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    Starting Out as an Indie Author: A Beginner's Guide to Preparing, Publishing and Marketing Your EBooks
    Starting Out as an Indie Author: A Beginner's Guide to Preparing, Publishing and Marketing Your EBooks
    Starting Out as an Indie Author: A Beginner's Guide to Preparing, Publishing and Marketing Your EBooks
    Ebook201 pages3 hours

    Starting Out as an Indie Author: A Beginner's Guide to Preparing, Publishing and Marketing Your EBooks

    By Ruth Nestvold

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    About this ebook

    Have you written your first book and are considering self-publishing? Perhaps you have started looking into the possibility and are feeling overwhelmed by all the options, all the things you need to do and learn in order to become an indie author? Or maybe you aren't even sure yet whether self-publishing is for you or not, and you want to find out more of what is involved before you decide.

    STARTING OUT AS AN INDIE AUTHOR was written for beginning self-publishers and covers the basics on where to sell your books, formatting for eBook and print, and developing marketing strategies. It includes a number of step-by-step instructions for everything from cover design, to setting up eBooks for various distributors, to creating ads with Facebook and Amazon Marketing Services. In addition, there is advice on any number of topics: eBook pricing, using distributors, how much to spend on self-publishing, and writing blurbs for your books.

    With this sanity-saving book as a guide, you will have a much better grasp on what is involved in self-publishing and will be able to approach the task realistically and with eyes wide open.

    Including an interview with Kate Sparkes, author of the bestselling Bound series!

    Contents:
    Part I: Is Self-Publishing for You?
    Chapter 1: Advantages and Disadvantages of Self-Publishing
    Chapter 2: Potential Self-Publishing Mudholes
    Chapter 3: The Costs of Publishing as an Indie Author

    Part II: Getting Ready to Publish
    Chapter 4: Why Editing is Important - and Who can Probably Skip the Expense After All.
    Chapter 5: Preparing Your Manuscript for eBook Retailers
    Chapter 6: Cover Options for Indie Authors
    Chapter 7: Writing Blurbs and Descriptions for your Books
    Chapter 8: Amazon Delivery Fees and Reducing the File Size of Your EBook

    Part III: Publishing Your Book
    Chapter 9: EBook Pricing
    Chapter 10: To KDP Select or not to KDP Select
    Chapter 11: Using Distributors for Getting into Online Bookstores
    Chapter 12: The Importance of Keywords
    Chapter 13: Formatting the Interior of your Book for Print
    Chapter 14: Creating a Wraparound Cover for your Print Book

    Part IV: Marketing
    Chapter 15: The Big Challenge: Becoming Visible
    Chapter 16: How to Develop a Strategy for eBook Promotions
    Chapter 17: Alexa Rankings for eBook Ad Sites
    Chapter 18: Advertising Sites
    Chapter 19: Social Media and Cross Promotion
    Chapter 20: Newsletter Basics

    Part V: Final Thoughts
    Chapter 21: Why "Write the Next Book" isn't Enough; Or: What to do if your Books aren't Selling
    Chapter 22: Rolling with the Changes

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRuth Nestvold
    Release dateJul 17, 2017
    ISBN9781370383429
    Starting Out as an Indie Author: A Beginner's Guide to Preparing, Publishing and Marketing Your EBooks
    Author

    Ruth Nestvold

    A former assistant professor of English in the picturesque town of Freiburg on the edge of the Black Forest, Ruth Nestvold has given up theory for imagination. The university career has been replaced by a small software localization business, and the Black Forest by the parrots of Bad Cannstatt, where she lives with her fantasy, her family, her books and no cats in a house with a turret. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous markets, including Asimov's, F&SF, Baen's Universe, Strange Horizons, Scifiction, and Gardner Dozois's Year's Best Science Fiction. Her fiction has been nominated for the Nebula, Tiptree, and Sturgeon Awards. In 2007, the Italian translation of her novella "Looking Through Lace" won the "Premio Italia" award for best international work. Her novel Flamme und Harfe appeared in translation with the German imprint of Random House, Penhaligon, in 2009 and has since been translated into Dutch and Italian.

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      Book preview

      Starting Out as an Indie Author - Ruth Nestvold

      Introduction

      Who I Am, and Who This Book is For

      The Genesis of this Book

      I began the series Starting Out as an Indie Author on my blog because a good friend of mine, another writer who was with me at the Clarion West Writers Workshop in Seattle many years ago, got the rights back for a traditionally published novel and wanted to self-publish. With all the questions she was sending me, I realized that I couldn't really do the subject justice in e-mail, so I started answering them via my blog. The impulse of those posts and now this book was to help someone less experienced. That is where this book is coming from, no more and no less.

      This is NOT a do this and this and rake in the cash! book. I have read plenty of those myself. I did glean a few useful tips from a couple of them; many more turned out to be lots of hot air or even outright deceitful. This book isn't sexy — it isn't promising anything hot, or any kind of magic formula to make your book a bestseller. Instead, it's realistic, the kind of advice I would give my best friend, because that is exactly what it is.

      Creating a career as an indie author is not a get rich quick scheme, at least not for the vast majority of us. It requires a lot of hard work learning the craft of writing, and a lot more hard work publishing new books on a regular basis to keep the income stream flowing. We all like to think we are different, the one person who will be the exception to the rule, but most of us are not.

      Which means that if you want to have any success in self-publishing, it will require work, and that is what this book is all about. What I go into here are the basics you have to learn about formatting, editing, cover art, and marketing, including things that might help, and things that probably won't. I try to cover most of the steps needed to publish an eBook, from beginning to end, and give you some basic pointers in developing a marketing strategy as well.

      I like to think of this book as a sanity-saving approach to starting out as an indie author. When you first start self-publishing, there are so many things you hear and read about that you are supposed to do and try, so many formulas for success, so many numbers and details to fret about (get thousands of newsletter subscribers, Twitter followers, Facebook friends, etc.). The first thing I would like to tell you to do is relax. I will be giving you choices rather than telling you what you have to do. This is a book about weighing your options and deciding what is best for you at the beginning of your self-publishing career.

      The information provided here can help reduce the learning curve for you if you're just starting out, or it might provide you with some extra tips if you are a more experienced indie author. But my target audience remains the beginner, those of you who are overwhelmed by all the tasks ahead of you to become a self-publisher. Much of what I cover in this book will be old news to more experienced indie authors. But if you want to buy my book anyway, be my guest!

      Why should you listen to me?

      I’m a writer of fantasy and science fiction with publishing credits both in traditional or legacy publishing as well as self-published works – what these days is often referred to as a hybrid author. I have sold close to 100 short stories to magazines and anthologies such as Asimov’s and Year’s Best Science Fiction. These days, however, I am primarily an indie author. I started experimenting with self-publishing in 2011, with an eBook reprint of my novella Looking Through Lace, originally published in Asimov’s. I didn’t get serious about self-publishing until 2012, though, when I got the rights back for the original English version of my novel Yseult. It had been published in German translation with Random House Germany, as well as in Italian and Dutch. But not English, my native language, the language I wrote it in. So I decided to take the plunge and self-publish.

      I have since published over 30 eBooks, most under my own name, a couple under a pen name. My indie career has had plenty of ups and downs, and is presently trending up again. I'm not a wildly successful self-publisher. I make regular money from my writing, but I am not breaking out in a big way or selling truckloads of books.

      What I am is a working writer who’s been an indie author for a number of years. Some things that I've tried work, some things don't. My intention with this book is to smooth the way for you a bit if you are considering becoming a self-published author. I will be sharing 1) my experiences, good and bad, and 2) many of the things I have had to spend much time on the Internet figuring out. From the first, I hope you might be able to avoid a few of the mistakes I've made along the way; from the second, you may be saved some time searching for information on formatting, cover design, uploading your book to different eBook retailers, and basic marketing.

      How to Approach this Book

      Every writer going into indie publishing also has to define for herself what her goals are, which will determine how to approach the advice in this book:

      Do you want to throw the book of your heart out onto the market and become a millionaire?

      - Buy a lottery ticket instead — the chances are probably a lot better.

      Do you want to throw the book of your heart out onto the market and reach a few readers with your words?

      - Take the advice in this book on the expenses involved in self-publishing with a grain of salt; you will probably never earn back the cost of professional editing and high-priced cover art.

      Do you want to go into indie publishing because you want to write what you love, since traditional publishing doesn't care for niche genres?

      - In this case too, I would advise not going overboard on the pre-publishing expenses. There is always the faint possibility that a niche genre can become a breakout genre — if your book is absolutely amazing, you are in the right place at the right time, or the stars are all aligned in your favor when you publish your book. I wouldn't recommend counting in on it, though.

      Are you willing to treat writing as a discipline, a job that you need to work at and learn (which includes both writing and marketing)? Have you written at least three full-length novels already with mostly positive critiques from readers? And if a certain genre you are writing in is not working, would you consider trying something else after publishing 3-6 books in your genre of choice?

      - Writers in this category are those who should invest the most money in their writing careers — and probably already do.

      To be completely clear on this, I think all of these attitudes towards writing are valid — except the first, that is, since it is flat out unrealistic and almost certainly doomed to lead to disappointment. But each individual writer should have a realistic assessment of what her writing and marketing preferences might mean for her own financial success as a writer.

      I myself tend to write what I love while also trying to test genres that might be more lucrative. But I do write every day. Except for vacations, and sometimes on weekends, or when I'm sick.

      If you prefer to only write when the muse hits you, you should probably adjust your expectations and the projected expenses to shell out on your career as an indie author accordingly: the less time you are willing to spend working on your craft, the less money you should spend on editing services, cover design, and marketing.

      And if you want to save the cost of this eBook for your next cup of coffee, you can do that too: most of the information provided here is also available on my blog at ruthnestvold.wordpress.com. Having this book at your fingertips could save you some time wading through my blog posts, but then you will at least be enjoying your coffee while you do so. But I believe in paying forward, and everything I have learned in my writing career, someone else was generous enough to share with me, which is why I regularly share what I've learned with other writers on my blog.

      Good luck on your self-publishing journey!

      Ruth Nestvold

      Part 1

      Is Self-Publishing for You?

      Chapter 1

      Advantages and Disadvantages of Self-Publishing

      I hope my introduction didn't frustrate you too much, but I do believe in being realistic about the business of self-publishing. Because if you want to make a living at this, that is the way you have to treat it, as a business. At the same time, I also do not want to come across as the kind of indie writer who thinks that anyone who goes the traditional publishing route is deluded. Whether you go one route or the other, it is a choice you have to make that hinges on what your goals are as a writer. Before you start sinking money in editors and cover artists, you need to have a clear picture of the advantages and disadvantages of going indie.

      Advantages

      - Speed

      A traditionally published novel can easily take up to two years from the time it is accepted to the time it actually comes out. And that isn't even counting the years of sending the manuscript out to agents and editors.

      By comparison, self-publishing is almost instant. E-publishing may take a few days from the time you hit the publish button until the time your book is available, but rarely more. Print on Demand (POD) takes a little longer, but in my experience, the physical copy of your book is available in less than a week. Of course, that doesn't include editing and cover design, but a self-publisher can probably have that completed in weeks rather than years.

      - Rights retention

      Many publishing contracts are not designed to benefit the author; they are designed to benefit the publisher, as numerous legal battles in recent years have shown. All rights to self-published books belong to the author. She can do whatever she wants with the book and does not have to consult a publisher about it.

      - Control

      This is probably the advantage most frequently cited by indie authors. As an indie author, you have complete control of deadlines, editing, formatting and cover design. You control the price and can adjust it up or down in reaction to sales numbers. It is easy to implement changes, including changes to the text. You could even pull the book for a rewrite if you so choose. Or if the cover doesn't seem to be working, replace it.

      In traditional publishing, an author usually has very little say in cover, design, or marketing strategies. A case in point: my novel Yseult, a retelling of the legend of Tristan and Isolde, was originally published in translation with Random House Germany. They provided stunning cover art, which is now being shared all over Pinterest. For copyright reasons, I can't include the image in this book, but here's the link:

      http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/71/77/15/717715b0a1f7ae224029471f150588e2.jpg

      The problem? It looks like the Lady of the Lake, not the tragic love story of Tristan and Isolde. Not only that, the book came out in a fantasy imprint for mostly YA readers, because the publisher wanted to cash in on the popularity of Harry Potter. But — the book has a number of sex scenes. Publishers sometimes make strange marketing decisions that are more concerned with where they think the money is than what would be best for the book.

      - Your book has all the time in the world to catch on

      Traditional publishing houses will give a book around half a year to see whether it's going to become a bestseller or not. If it doesn't, it will soon be remaindered. Your book had its chance, and now it's dead.

      With self-publishing, the shelf-life of your book is as long as you care to put effort into marketing it. Even if it has dropped into oblivion, you can always try some new marketing strategies to bring it back to life. As long as you want to keep it alive, it never has to go out of print.

      - Larger percentage of the profits

      In traditional publishing, the royalty rates tend to be between 6% (for audio) and 25% (for eBooks). As an example, for the hardcover of Yseult in German translation, which sold for €19.95, I earned under €2 per copy. (On the other hand, I did get a big

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