Hi Carlos! I had a hilarious ‘disparity’ book signing once. It was the opening of the new library and they called in a couple of local authors. I was one. The other, sat right next to me, was beloved author of The Snowman and other famous children’s books, Raymond Briggs. He had people queued in a big snaking line. I had two friends and then no-one! He was an absolute darling to me and we laughed about it while he was signing his hundreds of books. I made myself useful and got him a coffee.
Hi Carlos! My brother-in-law Krishna recommended this blog (very informative and entertaining!) since I’m considering self-publishing, and I just want to let you know my book club will be reading your book next month :-)
Welcome, Emily! Glad you’re finding it useful. And I’m so happy to hear about the book club! Hope you enjoy the book and please give my best to Krishna and Sierra!
Yes! I’ll be posting another update shortly, hopefully this week. Out of curiosity, is there anything you’d be interested in learning more about that I haven’t covered? I’d like this series to be as useful as possible for anyone considering self publishing.
Hehe, I have lots of questions! How much did you spend putting together your book? Did you use professional editors? Did you do a pre-order? How’d you format the book (did you use a free software or paid? Was it complicated?) and choose a cover designer/design? What about copyrights/royalties for the cover art? How did you choose the book metadata? Did you run an Amazon ad campaign? If so, was it worth it? Thank you!
Great questions! I should definitely cover all of these in a future post (in fact, my latest update that I'm about to post is about ads) but to answer a few of these quickly:
- I spent around $7,500. Roughly $2,500 was related to the crowdfunding for the books (printing and shipping, platform fees, etc) and $5,000 was for the editing, copyediting, cover design, proofreading, and interior layout
- I did offer a pre-order but I didn't push it very hard. Because I did a crowdfunding campaign, most of the people that would've pre-ordered it had already ordered copies through the campaign.
- I paid a professional to design the interior (including adding the metadata), but the keywords I chose for the metadata were basically a best guess at what might be most relevant for the book (satire, movies, humor essays, etc)
- I already had an idea for the cover and then paid an artist to design it.
- I won't get into the copyright stuff here since my book is a bit unusual given that it's parodying existing IP (but hopefully I'll get into that in a future post)
Hope that helps, and keep an eye out for a post about ads shortly!
Thanks so much for answering all my questions! It’s so true what you said that there are lots of estimates about what self-published authors spend and make, but concrete numbers are rare, so I really appreciate your posts. I’ll definitely keep an eye out for the next one!
Hi Carlos! I had a hilarious ‘disparity’ book signing once. It was the opening of the new library and they called in a couple of local authors. I was one. The other, sat right next to me, was beloved author of The Snowman and other famous children’s books, Raymond Briggs. He had people queued in a big snaking line. I had two friends and then no-one! He was an absolute darling to me and we laughed about it while he was signing his hundreds of books. I made myself useful and got him a coffee.
Haha, thanks for sharing that, Ros! I’m glad to hear I’m not alone.
The wheel of writerly humiliation turns for all of us, Carlos, until we become the one with the snaking line.
Hi Carlos! My brother-in-law Krishna recommended this blog (very informative and entertaining!) since I’m considering self-publishing, and I just want to let you know my book club will be reading your book next month :-)
Welcome, Emily! Glad you’re finding it useful. And I’m so happy to hear about the book club! Hope you enjoy the book and please give my best to Krishna and Sierra!
Will you be posting another update?
Yes! I’ll be posting another update shortly, hopefully this week. Out of curiosity, is there anything you’d be interested in learning more about that I haven’t covered? I’d like this series to be as useful as possible for anyone considering self publishing.
Hehe, I have lots of questions! How much did you spend putting together your book? Did you use professional editors? Did you do a pre-order? How’d you format the book (did you use a free software or paid? Was it complicated?) and choose a cover designer/design? What about copyrights/royalties for the cover art? How did you choose the book metadata? Did you run an Amazon ad campaign? If so, was it worth it? Thank you!
Great questions! I should definitely cover all of these in a future post (in fact, my latest update that I'm about to post is about ads) but to answer a few of these quickly:
- I spent around $7,500. Roughly $2,500 was related to the crowdfunding for the books (printing and shipping, platform fees, etc) and $5,000 was for the editing, copyediting, cover design, proofreading, and interior layout
- I did offer a pre-order but I didn't push it very hard. Because I did a crowdfunding campaign, most of the people that would've pre-ordered it had already ordered copies through the campaign.
- I paid a professional to design the interior (including adding the metadata), but the keywords I chose for the metadata were basically a best guess at what might be most relevant for the book (satire, movies, humor essays, etc)
- I already had an idea for the cover and then paid an artist to design it.
- I won't get into the copyright stuff here since my book is a bit unusual given that it's parodying existing IP (but hopefully I'll get into that in a future post)
Hope that helps, and keep an eye out for a post about ads shortly!
Thanks so much for answering all my questions! It’s so true what you said that there are lots of estimates about what self-published authors spend and make, but concrete numbers are rare, so I really appreciate your posts. I’ll definitely keep an eye out for the next one!