Self-publishing – Catholic Writers Guild

Did you go to Catholic Writers Conference Live? Or perhaps you’ve been lucky enough to attend another writers’ conference in the past few months. You’ve come home with a mind spinning with possibilities. Suddenly you have options, and choices to make. You’ve pitched a book (or two, or three), and hurriedly polished your work in order to send it to interested editors or agents.

Maybe you sense a sale in the offing. (Cue cheering crowds and confetti!)

Or…maybe not. Maybe your work straddles two genres, or maybe publishers are saying your story is unmarketable. Or worse, your genre is dead. Whatever the case, you’ve found no takers.

No need for discouragement – not in this day and age. Now you can publish your work by yourself. Five years ago, self-publishing was still new, and still carried a fair amount of risk. Print on demand (in its current form) didn’t exist, and an author basically had to commission a small print run out of their own pocket. Without the ability to market or access traditional booksellers, more than a few self-published authors ended up with a garage filled with thousands of unsold books – and a big hole in their coffers. Thanks to the explosion of e-books, authors of well-written fiction can now publish their own work.

Rather than go into the nuts and bolts of how to self-publish, let’s examine the pros and cons of taking on the venture.

At first blush, there is no con. After all, you just format and upload your work and wait for the money to roll in. Well, not so fast.

It boils down to: How much work are you willing to do, in order to succeed? And how do you define success? The answers to those two questions will drive your decision.

As a self-pubber, you are responsible for obtaining quality editing (yes, you must do this, and no, critique partners don’t count), formatting, cover design, obtaining ISBN numbers, finding out how to upload to the different platforms (Kindle, Nook, Smashwords, etc.) and then doing it, and promotion.

Some people relish the control they have over the process; others would rather poke their eye out than deal with all the details. As a self-pubber, you will create business relationships with cover designers, free-lance editors, and formatters. You will build an online presence and platform. This includes at least a website (complete with “buy” buttons) and an author Facebook page.

Marketing and promotion are essential. Getting your book noticed now that “everybody” is self-pubbing is not an easy task. Depending on your comfort level and ability to create and manipulate social media, you may face a steep learning curve – or pay experts to build and maintain your website, etc. Either way, it takes time and effort to market. *Note: Marketing and promotion are required of all authors nowadays, whether their route is via traditional publishers or self-publishing.

Sound like something you’d like to tackle? Then here are a couple of important things to keep in mind.

The most critical item in self-publishing is having a quality product. That means your book has to be the best it can possibly be. No ‘throwing it out there’ to see how it does. If the quality is mediocre, or worse, poor, you’ll generate bad reviews on Goodreads or Amazon. It is very difficult to entice people to try a subsequent work if the initial one was of poor quality.

The best way to ensure quality? Surround yourself with a superb team.

Before you jump into the self-pubbed fray, pay for a free-lance editor. At three to five hundred dollars, it’s a chunk of change, but every successful self-pubbed author I know views this step as vital. Read other people’s self-pubbed books, and when you find one that’s well-edited, contact the author to find out who they use. The best ones are booked a year or so out.

Find a great cover designer. Even in e-books, a sloppy or amateurish cover can kill sales. Same for formatting. Most readers will let an occasional error slide, but repeated errors are annoying.

Build a strong online network. Word of mouth still sells more than anything – but when your ‘word of mouth’ is a small group of authors with a similar readership and ten to twenty thousand Twitter followers each, ‘word of mouth’ takes on a whole new meaning. Too, there are Twitter accounts that exist solely to promote self-published works.

Other options are available if you choose to not take on the responsibility of self-publishing. Many smaller e-publishers are springing up to serve specific niches. You give up some of the profit in return for not having to go it alone. A ready-made team might be the perfect solution.

Or consider the hybrid route. Self-publish some work and seek traditional publication for others. Mix and match between larger and smaller houses.

Having a clear plan is essential. And since this is the Catholic Writers Guild, it is imperative to begin the discernment process with prayer. It’s crucial to align ourselves with God’s plan for us and our work. Sometimes an examination of conscience reveals that our ego or pride is driving our insistence on a particular path. Neither avoidance of rejection nor arrogance will serve us (or God) well.

What are your thoughts regarding self-publishing? Can you add some wisdom gleaned from your experience? What led you to take that path? And what have you found to be the most important elements for success?

image copyright Ellen Gable Hrkach

Although I now own and run and a publishing company, all my books were self-published. I don’t like the connection that people often make between self-published books and “bad” or substandard writing. The truth is, the vast majority of self-published books (I’ve read a lot of them) are indeed substandard quality. I download free Kindle books every day and many of them aren’t worth downloading because they are embarrassingly bad. I’ve also read some wonderfully written self-published books, but these are in the minority.

So…is the ease of self-publishing bringing the overall quality of books down?

Well, in a word, I believe it is.

Unfortunately, many self-published authors think they can write a book without extensive editing. Others, who do have editors, don’t employ professionals, and instead use friends and relatives. Another self-published novelist I know used a published author as editor but this particular “published” author had no experience in fiction so this showed in the characters and plot. Still others publish their books with little or no proofreading.

Going with a “Self-Publishing” company like Trafford or iUniverse also doesn’t guarantee high quality. Large companies want your business and while they can be helpful, they are also more expensive than a self-publishing book coach.

In my capacity as a reviewer for CatholicFiction.net as well as a reviewer for other websites, many self-published manuscripts come across my desk (or computer) that are so atrociously written, I won’t even review them.

I’ve come up with a few ways to increase the likelihood that your self-published book will not be included in the “badly written” bunch.

Avoid Thinking “I Can Do It All”
I’ve won awards and have had bestselling books precisely because I realize that I can’t do it all. I hire editors, copy-editors, proofreaders and my husband (a professional artist) designs my covers.

Employ a Professional Editor (for overall plot, characters, setting, writing style) and humbly consider their advice. If you’re writing fiction, find a fiction editor. If you’re writing a non-fiction book, find one who specializes in non-fiction. Authors should want their work to be the best it can be. Sometimes a book has to go through many edits in order to be polished and of good quality. My first novel went through about 30 edits. My second and third novels, ten. Be open to construction criticism. Don’t we all want to produce quality books?

Use a Copy-editor (for grammar, word usage and punctuation)
One author I know used a friend as copy-editor. This person (I’m guessing) had little experience in professional copy-editing. That particular book was a great read, but had many comma, quote and apostrophe errors that made it distracting to read. When a reader gets distracted, they’re pulled from the story.

Proofreaders, Proofreaders, Proofreaders!!!
Ask at least 10 of your friends and relatives if they could read your manuscript and find typos. One novelist I know didn’t use any proofreaders (he said he proofread his book himself, which was a big mistake…authors can be blind to their own mistakes). Unfortunately, it showed. Another author used one proofreader, but one isn’t enough to read through 100,000 words and find all the typos. With my second novel, In Name Only, ten proofreaders went through the book and missed “Brtish.” I didn’t catch it until I converted my book to Kindle.

Employ a Professional Cover Designer
The book may be good, but if the cover looks like a five year old designed it or the font is too light to read, then people may not even consider buying your book. A good cover must also look eye- catching in thumbnail. Many of the self-published book covers I see on Kindle are not professionally designed. In fact, many look like a child designed them.

Research
If your book takes place 100 years ago, please do the research that is necessary. I once read a self-published novel that takes place in the 1870’s and the author included an automobile (those didn’t appear on the scene until 20 or 30 years later…).

Kindle Conversions
If you don’t know how to convert your manuscript to Kindle (or other ebooks), hire a professional. I can’t tell you how many books I’ve downloaded on Kindle that were virtually unreadable because of the poor conversion.

If You’re Going to Print…
If you’re printing your book, hire a Print on Demand (POD) Company who has extensive experience with printing books. A company that prints brochures, business cards and flyers may not be the best company to print your book. Create Space (Amazon’s POD Company) prints over 100,000 books per week and, for the most part, they know what they’re doing and their customer service team is extremely helpful.

Consider Using a Book Coach For a small fee, book coaches (like myself) walk the self-published author through the maze of self-publishing. As a book coach, I sometimes help with editing (although not always) and assist the self-published author in releasing a quality book. The book coach’s fees are usually much less than an author would pay for self-publishing companies.

Following all these hints will not guarantee that your book will be high quality, but it will certainly lessen the chances of it being “embarrassingly bad” or substandard. In the future, I hope to see more quality self-published books so we can remove the stigma and the frequent connection that self-published books equal substandard quality.

Have you self-published? If so, did you use a company, a book coach or did you do it yourself? Feel free to comment below.

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