Hello again. Well the progress on Book #3 continues. I’ve finished the manuscript and now the effort of putting into the marketplace truly begins. Having written the story, run it through my AI assisted editing software multiple times, and getting it to a point I’m finally satisfied, that was the easy part. Now I need to configure it to actually get uploaded for printing.
There are a few decisions that need to be made at this juncture. First is to choose what publisher you will use. Do you want to try a traditional publisher, a hybrid, or self publish. I tried the traditional route now three times without success, and I used a hybrid publisher for the first book. The hybrid had several paid packages and the one I chose did the cover art, copyright and Library of Congress registration, a professional review, and some marketing. I can’t say I had great luck, but then I didn’t spend a lot of money nor any true marketing and advertising. The publisher was more than happy to do more, with an ever increasing cash payout and no guarantees. Hard to do when you don’t know anything about the industry except that you’ve read books.
So, off to self-publish I went for the second, and now the third book. One of the quickest and easiest self publishers is Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). There are some tricks and I came across Dave Chesson at Kindlepreneur.com. Dave has several tutorials about self publishing and a few apps that help navigate placement and selling on Amazon. While Amazon is the largest seller of books, you also have the option of publishing through Barnes & Noble as well as a few other places that have broad distribution. Amazon has broad distribution to consumers and you can opt for global distribution which allows your book to be sold in bookstores, not just online. But it comes with some restrictions that may not get you the wide distribution you desire. I went with IngramSpark to do my global distribution but there are some file differences required, especially for the cover, so beware.
You also have to carefully decide the pricing on your book. If you want to attempt the wider distribution, you have to consider two things: print cost and percentage discount for retailers. Retail bookstores will typically buy your book at a 50-55% discount. In addition, they may require either a buy-back or credit back agreement for returns. But this is after royalty costs. That means, you have to take the price, discount it for retail, minus the cost of printing the book, minus the publisher cost, and you get what’s left over. If this number is a negative, you actually have to pay to place your books in bookstores. In my political thriller genre, the standard novel length is 95,000 words which means I have to price my print versions near $20 to make any royalty. Digital versions need to be in line with others in your category which one of the apps from Kindlepreneur.com came in handy.
I use a software called Atticus for writing, organizing, formatting, and setup of files that are required for actual printing, for the print version, and epub for the digital version of the book. I used a new site for the cover art called 100covers.com and Atticus provided the page count required to complete the cover dimensions. Within Atticus, I selected my trim size of 6×9 that matches one of the three most popular trim sizes for books today and supported by my chosen publishing platform and distribution company’s (Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing and IngramSpark). After approving a front cover, I provided the paper type for the inside of the book (cream), inside type color (black and white), back cover book blurb, and short author bio.
So, with all of my printing parameters set, my short summary written for the book description on Amazon, and my file types ready in my writing software, I have everything I need to actually upload except…not yet. You need ISBN numbers that are unique identification numbers for each version of your book. To keep total ownership of your story, buy your own from the licensed agent for these in the US, Bowker Publishing Services. You can let Amazon assign them, or one of the other publishers, but those numbers are registered to them, not you. My advice, buy your own and you can only get them from Bowker. It’s also important to note that you cannot get a Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN) unless you’ve purchased your own ISBN for the print version. An LCCN isn’t required but it’s necessary if your book ever is to get picked up by libraries. Something that too many people likely miss is the need to protect their intellectual property. For books that means getting a Copyright. While we post it in the book, to actually be defensible it’s best to register that copyright with the Patent, Copyright, and Trademark office of the federal government.
Whew! Okay, so now we might have everything we need. We have the story, ISBN’s for each format we will release it in, copyright, LCCN (optional), our desired trim size and print parameters, number of pages, cover art for both print and digital formats, listing summary, and prices. Did I forget anything? Ah yes, reviews and marketing! I’ll touch on that next time.