Self-Publishing: How I Did It

The First Steps

Step one: Finish your manuscript! Give it multiple self-edit passes.
Change the font. Run it through a text to speech program like naturalreaders.com8. Read it out loud to yourself. Read it ‘backwards’ starting with the last chapter first. Print it out and read it physically.

The more ways you see your manuscript, the better you will catch any mistakes. I read somewhere that each edit pass you do, you will catch about 80% of the mistakes in the document. So the more passes and the more different ways you read, the more you’ll catch.

Step two: Find an editor!
Having a different set of eyes really helps. Not only will they possibly catch mistakes you may have missed, but they also bring a different perspective to your book. There are different types of editors but ultimately what sort of editor you need is dependent on your story.

For my story, it was looked over by my friend @linaket and she mainly provided line edits. She made suggestions to better word things, clarify things, and to rearrange sentences and sometimes paragraphs for better story flow. It was a great help and I’m deeply appreciative of her work! After I made the changes, I hired one editor to proofread the whole manuscript and then another to edit my book’s back blurb with line edit suggestions as well as proofread it.

Also note that good editors will usually be open to doing a free sample edit or offer one upfront!

This is to ensure that you jive with their suggestions and can form a good working rapport. You wouldn’t want someone offering unhelpful suggestions to go through your whole book, and on your dime no less! You want to make sure that they actually know what they’re doing too. Some writers even purposely add in mistakes to the sample edit to see that the editor catches them.

Publishing Process

Plan this out!! I got the ball rolling for all of the subsequent steps late October with a book release date on Dec 15! Now that it’s all done, I wish I had started even sooner to give me more time to breathe, plan, and not feel like I was scrambling. First, there are a couple of things you may consider before choosing a production company and uploading your files.

First is Copyright: This is in regards to the U.S. I filed the copyright for Secunda and it was pretty straight-forward. The only hiccup was I forgot to include the cover in the pdf I uploaded to the site. They kindly contacted me via email to rectify it a couple of weeks after I submitted the info and I made a new pdf and reuploaded it. About a week later, I got my official certificate of registration in the mail.

A copyright isn’t absolutely necessary. But it is nice to have it official just in case. It makes things go much smoother if you ever need to protect yourself legally.

Second is ISBNs: So what is an ISBN? An International Standard Book Number is essentially a book’s serial number. It’s used to identify, catalog, and track records of individual titles. They are required for physical books if you intend for retail stores and libraries to carry your book.

Each country has a separate agency that issues these. For the U.S. the company that deals in ISBNs is Bowker. You can buy them individually or as a set of 10 from them. I chose the set of 10 since I plan on publishing more books in the future and you must have a separate ISBN for each version of your book. For example, 1 Title published as a paperback, hardcover, and ebook, will use 3 ISBNs.

You can also buy barcodes from Bowkers and assign them to the ISBNs you use for physical copies. Bookstores will not stock books without a barcode! So if you want expanded distribution, ISBNs and barcodes are a must!

Some sites like Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing and Lulu.com offer the option to assign your book a free serial number. Take note that these free ID numbers may be exclusive to their respective sites. For ebooks, it’s totally fine. However, for physical books, you can have a wider reach with an ISBN as bookstores and libraries are more likely to order them. If you do use Amazon’s provided numbers, it will list KDP as the publisher instead of your own independent entity.

Choosing a producer/distributer: So now it’s time to pick a company to produce your book. The big ones are Amazon and IngramSpark. Each one has different size and paper options. While a few sizes are common between the two, I found Ingram to have way more options. They also do hardcovers! I also heard good things about their quality so I picked Ingram.

IngramSpark (pt.1)

It’s not a secret that many self-pub authors find the site finicky. And after dealing with it, I can see why and have developed a love-hate relationship with ingram too. Despite their set-up fees, I liked their wide range of book options. Amazon is a bit more limited in that regard.

Firstly, Ingram is a bit picky with file type. I had originally formatted my manuscript in Word (2011), however, it appeared that version of Word was a bit too old to be able to set the required settings when exporting to PDF. For those curious, Ingram needed a PDF stripped of color information to print in black and white. Luckily I have Adobe InDesign CS6, so I was able to layout my book there and export a proper PDF file. When Ingram denied my Word PDF, it sent a panic through me, and I lost a bit of time, but I’m glad I was able to work it out in the end.

As for the epub file. I’m still a bit vexed by ebooks. I think my version of InDesign is too old to support a locked layout feature, so I just went with whatever the export produced and Ingram accepted.

The cover file is fairly straightforward. Ingram has a spine width calculator so that was super useful when I was making the book cover. I added the width to my cover dimensions, added bleed space (standard U.S. bleed is 0.125 in), and had no trouble uploading once I got the numbers right. Ingram generates a digital preview for you to review and I used that to correct the colors slightly. (When uploading a new cover file, it takes about 1-3 days for a preview to be generated. If you’re only updating the text content, it only takes a couple of hours, I found.)

Most everything else went smoothly after the main files were uploaded BUT I learned a big lesson the hard way.

Save all your edits for the final file edit.
If you catch any typos, resist the urge to update your book files on Ingram until the last minute! Make sure you have everything as perfect as it can be. They will charge $25 for each file revision even if your book is still in its preorder period! Even the ebook files! Stupid I know!
You can change your print files for free up until you’ve approved it for print. It is advised to order a proof copy though, just to make sure it looks as good in print as you hoped it would and catch any evasive typos. But since its approved for print, you will be charged when you revise your print files. So save all the fixes for one go, ideally 10 days before your preorder period ends and the book is officially released. I believe that the preorders are accrued and they start going to print 10 days out from the official release.

IngramSpark (pt.2)

When I got the physical print proof copy, it looked fantastic! But it could have looked better! I ultimately changed the font size from 12 to 11, and turned all the other text down 1 as well. I changed the drop shadow effect of my cover’s spine text to be more legible. I also moved the inside margin a bit so the words weren’t quite as close to the book’s crack. I also did a full read through and caught a few typos and made a couple of edits.

After fixing those things (and paying for the uploads of the revised files >:T), it looked like it was good to go for release!

Preorders were underway (along with a giveaway that I’ll detail later) and the day of Secunda’s official release came and went. But then my biggest panic came!

Another Lesson Learned!: I kind of had a bumbled Kindle release.
So as you set up your title on Ingram, there is one clause that asks if you’ve published with Kindle Direct Publishing in the past 12 months. I checked no, since at the time I was putting Secunda on Ingram in October, I hadn’t. It’s a simple clause but it did not elaborate there and then what the consequences were.

In short: If you published with KDP the past 12 months, Ingram will not deliver a kindle version to Amazon for you. See I thought I was ok since I hadn’t published with KDP in the past year. HOWEVER, I published a novella on KDP a few weeks later in November and I think this was what bumbled my kindle launch of Secunda.

It was strange as before I touched KDP, the kindle version was appearing alongside the paperback during the preorder period. But along the way, the kindle release was pushed back to Dec 29 from Dec 15. Then the 29th comes along and then it said the kindle version was not available at all. I scrambled to publish a kindle version through KDP and had to reconnoiter with Amazon to link that with the paperback and set the listing straight.

The most frustrating part was that Ingram didn’t tell me they weren’t going to deliver the kindle version to Amazon and I had to figure this out on my own after a customer reached out to me about the failed kindle drop. I’m still not 100% certain why it wasn’t delivered, and my publishing the novella on KDP after the fact is my best guess. ¯l_(ㆆ_ㆆ)_/¯

Unfortunately I couldn’t push the new kindle version to the customers who preordered it since it’s technically a new book with a different Amazon ID number. I contacted different departments of Amazon and KDP about the matter to see if they couldn’t send new files on their end but ultimately I learned that due to privacy reasons, they can’t. The customers would have to individually contact Amazon for a refund for the kindle book that wasn’t delivered and buy the new one or ask for it as a replacement. For the customers that contacted me, I offered to send them PDFs of an exclusive Secunda short and a nsfw Halloween special free of charge for their troubles.

Despite all that nonsense, I would still recommend IngramSpark. Their quality is excellent and it’s nice to see my book up on Barnes & Noble with a Nook edition. Plus it’s a good option for folks who don’t want to directly support the Amazon corporate machine and rely solely on them.

Amazon

As a quick note/Lesson Learned: When publishing with KDP, double-check your book’s KDP Select status. Select is an Amazon exclusivity program where you can opt-in for promotions on kindle and so forth.

For some reason, Secunda was enrolled in Select when I don’t remember checking a box for that option at all when publishing it through the interface. I kind of panicked when Amazon sent me a content review e-mail saying it was violating the Select exclusivity stipulations since Secunda is available on other ebook platforms. Turns out, you can cancel Select yourself, but only within the first 3 days of publishing your book. Otherwise, you have to contact support to do so. There were no penalties but it was just another hiccup that I would rather have avoided.

As for publishing with Amazon, a while back I produced paperbacks of my first completed comic Erie Waters. It was printed in black and white on white paper. The quality is pretty good, but I noticed the proofs I got were more prone to slight printing errors than IngramSpark. They were fairly minor, but still noticeable. Like I had some black pages that were set up with bleed, but it printed off center and a sliver of white got through.
However, with 0 set up fees and 0 revision fees, KDP is still a great option for those who don’t mind Amazon as a company.

The quality may have gotten better now but I won’t find out until my next book I guess! One of my next paperback projects is a novella. It’s something that I don’t think warrants as wide of a release as Secunda, but I would still like to see physically in my hands. So I will use KDP for that one as it’s a much cheaper option.

Distribution:
KDP can distribute to sellers outside of Amazon if you choose expanded distribution for your title and if your book fits certain requirements (some print sizes and books in Yiddish and Hebrew aren't eligible). However, they are currently only working with US companies. International establishments could order from those companies, but it’s an extra step they won’t necessarily take, especially for a small self-pub book. Whereas for IngramSpark, they distribute internationally from the get-go.

Marketing

Start as you’re writing your story! Build up a following either on your social media or directly on your publishing platform.

Your followers will be the people you first advertise to. And some might preorder/buy your book right off the bat once you announce its release. Marketing is daunting, exhausting, and can break your spirit. But it takes time. The sooner you start the better. I constantly kick myself for not joining twitter and instagram sooner when my older comics were in their full swing and had some momentum. Now I’m struggling to get followers. But all I can do is just keep posting and making content.

Have free parts to read: I plan on keeping Secunda free to read on Tapas, and that’s my plan for all my major series. Free content will reach the most people. To entice readers to buy a copy though, I found that the best way is to offer
1. Extra content, like bonus illustrations for my comics
or 2. An extremely polished version. The final edit of Secunda with all the fixes and extra tidbits only exist in paid forms, paperback and ebook. Plus there is still a section of the population that enjoys physical media! People who love holding books in their hands still exist! So simply having a paperback version of a story may be incentive enough for them to buy it.

Consider a Giveaway: I hosted a preorder and launch giveaway where I offered a free book kit to anyone who ordered a paperback copy from the time of the preorder period through the first month of Secunda’s official release. The book kit includes a double-sided bookmark, a signed bookplate, an ex libris bookplate, and a sticker. They’re relatively inexpensive things that I can produce with online vendors.

IMG_3232.jpg650x650 297 KB

I made the bookmarks with vistaprint, and the ex libris and sticker with stickerapp. For the signed bookplates, I simply bought a set of blank bookplates from Amazon and signed them with a metallic sharpie.
The beauty is all these things can be sent to people through the mail with regular letter postage. I made a Google Form for people to submit their addresses to me. Since these items aren’t high-value, I did not require a proof of purchase to be eligible. I had envelopes already and just had to buy some more forever stamps (domestic and international) and I was good to go!

For those interested in the terms of my giveaway, you can see how I worded it in the form here.

I initially hoped that this would push sales, but I don’t think it had much of an impact. Twitter was the worst with each post only having a small amount of engagement, not even surpassing 15 likes and even fewer retweets. People say to succeed on twitter it’s all about engaging with other posts, but I have yet to crack that puzzle. (I’m terribly introverted >_< ) Instagram and tumblr fared slightly better, though. Despite not performing as well as I hoped, I still genuinely liked mailing these freebies to people who supported me!

And once the giveaway period ended, I simply listed the remaining book kits on my gumroad store2.

Honestly, for my level of willingness to engage with others, I think the best marketing strategy is to continue making illustrations of my novel characters and posting them with relevant tags.

I’m fortunate that I’m an artist and can produce my own assets for promotion, but for those whose drawing skills are a bit lacking, you can find royalty free images online and whip up something nice with Canva for bookmarks and things.

I would suggest spending money on a cover artist though. If you have to loosen your wallet for one artistic asset, it’s that.

Amendment: Earlier in the Publishing Process section I stated that a book with a KDP ID number won't appear at Barnes & Noble. It can, however, the KDP tile must be enabled for wider distribution and follow certain guidelines. I've amended that section in the Publishing Process post and I've further explained a bit about Amazon's distribution under the Amazon post.

Anyway, that concludes my Ted Talk for now LOL
Feel free to ask any questions!

@rajillustration
Thank you!!
For paperbacks through Amazon and Ingramspark, there's only a single paperweight for the cover and you can choose between 2 finish options, glossy or matte. I chose the matte option because I feel it fits better with my book.

If they had more papers, I would definitely pick something more textured! Perhaps they may roll out more options in the future, but for now it's either glossy or matte lol.

However, there are more options for hardback on Ingram and are as listed.

Screen Shot 2021-01-20 at 6.29.43 PM.png1034x382 40 KB

@UrMom
Thanks!
Yeah, if you're just crowdfunding a small limited run and don't need your book pushed to nation-wide chains, you can skip the ISBNs. I'm sure local bookstores and comic shops would be open to an exclusive run like that~

Each ISBN and barcode corresponds to 1 edition of a book. Say you've got 10 hardcover books of the same title and same print run, they will share the same ISBN number and barcode.

That's really great to know! Thanks!

At one of my local comic book stores, I ran across a physical copy of one of the comics I follow on Tapas (The Pale1 for those curious) and they just had the basic neon paper price sticker on the comic sleeve. So it's interesting to learn how books are handled!

Oh yeaaahhh! I remember those stickers! They had like foil in them for the sensor bit.
Luckily I got my manga from Borders back in the day and all their stickers peeled off really well.