Image by j/k_lolz, via Flickr

That leaves me with quite the conundrum. Anyone who reads this blog regularly or follows me on Twitter or Facebook is probably familiar with my support of indie publishing and authors taking charge of their own careers. You’re probably also familiar with the fact that I’ve already self-published my own non-fiction book, Internet Famous, and have my own publishing company set up.

When I decided to self-publish Internet Famous, I had very set reasons for doing so. First, I wanted to get the book out quickly. I didn’t want to spend six months to a year finding an agent, then another six months or more finding a publisher, and then another year or more getting the book into print. The subject matter was timely, and I was afraid that if I waited that long, there could be a dozen books on virtually the same topic out in the meantime. The other big reason was that non-fiction has an easier time in the self-pub world, as it’s often easier to reach your niche.

So self-publishing Internet Famous was kind of a no-brainer. And while sales have been much slower than I’d hoped for, I consider it an ongoing project, and one that will soon be seeing some big changes. But more on that in another post.

Back to fiction. I love the indie novelist/author/publisher movement. I think it’s wonderful and empowering and a great thing for both writers and readers. There’s so much possibility there, so much room for growth, and I want desperately to be there, to contribute to it, and to challenge the conventions the publishing industry has held dear for generations.

But, and this is a big “but”, I wonder if I wouldn’t be better served by a mainstream publisher. That was a very difficult statement for me to type. As I’ve said, I love indie. I love everything about it. It speaks to the control freak that lurks not-so-deep within me. (Unless you’re an agent reading this; then I’m not a control freak at all and am the easiest writer to work with in the world. Promise.) And my book isn’t particularly niche-focused. It’s contemporary women’s fiction. Pretty mainstream, pretty commercial.

The other drawback to indie publishing for me at this point is time. I don’t have a whole lot of it. I have full-time blogging/editing/writing commitments already, none of which I want to give up. I have one self-published book out there that needs further attention. And I also have a lack of access to large numbers of book buyers. I live in a small town, I’m not particularly involved in my community, and there aren’t any real cities nearby. While I do have a large number of people who are familiar with my blogging (even a few fans, I think, which makes me smile every time I think of them), they’re not really my target market for this book.

So, I think I’ve developed a plan. I’m going to try the traditional route with this one first. I’ve created a list of roughly forty agents who I both admire and who I think might be a good fit for this book. I’m going to start querying them in the next couple of weeks, now that my rewrites are basically done. If I get no bites, then I’ll go through every publisher I think might be interested. If I still have no bites (which will be really depressing, btw), then I’m going to self publish.

What I’m hoping is that by the time I’ve gone through all the agents/publishers/whatever, I’ll have my next women’s fiction book finished (this would be either the sixth or seventh). And then I’ll release this one, the fifth one, for free to build a platform for the sixth. I’m honestly hoping I’ll find an agent, land a decent publishing deal, and start a long career as a novelist. I’m also not holding my breath and realize it’s a tough market out there.

So, while I will continue to support my indie friends, I’m gonna sell out and try my hand at mainstream for the moment. I may rejoin their ranks before long, and I’m sure at some point I’ll have a novel or two that don’t fit into the mainstream and will better fit the indie mindset.

I’m working on international distribution at the moment. The issue I’m running into is shipping costs. For international priority mail, the cost is about $13. But what I’m seeing is that first class mail is nearly that much to most areas (with the exception of Canada) and it can take twice as long. Can international orders be done through Amazon.com? Or through Barnes & Noble’s US website? If anyone knows the answer to this, please let me know!

At some point in the next couple weeks I plan on writing a post outlining the entire publishing process. Until then, feel free to ask any questions you might have in the comments here. And thanks to everyone for their support!

Photo by nate steiner, via Flickr

All of those are perfectly acceptable options. But what if you want to do something different? What if you look at the options above and your brain just screams, “BORING!”

I have two more options for you: binding your own books (paperback or hardcover) or writing a “blovel”—a blog novel.

Hamish MacDonald was the first person I heard about who was doing his own book binding for his novels. He currently offers four books for sale, all hand-bound by him. He also offers a series of podcasts for the DIY novelist. It’s definitely worth checking out.

Kvasir House Press is another great resource for learning bookbinding and for other information related to self publishing. The owner, Chad Muller, offers an excellent two-part tutorial on how to bind your own books. The directions are excellent, and I honestly can’t wait to try them out myself.

No Media Kings offers a great comparison of self-publishing options that includes instructions for creating your own book press and for binding your own books. Definitely worth a read, though be aware that not all of the information in the self-pub options is accurate (mainly the assertion that POD books are only sold at retail price, which is false).

The other viable option for publishing your own books is to go the ebook route. But instead of going through SmashWords or the Kindle store, why not publish your novel on a blog? Serialized novels used to be quite popular in newspapers and magazines decades ago. Why not due the same thing on your blog? With one chapter released per week (or day), it gives readers a chance to come back to your blog on a regular basis. If you pair this with releasing a print copy of your book, you’re likely to see more sales than you would otherwise. And don’t forget to put a donation button on your blog so readers can support your work!

JungleG has a wonderful post titled “Procrastinating on that novel? Write a Blovel instead.” It gives a basic outline of what their approach to a blovel would be, though there’s plenty of room for customization.

We CAN! Promote Our Books has a great article on experimenting with the whole blovel idea (this time with a YA novel written entirely in poetry).

This idea has become so popular that there’s now a site dedicated entirely to providing authors with a space to write their blovel: Blovel Spot.

I’m sure there are plenty of other unique ways authors are self publishing their books. If you know of any, please share them in the comments below.

Publishing Renaissance had a great post about how indie authors need to take some cues from the indie music and movie industries, titled Finding Our Defiance. Mentioned in that article is an article by Henry Baum titled The Last Stigmas of Self-Publishing, which I thought deserved it’s own mention here.

Wil Wheaton was featured in an article in The Washington Times on self-publishing, Self-publishing finds commercial niche in digital age. Definitely worth a read.

I had another article on authors who tweet (this time it’s nonfiction authors) go up on Mashable today. Go check it out and please retweet it if you find it interesting.

And, last but not least, Nathan Bransford has his usual roundup of even more publishing news on his blog.

Hope everyone in the U.S. has a great Memorial Day weekend! And I hope everyone not in the U.S. has a wonderful regular weekend!

Photo by happysweetmama, via Flickr

According to a post on the blog How Publishing Really Works about sales statistics for self published books, the average POD book sells less than 200 copies. The article appears to be well-researched and I don’t doubt the numbers. But the numbers don’t tell the whole story. There are a variety of reasons why self published books don’t sell more than 200 copies, and being self published isn’t one of them.

Here are the main reasons I believe so many self published books don’t sell more than a hundred or so copies:

#1: The book was intended for a very small niche audience.
A lot of self published books are published with the intention of selling a few copies to family and friends. These might be family or personal histories or books about a local event. The authors generally don’t publish them with the intention of selling many copies or making any money; they simply want those who are interested to be able to purchase the book if they choose. These books can often be picked out by their lack of an ISBN.

#2: The author never did any marketing.
This is probably the most common reason why self published books don’t sell. The author writes their book, does some editing, uploads it to the POD service of their choice, and that’s it. They might order a few copies to give to family and friends, and there’s almost definitely a copy displayed prominently on their bookshelf. But they never bother to market it. They don’t take advantage of the Amazon book pages. They don’t have a blog or even a basic website. They don’t engage with people who might be interested. They don’t send out review copies or contact bookstores to persuade them to carry the book. They do nothing once the book has been printed.

#3: The book is very low quality.
This is the one that is mostly responsible for self publishing’s negative image. Someone writes a book. They show it to their mom, or their spouse, or their best friend, and that person says it’s great. The may try submitting to traditional agents or publishers for awhile but when that proves fruitless, they turn to self publishing. They never ask themselves why their book wasn’t picked up by a publisher or an agent. They don’t bother with trying to get an independent critique by someone who doesn’t know them and doesn’t feel like they have to be “nice”. They format their book according to the free guide their POD printer of choice offers, sometimes disregarding the information on good font choices or consistency or margins. They make a cover using free clip-art that came on their computer or a photo they took themselves. They send it off and then wait for the rave reviews and orders to start coming in. They might market more heavily than the authors in #2, but their product just won’t hold up.

If you’re considering self publishing, don’t fall into the traps of #2 and #3. Realize that self publishing is a business. It takes work. You need to know how to market yourself and your book. And make sure before you put your book out there that some independent, critical eyes have looked it over a few times. Hire an editor if you can afford it. Hire a copyeditor or at least a proofreader (or find a friend whose grammar and spelling is good enough to do it for you). Even if your spelling and grammar are impeccable, you need a third party to double check things. Make sure you’re putting out the best product you possibly can. Study books in your genre or niche and see how yours stacks up against them.

And most importantly, look beyond the numbers in statistics and think about the methodology. While the numbers might be sound, they may not mean what you think they do.

CNN had some great coverage on web and Print on Demand publishing.

The Guardian covered the #queryfail and #agentfail extravaganzas, and the comments section brought out a lot of great information on self publishing.

My suggestion for one of the best writing how-to books, Between the Lines by Jessica Morrell, was featured on Editor Unleashed in their “The 10 Best Books for Writers” post (it’s the 4th one down). Other books on the list include Stephen King’s On Writing and Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell, both of which I also own.

Writing Forward had a couple of excellent articles this week: Writing on the Go and How Poetry Writing Improves All Other Writing. I wrote poetry in high school and at this point I’m glad I lost all those notebooks (or burned them…whatever).

Nathan Bransford has a great rundown of other publishing news for the week, as he does every week.

This isn’t exaclty news this week, since it was published last August, but it’s still worth reading. Novelist Paulo Coelho finds the perfect alchemy of print & digital from the Guardian talks about how using the Internet and even releasing books for free online boosts sales.

Photo by stephmcg, via Flickr

First things first. Self publishing in not the end of the world. There are plenty of reasons to self publish that have nothing to do with being a last resort or not being able to find a traditional publisher. So, without further ado, here are my reasons for actively choosing to self publishing.

#1: Timing is Everything.
The book I’m writing deals with social media and Internet marketing. These are both very timely topics right now, but who knows what will happen in the next couple of years? That’s about how long it would take for the book to hit bookstore shelves if I went with a traditional publisher (and that’s a best-case scenario). Plus, in those two years, a dozen other books could be released on the specific topic I’m writing about. At present, there isn’t a single book with the same angle I’m coming from. Being the first in the marketplace is going to be a big advantage.

#2: A Particularly Suitable Niche.
Social media and Internet marketing make a perfect niche for self publishing. And because of the unique approach I’m taking, this book is well suited to getting plenty of attention from leaders in social media. It’s also in an excellent position to have viral spin-off content, some of which I’m planning for pre-launch publicity.

#3: I’m an Entrepreneur at Heart.
I love business. I love starting businesses. I love running businesses. And self publishing is a business. It takes marketing, organizing, planning, and coordinating. While writing is art, publishing is more like science. Self publishing this book gets me back into the world of business, something I’ve been out of, for the most part, for more than a year. I miss it sometimes and am looking forward to getting back into the thick of it.

#4: I Have the Technical Know-How to Do Almost Everything Myself.
This is one of the biggest factors for me. If I had to pay someone else to do my layout, cover design, proofreading, and website design, I probably wouldn’t be doing this. But I have a background in magazine publishing and am an experienced copy editor. I’m proficient with Photoshop and have done graphic design for years, so designing a cover isn’t a big deal. I’ve got friends and family who are willing to double check my proofreading and copyediting. The only thing I’ll need to pay for is the actual printing and someone to do my taxes.

#5: Self Publishing Non-Fiction is Different Than Self Publishing Fiction.
Self publishing a novel is much more difficult than a nonfiction book. Niche nonfiction has somewhat of a built-in market. Fiction doesn’t. That’s not to say you can’t be successful self publishing fiction, but it’s a lot harder. You have to take a lot more time to build up a readership than you do with nonfiction. And while plenty of people will purchase a nonfiction book online, selling an unknown novel through the Internet is much more difficult. A lot of readers buy their fiction in brick-and-mortar bookstores, which are harder to get placement in if you’re self published. And even if they buy novels online, they are usually doing so on the recommendation of a friend or based on a review, also harder to get if you’re self published.

Those are my primary reasons for self publishing this book. I’m sure other people have other reasons for going it alone. As an aside, I’m also interested to see what the possibilities are for profit in this business. While publishing overall is a very low-margin business, I have a feeling that with the right niche product and a bootstrap mindset, it could be very profitable. I may prove this thesis wrong in the course of this project. Either way, I’ll be posting about it.

Photo by deanj, via Flickr

I’ve just finished setting up the Adobe InDesign template for the chapters of the nonfiction book I’m working on. When I worked in magazine publishing, we used a mix of InDesign and Quark for our page layouts. But if you’re using Photoshop for your cover or any other part of your book’s design, using InDesign has the advantage of being able to pull in native .psd files. It’s also been about a year since I’ve used either and I’m finding InDesign easier to get used to using again (probably because I use Photoshop on a regular basis).

When laying out a book, there are a lot of stylistic choices to take into account. Here are a few basics to remember:

• Serif fonts (like Times New Roman or Garamond) are easier to read in print than sans serif fonts (like Arial and Helvetica). But serif fonts work great for chapter headings, title pages, and the like, where the sizing is significantly larger.
• The spacing between lines (leading) should be around 1.5 lines (I used an 11 point type size, so my line spacing is 17 points). Play around with it until it looks about the same as other books, or until it’s easy for you to read (you might want to print out a couple of pages to check it in actual size).
• Your paragraph indents should be equivalent to your line spacing (17 point line spacing means a 17 point indent).
• Margins should be a minimum of .5″ on the outside edges and .75″ on the inside edge. I ended up using .5″ on the top and bottom, .75″ on the other outside edge, and 1″ on the inside edge.

So here are step-by-step instructions for how I set up my chapter templates:

Start by opening a new document. Make sure you specify your page size here (I’m using a 6″x9″ book size) and your margins (InDesign uses picas and points, but if you insert the inch symbol ” after your size, it will automatically convert it).

Once your document opens, go to your A-Master page. Insert automatic page numbering here, as well as any guides you want for your chapter headers, etc. I renamed this master page to “Chap Beginning”. This becomes the master page for the first page of each chapter.

Create a second master page template and title it “Chap Body”. Insert guides for where your text boxes will start. Also insert automatic page numbering.

Once your master pages are set up, go back into your actual pages. On the first page (which should be using the A master document as a template), add text boxes for your chapter title and your chapter body. I put my chapter title about halfway down the page, right-aligned, in a 40 point sans serif type. I also aligned it to the bottom of the text box instead of the top or center. This way, whether my chapter title is one line or three, there will be a uniform amount of space between the heading and the body copy.

Once you have the font and spacing the way you want it for the heading, create a paragraph style from it. This way, whenever you add a new chapter, you can just apply this style to the heading without having to redo the settings each time.

In the text box for your chapter body, create two sample paragraphs (I just copied a couple of paragraphs from my book’s Word document for this, though you could also elect to use InDesign’s “Fill with Placeholder Text” option, located under the “Type” menu). You want to create a drop cap for the first paragraph. To do this, go to the Paragraph toolbar (Window -> Type & Tables -> Paragraph). Click the little arrow in the upper right corner to access the options menu and click on the “Drop Caps and Nested Styles” option. From there, you can select how many characters you want in the drop cap (1 is standard) and how many lines you want it to cover (I chose 3). Set the rest of the paragraph in the font and spacing you’d like (at this point I’m using Palatino, 11 point, with 17 point line spacing, though I may change this later). Don’t forget to set your paragraph alignment to justified (don’t set an indent for this first paragraph). Once this is done, set another paragraph style and name is something like “First Paragraph”.

Go to your next paragraph and set the text and spacing to the same as your first paragraph style, but without the drop cap and with a first line indent equivalent to your line spacing (17 points in my case). Reset this paragraph style to your standard “Body” style.

Next, add a two-page spread and label it with your B master document as a template (you can just drag the B master pages down to your layout box to do this). Add a text box for the body on each page. Apply the “Body” style to each of these.

Then, add a text box next to your page numbers on each page. These are for your headers. On the left-hand page should be the title of your book. On the right-hand page you should put the chapter title. When you create each chapter, you can put these in your master documents if you choose, but for now I’ve kept them in the actual page templates. It’s an easy cut-and-paste operation if you want to move them later.

I’ve set my headers to use the same font as my chapter titles, but in a 10 point size. They are aligned in the center of the page, though you could also align them with the inside margin. Create a style called “headers” or something similar for these. Keep your page numbers aligned with the outside margin. Make sure you set your page numbers to the same font and size as your headers.

The last style you’ll need is for your chapter subheadings. I used the same font as my chapter titles, but in a 24 point size instead of 40 points. I also removed the first line indentation so my headings are left-aligned. You might choose to center align your subheads or align them with the outside edge of the page. If you align your subheadings to the outside edge, you’ll need to create two separate styles, one for right-hand pages and one for left-hand pages. Once your subheadings are set up, create a style from these (I named mine “Chapter Subheading”).

If you need additional styles for photo captions or pull quotes, you can add those now. At this point I’m not using them because I’m not that far along with the actual book. When the text is finished and I start laying it out, I may add these in.

The final step is to set your text boxes to flow text from one to the next. I’ve found the easiest way to do this is to overfill the text boxes and then just click on the little red “+” that shows up in the lower-right-hand part of the text box. Then you just click on the next text box and watch as the overflowing text appears (it’s not nearly as dramatic as it sounds).

When all of your styles are set, go to File -> Save As and change the type of file to “InDesign Template”. Name your file and save it (I named mine “Chapter Template” so I can keep it seperate from my front matter templates and index templates).

That’s all there is to it! I now have a chapter template at the ready for my completed chapters. The onlly thing I have yet to figure out is formatting bulleted lists in InDesign. I’m considering dropping them entirely just so I don’t have to worry about them! (Or, if you know how to format them, including making the second line align with the beginning of the first line and not the bullet point, please post in the comments below and save me hours of mindless searching to find the answer. Thanks in advance to anyone who knows!)

Photo by David Masters, via Flickr

I estimated finding an agent would take a minimum of six months, and then finding a publisher would likely take another six (that’s assuming I could even find an agent, and that they could in turn find a publisher—both are far from definite). At that point I’d finish writing the book, another three months. Then it would go to an editor, who would look it over and decide what needed improvement, and then I would edit again, taking another month or two. Hopefully, by then it would be in good enough shape to progress on to line edits and then a copyeditor, taking another few months. All told, I realized I was looking at a minimum of probably two years before my book would ever see the light of day.

TWO YEARS!

Now, without going into too much detail, the subject I’m writing about is likely to change quite a bit in the next two years. And for all I know, there could be a handful of publishers out there with books like mine already in the works that could be realeased months before mine. I could end up releasing a book into a fully-saturated market. Not exactly what I wanted to do.

So I started looking into self-publishing. And the more I read, the more convinced I became that the type of book I’m working on would be very well-suited to going it on my own and becoming an indie publisher. Here are some of the reasons:

• It’s in a very specific niche but still has a very large market (up to 80% of teenagers are likely to be interested, along with plenty of adults)
• It’s particularly well-suited to online, viral marketing campaigns
• It’s not going to be a particularly long book (~250 pages), keeping production costs down
• It’s particularly suited for word of mouth promotion
• The topic and format are likely to get more publicity in particularly appropriate niche sites

I realize that’s all a bit criptic, but I’m still not quite ready to disclose what the topic is. The marketing campaign for the book will be launching in about a month, so everything will be disclosed then.

Now, there are a lot of self-publishing options available to the indie publisher.

There are subsidy presses and vanity presses that sometimes cover part of the expenses of publishing (sometimes the author pays for all of it). Many of these companies are misleading at best in their approach to authors, implying that their imprints are just as respected as the traditional, big publishing houses (they’re not).

There are self-publishing services such as CreateSpace, Blurb, and Lulu (among tons of others) where you pay a setup fee, and either provide editing, copyediting, design and all the other things that go along with producing a book yourself, or pay sometimes exorbitant fees to them to perform those functions. Often, you can provide your own ISBN, meaning that you are your own publisher, not CreateSpace or Lulu or Blurb. Otherwise, they’ll provide you with an ISBN (either for free or a small fee) and they will be listed as your publisher. The biggest drawback to these companies is that the per-book price is often quite high, making it almost impossible to make a profit if you want to remain competitive.

I’ve decided to go it completely alone, without anyone there to hold my hand other than the customer service people at the vendors I’ve chosen. I’ll be setting up my own publishing company (Untime Press, and yes, I have a great story about the origin of the name) and ordering at least one ISBN for said company (probably just one at this point to keep costs down). I’m going to go through Lightning Source for my printing needs (they’re the largest POD printer in the world and a subsidiary of Ingram, one of the largest book distributors in the world). I’ll be doing all of my own layout and design (I have a background in magazine layout and design) and all of my own promotion and marketing (hopefully with some help from a few friends).

It’s a big undertaking. There are tons of things to plan, to organize, to manage, all while I’m writing the book. There are self-imposed deadlines to meet. There are all of my regular writing responsibilities to keep track of, two blogs to manage, and another big website project I’m working on, plus all of my usual household and family responsibilities. I’m thinking it’s probably going to be overload for my Moleskine planner and might require me to look into some online time management apps (luckily, I’ve written at least four articles that should help me in my search for the perfect app).

In the end, though, I think it’s going to be well worth it. This is the kind of project that could take off with a life of its own (I’m hoping it does). I’ll be blogging the process of writing the book and self-publishing it here and you’ll be the first to know when the book’s website is launched later this month.

If anyone has self-publishing tips, non-fiction writing tips, or any other advice for what I’m doing, please post in the comments below!