The Many Different Self-Publishing Platforms

Quick book 2 update: I will be publishing around New Years. I don't have an exact date, but this is about 2 or 3 months sooner than my previous target.

As I'm reaching the moment of publication for book 2 of The Corpus Chronicles, I thought I'd share another self-publishing tidbit with you all.

UNDERSTAND THAT CREATESPACE IS NOT A MAGIC BULLET.

It will make your life much easier, trust me.

Most of the self-published authors I talk to, like me, used Amazon Createspace to publish. I chose Createspace after a lot of research. As EOA was my first novel, I needed an extremely user-friendly to get a good footing. I also liked how I could center ebook and paperback distribution into one very well known website. However, there were some downsides I did not know about before I started.

1. First, if you are signing up for Createspace and continue on to Kindle Direct Publishing for ebooks, DO NOT click the button signing you up for KDP Select. The agreement prevents you from having your ebook available anywhere other than Amazon and the royalties they pay you in return are very negligible - for me it was only a couple of dollars a month. You miss out on sales and your book doesn't get as much circulation. I made a stupid rookie mistake. Don't fall for it too.
2. Second, Createspace has a lot of paid services, such as professional cover design and interior layout. This sounds great and all, but Createspace receives a massive amount of orders at a time, and the cover art they produce ends up looking cheap for the exorbitant amount you have to pay them. It is much better to find an illustrator on your own. I'd recommend Kit Foster (and here's a link to my previous post detailing the illustrating process with him). He's a bit pricier than others I've seen, but the amount of time and effort he puts into his work is immediately recognizable. There are other artists that offer ready made covers for around fifty dollars (which is much better than the 200+ dollars Createspace demands). The only down side to these covers is that you probably won't be lucky enough to find something ready made that will immediately capture the essence of your book, but hey, it's worth a look. You could also design your cover yourself, but this is not something I would recommend unless you're an experienced artist/graphic designer, because everyone judges a book based on the cover. Moving on to interior layout/design - again, Createspace offers this service at a very high price. There are other services that will format the interior pages of your book for much cheaper rates. However, after looking into these services, I decided to do it myself. I had to do a lot of research to determine the preferred font/spacing for different books (yes this is a thing and there are a lot of factors such as target age group, genre, length, book dimensions, and plain old personal preference). It wasn't too difficult to do and it came out looking as good as the professionally designed ones. I must warn you though, the Createspace template was a pain to deal with.
3. Third, Createspace is very popular. Consequentially, it is also very saturated with a ton of different titles. It will be hard to get your book seen. It is important to have either a paperback/ebook available on Amazon as it is a good place to centralize reviews, but using a couple other platforms is very helpful to get more exposure. 
4. Lastly, and probably my biggest problem with Createspace, is how hard it is to list an ebook as free on Amazon. Amazon wants to make money, so besides for five day promotions run through KDP Select, you can't list your ebook for free. When I ran my five day promotion, I got hundreds of more downloads than I had ever gotten before, and as a new, independent author, getting your name out there is the most important thing. After that, I wanted to list my book for free for longer to hopefully rake in some reviews, but Amazon would not allow it. However, Amazon does have price match and you can list your ebook as free on another platform and then ask Amazon to price match. Some author friends of mine have been successful with this. I've been trying for months and Amazon still hasn't followed up with any of my requests. It's very hit and miss. 

Those were the big problems I found with Createspace, but there were also many positive aspects, so don't write it off right away. If you know what you are doing going into the process, you can have a much more positive experience, like I am with The Corpus Chronicles Book 2. Learn from the mistakes of others. It's much better than making them yourself.

As a last little note, you don't have to use just one self-publishing platform. Currently, I have EOA up on Amazon and Smashwords, but there are so many others. The more platforms you hit, the greater your circulation will be.

That's all for today. Enjoy, share, comment. 

-Esha 

The Corpus Chronicles Book 2 News

About half an hour ago I put the finishing touches on the first draft of book 2 of the Corpus Chronicles! I know it's been a while, so here are all the updates, and yes, I finally committed to a title.

- Now that the first draft is done, here is my expected timeline:

1. Self editing - through to the end of November (that is if I don't do NaNo this year)
2. Beta readers - I'll probably try and make sure they get back to me by the end of December, but schedules vary. Hopefully work based on their comments will be done by mid January.
3. Copy editing - will aim to be done by end January
4. Cover art! - My favorite part. This will probably take from four to six weeks to finalize, but the process might overlap with some of the final copy editing
5. At some point in here I will have to write a detailed book 3 outline to make sure everything matches up before I send book 2 out. Right now I just have about a page and a half covered with a messy jumble of ideas.

In a previous version of this post, I added a title release, but then I realized I wasn't ready for that kind of commitment.

As you know, schedules have a nasty habit of changing themselves around on a whim, but hopefully Book 2 will be in print very soon.

The awesomeness that is cover art as an indie author

While I was writing EOA, all I could think about was the manuscript itself. During the publication process, all my energy went to my piles of incomprehensible scribbles on sticky notes and the graveyard of old drafts that was becoming my desk. And the formatting? That was a nightmare straight from Hell. As an indie author, when I began the publication process, I was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of crap that publication companies do for traditional authors. I had to pick what the best dimensions for my book were, whether I wanted a matte cover or glossy, and even which shade of white I wanted the paper to be (now that was a hard decision). In one way, deciding the little things was a lot of fun. I got to have complete control over what my book was going to look like, and that was incredible. But then that little nagging worry at the back of my head rained all over my parade - I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

I did plenty of research to make sure things came out right, but there was so much different information floating around that it was extremely difficult to pick out which pieces were right for me. However, the one thing that people did seem to agree on, was that when it comes to cover art, never cheap out. Everyone judges a book by its cover, so if you don't have graphic design experience, bite the bullet, dip into your pocket, and have it done professionally. It doesn't matter how absolutely amazing the work inside is if the cover looks like something a five year old put together on kid pix. Your cover is the first impression in the author-reader relationship, and if you blow a first impression, the chances of a sale aren't very high. If the cover looks cheap, it becomes a bright little red flag with the word amateur pasted over it. If you're confident in your design abilities, then by all means, go ahead and prove me wrong. I've seen a fair few of beautiful author-made covers, but they are far outweighed by the train wrecks.

When it came time for me to find a cover, I scrolled through pages of ready made covers, but, while beautiful, none of them really fit my book. I started to focus on finding an artist, but when I found one with a portfolio I liked, their prices were absurd. But then I found the amazing Kit Foster while scrolling through a very old thread on goodreads (this is his website: http://www.kitfosterdesign.com/Home.aspx). His work is incredible. 

I chose the most expensive package, which was a print+ebook custom cover and began the process. By that point, I had seen so many different images that any ideas I had had initially had become a scrambled mess in my head. I gave Kit almost nothing to go on, and he still managed to put together three very different first drafts for me.

#1:

 #2

 #3

I wasn't to keen on the first two, but I loved the third. After I gave him my ideas, he gave me a new draft which became the final cover.

I think one of the best parts of the cover process was that for once, I wasn't doing the heavy lifting, which is a huge relief for any writer, since heavy lifting is usually all we do. The cover art process was the best part of my self-publishing experience and I can't wait to do it again. The cover is a snapshot of your book, so make sure it lives up to the interior. I couldn't be happier with mine.
-Esha

The side-effects of indie authoring a series

Hey everyone! I know it's been a while since the last time I posted - sorry about that. I've been wrapped up in the madness that is writing Book 2 (which I am glad to say that I finally have a working title that I like for... but I'm not going to say it because, knowing me, it's going to change again in a few weeks :P). So, in the heat of the writing marathon, I've put the old blog to the side a bit which I am not happy about. I think one the main problem was that I was starting to feel really down about the whole writing process while marching along through the endless typing that is book 2.

You see, when I first set out to write EOA, it wasn't nearly as complex of a story as it became. As I outlined, the story evolved tenfold (as stories tend to do), and my original plan of EOA being a stand alone novel was quickly swept away. (Here's the bit where you might not understand everything I'm talking about it you haven't read EOA- I'll do my best to explain the relevance of various names or places from the story. If you have, yay! Keep on reading! If you haven't, you can try to trudge through this bit or skip down a paragraph). In my first outline, the basic structure of the society was the same, but the story was supposed to center on a young woman from the Heart (the slum district) named Juliet Fenn who gets ranked as the First (she basically becomes a very big deal) and tries to use her new position to instigate change in the way the system is run. The book was supposed to be about the political battle that would ensue and the adversity she would face in an effort to make things better for the people she cared about. I had wanted to show the difficulties the people in the Heart faced through flashbacks, but as I was writing, it didn't feel right. That's when Gwendolyn was born in my mind (Juliet's twin sister who stays trapped in the slum districts). As I went on and Gwendolyn began to flourish as a character, I knew that she had to be more than a lense to see the Heart through as changes took place. Her character was independent, feisty, and bullheaded, and the idea of her watching injustices take place without  getting involved didn't seem realistic at all. I created the Fracture (a revolutionary group) purely as a stage for her to showcase her strengths, but I knew that she wouldn't be willing to accept the Fracture's extremist ideals if Juliet's character didn't take a sharp turn away from the political idealist I had originally intended her to be. And once I was sure of that, it became clear that the story wasn't going to fit into one book, so I split up my outline into three and bulked up each piece.

Okay, so if you didn't read the last paragraph, I explained why EOA became the first book of The Corpus Chronicles and not a stand alone novel. Moving on... when I wrote EOA I was in love with the story. I was mesmerized by the world and the different personalities that were developing though the cast. And then I made the rookie author mistake of thinking that everyone else would think so too. I didn't plan to go indie in the beginning. I wanted my name to be on one of those shiny covers on the shelves of every Barnes and Nobles (I mean, come on, who doesn't?) under the protective wing of one of those big name publishing companies.

When I realized that if I wanted to see EOA in print anytime soon, I would have to go it alone, I didn't entirely understand what that meant. I didn't understand the hours of marketing it would take to sell one copy or the difficulty of booking a handful of reviews. When a family member said they didn't fully understand an aspect of the society, it was like a punch in the stomach. The beautiful cover art I was so happy with initially became something I feared, and I would find myself wondering if putting EOA out there had been a mistake. And then I would open the book to check a name or place while getting the wheels of book 2 turning in the beginning and I would fall in love with the the story all over again.

I can't truthfully say I've gotten past those fears. I think it's something natural every artist who shares their work with others faces, just another part of the job. Now I'm in the middle of book 2, and I'm facing a new problem while writing. I had heard other authors saying that writing a series was a long term commitment, and to not get yourself roped into one if you weren't absolutely sure you could handle it. It wasn't that I ignored the advice - I just assumed that I could handle it. (Now this is the bit where all that rambling I've been doing all ties together or so I hope) But what changed since last fall when I wrote the first chapter of EOA shelved it to play with later was publishing it and all those fears that came with seeing the book in print. Writing started to seem like something I had to do instead of something I wanted and liked to do. It wasn't that I lost my love for the story, but more that I had deviated so far from my initial plans. I wasn't traditionally published, and I wasn't going to be until I wrote and published the rest of The Corpus Chronicles and then a new manuscript, which I then would to take through the query process all over again and without the carefree optimism of a novice.

Writing book 2 and finishing the series has become a greater challenge than I ever expected. This is mainly because of my own insecurities about being an indie author and the challenges I face because of it, but, as people tend to do, I've said nothing about the good parts - particularly about how absolutely amazingly fun the entire indie publication process was. I have complete control over the title, the cover art, and I am able to write about out of the box topics and ideas that would not be approved by those big name publishing companies I love so much. I've connected with other indie authors and read amazing work I probably wouldn't have found if I wasn't indie myself. Like anything, indie authoring is full of high and low points, and is up to the author to make sure the bad bits don't overshadow the good, and when you write a series, it's like multiplying all those little good and bad bits, the fear and the fun, by a lot.

As promised, one long overdue, non-proofread ramble.
-Esha

Self-Publishing Help: Ebook pricing

When I started this whole self-publishing adventure, I read a lot of different snippets out there all with varying advice on how to get the most ebook sales. One person said to price your ebook at normal, competitive market rates so it blends in with traditionally published books (which is what I did but keep reading because I learned some more things). Others said to price it at $0.99 or free, while yet other blogs and websites said that doing that screams 'amateur'. But then, of course, there are people like Hugh Howey who made a buttload of money selling $0.99 ebooks after his novel Wool became popular.
I listed mine at $3.99 (I think), which is still cheap for an industry ebook, but it isn't fighting for the bottom of the market either. Over the next week or two, I had about fifty sales, all of which I think were from friends and family. Most of these were in paperback. I think I had maybe 3 ebook sales, and they all were reviewers that I was exchanging reviews with. After the first few days, sales tricked away and inched along at a snail's pace, and I only had five reviews on amazon. I paid for a fancy promotion deals. It didn't do much. Things were not looking good (yes, I realize it had only been a week and a half but I an not a very patient person which probably isn't the best thing for someone in the publishing industry, but at the same time, every second matters to boost up rankings). I enrolled EOA into KDP unlimited mainly because I was out of ideas. It offered two different options - a countdown promotion or a free ebook promotion, so I chose the free ebook promotion which listed my ebook as free for up to five days.
Why I did this: In the beginning, reviews are everything, and there was only so much I could gain from pestering my family. It hasn't been a full day yet, and I have had over 60 downloads, and hopefully those sixty people will give EOA much needed ratings and push it up the amazon book ranks. The main focus for a newly self-published author should be to get your book into as many hands as possible, even if that means not getting a paycheck for a while. If you do it right, the money will come.
-Esha

Review Policy

Currently open for reviews.

READ THE WHOLE POST FOR SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS 

To other self-published/indie authors out there:

We don't have big publishing companies behind us so we need to have each other's backs. That's why I review. Feel free send me inquiries through my contact form. I prefer dystopia/sci-fi/fantasy, memoir, literary fiction, and YA. I love complex, ethnically diverse characters and books that highlight other cultures. However, I will review almost anything. I'm not really a fan of romance unless it is very well done. Please, no erotica or religious books.

My reviews are always honest (1-5 stars). Please include the word count in your request. Requests submitted without word counts attached will be ignored. I reserve the right to deny requests. I will only answer requests if I am interested in the title.

Right now, due to time constraints and backlog, I am only looking to swap reviews with other authors - that is, an honest review for an honest review. Please let me know if you are interested.

One final piece, I know the review process is stressful, so here's something to help with that. I found this on twitter and it speaks to my soul:

Self-publishing help: books on consignment

Being a self-published author is a double-edged sword. There are the good parts, the complete creative control over content, cover, and title, the higher royalties, and the speed, but there are also a lot of disadvantages when a big publishing company doesn't have your back. For me, the bit that I didn't like the most was that I wasn't going to be able to see copies in big name bookstores. But, if you're a self-published author, there are other ways to achieve that dream of seeing people flipping through your title on an actual, non-virtual shelf.

You've probably heard success stories like Amanda Hocking's books or the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon. Shelf space is money to big book stores, so they have to be confident your book will sell before they will stock it. The bigger you grow your platform, the more likely they are to respond positively to a pitch. 

Until then, there's consignment. A lot of independent bookstores will be willing to take books on consignment (this means that they will keep a few copies on shelves for a certain period of time in the local author section, but you don't get paid unless they sell the books. You are also completely responsible for collecting payment and picking up remaining books. The profits are usually split 60/40 in favor of the author, but read through the consignment contract carefully and make sure they give you a copy). Today I brought five copies to a local bookstore with a super cool name (Pegasus books) and gave them my little pitch, and they agreed to take three copies, and it they sell, the store might request more copies. 

I spent the rest of my time pawing through the fantasy/sci-fi used book section waiting for my books to be shelved, but they were pretty busy and it didn't seem like that was happening anytime soon. 

Anyways... I'm off to try and get The Essence of Aptitude on more shelves. Hope this helps!

-Esha