Greetings all, I have just finished my manuscript and I plan on publishing through Amazon. What should I do now? I have already gone through and edited several drafts. Now I’m at the part where I’m ready to pay for any expenses related to cover art, editors, ISBN’s etc. For anyone who has gone through this process before, what do you recommend I get done first before I make any mistakes as I have not yet self published anything. Thanks for any advice! ~ Al
Glad to hear you've done a few rounds of revisions and edits, a lot of people call a manuscript done at draft 1. Have you considered starting a thread in the beta-readers section, see if you can get a few people to read over it? Or maybe you've already done that?
Yes, I’ve done quite a lot. And I think I’ve been taking a little too long on this one particular manuscript so that’s why I’m planning on going the self publishing route with this one. What do you recommend I do first? Should I find someone to do the cover art or should I go ahead and buy the ISBN? Also, where would I go to purchase one, would it be on the amazon page?
What? Well... I don't know that! (Flies off the bridge into the bottomless gorge with a diminishing howl). Hopefully somebody who knows can pop in and help.
I have looked into self-publishing, but there are members who have extensive practical experience so I shan't offer my amateur findings, however for my part I think you should go down this route because you think it's the best for you not because of the time it's taken to finish the manuscript?
I do think this is the best option for me right now. I’m just trying to figure out where to start so that I could get this done. Thanks for your response.
I've never done self-publishing either but I do know that covers are extremely important. It's the first thing people see when they pick up your book. And there's a reason why the saying "Don't judge a book by its cover" exists. Lots of good books that have bad covers exist. And last I heard, Amazon offers free ISBNs if you do a print version with them (not just Kindle). But I read this a while ago so not sure its still true. Yeah we've got some really experienced self-published members here so they'll be able to advice you further. One of them did say that self-publishing is hard because you have to do it just right if you want it to be worth it, so don't make any rushed moves. Out of curiosity, what kind of book is it? What's the genre, themes, and target audience? It's useful to have that info.
Cool - I tend to agree; I have a good friend who has been trade-published since day 1, made his living through writing, has a dozen or so trade-published works to his name but would self-publish if he started again. If you're happy with the piece then I guess look at cover art - commission sites like fiverr, pre-made sites like http://www.selfpubbookcovers.com/, or even consider AI generated images? Perhaps get AI to generate something you like and commission an artist to tweak it? Then have a good look at the Amazon kindle pages - last time I looked they had style guides for page size etc. and in-house software for formatting as kindle files, you just uploaded the document, or there are proprietary tools like Calibre which will output as .mobi which is supported on Kindle, and then consider your marketing strategy. There have been quite a few threads on here about that, well worth a search. Then just do it and become famous. (that's the bit I haven't done yet...)
I agree, rushing would not be very wise. It’s a novel, about 440 pages. Dark fantasy. I had to cut a lot out of it and edited a crap ton because when I started it, my skills weren’t on the same par as they are now. That’s what took so long to get it finished. Thanks for your response.
I would love to go the traditional route at some point but I would rather do that when I’m more familiar with the publishing process. I took too long with this one. I finally got it looking good so yeah Amazon print on demand would probably be most suitable. Thanks for your response. I’ll definitely check those websites out right now. One more question though, if you know more or less about this. When you publish through amazon, how would the royalties work? I’m sure they take most of the funds and we get 20%, right?
Edit: I just went on Amazon publishing (APub) and it says it’s invitation only and would not let me create an account or use my original Amazon account. Does anyone know where to go for those who haven’t published through Amazon yet?
Not sure of the royalties numbers, but I seem to remember you get more if you sign up to let them have exclusive access and enroll in --<whatever it's called when you get paid per page impression>--
I have self-published through Amazon Kindle. I felt it was the best choice for my first novel, nine years ago. My reasoning was, after I published it I could make corrections , and I did that multiple times. Later readers pointed out errors and I would change them, but I finally had to get a professional edit to clean it up. After that learning curve, readers have praised my novels for the clean editing. That being said, self publishing is a good way to go if you don’t have the confidence to use a traditional publishing. One more thing is … get professional editing and then go through it yourself. I use Fiverr for editing.
I do not suggest this. AI iamges cannot be copywritten and also, it's a controversial topic. By having an AI cover you could potentially limit your audience and cost yourself support from others in the industry. Fiver is also a crapshoot unless you know the person or know people who have worked with them. Not only because of quality issues but there are fiver folks who will simply steal other cover designers' work and give it to you, along with use photos they don't have the rights to use, and other complications. They aren't all like this but if you are new and don't really know what to look for you could get a bad business deal. What I suggest doing now, if you haven't already, is learning everything there is to know about "passive marketing". That will help you when determining what sort of cover to make, the blurb/book description, the keywords, and etc. You want your book to be packaged so that you are effectively sharing with readers your genre and niches/tropes.
Could you recommend any sites where I can find a good cover art? Also, this question might not be relevant but would I need a bank account to make a book on Amazon? Or will a prepaid card/PayPal work?
I believe the only way to get paid is direct deposit to a bank account. I'm not familiar with dark fantasy cover designers so I don't have any recommendations. In the front of books, in the copyright section, usually the cover designer/artist is noted. So if you go to amazon and find some comparable books that have covers you like, use the look inside feature to check out the copyright page and make a list of names/businesses to look into.
There is a site I used several years ago, that was for gig artists. You posted a description of what you are looking for, then got several samples to choose from, and bought what you liked best. Can't remember the site name, sorry.
Update: I went ahead and found an artist on Fiverr for my cover work. I’m in the process of buying the ISBN’s. Now I have a question about this. On Bowker, it gives me an option to buy 10 ISBN’s, one singular ISBN, and other options like one ISBN and one barcode. Since I’m publishing on Amazon kindle, I only intend on selling a paperback. I would only one ISBN right? Or will it automatically make me sell a book as a digital version too? Also, what are some benefits of buying a barcode that I won’t already have with my ISBN?
Amazon provides a free ASIN (Amazon version of ISBN) for ebooks and a free ISBN for paperbacks and hardbacks. All publishing places do as far as I'm aware (Barnes & Noble, Ingram Spark, Smashwords). I'd suggest going into your kdp dashboard and poking around a little. There are several pages involved in the process of creating a book. If you start the process of creating a book in there it's not public/published until you hit submit on the final page and you can save it as a draft.
