How to be an Indie Author 5: Publishing Ebooks

This is the fifth post in a series about self-publishing from ideation through sales. To check out other posts in this series, click here.

In the last post for this series I wrote about formatting, the prep for publishing. Now is time to get into the nitty gritty of publishing.

This is a behemoth of a post with info about jacket summaries and cover art, so get comfortable. Let's talk about the thing you've been waiting for - the thing that makes an indie author, well, indie.

Digital Power

The bread and butter of indie publishing, the thing that really launched independent authors was the ebook. This is to authors as the MP3 is to musicians. It revolutionized the publishing world and allowed authors to take control of their publishing destinies directly - something that is completely novel (heh) in the history of publishing.

Also, publishing an ebook is something that a monkey can do.

Really.

Author Joe Konrath once challenged people to write and publish an ebook in 8 hours. And people did it. A lot of people did it. Because it is so dang easy.

The difference between publishing an average ebook and a good ebook is formatting (assuming all else is equal). If you have your formatting done by professionals, through a reliable template, or you're old hat at the process, you're golden.

Jacket Summary

Before you get to the publish page of Smashwords (my preferred e-publisher/distributor for its wide reach and high royalty percentage) you need to spend a little time on descriptions.

There are usually two descriptions you need to write - the short, which shows up on all online retailers, and the long, which only gets pushed to a few.

To be honest, I open a separate document which I save to my book folder as "Book Title Summary" and write as compelling a summary as I can, without concern for length. I know my long description is always shorter than the character count.

There are a lot of resources on how to write jacket summaries, but the thing that I've found the most helpful is:

1. Look at best-selling book summaries in the same genre.
2. Don't give everything away.
3. Somewhere in your closing paragraph or last sentence use this formula: "[main character] must do [certain action] or [result]."

This formula is the 140 character Tweet you'll send out to catch people's attention. It's the lead for your elevator pitch. It's the thing that will get someone to buy the damn book. That said, this won't always work. Sometimes a description does well without this formula. For example here is the long description for BELOW THE BELT:

Alisa Greer excitedly begins her doctoral program in anthropology when she meets Dr. Corwin Pierce. An awkward genius, she swears his eyes change color as a result of the light, and his cold appearance can only be a figment of her imagination. Yet as Alisa gets closer to Pierce, things even more bizarre start happening on campus and at archaeological sites that all link back to him. Students go missing under strange circumstances and inexplicable displays of light occur at ancient sites across the globe. Frightened and fascinated, she can only begin to guess who or what he is. But the truth is more disturbing than she can imagine...

My quick and dirty way to get the short description is cut this down to size in the field on the publishing page. The key is to get the content and interest generation despite the shorter length. Here's the short description I have for the same book:

Alisa Greer excitedly begins her doctoral program in anthropology when she meets Dr. Corwin Pierce. As Alisa gets closer to Pierce, bizarre things start happening on campus and at archaeological sites that all link back to him. She can only begin to guess who or what he is, but the truth is more disturbing than she can imagine... 

Book Covers

Never judge a book by its cover, unless it's an ebook.

That may as well be the message of most "indie publishing gurus." As much as authors may wish people would not judge books by covers, they do. And let's face it, if an author doesn't spend the time to make their cover look nice, how can you be sure they spent the time on their book?

I say this, knowing full well I spend a shit-ton of time on my covers. In fact, they give me a tremendous amount of grief...and they don't look like anyone else's.
I did that on purpose because I wanted the art to reflect the nature of the stories. For the Khloe Alwell series, I wanted the covers to hint at an artist's sketchbook. The main character is an artist, and art is referenced throughout the books.

That said, I am not a graphic artist. I've spent a lot of time and effort earning the knowledge of cover design I have, and it's imperfect. I went from horrible covers when I first started out, to something that is passable, and finally, with my new Rollins Pack covers, to something that is sort of, well, good.

You can, if you don't want to deal with this mess, pay someone else to make your cover. In fact, I would advise you do that if you have the resources to do so. If not, or if you're not concerned with graphics and just want a simple cover for a business book or something, use templates. There are a thousand and one sites that have resources for this.

If you choose to go the DIY route, do that. I never did that because, I have some art training and I wanted to learn the photo-editing skills it would take (also I didn't have the cash to pay someone else at the time).

If you're crazy or beyond broke, you can do what I did. Download GIMP for free (yay open source!). If you've worked with Adobe before, GIMP will feel relatively natural. If not, play around with it for a while. Spend some serious time doing this. Figure out the ideal scale for your cover, make sure to have it at least 300 DPI, and go to town. Download some free for commercial use fonts (there are a gagillion sites for this) and enjoy.

NOTE: This will take you a week of tweaking, especially if this is all new. Be patient and prepared to swear at your screen. Have things that are safe to throw nearby. And take breaks.

Categories

This is something that is somewhat arbitrary and mystical. For many books, the categories you choose will be cut and dry, but for others, you have wiggle room.

I honestly have no idea what categories to choose for most of my fiction - well, I should say, I struggle with categorization. But categories are important because this is how new readers may find you.

Actually, I lied. I know exactly what categories to choose. Choose the categories your ideal reader would choose.

*Blinks*

Who is this mythical ideal reader? For the Rollins Pack, they're late teen to early twenty-something males.  For Khloe Alwell, they're the same age, both male and female, who are deep into nerd culture. So sometimes labelling these books as YA is good, and then again, maybe it would be better to label them "new adult." My deciding factor was the age of the main character - so I keep them YA (If this is confusing, don't worry. We'll touch on this again in marketing and sales.).

PUBLISH!

Everything's entered on the publish page. You set a preliminary price (probably between 2.99 and 4.99 for the average ebook) and hit the publish button. You select all the different file types (of course!) and click through. Your book is in queue. You get an email saying it had no autovetter errors (if it did, follow the directions in the email). Now it gets reviewed and then, assuming everything's good (which is should be if you have good formatting) your book gets pushed to all the major online retailers.

Sit back and smile.

You are now an independently published author.

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If you have tips or tricks on descriptions, cover art, or categorization (or like a different digital distributor) leave a comment below! I love learning more about indie publishing and I know other readers will too!

Also check out my next post in this series on publishing print-on-demand where I will talk about the differences in that process. 

And please support your local, lovely indie bootstrapper, by visiting my website to donate or buy my books! All the links on my site give me maximum royalty percentages, as opposed to supporting big companies.

How to be an Indie Author 4: Formatting

This is the fourth post in a series about self-publishing from ideation through sales. To check out other posts in this series, click here.


Last time I wrote about editing, which most writers think of as the bear in the process. I'm here to tell you, that formatting is just as tedious, if not more so. This is where the real work for the indie author begins.

The Indie Difference

Indie tools: coffee, notepad, pen, & laptop

Formatting is a serious difference between traditionally published and independent authors. The reason is simple - this is the beginning of the publishing process.

Before we were working on the content. Editing, is really polishing content. Formatting, however, is making sure content is accessible in whatever form a manuscript takes.

For the purposes of this discussion, I'm going to talk about both digital and print-on-demand publishing. While there are many options in the wide world of digital and POD publishing, I will dive into the reasons why I made the choices I did for the distributors I did etc.

Digital

First, it should be noted, choosing a distributor will change your formatting process because different distributors do different things. For the most accessibility, I recommend the following things:

1. Set up a style throughout your manuscript (for example first line indent for text body, chapter title/heading style for section titles).
2. Get rid of any extra spaces unless they are necessary for content readability (extra lines, extra spaces, extra indents).
3. Embed fonts if you're attached to them.
4. Include a message at the beginning of your document reminding people if they got your book for free, to buy a copy because it was a lot of work to produce the book.
5. Include an "About the Author" section at the end with a little bio about you.
6. Include a "Connect Online" section that has all the major places readers can find you online.
7. If you're really tech savvy, create hyperlinked table of contents that allows readers to jump easily to chapter headings (I'm not tech savvy, so I don't have this in my docs because every time I try things explode.).

Keep in mind, different file types will look differently in digital readers. If you have a reading app on your phone, ereader, or app on your computer, USE THEM. This is especially important when you're starting out because you won't have a system in place. That said, once you've done this a few times, it will become second nature, and you may decide to skip the ereader review altogether (like I do, for better or worse).

Also important to note is different distributors have different capacities. Some will only provide a single file type, like MOBI or EPUB (the most common). If you have to choose one kind of file, choose an EPUB file. However, I would strongly recommend that you not limit yourself to one type of file or one place to be read.

That said, if you have any confusion around formatting, or the distributor rejects your document for some reason, most have a guide or FAQ that you can reference for assistance. Smashwords, my ebook distributor, has a ton of resources for authors (and readers!) which are very accessible and easy to understand.

If you read all this and it stressed you out, however, you can pay someone else to format your work for you or buy a template to use. The cost varies significantly, and I cannot make recommendations this way because, well, I've never been a la cart. I've always been a bootstrapper (If you have recommendations for formatting services or templates, please comment below!).

Print-on-Demand

The second kind of formatting fun is, well, worse. Formatting for print is, as a friend once said, an art form. To format from scratch takes finesse and deep knowledge of printing.

Before you go through the nuts and bolts, make sure you include - just as you did for your digital copies - "About the Author" and "Connect Online" sections at the end of the manuscript.

Now that everything is where you need it, be sure you have selected your printer/distributor. Formatting requirements vary widely from company to company, and one set of formatting choices may not translate to another company.

In my next post on publishing, I'll talk about the reasons why you might choose one printer/distributor over another, but for the purposes of formatting, let's just recognize the two choices available (similar to digital):

1. Use the template provided by the printer.
2. Pay someone to go through the process for you.

If you use the template provided, make sure it matches the size of book you want (6'x9' for example). Make sure the pagination places everything on the correct page. So, the title page should have the binding margin on the left. The table of contents should start on a page with the binding margin on the left, etc.

If you pay someone else to do this for you, make sure they are comfortable with the printer/distributor you plan to use and you clearly communicate what size book you intend to have (5'x8' or 6'x9' or ?).

Even if you pay someone else to do this for you, check every chapter. Make sure there are no pages with a single word on them. Make sure the chapter headings are consistent. Make sure the fonts are what you want. Make sure the pages are tracking. Double check that binding margins are where they need to be. THIS IS IMPORTANT! If anything is wrong with the formatting, it will slow everything down. You will have to change the document, go over it again, and possibly again.

I cannot stress the importance of formatting. Once you have this process down, it makes everything easier and faster. But it does take some time to get comfortable and confident in this (I'm just now comfortable with POD and it's been almost 4 years since I started doing it!).

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Do you have any tips or tricks to make sure your formatting is correct? Have any horror stories to share? Leave a comment below!

Check out my next post in this series on publishing where I will talk about why I chose the distributors/printers I did. And to support your local, lovely indie bootstrapper, visit my website to donate or buy my books! All the links on my site give me maximum royalty percentages, as opposed to supporting big companies. Buy a book there and see how my formatting went (or didn't!).

Total Equality: A Feminist Manifesto

Recently Obama called for the American legislature to require equal pay for equal work. There have been a lot of conversations about that.

I would argue his call is premature, not because I don't want that. I do. I absolutely completely do. I just think the problem is bigger than that.

You can't eradicate a symptom if you don't cure the disease. The disease, in this case, is sexism, and it is pandemic. The body politic is infested with this horrible, debilitating illness. And we need a cure. We can treat the symptoms, but they will keep coming back in one way or another, until we address the illness as a whole.

It is for this reason I wrote and published TOTAL EQUALITY. I don't think people realize how pervasive sexism is in America. I don't think people realize how damaging it is, how painful it is, as a woman, to be systematically disregarded over and over again (my brown skinned friends know this very well, and I empathize with that hot mess because there is a lot of overlap). I wrote this because I wanted it to be absolutely clear, in one place, easily understood, just what is required for women to be equal to men.

Obama is right. It should happen now. It has been a long time. But let's be clear - this is still a big task, especially when America won't admit there is a problem in the first place.

Help! - Project Poll

I need your help. Seriously. I'm blocked. Not sure if it's  sleep deprivation, stress, sleep deprivation, illness, or sleep deprivation. Whatever the deal is, I'm at an impasse with writing. SO...I need your vote and here are the fiction project options:

1. FAMILY, FRIEND, or FOE - the last book in the Khloe series. I'm maybe half way done with this and I can't figure out where to go next. The ending is in my head, but how to get there is tough.
2. ANDREW - the third book in the Rollins Pack. Again, I'm about half way done (maybe more) and I know how it ends, but I'm struggling with the path between here and there.
3. CERIDWEN - a stand alone college/adult project with series potential. This is my mutant/alien/disease/sci-fi book and is maybe a quarter done. I have no idea how it ends or where to go next (lots of intrigue and scandal potential).
4. VICE & VIRTUE - working title, a stand alone adult project. I'm probably between a third and half way finished. This is my angels, demons, and general mayhem theological exploration book. I have no idea how it ends, and I'm not sure what needs to happen next in the story.
5. ???? - there are several "other" options including a story about a family where the son strays from his parents to pursue his dream (think night circus style); a sister who decides to leave the family business with catastrophic consequences (think myth); there's also a psychological book idea involving God and the nature of reality. Christian thinks I should write a sequel to BELOW THE BELT (it's a very popular download on Smashwords and it's FREE this week so get it now!)

 The other option is something non-fiction. I have two real projects there, both in relative infancy (one in lines of the unexpected, and the other having to do with a taboo topic and the process of exposing it).


What do you think? VOTE! PLEASE! I need to figure something out. I must make progress! And, please tell me why you want me to work on a given project. Also, suggestions for something completely different are also options, along with reasoning behind them.


Thanks in advance!

LOVERS AND RIVALS is Now on Smashwords!

BOOK 2 is here digitally! It's time to join Khloe on the second leg of her adventure! Download a sample of the book for free, and then buy the rest to read what happens next!

For the moment this book is only available digitally through Smashwords, though I expect it to be distributed through other venues shortly.

Thanks to everyone who slogged through this process with me! In some ways it was shorter than Book 1, in others it was longer! *sigh*

Look forward to some character bios coming soon to this blog!

Impatience - A Vice or I Hate Formatting

I am not a patient person. In fact I am incredibly the opposite. Right now I'm really feeling my least favorite vice. Why? In a word - formatting. I have now spent weeks on formatting The Brothers, just to get it to Premium Distribution on Smashwords. Now I'm wondering if there is another better way that doesn't require me to pay money I don't have. And honestly, I'm not sure.

Formatting is a necessary evil when you're publishing digitally, especially self-publishing. In order to get your creative project into the world, you have to deal with formatting. Necessarily it takes time away from the creative process. This, as a creative person, whose work thrives on momentum, sucks.

Luckily I have had other things to entertain me creatively while waiting for all this other crap. I still have to edit Lovers and Rivals. I have Lilith and Ammon I have to wrestle to completion. I have Legion which actually has a due date. And of course, there is my newest tour de force, The Rollins Pack. This might be crazy.

Luckily for me, with all of these books I will have more experience with that dreaded evil issue of formatting. Thank GOD! It will make the process to the end result so much less painful and frankly more enjoyable. I hope I'm almost done here with The Brothers. I hope. We'll see if my next attempt at premium distribution goes through or they come back with another single issue they forgot to mention yet again.

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