The Self-Publishing Experiment

Missing's in Cowtown, We'll All Go Down

2012-02-29T11:38:00.001-08:00

On Friday, March 2, I'm going to be one of the author's attending the Cowtown Children's & YA Book Roundup where I'll be signing books and (possibly) be speaking on a school visit panel. This is really the first conference I'll be doing as an author and not as an editor/publisher. I'm very curious to see how it goes.

The main reason for attending educational conferences like this is to promote (and even possibly) arrange school visits. School visits can be one of the more lucrative aspects of children's publishing -- especially self-publishing. When a traditionally published author goes into school, normally they only receive the honorarium (if there is one) and the royalty for each book sold. However, since as a self-publisher I am able to do the sales myself (and I have lots of experience with running other author's school visit sales), I am able to keep all of the profits of the book. This can be double or more the traditional royalty rate.

Another great benefit of school visits for a self-published book is the way it gets awareness of the book directly to the target audience. (We all know how the self-published version of Eragon originally started building momentum --school visits.) I have to admit that I've been very lax up until now on my marketing and promotion. I have greater plans for this (like seeing my meter out of the red), and I'm not going to let this opportunity go by. In fact, to take advantage of this conference, I have even made a special school visit page on my website and a handout I'll be giving out (stapled to my business card).

Next stop: Missing in a school near you.

To Print or Not To Print

2011-09-22T09:19:00.000-07:00

Originally when I decided to self-publish my book, I had intended to only offer it as an eBook. However, one of my other self-publishing friends has been strongly encouraging me to have POD version as well. (I'm now looking at CreateSpace.) She has some great arguments. A print book would allow me to:

Have a book for school visits
Do book signings (I have yet to figure out how to "sign" an ebook)
Have something to physically sell at conferences and conventions

So, I think I'm probably going to go for it. We'll see.

First Week Recap

2011-09-17T15:01:00.000-07:00

So, Missing has now been available for 7 days now. I thought it was time to do a brief recap:

Trajectory I want sales to take.

Stores Missing is available:
Amazon
Smashwords

Number of Sales in one week:
Total: 7
Free Downloads: 3

Marketing Done on My Part:
Upgraded my Goodreads account to an author account
Actually told people about this

In summary, I still haven't done anything yet to let people know that this book exists, so the sales I have gotten have been from family and friends. Awesome, but only the beginning...

Making the Book Available

2011-09-16T15:49:00.000-07:00

Slowly, but surely, I'm starting to find Missing in the various online retailers. So far, it's at:

And I expect it to go up on Barnes & Noble, the Apple iBookstore, Kobo, and Google sometime within the next 1-2 weeks.

This is important because I don't want to start any serious marketing pushes until the book is available everywhere.

Let's keep our fingers crossed that all this goes up soon!

Amazon Bound

2011-09-14T11:36:00.000-07:00

I have reached 2 more exciting milestones:

I have had someone PAY to buy the book! I know, exciting! (Thank you Tricia! And if you haven't read her book Solstice yet, you should.)

I have uploaded the book to Amazon, where it should appear tomorrow. Also, my books should go out sometime this week to all the other major e-tailers.

Now, I really must start marketing this in some sort of serious manner.

First Sale!

2011-09-11T07:42:00.000-07:00

Missing has had it's very first sale! Oh sure, it was free (they took advantage of my coupon special), and it was probably my dad, but still, I feel we have hit a major milestone.

As for my final decision on pricing, I ended up going with the $2.99 price. However, at Smashwords I have the option of offering coupons (like the link above), so my plan is to have the book be $2.99 and then offer 66% off coupons (bringing the price to .99). That way I get the best of both worlds pricing-wise.

The Pricing Dilemma

2011-09-05T15:04:00.000-07:00

Now, this particular problem is not unique to self-publishers. In fact, all publishers go through the process of trying to determine what is the best price for the books they are developing. Of course, normally production constraints have a big impact, and that is why you often find self-published books to be priced higher than other books in the market -- small print runs and/or POD books have higher per book costs, so the author must ask for a higher price. Also, with traditionally published books, the publisher/self-publisher must account for the trade discounts that must be given. This can range anywhere from 47%-55% for returnable and 50%-60% for non-returnable books. Factor in the cuts distributors take (like CBAY's NBN), and margins start getting pretty slim.

It's no wonder I decided to self-publish this book as an ebook instead of a traditional print book. Besides having less upfront production costs, there are fewer holding costs, distribution costs, and no returns costs like there are for "real" books.

And that leads me to my pricing dilemma for my eBook.

Savvy consumers are aware that there are lower costs associated with eBooks, and they expect the savings to be passed on to them. That seems fair. That's why you won't find eBooks priced higher than a paperback edition and significantly cheaper than the hardcover. I don't have a problem with that. In fact, my gut tells me to price my book at 99 cents. But then I looked at Amazon's "royalty" program, and greed began raising it's ugly head.

You see, if I price my book at 99 cents, then Amazon would give me 35% or 35 cents. Not bad. I would only need to sell 1,443 books to currently break even. (Of course that number doesn't include the marketing costs I have yet to incur.) And although 1433 sounds like a high number, there are millions of people reading eBooks, and the format is becoming more popular. 1433 is not unreachable. Daunting but not unreachable.

But then I read on, and I learned that if I priced my book between $2.99-9.99, Amazon would give me 70% of the cover price. So, on a $2.99 book, I would get $2.09 a book, meaning I would only need to sell 242 books to break even. That's a lot less books.

It's a tough choice.

Tinkering

2011-08-28T07:01:00.000-07:00

At my teeny, tiny press, I have some authors who are tinkerers. You know what I'm talking about -- authors who are never quite "finished" with their work. Every revision, or proof, or whatever, comes back with a million changes. And I don't mean the authors have found typos or missing words or things like that. I mean they come back with new sentences (sometimes even paragraphs) that would affect the layout of the book and half the time require updating the table of contents.

It used to drive me nuts.

I say used to because I have made a horrifying discovery yesterday. I am a tinkerer.

Yesterday as I prepared my manuscript for layout, I found myself making all sorts of changes to the text, and not single word changes, either. This was a shocking discovery for me. I have never been one to compulsively edit; however, I have found that when it comes to actually publishing a book, to actually putting it out for the world to see, I am much more of a perfectionist. I suddenly feel the compulsive need to change stuff -- even things that probably don't really need changing.

I shall never silently complain about my tinkering authors again.

Liv's Point of View

2011-08-23T08:17:00.000-07:00

One of the my favorite things to see is a blog written by one of the main characters of the book. I think it really helps personalize and bring that character to life. It can act as a teaser for the book, and it can also provide interesting or pertinent information that may not be appropriate for the book's website. One of my favorite character blogs is the one written by Hannah from 13 Reasons Why.

So, since I like them so much, and because I think they are good (and cheap and not overly time-consuming) marketing tool, I have developed a blog for Liv from my Missing book. It covers the period of one month -- from the first few days after her brother's kidnapping to the day after the one month vigil. Curious why I picked that timeline? You'd have to read the book. (Hint. Hint.)

To see Liv's blog, click here.

Let the Games Begin

2011-08-21T21:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, the grand experiment officially began when I made my first purchase towards this project. I bought the cover art. Specifically, I purchased this image from istockphoto.com:

and after a few hours, had turned it into this:

The image cost $105 from istock, and my total time on the cover (including tedious stock photo search) has been 8 hours. Now, most people who choose to self-publish most likely will not have the full Photoshop CS5.1 on their computers, so they would have to hire someone to design it for them. Billing myselfat $50/hr (a moderate rate), my total outlay would be $505. (Although of course, I only actually paid $105. The other $400 will factor into my decision of how profitable this endeavor is.)

The point though, is that I am now committed to this project, and am going to keep striving for my September 15 release date.