I am close to finishing my book and keen to get it published. I figured it would be easier to self publish (could be a wrong assertion), and wondered if anyone had any advice? Have you done it before? Anything to avoid? Anything I should definitely do? Any good sites to promote it on?
N.B. The book isn't a technical book. It is a comedy book set out in the style of a blog.
thanks!
1) Don't write in a vacuum. Build an audience of people who want to buy (double points if you presell to them), and deliver value to them once a week in the form of takeaways from chapters you've just written, thoughts you have on the subject, etc.
2) "It's a comedy book" means you're likely selling to consumers, and it's pretty hard to explain the value (e.g. why someone should pay you for your book) when you're selling to a consumer.
3) Don't promote the book, promote blog posts that reinforce what you're writing that end with a call-to-action to join a mailing list.
4) I'd usually say setup multiple packages, but again, I'm not sure if that'd work for a consumer product.
I'll look to get on the mailing hunt more and do some of the things you suggest above. Thanks!
[1] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1223051718/practical-fla...
In this case, he's used kickstarter to be transparent about costs and process. He can also offer preview content pre-release to people who have put money down to prove their interest.
[1] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nickd/cadence-and-slang-...
1- Please share your journey/methods 2- As a programmers how I could write ebooks on different technical topics. Will people buy books on programming languages or related things?
Maybe I could ask you a few questions over email? :)
Selling my e-book on Amazon (http://snook.ca/archives/writing/selling-ebook-on-amazon)
How you can make a million writing your own e-book (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2040044/Kind...)
How to Write and Promote New York Times Bestsellers: Tim Ferriss and Jack Canfield (http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2012/09/01/how-to-write...)
How to (Really) Make $1,000,000 Selling E-Books – Real-World Case Studies (http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2013/04/04/how-to-make-...)
How I Used Hacker News to Sell My eBook (http://rubysnippets.com/2013/04/26/how-i-used-hacker-news-to...)
An eBook pricing model that resulted in $100,000 in sales (http://blog.asmartbear.com/selling-ebook.html)
5 rules to sell thousands of copies of your ebook (http://mir.aculo.us/2012/10/20/5-rules-to-sell-thousands-of-...)
His timeline is.
- Hermit, single guy, writes and gets three books published in the 80s
- He Marries
- Purchases a pop culture / comic book / store of awesomeness
- Can't keep writing and keep up his business and his family, so he quits writing
- The business expands (Sports Card Bubble, Pog Bubble, some other bubbles) opening 3 other locations
- The business contracts (bubbles pop)
- Focues on making one location super solid
- Gets his business dialed in
- Finally pays off all his debt, store is doing really well
- Works two days a week at the store, hires solid employees
- Devotes other remaing days to writing books
- Has been publishing ebooks
- Has tried to go the traditional publishing route
Take aways
- The dude has been around the block
- He writes at least one blog post a day (he has been doing this for 5+ years)
- He shares A LOT about what he is doing (store front business, book writing strategy, business strategy)
- He has hired artists
- He has hired an editor
The one warning I'll give, is a lot of the time his blog is him processing. You really are reading the guy's journal. So it may feel he repeats himself. I personally enjoy existing in the guy's head. It is a different type of blog. One where you eventually see him work stuff out and you almost get that "AHAH!" moment with him.
I really respect Duncan. I'd tell anyone interested in either business or writing to follow the guy.
http://pegasus-dunc.blogspot.com/ https://twitter.com/PegasusBooks http://amzn.to/149vsQG
I've been working on it for a few months after reading Nathan Barry's excellent book Authority. Based on that I started a mailing list right away and have collected a few hundred email addresses that I can market to.
I can't say I have any concrete advice (bdunn's advice sounds great, though). Best of luck to you!
Hope you find something helpful there.
I have a friend who is a visual designer, and he has commented favorably on my approach.
https://leanpub.com/bastards-regexes
I used the Leanpub platform, which is more targeted toward technical writers, though it provides a great number of conveniences if you're writing something that is published in piecemeal.
I think the general advice is...get known. If you are self publishing, then you are on your own in terms of promotion. Put together a list of bloggers/sites who might be interested in reviewing your work and send it out. Create your own micro-site devoted to the book and publish excerpts that you think might stand on their own and generate interest.
Self-publishing is only easier in the sense that it is easy to put something out there. It doesn't make it any easier to get discovered or be successful
I particularly like the fact that you can publish a single chapter of the book, people can buy it, and you can keep writing it and improving it (with feedback) and people will continue receiving updates for ever. I just love it.
My advice would be, get on Leanpub now (or, well, two months ago), let a few people discover and give you feedback on the book, see what works and what doesn't, and then publish the final thing somewhere else, if Leanpub isn't working for you, using the feedback you've gotten.
Also, everyone else's advice sounds sane too.
Good luck, whichever route you choose.
My advice to anyone else considering self-publishing:
* Start with Amazon KDP and CreateSpace. Both services are easy and fast. It's the quickest way to test an idea.
* Be prepared to iterate quickly based on reader feedback.
* Consider paying $100 or $200 for a decent cover. You can find designers lurking around the online writing communities (such as kboards.com for fiction) or hire someone on oDesk. Make sure they have experience designing book covers, which will save time and frustration.
* Have someone proof your manuscript. I see lots of writers who skip this step, and suffer in the ratings and reviews as a result.
* Have a cover blurb and Amazon description that grabs people. Also, make sure that readers can easily find out about you, either through the product listing page (which Amazon grabs from Amazon Author Central) or your own product website.
* If you want to use other platforms, Apple's iBookstore seems most promising. It's hard to set up, though. "iTunes Producer" is a very rough piece of software. However, if you've worked on iOS apps in the past at least you will be familiar with iTunes Connect, which is used to set pricing and monitor sales.
* I have sold many PDFs, but I am not sure how that would work for fiction. I started with e-junkie but switched to Gumroad (3) which has a much better interface.
Marketing is tough. One thing you can do once you have a print version through CreateSpace or another service, join Goodreads (a social network for people who love to read) and set up a Goodreads Giveaway (4) (a contest for your book that Goodreads runs -- usually a few hundred people sign up, and you have to send out 10 or 20 copies to winners that GR selects). It's free to set up, but you'll have to purchase and send out copies of the book to the winners of the giveaway. The advantages of this: Readers often write reviews, which are seen by other GR members. Many other people will put the book on their "to-read" list, and some will go out and buy the book right away because they don't want to wait to see if they won a copy.
Good luck!
1. http://www.digitalmediamachine.com/2012/09/do-people-judge-e...
Btw, does Gumroad support Bitcoins?
So technical stuff out of the way: * don't use MSWord (probably obvious), but it is way easier if you write in UTF8 with basic mark-up for italics. Markdown is great. * create an epub and then think about Kindle. You want to be everywhere. You need both formats so (Amazon is your primary target market) but it's easier on everybody if Kindle formatting comes second. * eReader specs are all over the map -- it's like a throw back to the browser incompatibilities from 10 years ago -- so clean mark-up is vital. If you want your book to look good on as many devices as possible, don't use a conversion meatgrinder (like calibre) to create files. Do look carefully at lean pub.com or pressbooks.com, especially if you don't need your hand held in this area. * you will need to buy an ISBN, either directly or through a third party
Editing * you need an editor -- your wife, your neighbour, a freelancer -- somebody needs to edit your work. Don't be fooled otherwise, even if you write a blogpost a day and have for the last two years. Good editors will catch problems with tone, spot areas that are confusing, and generally shape the work. This is especially important because writing down complex thoughts is hard. A lot of people think they have a book in them, when really they just a magazine-length article or a blog post or an idea for a tumblr. A good editor will call BS on your ambitions. * proofreading is not editing. Have someone that isn't you or your editor look over your work before you publish
Selling and Marketing * If you are going to spend any money what so ever on your project, spend it on the cover. Self-publishing is plagued by terrible covers and even pro designers trip up when they try to approach ebook images. Do yourself a favour and hire a real book designer. If you can't afford it upfront, publish first and then redesign the cover later. * You want to be on Amazon, B&N, Kobo, iTunes, and (maybe) Google Play. You can take this upon yourself or get help from a service like SmashWords or Bookbaby.com * And of course sell on your own site and through your own newsletters using shopify or the like. * Again, it should be obvious your book is not going to sell itself.
All that said, the hardest thing is the writing so get to it.
I've played in the completely self-controlled arena and more mainstream platforms (Amazon, Kobo, etc), and am happy to answer any questions you might have :)
Broad advice: Think very carefully about what you hope to achieve with your book. If you want to build a brand/platform/business/audience long-term, put out some free work to start, and show people what you're capable of. If you're looking to make a living from this book, publish some smaller works (blogs or short ebooks) first, to give people that sample, and build up a small list.
Treat your readers with respect, but don't take all advice given (filter!). Don't over-advertise. Do your best to incentivize sharing of your message and work without straying into over-marketing territory.
Recognize that you'll make a lot more money publishing yourself (through something like Gumroad or e-junkie), but you can get more organic traffic through a platform like Amazon (and there are MANY pros and cons to both paths). Also recognize that you can play in both arenas: use Amazon to gain new readers, and have other work available outside their ecosystem.
Remember, too, that there are still things that Big Six publishers (and their smaller, traditional publishing counterparts) do really well, and ideally indie authors don't see the publishing world as 'us' and 'them' — just two sides of the same coin. You can build up a library of work that you indie publish, and then seek a traditional contract and have more control over the process (having an existing audience to leverage), and the negotiations (they provide prestige that can get you in places that are otherwise difficult to get your book, like airport bookstores, and PR materials that can help you get on talk shows and such — some people still won't consider you a pro author until you've got a Penguin or HarperCollins logo on the spine of something you've written).
(Also: Consider the phrase 'indie published' over 'self published,' as the latter tends to imply the equivalent of a garage band, while the former implies something more akin to indie films or indie music — personal preference, but something to note when you're telling people how your book is published).
Again, happy to expand on any of this if you want to reply here, or shoot me an email — colin at exilelifestyle dot com
Best of luck whichever path you end up taking!
But 500 is great (with that same kind of audience), and by the time you get up to a few thousand really engaged, interested readers, you're set. You may not make a livable wage right away, but you'll be making SOMETHING, and from there all you have to do is keep doing good work and publishing it (and as you build a back catalog, each new release can lead to a big boost in sales of your past work, as well).
It's meant to be something of an adjunct to some other in-the-works books. These other books (one about hacking the XBox Kinect, the other about the Leap Motion) make use of OSC, and I didn't want them to become bloated or sidelined by an explanation of OSC, especially for people who may not need it.
One of my goals is to keep the books short, on-topic, and to the point (hence "just the best parts").
Some advice: Know the limitations of your publishing formats. I started out writing the book on the Web, only to learn that HTML that works nicely in a full-size browser can end up as crap when rendered for epub.
Yesterday I did a giveaway of my book because it was my birthday. I think that did more to get attention for the book than anything else. (I'm leaving the free download in place for a few hours more if folks here want to grab it.)
People often say you need to promote the book with blog posts and stuff. I agree, but what it means is you are, in a way, now writing two books (or something). There's not just the work to create the book, there's the work to create the material to promote the book.
I've made the book available online as well, but even then it's hard to get attention. I've started doing some screencasts of some of my OSC software.
Bottom line is I tend to write because I enjoy it and I want to make certain information available to people. I want to see more artists get comfortable with technology. Ideally, though, I can manage some decent return on my time so I can continue doing it.
I did a printing of the book and am selling the physical version on Amazon Advantage. Advantage takes a 55% cut of the List Price, and handles all shipping, ordering, etc. I just have to send them inventory when needed.
The program works, but so far in my experience it's a huge pain in the ass. They send out Purchase Orders when they need more inventory and it's pretty unpredictable (an order could be 4 copies or 900, which means shipping really changes my COGS). They also "lost" a shipment of 800 books that took them a month to find. So I wouldn't recommend Amazon Advantage unless there isn't another option.
It's relatively straightforward to get freelance proof-reading and cover design. You could use something like LaTeX to layout the book and if the market you are targeting is relatively niche then you can market it at least as effectively as a publisher, by using a blog / website.
How much hassle do you want? How much money do you want? Is there a publisher who wants to publish your book? Do you have a ready made market?
I've self-published a book on a niche topic. I used Lightning Source, a print on demand company. They expect you to give them everything print-ready. Some print on demand companies like CreateSpace will hold your hand a bit more.
Personally, I enjoyed learning all the things that were needed to get my book into print. It's also nice to make much more per book (~70% or the cover price rather than ~10%).
They basically share a Dropbox folder with you and let you edit your book in Markdown. For me this means that I'm easily able to work with my normal text editing tools rather than learning something completely new. When I want to publish/preview a new version, I just log into their site and hit the appropriate button, which will autogenerate the PDF, epub and mobi files, putting them in the shared Dropbox folder.
The other nice thing about them is that they will let you start selling your book while it is still in progress, so you can get feedback from real customers about what they would like to see in the book.
A Drip of JavaScript: https://leanpub.com/a-drip-of-javascript-book
Jasmine Testing: A Cloak & Dagger Guide: https://leanpub.com/jasmine-testing
Things I've learned: - The cover is very important. Don't design it yourself. When thinking about the book design, make sure it looks good small. Half of the time your cover will be seen as a thumbnail online. - Pay someone trustworthy to edit your book. I paid a guy on Craigslist as first and got what I paid for... - Submitting to the Kindle store and paperback through Createspace is fairly easy. - The program Scrivener is amazing. Besides being a great writing tool, it outputs to the Kindle format (as well as every other format).
I wrote out the step by step process here: http://bennesvig.com/how-i-wrote-a-book-step-by-step/
Here's an example of a graphic novel self published, initial print run crowd funded. A Possibly useful example.
Jason Brubaker developed a following for years by blog, showing the actual pages and process for creating his intended book. Then he took his community to kickstarter to fund the initial print run, and initial orders too, and initial publicity beyond his blog (aside from guest posts at other comic author blogs). He's done a second one book the same way, too.
The book: reMind
His fundraising story: "Grassroots Funding with Kickstarter.com" http://www.remindblog.com/2010/10/14/grassroots-funding-with...
The main thing I learned is that if you need to sell your book for more than $10 (if it's aimed at a vertical market) split it into multiple $10 books or you'll be screwed by Amazon (which gives lower royalties for books between $10 and $20 than for $10 books). I ended up only selling my book through Apple and Lulu (and BN but that's useless).
Another problem is I've found most of the epub tools I've used to be fairly awful. Were I doing it over again I'd probably write the whole book in markdown and convert it to epub using scripts.
I'm so new to it don't feel I can give any authoritative advice. I have sold copies. I have not hit the lottery. But it's a great feeling of accomplishment. Feel free to ping me via the email addr in my HN profile.
My next book will be technical, on Software Performance and Scalability. Then switch back to a sequel to DSPR.
I wrote a post about some of the things I learned from it: http://korban.net/2013/04/10000-in-sales-of-my-c-book-easier...
Two things I can say (also discussed in the post above): I wouldn't go with a traditional publisher now (with the exception of Pragmatic Programmers), and marketing isn't as hard as I thought, but it's definitely a long term effort.
Some advice:
- Spend a lot of effort on designing the cover, as you can't easily change it afterwards and it makes a big difference to whether or not people will buy your book.
- Proof read it thoroughly multiple times (and get someone else to proof read it as well if you're not 100% confident in your own spelling/grammar).
- Don't expect to sell many copies unless you do a bunch of marketing yourself.
Point 1 - I've got a great animator to design me the cover. You can see the animation from the link I posted above (around 2 mins in)
Point 2 - I have enlisted the help of a friend and my dad who are in the process of proof reading. Need to spend a lot of time on this like you have suggested.
Point 3 - I'm hoping I'll get lucky! I have around 750 people who seem to be interested in the book based on the blog, and sitcom, that it is about. Hoping if they buy it then they may recommend it. If not, it's cool to finally tick off a goal!
Did you hire someone for this? If so, who?
Exactly. I am getting ready to self-publish and am facing this problem. So far this group: http://bookcoverexpress.com/about-book-cover-express.html looks promising, but they don't list prices, which is seldom a good sign.
I recently released the 4th edition of my Java AI book on leanpub.com https://leanpub.com/javaai and in a few weeks the 3rd edition of my "Loving Common Lisp. The Saavy Programmer's Secret Weapon" will be released.
Leanpub.com pays 90% royalties, minus a $0.50 handling charge so you might be pleasantly surprised how much money you can earn.
Here are few quick tips:
1) Build your audience beforehand (email, social) as it will power your sales once you launch your book.
2) Try to do guest blogs and get reviews from other bloggers on your book. Send them free copies etc.
3) Launching is easy but holding the revenue steady requires a lot of work so plan to spend some time post-launch to promote your book.
*) To optimize revenue think about several pricing options.
Feel free to contact me maris[at]sellfy for more info!
Draft (http://draftin.com) is pretty good for this, but not designed for larger scale projects like ebooks.
Leanpub is awesome for distributing early / unfinished copies and opening the doors for feedback, but as far as I know, does not have any built in tools for collecting and integrating feedback or edits (gramatical, writing structure, etc).
Any ideas?
http://www.aarongreenspan.com/authoritas.html
I answered a question on Quora about this general topic a while back.
http://www.quora.com/Self-Publishing/Are-there-any-self-publ...
A copy editor will challenge your sentence structures, paragraphs, overall flow, and much more.
Compare what you wrote before the copy editor did their work, versus after - you'll see a big difference.
Note that copy editing is often an iterative process - so you'll work with the editor as you complete your revisions.
Yet in the end it is your book, so you don't have to follow the copy editor's suggestions if you think you're right/know your topic more than he or she does/etc.
I'm currently writing a book about neural networks and deep learning. Ideally I'd like to make the book freely available online, with paid ebook and hard copy versions. But I'm uncertain about the impact a free online version will have on sales revenue. Anyone with much hard evidence? Or suggestions for how to make a reasonable amount of money, while keeping the book freely available?
http://www.technologywoman.com/2012/07/09/the-dirty-truth-ab...
I found it to be a great resource for finding information as well as people to do the cover and/or formatting of the eBook.
Yes I have one out... :)
Use this to avoid scams:
http://www.sfwa.org/other-resources/for-authors/writer-bewar...
Best of luck!
PS: I created this tool, let me know if you need any help.
:D