by Joelle Steele
I love the publishing industry, and I’ve been in that industry since the early 1970s. I was a periodicals publisher starting in 1983, and that was when I first started self-publishing some of my own books about horticulture and face and ear identification.
Self-publishing and indie publishing are exactly the same as publishing. Self-publishing just means you are publishing the books you write. It’s a complex job that requires a considerable amount of skill and money to do it right, even if you use some of the services that have sprung up over the years to serve the needs of indie publishers.
The first thing you need to think about is the writing. No matter how well you write, plan to spend money on a good content editor, not a grammatical editor. Any competent writer should not require a grammatical editor, but if you’re only doing one book and you don’t write well, you will also need to invest in a grammatical editor. But a content editor is the most important. I never publish anything without a content editor overseeing my work. I used to be a content editor, but editing your own work is not the same thing. You need that second set of eyes to ensure the quality of your work.
Once your manuscript is complete and edited, you need to think about who is going to print it. The printer will provide specs for the cover: front, back, and spine (as well as for the pages). I look at covers of books in the library to find some inspiration. I do my own graphic design, so I don’t have to pay to have a cover done. Cover design can be very expensive or very reasonable. It all depends on who does it. I have seen some gorgeous covers done by students, so try not to get sucked into taking out a second mortgage for your cover.
I do my own book formatting (typesetting). I have typesetting software (QuarkXPress and InDesign) so this is something I don’t hire out. I occasionally do typesetting for others, so I know how long it takes to typeset a book. Novels are the cheapest because there are no illustrations. A short novel of about 200 pages takes about 4 hours. Illustrated non-fiction can take longer depending on how many illustrations. I just finished typesetting my latest 250-page, heavily illustrated book – 228 illustrations – and it took me 80 hours, which includes creating some of the graphics and putting the photos into the correct file type and size. If someone has me typeset their book and their graphics are not sized correctly or are RGB .jpgs, I end up having to do that work as well, so be sure that you get your images ready or be prepared to pay someone else to do that too.
Until very recently, I used to publish my novels in print (paperback, perfect bind), ebook, and audiobook formats, and my non-fiction in print and occasionally in ebook format. But nowadays I have been doing mostly fiction in ebook formats, mobi and epub.
Non-fiction sells better in print. Novels can go either way. I am lucky to live only 35 miles away from a book printer, Gorham Printing, in Centralia, Washington. So, I can go pick up my books and that saves on shipping, which is quite expensive since books are so heavy. Most printing these days is digital, and you can save a lot of money if your book is a size that does not require large size sheets that are then cut down to an odd size. I always opt for 5.5″w x 8.5″h, as that is an 8-1/2″ x 11″ sheet of paper. For my larger books, I go with the 8-1/2″ x 11″ size. I always pick the house brand of paper for both covers and pages. It has always worked just great no matter who my printer was. The more books you have printed, the cheaper the cost per book, but don’t go crazy on your first print run. Keep it down to about 200 copies that you can send out for review.
Before your typesetter starts work on your book, they should work closely with your printer to obtain all the correct measurements for your cover (front and back) and your pages, so that when the typesetting is done, the typesetter can output the file into the correct PDF format. Unless your printer dictates otherwise, your images should be 300 dpi resolution .tif files, saved as grayscale if they are all black and white, or as CMYK if they are color.
Many people immediately make their novels in ebook format. But when you do, please try not to rely exclusively on Amazon’s Kindle or “mobi” format. Get your book into the epub format too. Epub is the format used by every other ebook seller on the planet except Amazon. I have the Barnes & Noble and Kindle aps on my tablet so that I can read both formats without being limited to one device or the other.
You can create a Kindle ebook at amazon.com from a Word file that has bookmarks and hyperlinks in it. If you want to create your ebook in epub and all other available ebook formats, you can do this free at smashwords.com which will give you instructions on how to prepare your manuscript to do it, will then convert it to all the ebook formats, distribute your ebook worldwide, and pay you royalties.
I also used to publish my novels as audiobooks, but I don’t do that anymore. I used to hire a narrator and he created the files to make an Audible audiobook. I have worked with other narrators in the past and, in general, I usually ended up paying for the same number of hours that it actually took to read the book aloud. For my shorter novels that averaged about 200 pages, that usually came out to about 6 to 8 hours billed at whatever the narrator’s rate is. I didn’t hire the likes of a Peter Coyote or Morgan Freeman to narrate my books, but there are quite a few unknowns or lesser-known actors who also narrate books, so listen around until you find one whose voice matches your story and whose rates match your wallet. If you have words, phrases, names, etc., that need to be pronounced a certain way, note that in the copy of the manuscript you give to the narrator. Your narrator should send you the first chapter when it’s done so that you can listen to it and see if it sounds the way you want it to. Do not be afraid to tell the narrator that you want them to read it a little differently, and be sure to clearly explain what you want.
Self-publishing is a complex job, and it’s not for everyone, but it’s also a fun job for people like me, so it might be your cup of tea as well.
