Recently, guest blogger Brian Drake gave us his take on The
Cost of Self-Publishing. Brian will be back shortly with another side to the
coin, but successful self-publisher Perry Constantine has also weighed in on
the subject, which is presented below…
THE LOW COST OF SELF-PUBLISHING
PERCIVAL CONSTANTINE
Recently,
I read a post by Brian Drake about The Cost of Self-Publishing. It was an
interesting take on the subject and Brian makes some good points about the
hidden costs of self-publishing that may not be readily apparent. However,
after reading the post, I thought on my own self-publishing career. Before I go
into too much detail on this, allow me to take a minute to tell you about my output
to date in 2015.
In
January, I launched my Vanguard serial. Five episodes released a month
apart, with a bonus prequel episode offered as an incentive for mailing list
subscribers. June saw the release of Curse of the Necronomicon, the
third novella in The Myth Hunter series, followed by the release of my
third Infernum novella, Gentleman Rogue. The compilation of the
first season of Vanguard will be out shortly followed by the debut of
season two in September (with a switch to a bi-weekly schedule).
The
reason I tell you all this is because at the costs Brian cites in his post, I
would not be able to put out so many titles. Instead of monthly releases, I
would be lucky if I could afford one annual release. But I’m able to put them
out at professional quality for a fraction of the costs. Of course, it’s not
easy. It takes a lot of hard work. And I will say first that my situation is
somewhat unique. But the reason I’m able to put out so much work on my own is
because I learned how to use the tools of the trade and learned how to use them
well. I also paid attention to what was around me.
It
wasn’t always the case and there was some trial and error. The covers on my
first three books—Fallen, Chasing The Dragon, and Love &
Bullets were all truly, truly awful. The cover for Outlaw Blues was
also not much better. The Lost Continent and Dragon Kings of the
Orient fared much better, but they had another problem—there was no real
series branding or sense of genre in them.
A
good cover designer will cost you a lot of money, but there are workarounds. I
learned how to use Photoshop through a lot of practice. I researched tutorials
on different effects, practiced those tutorials until they were committed to
memory, and would always be on the lookout for more. I made friends with
graphic designers and showed them my work and asked them to critique it. Those
critiques are what led to the most-recent covers, seen below in these images:
All
those covers were created by myself, using a combination of stock photography
and Photoshop tutorials. I made them by studying the successful books in the
genres I was targeting, and from there it took a lot of trial and error and a
lot of critiquing from professional cover designers.
Of
course, I’m not saying this is by any means easy. But the total cost of all
these covers combined was about $100 worth of stock photography. If you’re good
with Photoshop, then it’s just a matter of studying the genres and seeing what
works. Often times, you’d be surprised how effective a simple cover with strong
branding can be. The Infernum covers, for example, are not at all
complex. White background, dark figures, grunge overlay, color overlay, and
text. But all those elements work together in a way that fits wonderfully into
the thriller genre.
But
even if you don’t know the first thing about Photoshop and are unwilling to
learn, there are still cheaper alternatives to an expensive cover. One option
is Canva,
an online resource for designing not only covers but also social media
graphics. Another option is DIY Book Covers, a site launched by
professional cover designer Derek Murphy.
Fiverr
has a number of people who will design covers or you can look at pre-made
covers, which range in price from $30-50. Or make friends with people who are
able to help out on covers. I’m part of an author group that has a great,
active, and very supportive membership. The cover designers who critiqued my
covers? They’re from that group. They’ve also done cover work for other members
in the group, usually for nothing more than an exchange of services. For
example, if one author can provide editing and another can provide covers, that
can save you a lot of money.
The
cover’s taken care of, but there’s still the matter of formatting. Well, for
about $30-40, you can purchase a copy of Scrivener.
This is a wonderful all-in-one writing application. Not only is it a far
superior word processor to Microsoft Word that gives you greater control in
organizing your projects, but the compile features are tailor-made for the DIY
self-publisher. Scrivener produces great ebooks in both epub and mobi formats
with an auto-generated table of contents. There’s also an output for print
books. I’ve never used this myself because I format my own books through Adobe
InDesign. If you really insist on Word, then CreateSpace offers free templates
for formatting paperbacks. Another epub formatting option is Sigil,
a free cross-platform application for designing ebooks.
Now
there’s still the matter of editing, which is a big one. And this is something
that can be harder to find good prices on. I have a benefit because I’ve worked
as a professional editor and I have a masters degree in English and Creative
Writing. I produce fairly clean manuscripts as first drafts and I’m able to
catch about 98% of any additional mistakes on my editing passes. I also ask the
people in my author groups to look over it, mostly for story problems. Again,
this is where author groups are a valuable asset. Another option is just shop
around. Look at the freelance sites like Elance or Upwork and post an ad with
your budget. Maybe you’ll find someone, maybe you won’t. It’s worth trying.
If
this all sounds like it’s cutting corners, then you’d be right. But the
wonderful thing about self-publishing, especially if you avoid paperbacks at
first, is that nothing is set in stone. If you find a mistake, you can fix it
and re-upload the file. If you can’t afford editing now but can in the future,
then do what you can and go back to it later.
You
absolutely can break the bank with self-publishing, but it’s not true that this
is the only way to do it properly. You just have to be smart about it and most
importantly, do your research. For further information, I highly recommend Bootstrapping For Indies:
Self-Publishing on a Budget by Simon Whistler. It’s a great book
that will provide you with a lot more tips and advice on how to get your work
out there on the cheap.
The
biggest expense I’ve found is advertising, but this is well worth it. There are
some best practices to keep in mind with advertising in order to get the most
out of your dollar. First of all, don’t promote the first book unless you have
the second book out. Second, permafree does still work. I recently ran a
promotion on Love & Bullets, the first book in my Infernum series.
Love & Bullets is permafree and I bought ads from EReader News Today
($25) and BKnights on Fiverr ($5). The ad ran last month to tie in with the
release of the third book in the series, Gentleman Rogue. Since the ad
ran, I’ve seen something very interesting happen. Book two in the series, Outlaw
Blues, has traditionally been one of my worst sellers. But after this ad,
it’s become the top-selling title in my catalogue. I’ve also noticed many
people buying not only Outlaw Blues but also Gentleman Rogue at
the same time. If you don’t want to give it away for free, then try dropping
the price of the first book to 99¢. And all of this is without being enrolled
in Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program.
One
thing Brian touched on which I’d like to mention are Facebook ads. This is an
area that’s not very well understood and Facebook advertising is difficult to
get a handle on. I haven’t tried them yet, but from what I understand, there
are a few things you have to be very careful about. One is targeting. If the
ads aren’t properly targeted to the right audience, you won’t get much of a
return. Another is images. Make sure you use images that are ideally sized for
the Facebook ads. And unless you’re trying to build up subscribers for your
mailing list, you’re better off using Facebook advertising for high-priced
items. Mark
Dawson has provided a lot of valuable information about using
Facebook advertising and I’d recommend signing up for his list and viewing his
free videos on the subject. One of the things he recommends is not to advertise
items that are under $5-6, because you need to move a lot more units in order
to make money or even break even. If you’re an author of short titles that are
priced primarily at $2.99, how can this be accomplished?
Simple—bundles.
Get out several books, bundle them together as a single ebook and publish it on
the platforms. If you’re selling three $2.99 novels bundled together for $5.99,
you’re basically running a “buy two, get one free” deal.
While
I haven’t been making a lot of money on self-publishing up until this point, I
am building up more and more momentum month after month. I’ve been not only
breaking even, but taking in a small profit. Not enough to quit my day job, but
it is a start.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Percival
Constantine is an author, editor, book formatter, and cover designer who has
been working in the publishing industry since 2005. He’s the author of several
series: The Myth Hunter, Infernum, Vanguard, and Luther
Cross.
ON THE WEB
PercivalConstantine.com
Twitter: @perconstantine
Facebook: Percival Constantine
Excellent article! Now I'm going to check out your books.
ReplyDeleteThanks, I really appreciate it! I checked out your books after reading your post and got a little chuckle over the fact that we have similarly-titled books (The Rogue Gentleman and Gentleman Rogue).
DeleteAnother great article about how there is no one true path in the world of independent publishing.
ReplyDelete