Self-Publishing: Getting Started

Last Saturday I spent four hours at a local gift shop conducting a book signing. That description probably is glorifying it more than the reality. I sat in the corner of a small shop at a tiny table and talked to potential readers. I gave my sales pitch, weak as they are. I sold five books. I spoke with a lot of people and handed out my bookmark/card. I spent all of the sales and more buying gifts for people from the gift shop.

Yet I consider it a good day because I connected with people.

In these situations, because I am not selling many books or getting much traffic, I do enjoy my talks with people. I can hear their stories. I hear their desires to write or their marvel that anyone can write a book as thick as mine. I hear about their inability to sit and read any longer and how they watch Netflix instead. We talk about other books they like. I tell them mine are good, and what they are like. I give them advice on writing.

And they ask about getting a book published, and sometimes self-publishing, which I can talk a good bit about. More on that coming.

If all I wanted to do is off-load books, I wouldn’t be there. Where would I be?

At home writing another book, following the sage and somewhat mercenary advice of a person like Alessandra Torre. I sat in on her webinar last night and found out what I was doing wrong, which is everything. I don’t plan my books for the market (but based on what I want to write about), I don’t write genre fiction (that much), I don’t write steamy stuff, etc. etc. She has been on the New York Times Bestseller List seven times writing thrillers, romance, and erotica-adjacent books.

She did give some good advice about the books’ description on Amazon (mine had no zing and put me to sleep) and the keywords and categories, so I rewrote and recategorized and re-keyworded. I also took the plunge and did something that is really against my better judgment. I allowed five of the books to be published on Audible with “virtual voice.” In other words, an AI narrator. Audible gives you a bunch of choices in terms of voices, even Southern and British. Some sound more robotic than others. This was free, of course—AI costs nothing. I listened to one of them; not too bad, but I wouldn’t listen to it.

So far, I doubt it meant any sales. But it did seem a step forward.

I am also redesigning (that is, paying someone to redesign) my website.

I may be considered the local expert on self-publishing. I actually taught a class on it (twice) at the college from which I am about to retire. There are a lot of things I do not know about it, particularly the technical aspect and fine points, but I do know the broad outlines.

However, I am determined not to spend money promoting my books. I do not enter contests and I rarely go to conferences. While I will take Allesandra’s advice on writing to market (it makes sense that you write with a paying audience in mind), I’m still going to write what I want to.

That said, my 2023 novel, Sudden Future, has been a huge disappointment. Let me put a plus in here, and explain what I did wrong. My pitch, “It’s about a young man who finds out his estranged mother is dying and wants him to do something he doesn’t want to do.” Now, who in the wide, wide world of sports would want to read that?

Now I’ll say it’s a story of redemption and growth about a young man facing a major challenge. The first chapter of the book is a hook in itself. I need to sell these books! Please check it out.

Sudden Future was not self-published, but so far five of my novels are. What’s that story?

In November 2011 I participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time. I did write 50,000 words, somehow. This was the time that Amazon was starting up its kindle business and print on demand project. I decided to learn by doing and figured out how to get the book on Amazon my own way. I finished the book in early April of 2012 during a horrible bout of flu and published it. It was The Unexpected Christmas Visitors, which is still one of my favorites because it is about refugees.

I actually taught a class in self-publishing twice, which was part technology, part social media marketing, and part creative writing. Also in 2012 I published two more novels with Oak Tara, and then I went underground with fiction writing while I earned a doctorate. In 2015 I published Bringing Abundance Back through Kindle Direct Publishing, and have done better than average with that one because of my pitch and the cover: “It’s like Fried Green Tomatoes” (not really) and the cover has a photograph of an inviting Southern porch (the real version is in Pennsylvania, thought). In 2016, 2019, and 2024 I self-published three more, a series of mysteries set in a small town in Georgia.

The advantages: If you know what you are doing and spend the time, you can put out a nice-looking paperback that will cost about $4.00 per copy, plus shipping. You have total control over the project. There are a lot of options, and Amazon is not the only way to do this: Ingram Spark and Barnes and Noble also have programs. You can order as many as you want.

The disadvantages: There are many.

1. You may be stuck with all the copies. There is no guarantee you will sell books.

2. It will be on more volume on the everlasting pile of really vile and dreadful self-published books.

3. There are lots of companies out there that will “help” you self-publish your book by saying they are publishing it. They are vanity presses and hybrid publishers. BEWARE. The main reason I talk about self-publishing is to warn the unsuspecting about these companies, who will gladly take 10,000 from an elderly lady who wants to write a devotional book and leave her with dozens of copies of a book with an attractive cover and layout but likely not much to say for in content, and she tries to sell them and only her friends buy it because it’s neat that she wrote a book.

4. Everyone wants to write a book. This way, today, you can. That does not mean you can sell them or get people to read them.

5. Self-publishing through Amazon is good for someone who has a platform already and wants a book for back of the room sales or has a ready-made audience. Today, publishers won’t really talk to you if you don’t already have a platform (that is, you are already famous in some way). Publishers are business people; they are not there to support the arts.

Further:

6. For every Hugh Howey (Wool, upon which the TV series Silo is based was originally self-published) there are hundreds of no-names. (Silo is rather different from Wool, by the way, but follows the same lines.)

7. You will want to have lots of betareaders and a helpful proofreader, if not editor, before publishing. You don’t want to use the cliched covers Amazon has in its stock. So you’ll need to get a cover designer. There will be expense if you parcel out some of this work, but you may want to.

8. Many people want their memoirs for their children and grandchildren. I have a better idea: oral history. They can watch you on video. It’s much easier and fun and they are more likely to watch it than to read the book.

All that said, how does one self-publish? Go to Kindle Direct Publishing and read all the information. If you are fairly tech savvy, you can figure it out, although I find the page numbering difficult.

Some basic info.

KDP has lots of Q and A forums. You will have to understand what you want. All my books have been 6 x 9 trade paperbacks, but there are other options in KDP. And you can just do Kindle ebooks, a lot of people do.

I suggest downloading their templates and cutting and pasting your word document into that template. You also can do a PDF but will need to deal with formatting. The template will work but you have to fiddle with it. This is where you might need a more technological person. It can be tedious to make sure it looks the way you want to. All of this is assuming you have edited, edited, proofread proofread had other people proofread.

There are style manuals for fiction. There are things like em and en dashes, the fact that if dialogue by one speaker goes into the next paragraph, then the quotation marks at the end of the first paragraph are left out. Before that, you need to be sure that your dialogue isn’t squeamish in the first place. Let’s not have “She screamed angrily” sorts of dialogue tags. Even “she said angrily” is a bit much. The words she says and the actions around it would show anger without telling it. Adverbs in dialogues tags are very pre-WWI style. Modern fiction focuses on verbs more than adverbs.

If all this is new or makes no sense to you, you are not ready to publish anything.

As you work through the KDP process, it will ask you a number of questions. One is about inputting an ISBN. You can buy a batch of them that you will own or you can let Amazon give you an ASIN number, its own identification. You can go to ISBN services.com or Bowker for more information. I have not bought my own ISBNs. They will cost you something, but then you won’t be stuck with an Amazon one. If you don’t have any idea what an ISBN is, you should not be self-publishing a book, at least not enough to.

You’ll run into something about “bleed” but unless you want photographs to go to

the edge of page, that doesn’t apply. You can have photographs, even color ones, there will just be margins.

You will also have to indicate if you have adult content, write a description (which needs to zing), pick categories for the book and keywords, promise you wrote it without AI (shame on you if you did), and pick the type of paper and color of paper. Then the cover, which can be a lot of work. Then it will allow you to proof it online or order proofs.

Then you get to pick your price, within certain levels, and where you want it distributed, and royalty levels.

Let me clarify that this is not an easy click click click. It’s not at all. It’s going to take you a while.

What is the alternative to self-publishing. I say three things: publish in bits on websites or blogs, enter contests (there are a slew of them, most of them sketchy), do not publish at all, get an agent, or find a small house that is not a hybrid or that is willing to take you on “non-hybrid.” Let’s talk about those.

My publisher is both hybrid and traditional, as are others. Be careful of these; know what you are getting into. For clarification, a traditional publisher will not charge you to publish the book, but you may likely have to buy copies and be responsible for marketing, or most of it. A hybrid publisher will charge you for editing, cover design, etc. as well as copies and marketing. The hybrid helps, for money. The traditional takes most of the risk. As I said, some are both. Just be sure you know what you are doing.

Do you need a lawyer in all this? Well, yes and no. Depends on who you are using to publish the book, and what the book is about. If you are writing an expose of your former employer, you better. Actually, you better just not write the book. If you are writing about a medical procedures or issue and you are not a health professional, be careful. You would have to have lots of good research.

If you are writing a novel that is really a biography or a memoir that names names, yep, you might need a lawyer. Again, why write it? Get your forgiveness or revenge by mature and humane means. If you are writing something anodyne and safe through Amazon, not so much.

On top of that, you need a lawyer who knows about this kind of thing, not just an injury attorney.

This example is not about publishing, but it is relevant. A couple in the town I live in have worked for three years on a documentary about the dye industry. They have lots of experts on their side and the facts, of course, but they also have legal representation because they are saying things that could hurt big companies.

My books are Bible studies and novels with totally fictional folks, so the standard disclaimer at the front is enough. Actually, for Bible studies there is another issue. Unless you are using the King James Version, also called the Authorized Version, you have to get permission to use significant portions of other translations, such as the NASB, NKJV, or NIV. Those are copyrighted.

This is an area you need to look into, overall. A verse here and there just requires a note of which one you used on the back of the title page. But there are limits. For a modern translation for conservative evangelical purposes, you can get the World English Bible from Bible Gateway. It is not copyrighted and is in public domain, so you can use it freely. This was done so that nonprofits can have a version to be freely used online.

If you go to BibleGateway website and look for its list of versions, you will find the copyright information. It tells you what to put on back of the title page and how much you can use. If you are writing about the Bible, it would be inconsistent to violate copyright law!

Now, what about other kinds of books or published material? If you are quoting a song, you need to check the copyright and get permission if it’s the whole thing. If it’s a line, that’s okay; a whole verse, need to get permission. Unless it’s very old, like a hymn from before 1900 or a folk song. Obviously, "Old MacDonald" doesn’t need copyright permission. Renditions of it do, so a recording in a movie is a different matter.

Photographs—oh, my. You cannot just take something off the Internet and put it in your book or cover. Definitely need permission on that. There are stock photo sites like Fivvr you can use. Also wikimedia; I used it recently for a cover. But you have to look and see if it is public domain or free to use without permission. It likely is not.

Best bet, take your own photo or have a friend do so. Or pay people for their work. The Internet has made that harder. But you don’t want someone seeing your book and saying, legitimately, that’s my work and getting a lawyer involved.

Creative Commons is a different issue. Creative Commons is for free use, but the originator can stipulate no use for money. For example, the textbooks we wrote.

All this is to say, do your homework

As to getting an agent, I recommend Query Tracker or conferences. But then do your homework. Who is your book for? Who would want to buy it? What is it like that’s already published? Have three really strong and well edited chapters, at least (minimal, really; it should be done, I suspect). Agents do not, or should not charge you up front. That’s a scam; they only get paid when they sell something, so they have to be selective about who they take on as a client. But if you can get one, that is your most likely way to a larger publishing company.

All that said, I may very well keep self-publishing, because I want to write what I want to write (keeping in mind it has to be good and “hooking”). But I have no delusions about whether I will sell a lot of books.

One of the things Allesandra Torre spoke of that I have done very poorly, as in not at all, is gathering email addresses for sending out announcements. It is likely that is the one avenue I will pursue in the future; I have enough street cred now to do so. How to get names—give aways! I can give away a copy of the latest book in a lottery, that kind of thing.

Marketing matters. Marketing takes up a great deal of time. I have also been told a publicist is needed, but a publicist is an up-front cost. One must decide if writing is a all passion or all business, at some level.