Welcome back!
Last month we talked about the major physical differences between my first poetry book, Just a Thought, and my new book, Emotional Ramblings. I covered the size, interior and cover of each book. If you missed it, head here to give it a read.
Today we're covering the differences in the publishing process I took for each book. This is where the BIGGEST differences between the books lie.
Just a Thought was published with the help of publishing company, Xlibris.
Whereas Emotional Ramblings is being self-published solely by myself- literally the only thing I've outsourced was the cover.
A couple of things to note:
There is a good 8 years between books. This means a) a lot of the publishing world may have changed between now and when I first started this journey and b) I have learned a lot and changed my mind about a lot, just because 8 years have passed
I made a LOT of mistakes back then because a) I didn't know what I was doing and b) I didn't do enough research. I highly recommend you do your own research because it is YOUR journey, YOUR book, and YOUR choices you will have to live with, in the end.
For the sake of these posts, I will call my choices back then "mistakes" but I actually DON'T regret them. I'm a firm believer in learning from every experience, and I learned a LOT by doing things the "wrong" way. While I am not proud of a lot of the choices I made back then, I believe that I made them, I learnt from them, and now I apply new knowledge to ensure I create better books in the future.
I will leave the link for Xlibris here and the review I posted last month here for you come to your own conclusions. Remember: I DO NOT REGRET working with them, but I have decided to do things differently going forward.
Just a Thought:
Just a Thought was my "What If" project. The idea was "if I ever get enough poems together I'll try to publish a book." It was more about seeing if I could do it, than doing it well.
So, it should come as no surprise to hear that when I did try, I was underprepared, and barely fazed, about the publishing process.
I didn't know:
- how to format a book
- the importance of a cover and how to go about designing one
- the difference between traditional and self-publishing
- what front and back matter was
- the process for ISBNs and barcodes
(and probably a lot more).
Based on a quick search I discovered a trend that traditional publishers didn't work with debut authors often, and very rarely for poetry. (My interpretation at the time. I didn't even know that agents existed at this time!)
We found a couple of options that essentially charged you to do the formatting, cover, front and back matter, pull together some marketing material (business cards, bookmarks and posters) and organise the ISBNs etc. This seemed like a great idea- because I had no idea how to do any of that stuff- but it was too expensive.
After putting my email into Xlibris' site so they'd send me an info PDF, they called me about my publishing goals. I told the lady that I couldn't afford it and that was that. Then a couple of days later I got another phone call about a sale they were having. I took up the opportunity, eager to get my words into book form.
What I did:
- Provided the MS
- Provided the About the Author and a short blurb
- Drafted a quick image on Microsoft Publisher- to be "edited"- for the cover
What they did:
(pretty much everything else)
- Formatting for paperback and ebook
- ISBNs
- Marketing material
- Tweaked my image ever so slightly to make it less grainy and more like an actual cover image.
They served to do exactly what I needed: they did everything I didn't know how to do, and well and truly faster than I would have done it.
But, obviously, if I'm doing things differently this time, there has to be a reason. So let's look at the pros and cons...
Pros:
- They were time efficient
- I didn't have to research how to do everything. (Keep in mind, we had extremely poor internet back then. Even for 2012. We lived in a weird black spot that saw no cell reception for a 1km radius around our house. Google maps only showed a blurry spot. The quick research of 2020 would have taken me months, if not years, back then.)
- Try became have when I held my book in my hands.
- I owned the rights to all intellectual material. i.e. the original MS, the unformatted back matter, the title, the draft I designed for the cover.
Cons:
- The publishing package I chose was approximately $600-$700 (I can't remember exact figures.)
- Purchasing copies of my own books to sell was extra (I had to get a loan from my family, as the publishing cost wiped me out.)
- I didn't get a say in the price set for the book.
- I never really loved the cover. It was ok, but the way they described the process made it sound like they would take a small idea and make it something amazing- but they just tidied up what I gave them.
- I didn't learn anything about the publishing process. This meant that for years I still felt intimidated by the idea of writing and publishing. I had a book out in the world, but I didn't want to call myself an author because I felt like a massive fraud that actually knew very little about the process.
- Xlibris had US and AUS accounts and I could never keep track of where my book was, what my logins were or how to view my stuff.
- I never saw a cent of royalties. Let me repeat that. I never saw a CENT of royalties. I don't know if that was because it wasn't selling enough, or I didn't have the right login details, or something else entirely, but I never made any money through Xlibris. I sold some of the books I purchased myself, but never received a payment from Xlibris- and I know at least a couple of people bought it online. I couldn't even figure out how to get a proper quarterly report.
- Xlibris boasted about their marketing. What I received was a small handful of marketing materials, and then constant phone calls about their "marketing deals". As I had already spent everything I had on publishing, I didn't have the money to pay for more marketing materials, or for them to "feature" me at their conferences or in a newsletter or whatever the deal was that time.
- I insisted that they email me rather than call- since my reception was so bad- but they didn't listen. It took years for the bulk of the calls to die down, but even still I received calls rather than emails. It wasn't until I was enquiring about the termination process, and I reiterated that I preferred email, that they finally stopped. (That said, since beginning the process of publishing Emotional Ramblings, I have gotten a couple of missed calls from them again.)
- I never owned the rights to any material they created or bought. i.e. the formatted MS, edited cover, back and front matter including copyright page (imagine that- I owned the copyright to my poems, but not to the copyright page!), ISBN, marketing material or ebook. (I can sell the paperback copies I currently hold because I purchased them.)
Emotional Ramblings:
On the other hand, Emotional Ramblings is the start of a series. Unlike my "what if" project, which was a one-off to see "if I could", ER is the first in a line of poetry books I plan to publish over the years. Now, I know I can, I want to, and I will write, edit, format and publish poetry books every 1-2 years. (If all goes well.)
With that in mind, it only makes sense that I put in the work and do it well, but most importantly, myself.
After a few years of watching YouTube videos, reading up on the process and just soaking up the excitement, I've decided to self-publish, tackling most of it on my own.
It's not all roses, and I still have a LOT to learn, but I am so happy with my choice so far.
Let's look at what I'm doing myself and what I'm outsourcing...
What I did:
- draft MS
- formatting for paperback and ebook
- front and back matter, including copyright page, title page, ISBN, and dedication- which I never even got asked to do before.
- sourcing and liaising with a cover designer
- social media marketing- I rarely did this for JAT- including giveaway and street team
- website - a store will go up at some stage, but hasn't made it there yet.
- uploading formatted files to KDP
- setting ebook up for preorder
- setting price and royalty rate
What others have done:
- cover design
- bookkeeping/taxes (I'm giving it a crack so far, but it may later be taken to an accountant).
Some of the pros and cons for ER might be pretty obvious, but let's have a look at them, shall we...
Pros:
- I own the rights/copyright to EVERYTHING. Well, except the cover, which was done by the amazing Mandi Lynn.
- My cover is BEAUTIFUL. Working with a cover designer was the best thing I could do for my book, and Mandi did an excellent job of bringing my idea to reality.
- I decided on the books price and royalty rate.
- (Because I own the rights) I can expand where (what platforms/stores) I publish/sell my book. I currently have the paperback and ebook files on KDP, but I can also upload them to IngramSpark or another POD if I wish, without having to consult anyone else.
- I market the book how I want and as much or as little as I want.
- Uploading my files didn't cost me ANYTHING. I've heard mixed things about other POD platforms and whether or not they charge for file uploads, but KDP doesn't charge you to upload your files. And you can re-upload files as often as you like and they still don't charge you.
- KDP has great step by step troubleshooting pages for beginners.
- By doing it all myself I look much more professional, and I have a better understanding of how it all works.
- With the use of a template, I was able to format all on my own, saving myself a chunk of change.
(and more that I can't think of right now.)
Cons:
- Collating my poems took AGES. But that's because I actually cared about what order they were in for EM, where for JAT I had them completely random.
- Formatting took longer than I thought. But again, that's because of the matter I was working with. I was told, "If you get a format template, you just cut and paste your chapters into the formatted document and then you're done." What I didn't account for was the time I would spend tweaking the template to create a new poetry template, the fact that each poem was a new "chapter" to cut and paste in, and that after all the collating I did earlier, when I saw the poems on actual pages, I wanted to rearrange them a bit more so that it flowed even BETTER.
- If I don't market, it won't sell. Free marketing might be more financially viable than paying someone to do it for you, but it doesn't work if you don't actually do it. That means extra time and effort on my part to get the word out. For someone who struggles to keep a constant flow of posts running, continually checking in to my social media platforms and coming up with new ideas can be taxing.
- It's a long term plan. When I published JAT with Xlibris it was about three months of work from contract signing to book in hand. I've been working on getting EM published since end 2019/start 2020. I planned everything out so I had heaps of time, and I am still pushing myself to get it all done.
So, there you have it. The then and now of my publishing journey, from Just a Thought to Emotional Ramblings.
Overall, I feel like JAT was quick and easy, but it never really felt like my book. Whereas EM has been a lot of work, but I am so proud of this book, and of myself, and look forward to seeing it, and my future poetry books, sitting neatly on my shelf someday soon.
I would love to head about your publishing journeys. What did you do, what do you wish you did differently, what do you love most about your journey and your book?
That's all for Publishing Take 2.
Thanks for reading.
Jacinta
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