How to get ahead in self-publishing: never stop dreaming

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From The Irish Times:

We all have dreams. For many, writing a book and seeing it on the shelves of bookshops is a dream come true. The next best thing to fulfilling your own dream is to help someone else to fulfil theirs. Such was my opportunity when my father wrote his dream book.

31 Years Of Hell! 1914-1945 (www.31YearsOfHell.com) is a concise history of the two world wars and the interwar years. I undertook to edit and produce the book, then I self-published it. The process was very intensive and the lessons I learned should help indie authors to maximise potential distribution and revenue.

Long before your book goes to print, it’s important to think about how to attract readers’ attention and generate sales. Key factors include professional editing, design, print styles, publicity strategy and understanding readers’ habits.

We’ve all studied English grammar in school, right? So why would you need an eidtor editor? If you misplace an apostrophe or insert a comma splice, will the grammar police come after you, lock you up and sentence you to two weeks in punctuation prison? Maybe not, but while your freedom is not at stake, your book’s distribution options are. Most of the book buyers I approached were very welcoming. However, some were a bit cagey when they heard the phrase “self-published”. They told me that many self-published books offered to them are not well produced and contain spelling and grammatical errors. A great editor won’t just weed out typos, misspellings and punctuation errors; they will elevate your writing and “make it sing”.

. . . .

 Once your text is punctuation-perfect, it’s time to choose the style for the interior pages of your book. With my background as a content creator, I had the capability to design the interior of my father’s book myself. However, if this is not within your skill set, I recommend hiring a professional designer. In addition to adding necessary text elements such as page headings, dedication page, table of contents and acknowledgements page, a talented designer will add flourishes to separating sections of text, choose appropriate fonts and create eye-catching page layouts.

. . . .

 In order to get your book into bookshops, you need to submit to Easons, Argosy (which supplies most of the independent bookshops) and Dubray. The era of self-publishing has led to a huge increase in the number of submissions they receive, so it’s very competitive. Alternatively you can approach independent bookshops directly. When doing this, I emailed an “advance information” document first then followed up with a phone call saying my father would call in to show them his book. This strategy worked: the response was overwhelmingly positive. I also supplied “sale or return” invoices on headed paper, which was described by many book buyers as “very professional”. Sale or return is the standard arrangement: bookshops will stock your book but will only pay the percentage agreed on stock sold; unsold books are returned. The percentage that bookshops take varies from 33 to 45 per cent. Because of this, it’s more lucrative to sell from your own website or directly through personal contact, for example after giving a talk, so it’s worth putting effort into those avenues.

Link to the rest at The Irish Times

Here’s a link to 31 Years of Hell. It’s too bad the creators apparently didn’t know about ebooks.

4 thoughts on “How to get ahead in self-publishing: never stop dreaming”

  1. Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 3,795,733 in Books

    Not even available on Kindle. No blurb on the product page. No author central profile. Their own store page is UNENCRYPTED for sales at the point they ask for private info to complete checkout. 9 Euros UK postage plus 17.99 list makes it ridiculously overpriced to boot.

    And it’s not self publishing. The author is not the publisher. This is a poor micro press acting on nepotistic family impulses.

    This isn’t news. It’s an advert for Flashe Forward Editing.Selling this as ‘how to get ahead’ is an affront to all the indies selling in large volumes digitally and in print at the world’s largest bookstore. Writing to a handful of tiny Irish bookstores to hand-sell consignment copies is not a replacement for an eBook on Amazon. Or even a POD book on Amazon at a less-unreasonable price.

  2. “It’s too bad the creators apparently didn’t know about ebooks.”

    One step at a time, at least he self published.

    “Long before your book goes to print, it’s important to think about how to attract readers’ attention and generate sales. Key factors include professional editing, design, print styles, publicity strategy and understanding readers’ habits.”

    Last should be first if you’re just trying to ‘sell a book’, miss understanding the readers’ reading habits can make the rest of it not matter.

  3. Hire a professional designer for a print copy?

    Or use Create Space’s free template.

    Never had a problem and I print books of different sizes. It’s SO easy to do. Seriously. E-Z.

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