Self-publishing continued...Your responses to my post. What works. What doesn't...and the cost of self-publishing.

Recently, I posted about my blog focus for the year. Posting more about Australia was hailed as good stuff by many. 

So, these are my conclusions about blogging in 2017:

• My posts will have more of an Aussie flavour, as when I started out in 2008 with my travel blog.
• I'll do some travelogue-style posts. I've been asked for more info on Tasmania, so I might start there. Tasmania is interesting. I lived there for nearly 2 years, so I'll be talking about a state where I have personal knowledge. Well, actually, I've travelled every state and territory of Australia, so I will be sharing first-hand experience.

But this week it's different. For the IWSG, I posted about self-publishing. The comments were interesting, and I am sharing some here hoping they might help someone. I'm not going to link them all, that takes too long, but here is the link to the post so you can see the links yourself. They're in chronological order except for the final one...

F Scott Fitzgerald, a self-published author

• 'You've had some of your work on Wattpad. What's your take on that? - D.G. Hudson
• I'm no expert on Wattpad. It has worked for some writers who publish their chapter/s and seek feedback. I'm not prioritising it at the moment, and I've heard there's some hacking of authors' work, but I don't really know if that's true. And an acquaintance found 75,000 readers for her romance, but still can't get a publisher interested, so what's that about?
• 'Self-publishing is a "Learn As You Grow" path. It is simply a marketplace that is too over-crowded to stand out unless you are a Name. Persistence and Evolving are the only things that will see us through. The more books you self-publish, the bigger your backlist will be should you ever gain fans. That thought is what keeps me going.' Roland Yeomans.
• I'd be more comforted if I knew Roland was happy with his sales, having published over 20 books. I'm the tortoise, Roland. You're the hare. 
• Raimey Gallant has a template for marketing your book (keeping track of street teams and everything else) on her blog today for IWSG. And BadRedHeadMedia has a lot of info on building your author brand (for that all-important name recognition). Ronel Janse Van Vuuren
• Very interesting. Check it out.
• 'How about doing an additional recipe collection relating to each of your books - Tuscan, Parisian ... then you could add to that ... French, Italian etc refer to the place/ happening in the book ... ?'  Hilary Melton-Butcher.
• I love this idea. Do you?
• 'Self-publishing demands all your time and energy when you decide to go that route.' - Pat Garcia
• 'I have a whole book of ideas and there are so many more new ones available now. Ask yourself - who is your target reader? Where do those people hang out? Now, find a way to put yourself in front of them, via a book club, a conference, articles for websites and blogs, fan sites, etc.' L Diane Wolfe
• '...we stay with Amazon and KU and KDP etc. because that's where pretty much *all* my sales come from.' - Pepper Words
• I've read that 75% of all books are sold via Amazon and I haven't bothered formatting for the rest, but am looking into Draft2Digital who do all that for you in exchange for 15% of your royalties -- oh, goody, just heard on the weekend that an actual Amazon office is coming to Australia. I wonder what that's all about? If it leads to lower prices (you wouldn't believe how much extra we have to pay compared to our US friends!), I'm happy.
• 'As you know Denise, marketing comes easy for me. I help authors market their books. And I also upload for other authors, so I do know some authors are making good money from self publishing.' - Nas Dean
• Yes, Nas and others like Mason Canyon provide an editing/marketing service. Let me know if you do! I think the cost runs over $300, but I'm open to correction. You can't always book these services as they're very busy. Not many self-pubbed authors can afford these services. But it definitely widens the scope if you hate self-promotion.
• 'A lot of those statements you made can also be applied to traditional publishing too. Which, if I'm honest, is kinda depressing.' Lynda Young
• Yep. I'd heard that traditional publishers don't help much with marketing. You have to convince them you have a marketing plan before they accept your manuscript. *chews thumb*
• 'If you join Payoneer, they provide you with a US bank account that you can give Amazon, which makes royalties *SO* much easier. And I use it myself, so I know it works. Misha Gericke.
• Whoops. Then I remembered I'd signed up for Payoneer and forgot why. Doh!!
• 'I’m on the Writer Unboxed Twitter team and my duty is to scour the internet for information on promotion. I post links on both indie and traditional promotion under #WUPromo. This isn’t intended as a plug, but there’s a lot of good information there,' VR Barkowski
• I love Writer Unboxed. Must check out this twitter feed. Sounds good.
• 'It's not that I don't want to share publishing/marketing tips, it's that I haven't found anything that works. Nada. - Lexa Cain
• That is SO DEPRESSING!!
• 'While I have read many good works that were self-published, I'm disappointed by the number that are sloppy. People who rush the process and don't have their work properly edited. I'm slogging through one now.' Faraway Eyes.
• This is also depressing. Many of the self-pubbed books on my Kindle I've read 6% and can't go on...I like to read really, really, good stories and aspire to write that way, too. Maybe I'll never get there, but it's a good goal.
• 'I'll let you know how long it takes me to recoup the cost of editing, formatting, and design. Hmm...' - Yolanda Renee.
• This is the thing. It's not 'free' to self-publish like some people think. If you do it right (pay experts for different kinds of editing - structural, copy editing and so on, then there's formatting and a professional cover at a minimum), you're looking at $3,000+. You might also hire someone to write your blurb, do illustrations etc. And then there's Print on Demand. Traditional publishing, if you can be so lucky to hook such an animal, helps defray these substantial costs.

Lisa Genova, who self-published Still Alice, then got picked up by traditional publishers.
I just finished reading her Love Anthony. Best read for some time.

So there it is, peeps! I've learned a few more things about self-publishing by throwing it open to discussion last week. I'm hoping more of you will respond to this post and the comments of various bloggers.

• After reading this and/or my previous post, are you still planning on self-publishing?

See you next week!!

And if you think this post is helpful, please hit the social media buttons! Much appreciated! (I'm going to be posting about social media SOON!)

And here's another plug for Write...Edit...Publish. Please think about joining us. A new challenge comes out every second month. Check out the schedule at the top of my sidebar. There might be something that catches your imagination. You can sign up in my sidebar. Also, you can delete your link if you run out of time/inspiration.

THIS MONTH, FEBRUARY...Back of the Drawer (not your average Valentine's challenge). Tell us your interpretation in a poem, a flash fiction piece of 1000 words or less, a non-fiction piece detailing your personal experience or someone else's experience, write a script, draw your dreams, or post a photograph or a photo essay. The genre is up to you. The artistic choice is completely yours.

#IWSG post -- What I've learned through my self-publishing experiment.

Howdy people!

Thanks to Alex J Cavanaugh and his awesome co-hosts for February 1: Misha Gericke, LK Hill, Juneta Key, Christy and Joylene Buter!

The IWSG question of the month is: How has being a writer changed your experience as a reader?

Short answer: It's made me aware of all the 'so-called' rules of writing that are broken constantly by famous authors. But also, it's helped me to learn plot and structure which is hard to get just by reading the theory. Not that I'm there yet, but I've improved.

Long Answer: Go to Write...Edit...Publish where Pat Garcia has a great guest post on Critical Reading.

But today I want to come clean about what I see in the tricky world of publishing, in particular, self-publishing.  

WHAT I'VE LEARNED ABOUT SELF-PUBLISHING and selling books. (Not much, but I'm not overly insecure about it, just realistic.)

I formatted a book for Amazon just to test how it all worked. It stands alongside other compilations which include a story of mine. I received some great reviews for Under the Tuscan Moon, my vampire fantasy, but haven't sold many copies. I'll definitely be trying traditional publishing for my Paris novel.

This is my self-pub story...(not an episode of Law and Order).

• Formatting on Amazon is not hard if you follow their intricate instructions, just tedious. I always planned to hire someone to format for me, but as I said, I wanted to try it for myself at least once. Tick. :-)
• Amazon is very helpful, answering emails quickly and doing what they can to help you which is opposite to what I've read on some blogs. Tick. :-)
• Their 75% royalties only eventuate if you price your book high enough. :-(
• Setting up a bank account for receiving those non-existent royalties is a right royal pain. No doubt it's easier if you live in the US. I really think Amazon is for American citizens, so Donald Trump will most likely leave it alone. :-(
• You don't sell any/many books unless you make the first few pages of Amazon searches and how do you do that? A lot of spamming I'd wager. Or friendly bloggers could get together and all buy each other's books on the same day. :-(
• Self-publishing is difficult for people who hate self promotion or are basically lazy or don't care less if they sell a book or not. It takes a lot of effort to crack the market as exhausted authors will tell you. :-(
• Self-publishing works best for people who don't need sleep or are already traditionally-published best-selling authors (name recognition). :-(

Okay, IWSG-ers, if you have a moment, would you answer one/some/all of these questions for me? 

• Do you have any help to offer re selling books that  you're willing to share?
• Are you happy with Amazon if you're self-published? Do you sell most of your books through them? 
• Do you have a marketing plan?
• Do you see social media as an important marketing tool? (A future post).

Thanks for coming by. I hope to see you again!

While you're here, I'll do a plug for Write...Edit...Publish who announce their new challenge today. Please think about joining us if you haven't before or if you haven't for awhile. A new challenge comes out every second month. Check out the schedule at the top of my sidebar. There might be something that catches your imagination.

THIS MONTH, Back of the Drawer (not your average Valentine's challenge). Tell us your interpretation in a poem, a flash fiction piece of 1000 words or less, a non-fiction piece detailing your personal experience or someone else's experience, write a script, draw your dreams, or post a photograph or a photo essay. The genre is up to you. The artistic choice is completely yours.

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#InsecureWritersSupportGroup, #IWSG post -- me? insecure?

Hello everyone!

Wow, November already? The month I volunteered to be an IWSG co-host and help Alex J Cavanaugh with the commenting. I'm #16 on the list so I go way back with IWSG!  Please enjoy reading the posts from far and wide across the globe, and comment in a helpful, supportive, empathetic way. My other co-hosts are: 
Tyrean Martinson , Karen Walker  and Stephen Tremp. 

I hope, unlike me, you're not insecure about anything this month, although most writers I meet have some form of insecurity, particularly about their published works. And IWSG is the forum to chat about what's getting you down, or contrarily, what's gee-ing you up!

I'm going to keep this post blissfully short--in respect of those of you who should be writing their NaNo novels rather than blogging...and well, I should be doing the same. 

So...my insecurity today--well, I finally self-published my paranormal romance in time for Halloween. I did not submit to traditional publishers as I wanted to experience the self-publishing model myself and learned...it's damned hard work. I ended up doing most of the work myself even though I hadn't planned on it! Oh boy, I really did find out what those formatters and cover artists get paid for! So, okay, now it's up...and I may submit traditionally after all.

Amazon publishes 1,000,000 books a year, so how do you get noticed? You can't unless you find a way to shoot to the first few pages. I've got a few creative ideas I'm going to try to do just that. We're all looking for something new, aren't we? 

I've been blogging since 2007. I've hosted bloghops to encourage writers, I've bought blogger books, reviewed blogger books, hosted bloggers on my blog (can you believe I hosted Alex as part of my Publication Party series before he released his first novel, CassaStar?) Whoa, takes me back. But in this cover-reveal-book-launch-guest-post-weary environment, it will become increasingly difficult to find bloggers to host new authors. We need new promo ideas, don't you agree?

My novella is Book One in a series. I'll be using NaNoWriMo to complete the next book...and maybe the third as well. High hopes! No harm in being an optimist!

And I've gone over to the dark side in more ways than one. After deleting 3 Word Press blogs due to the level of difficulty in building them, I've finally persevered due to the large influx of WP bloggers to WEP. So my new WP blog is up and limping along. More to do yet. But if you're a WP blogger and have trouble commenting on my blogspot blog, go to: Denise Covey, Cafe Writer.

Some IWSG notes:

We are still trying to get the IWSG site listed as one of Writers’ Digest’s Top 100 Best Websites for Writers! Please email them atwritersdigest@fwmedia.com, subject line 101 Websites, and suggest the IWSG - http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/

Don’t forget we have a Facebook group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/IWSG13/

If you'd like to read my novella for FREE and review it, please leave a comment with your email address or email me and a copy will wing its way to you.

If you'd like to host me on your blog, please tell me in the comments or email me.  

Go HERE to read more IWSG posts.

• Are you a published writer, either traditional or self published?
• Have you been inspired or disappointed with the publishing experience?
• Have you any tips for newbie published writers?
• What, in particular, are you insecure about with your published books? Or are you blissfully secure?

Amazon.com

Amazon.uk

Amazon.au

MINI BLURB (courtesy of Michael di Gesu, that man with a golden pen!)

Within the velvety Tuscan sky, a harvest moon glows like liquid amber. Mysterious shadows seep noxiously through the unsuspecting forest, preying on the vulnerable, whose blinded gaze mocks their senses.

A man.

A woman.

Forever locked in a sensual embrace...

How times have changed...in the publishing world! From Daphne du Maurier to today.

Hi everyone!

I've been busy with the River City Writers Conference, (a few of you 'liked' some of the trillion facebook posts), a single day dedicated to writing workshops, networking, launching/buying books, chatting with editors and publishers...and eating and drinking and being merry!

Members of Vannguard Writers Group @ the conference - 

Raelene, myself, Charmaine and Nas. 

(Nas is an honorary member of our Brisbane group)

We had some great presenters - Helene Young, pilot and author of a series of excellent romantic suspense single titles set in Queensland's wild, empty north where surveillance is key - Karen Tyrrell, author of 'resilience' books...2 adult (on overcoming mental illness) and 2 for children...one especially successful title Stop the Bully has gained her entree into schools and libraries - Antony Puttee, who runs an uber successful self-publishing one-stop-shop, Book Cover Cafe, who ran an awesome session on how to get your self-published book out there and how to get high Amazon sales - then our very own Nas Dean, helped me judge the flash fiction competition which ran in conjunction with the conference. Nas then presented her session on editing.

Nas Dean presenting on editing in the modern age

Nas' session on editing had some of the died-in-the-wool old-school publishing houses (who sent representatives to the conference to receive pitches from writers) screaming in frustration, claiming publishers did all the things the presenters had been claiming all day that writers did -- editing, promoting, book covers etc. This caused much merriment from those who had already told their story of the hard road of promotion even after being contracted to a publishing house. Obviously these guys have no idea how hard writers are doing it before submitting manuscripts in the faint hope of being picked up, and how little it is perceived that the traditional publishers do after buying rights to your book...(I'm no expert on this, having never submitted anything to an agent or publishing house!)

CLASSIC BOOKS Vs MODERN BOOKS

...Which brings me to some of the changes I see when comparing classic books to modern books. I read a lot of stories of how the old publishing houses used to treat favoured authors--the army of editors who went through the novel after submission, the pampering, the promotion etc. Don't many of us think these oldies were just pure genius? Well, it took a lot of help to polish that genius.

Today, many traditionally-published authors and self-published authors are doing it all/mostly by themselves, some by choice and some because they can't afford/don't see the need for even one editor. (My  opinion is everyone needs an editor, and most savvy readers can tell when this important step has been skipped). I've shared this before, but Margaret Mitchell (author of Gone With the Wind) re-wrote her first chapter 60 times. So these oldies but goodies still did the hard yards themselves before they were touted as overnight/on-going successes.


Along with several other books, I'm currently reading Daphne du Maurier's Frenchman's Creek, (1941). (Well, it does have French... in the title). This book is a classic passionate romance/adventure, one of her most popular novels -- on the best-selling list for thirty years!! But the beautiful Lady Dona and her French pirate adventurer would have been severely edited today.

We modern writers get slapped on the wrist if we carelessly 'head hop' even once in our stories - du Maurier and plenty of her contemporaries did this as a matter of course, and even modern best-sellling author Nora Roberts, a great favourite of mine, does it A LOT, especially in her romances.

Dialogue has changed too. Now we go through our manuscripts with a magnifying glass trying to find/slay most, if not all, dialogue tags, turning them into actions instead.

"Don't touch that!" Jack said to Kiddly Bop. ... becomes...

Jack ran across the room. "Don't touch that!" Kiddly Bop snatched his hand away from the grinding machine just before his arm was lopped off.

(I used the exclamation mark to upset all the 'no exclamation marks' modern rule!! as I think it is quite probable that Jack yelled in this situation.) 

But on p.62 of Frenchman's Creek I found this dialogue...exactly reproduced:

  'William, you are a genius,' she [Lady Dona] said, and he bowed, permitting himself a smile. 'I am pleased you are glad, my lady.'
  'How do I look? Will your master approve?' she asked him, turning on her heels. 'He will make no comment, my lady,' replied the servant, 'but I do not think he will be entirely indifferent to your appearance.'

So...if you don't know what's odd about the above, I'll leave you blissfully unaware. But I'll just say it caused me to be 'taken out of the story' which is the criticism I receive from critique partners whose job it is to make sure we don't commit such writerly sins.

And of course I bought a book - Delia Strange's

FEMME. I'm quite liking the sci-fi romance genre.

• Methinks it was somewhat easier to be an author in the olden days. What do you think? (And I don't mean -- of course it's not, it's a lot easier today to be an author as you can just self publish). I'm talking about the old style, the third person onmisicient POV etc. as compared to today's more stringent rules about everything.

Nas snapped us heading out to breakfast. 

Yes, the last bite of Winter was in the air.

Had a great weekend with Nas and Rajesh staying with us... and attending the River City Writers Conference. How was your weekend?

Frustrated with self-publishing? Shocking facts! Things are starting to look up, starting with Mardibooks. And Michael Di Gesu cover reveal news!

I used Grammarly to grammar check this post, because I could end up with egg on my face if you detect any mistakes lol! Go on...find one...

Most of us have done it -- picked up free e-books, bought 99c e-books, bought blogger friends' self-pubbed books -- sometimes a worthwhile read, often not. I don't think self-publishing quite works yet, even though it's been around for a long time. Due to market saturation, there is a quest to find REALLY GOOD SELF-PUBLISHED BOOKS. How do we work through the maze of books riddled with bad grammar, punctuation, plot holes, unsympathetic characters, and get to the good stuff?

I like to read -- I read over 200 books a year. I review books, but only the ones I can say nice things about.

Shocking fact number one! 
I'm not a big fan of e-books ((claps hands over red face))). Would still prefer to prop a print book onto my knees late into the night and read, Luddite that I am. But e-books on the kindle or phone do have a place in my life -- they are great to fill in any downtime throughout my busy day. But...

Shocking fact number two!
To be cruelly honest, most of the e-books I start, I don't get past Chapter 1. If I do keep reading, I often put it down before the finish as I just lose interest in a shaky plot or bad/no editing or characters I couldn't care less about. Even poor formatting puts me off. I know I'm not alone.

Shocking fact number three!
Our best-selling classic authors throughout history used a truckload of editors. Margaret Mitchell, beloved author of Gone With the Wind re-wrote her Chapter 1 sixty times in longhand, gulp. So...what makes us think we can do it all by ourselves, or with the help of our family or friends who won't like to tell us our story sucks? In self-pub forums you learn a lot about attitude. One beauty was from an author who said she writes her first draft and doesn't have time to waste editing. If an editor buys it, it's their job to fix it. Hmm. Wonder if she has editors knocking at her door? At the very least, I'd like to see a bright badge on e-books I buy which proclaims: "EDITED BY..."

I've discussed this problem with other writers/authors, and many of them share my opinion. The self-published amongst my friends use multiple beta readers, CPs, paid professional editors and book cover gurus. Costs them about $1300 to produce an e-book. Then...the promo begins. 

Not-so-- Shocking fact number four!
Authors hate self-promotion. Readers hate self-promotion.

Self promotion is not loved by anyone, I'm sure, well, maybe by a few. However, how can you sell your book when there are thousands of new books up on Amazon et al each year unless you promote, promote, promote? Even if you're a debut author with a publishing house, you won't get much help with promotion and have to find your own way to tell people it's out there. Sadly, many authors think self-promotion means drowning their followers on social media in countless twitter hashtags about their book, countless facebook blasts, fb 'like me' requests...these just annoy, annoy, annoy when our twitter and facebook feeds contain little else other than author promotions, sometimes running one after another. And most of these authors make it clear it's all about them, nothing reciprocal about it.

I read a great post by Anne R Allen this week who calls this self promo Twitter-Fritter and Facebook-Fail.

Shocking fact number five!
Readers now know we can't trust reviews, so there goes that 'Get 10 Reviews and you'll sell tons of books' good old standby. I, along with most other readers, want to have some excellent e-books recommended to me so I can actually finish them. And if I ever go the self-pub route, I want to do it properly.

And hello, happy fact...I feel a ripple of hope.

IS THIS THE WAY FORWARD FOR SELF-PUBLISHED NOVELISTS?

A forward-looking publisher is Mardibooks. Like regular imprints, it only accepts mss with commercial potential. It does the usual editing and pre-press work and puts up the result on Amazon and Kobo without a fee. It covers its overheads by charging for the production of an e-book or paperback on a cost-plus basis. Mardibook authors then market each others’ work collectively on their own social platforms. Whereas familiar services like Lulu and CreateSpace deal with authors one-to-one, Mardibooks claims to create a ‘cross marketing’ platform: one to many.

I like the sound of this. Is this a viable model for a global collective of the future?

Then there's self-publishers' review sites. They review and endorse selected books.

B.R.A.G. Medallion looks good.

Compulsion Reads also has possibilities

Nash Black for mystery and ghost tales has an awesome website

There's always Indie sites out there, polishing their swords, ready for a good fight. Here's one I follow...

Indies Unlimited Direct from their website: 'We are at the beginning of a technological revolution in how books are written, published, marketed, purchased, and read. This site is dedicated to the independent authors, publishers, reviewers and readers who are on the cutting edge of that technological revolution.' At this stage, I am pretty impressed with what I've seen on this well-set up site.

These are just some I have discovered. There must be many more. I am yet to test their reviews, but maybe some of you have already. If so, tell us about it.

I am indebted to Write to Done for the inspiration and some information in this post. Go here to read the full post.

***
We all know what a crucial marketing tool is the cover!!! What a lot of work needs to go into this to create that most important first impression.

And here is the BEST news! Beloved blogger, the gym-honed Michael Di Gesu, has illustrated a cover for Siv Maria Ottem. They will reveal this wonderful work of art on Monday July 29. I'm a town crier ringing the bell - 'Don't miss this!'

I loved Michael's cover reveals during the A-Z. They were INSANE to use one of his favourite words! I'm not going to try to emulate his talent here. 

So, lucky Siv. Her book is due for publication in October. Swing by both Michael's and Siv's blogs on Monday and give them the old ooh aah!

I just hope, selfishly, that this won't result in an explosion of cover requests for Michael. That would mean Michael would have less time to swap biscotti recipes with me, swap manuscripts, swap travel stories, swap positive mantras for future publication...what a hell that would be for me!! But, on second thoughts, go for it, send Michael your requests for a cover and fall into line.

• What is your e-book experience as a reader or an author?
• Would you value a site where you could make a selection of great e-books, well edited?
• Can you add to my list of potential sites to de-clutter the e-book universe?
• Don't forget to visit Michael and Siv on Monday.