as one copy of their book, so you can probably guess how much they’re earning.

The truth is that the success of a book is something like 20 per cent writing, 80 per cent marketing, so to be a success as a self published writer, being a good writer simply isn’t enough – you need to be a good, if not great, marketer as well.

p.s. Quality writing and canny marketing skills are the only ways to make good profit as a self published author.

The Inverness Book Festival has been running for eight years and is now a fixture of summer in the Highlands of Scotland. This year’s Festival kicks off on the 10^th of August and runs until the 14^th, making it a five day event which will be well worth the time to attend for readers or writers, be they in the self publishing industry or otherwise. Local literary buff Brid McKibben is in charge of this year’s activities, which will contain the now expected array of both local, Scottish and general United Kingdom writers, plus a few surprise guests.

The little ones won’t miss out either, with special events designed to keep them suitably entertained such as Bookbug Rhymetimes and the daily activities that are organised by the Festival’s Arts Ed group.

The Inverness Book Festival has never struggled to attract top cream writing talent, with the likes of GP Taylor, Iain Banks, Katie Grant, AL Kennedy, Kenneth White, Tom Devine, Cameron McNeish, Scoular Anderson (do you think he scowls a lot, then?), Emma Wood, Ewan Morrison, Des Dillon, Lance Price, Lin Anderson, Stuart MacBride, Melvin Burgess and Shirley Spear all having attended the event in previous years. This year’s guest list includes such names as Christopher Brookmyre, John Eunson, Tom Renouf, Louise Welsh, and Andy Wightman.

p.s. The Inverness Book Festival will be worth taking the time to visit.

It’s nearly July, so I thought I’d take a look at a couple of the new books that are due for release next month as the latest literary endeavours should be of interest to all writers, whether they are in the self publishing game or otherwise.

One such new book out in July is “Twisted” by Sara Shepherd. That name may not immediately ring a bell, but if you’ve heard of the teen mystery soap TV series “Pretty Little Liars”, then you should know that that show was originally a book series, and “Twisted” is the ninth in what is a hugely popular line. This time out the plotline involving “A” has apparently been solved at last, but it doesn’t take the girls long to get themselves in more trouble.

Also out next month is a new book from a writer just about everyone will have heard of, whether they’ve actually read any of her books or not, Danielle Steel. Steel’s newest page turner is entitled “Happy Birthday”, which deals with three very different people all reaching a turning point on, you guessed it, the day of their birthday. If you’re into Steel (and plenty of people are), you’ll be sure to like this.

The geeks will be celebrating in July too, as there’s a new “Star Wars” novel out. This one, entitled “Choices of One”, is written by regular “Wars” novel scribe Timothy Zahn and will be sure to have all the Jedi’s running out to the nearest bookstore.

p.s. There’s plenty to enjoy on the shelves in July.

Do you have a manuscript collecting dust (maybe electronic dust)? If you have in the past submitted your manuscript to mainstream publishers or if your manuscript would only appeal to a niche market then self publishing your manuscript may be the route to take. But before you take the plunge and go the self publishing route we have some tips below:

1. Spelling / Grammar: Is your book ready for the general public to read? Make sure that your manuscript has been thoroughly proofread. It is highly advisable that you get someone else to proofread your manuscript. It is so important to make a good impression to the reader. If your reader starts finding spelling and grammatical errors it can be a real turn-off and seriously damage the potential of your book being taken seriously.
2. Copyright and defamation of character: Before you publish a book it is imperative that you own or have permission to publish all of the contents that are contained in your manuscript. This also includes images. As the author you need to make sure your book does not contain anything libellous that someone might take offence to. You may wish to read our blog Avoiding Defamation of Character. Remember when you are self publishing in most cases it will be up to you the author to make sure your book does not break any copyrights or contains anything libellous against an individual or groups.
3. Storyline / narrative: You may wish to get a trusted friend to read your manuscript and ask for comments to the storyline / narrative. This can help to iron out any confusing or hard to read sections of your manuscript. This is also a good test to see someone’s response to your work though remember as you are getting a friend to read your work you may not receive the same response from the general public.
4. Distribution: It is a good idea to get an idea now what type of availability to the general market you want your book to have. Do you only want to sell your own copies or do you want your book to be available for sale on retail websites? Deciding this now will help you to find the right publishing service that is suitable for your needs.

I hope the above will be of some help to you self publishing your manuscript. If you think there are any other useful steps that should be included then we welcome you to add comments below.

Top image by: markhillary