From Storyist to e-Stores: The Journey of The Deviant

[orrenm]

I thought that this tale might be interesting for some of you, so here it is. This will probably be a bit of a long post, so please forgive me. I'm sure I'll also ramble a bit. I tend to do that. That's why I named my own blog "A Writer's Ramblings." I hope I don't get too self-indulgent; my goal is to inform, and hopefully encourage.

 

I should briefly preface my post by explaining that I didn't write my novel The Deviant with the intention to publish it myself. I have eight technical books that I have written or co-written published through a large publisher, and I appreciate all the steps required to turn a manuscript into a truly professional product, and then market it. I don't have a chip on my shoulder against the mainstream publishers at all, I definitely would have been happy to accept a publishing contract for my novel had one been offered.

 

However, unlike the world of technical publications, in mainstream fiction agents are required. And like so many novelists, I sent out scores and scores of queries. I got some interested responses, some requests for more and more of the manuscript, and some nice comments, but ultimately, no agents were willing to represent my novel. One piece of advice I got repeatedly from agents who went as far as to communicate back and forth with me either via email or the telephone was that there were just too many vampire/urban fantasy novels right now, and I'd be better off writing a novel in on a subject that wasn't so oversaturated. I had a science fiction novel that I'd wanted to write, so after I had more rejections than I wanted to count, I assumed that they were right, and it was time to lick my wounds and write my science fiction novel.

 

But wait a minute...just because they won't do anything with my novel, that doesn't mean I can't do something with it. So as I wrote my science fiction novel, I decided to go ahead and put my urban fantasy/paranormal romance/vampire novel out there myself.

 

They say self-publishing is easy, but I would add a caveat to that. Self-publishing is easy if you are not concerned with a truly professional product. But I wanted The Deviant to both read well (meaning, not just the writing, but the editing had to be up to professional standards) and present well. It should look at home on a bookshelf alongside other professionally published novels. It's very easy and inexpensive to have a friend edit your book, then just release just an eBook, or to export a PDF and use Lulu or CreateSpace to produce a very generic looking Print-on-Demand (POD) book that gives you a few design options but nothing major. But being "in the biz," that wasn't going to cut it for me. My novel was going to be a completely professional novel. Nobody—nobody—was going to be able to look at it and tell that it wasn't a bookstore purchased novel.

 

That meant I couldn't simply be an author. I had to become a publisher. So that's what I did. I have long had a business ("Darkling Ventures," named after an early rock band of mine) that did all my artistic productions, from music to technical writing. So now I would create a new division, Darkling Books, that would be a small publisher, with the express aim of publishing my own books.

 

So Darkling Books assembled the same team of professionals that would be assembled by a large publisher. I got professional editors (different editors for different drafts) to edit the novel. The editors worked in Microsoft Word, with all the edits done in Word Track Changes. So I exported the manuscript from Storyist once it was finished, and did the rest of the work in Word. I'd generally load all the final Word docs back into Storyist just to have it all in one place.

 

When the manuscript was finished, I got a professional layout artist to do a gorgeous internal layout. He took the final Word document and using InDesign, got the kerning exactly right for the dimensions of the two books (paperback and hardcover), with facing page numbers and a different design for first pages of chapters, etc. Really wonderful stuff.

 

Then I got a cover artist who does web, CD, and book art/covers to do the cover. I also purchased a block of 10 ISBNs (the unique identifiers used on books) since I knew that to publish The Deviant as a paperback, hardcover, and eBook, I'd need three (and if you're going to buy more than 1, you might as well buy 10; I think it cost nearly as much for 3 as it does for 10).

 

I found a well-regarded POD company that works solely with small publishers—in fact, they work with some up-to-medium sized genre publishers as well: Lightning Source. I signed up my business with them, and followed their instructions for delivering PDFs of the interior and cover art for both the paperback and hardcover editions. Lightning Source is a great partner—they take what they do very seriously. In fact, my cover artist (Barry Wood) mentioned that in his years of doing offset print work, LS had some of the most rigid and specific guidelines—but the result is that you get a professional product, assuming you've hired (or are yourself) a professional who can do it. And LS held my hand when I needed them to. LS also feeds your books to all the major online stores (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and so on) as well as listing you in the Ingram catalog, so you can be ordered by other stores (both online retail and brick and mortar).

 

I would highly recommend working with them, if you go this route. It's a more expensive route, but the money is very small if you plan on selling a number of books. Whereas Lulu or CreateSpace may not ask for much (or anything) upfront, you end up with (what I considered) a generic product that's actually quite expensive per-book. With LS, there are up-front costs but the per-book costs are cheaper, meaning you can make more money. I believe that my costs were $100 for the hardcover and $70 for the paperback, and that included setup, putting it into their system, and a proof copy—and if there were any errors in printing, they gave me an opportunity to report them and additional proof copies would be sent to me at no extra charge. $170 is hardly a kingly sum. And the way LS works is it lets you set both the retail price and the wholesale discount, so you'll know exactly how much you'll be earning, while still allowing retailers a margin to discount your books if they want to.

 

For the eBooks, I went directly to the major retailers (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple) and directly uploaded my files. For the Kindle book, I directly uploaded the .mobi file straight from Storyist. But for the ePubs, I used the free Google project Sigl, which is absolutely amazing and a must-have for anyone publishing an ePub. It's a true WYSIWYG editor for ePubs. So in my case, the "front matter" (credits, masthead, dedication, etc.) weren't properly showing up as separate pages, so I was able to edit it in Sigl in minutes and have the ePub ready to go. And this, of course, was free. I thought about going through an aggregator like BookBaby or Smashwords, but ultimately I didn't want to give up any royalties or control.

 

Of course, the major publishers have marketing departments; when you're a small publisher (or single author) you're doing the marketing yourself. That I'll save for another post.

 

Thanks for reading,

Orren

[marguerite]

Orren, thank you for sharing this. It sounds like quite an endeavor!

 

As far as advertising goes, do you know about Steve Windwalker's Kindle Nation Daily (with its offshoot Planet iPad)? Both sites let you sign up as a daily sponsor (I think it costs around $75, but I don't know if you pay per site or whether the fee applies to both), in which case you get listed front and center on the blog. The Planet iPad site is more general in terms of formats; Kindle Nation Daily has a much larger audience, including people who subscribe to it for electronic delivery. Both sites offer one relatively low-cost way to make your e-books known to a wide audience. Given Amazon's royalty scheme, you could cover the advertising fee with even a small blip in sales.

Best,

M

[orrenm]

Thanks M! No, I didn't know about that. I appreciate the heads up!

 

So far my "advertising" has consisted of letting my social networks know the novel is available, writing to the various urban fantasy blogs I know about and offering them free books to review, and getting a few contests and the like started. That and asking those who liked the book to write positive reviews on Amazon, iBookstore, Goodreads, wherever. I'll be trying some advertising and the like in the near future, and I appreciate your pointing the Kindle Nation Daily out to me!

 

Orren

[phase3player]

Orren, you said "I got a professional layout artist to do a gorgeous internal layout." can you please share that person's name and contact info?

 

Thanks soooo very much for the info above. I'd never heard of Lightning Source and they look great.

 

- Robert