Self-publishing: creating your own publishing company

After having had my book Castle Falcon on the market for a few years, I decided it might look a bit better if it had a company as the publisher instead of just me.

Of course, this doesn’t make any real difference in how things get done, but I think that a book gets taken just a bit more seriously if there’s an imprint on the copyright page. Okay, maybe not, but I still thought it would look better.

I’d picked the publishing name a while ago. In Castle Falcon, a major character is Aurachne (yes, I spelled it that way on purpose), the Golden Spider. She loves reading. So the company would be Golden Spider Books.

I whipped up an icon, which was a lot of fun:

The hard part was finding a 3D spider model online that was stylistic enough to not look creepy. As it is, I still had to delete the mandibles.

Then the work part:

Step One was creating the company. How you do this depends a bit on where you live, but here in California, you have to set up a “DBA” (Doing Business As). There’s a form to fill out for your county, and a small fee to pay to get registered. You also have to pay to get an announcement in the business section of your local paper. That’s pretty much it as far as I know, at least to get started.

Step Two was to go to Bowker, where I’d originally purchased my ISBN numbers for my various editions. I was pleased to find out that I could simply transfer my existing ISBN numbers to Golden Spider Books by request, and not have to buy a whole new set.

Step Three was going through my various editions and updating the copyright page and covers to add the new imprint and logo. Since I didn’t have to republish most of them under new ISBNs, this mostly involved updating the interiors for e-books and Lulu editions, and updating the cover image file (Createspace version below) for the latter.

The Createspace edition was a bit more difficult. When I originally published at Createspace, I just ran it through using Createspace as the publisher, where they provide their own ISBN number and add their barcode box to the cover image. Most people do it this way, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

To replace this with my own imprint and ISBN number required me to create an actual new edition, a second Createspace publication. I had no problems with this, updating the interior and cover (including logo and new ISBN barcode). I’m currently waiting on a proof copy of the new version. The only visible difference is the logo on the cover and some copyright text. I also added an “about the author” page at the end.

The real trick will be shoehorning the new Createspace edition into my Amazon setup and still retaining all my links, access to my five hard-won reviews, and other information. Particularly since I probably have to take the first edition off the market. More on this later (I hope).

 

 

 

Sold my first book to a publisher!

Sold my first book directly to a publisher: Roger Mantis.

After 78 rejections.

Never give up.

“The Four Hidden Dangers of Writing Groups”

A blog post by Jennie Nash.

(With bonus Pixar content from the book Creativity, Inc.)

I’ve found that while critiques are useful, it soon becomes apparent that they aren’t usually very consistent. What’s listed as a problem for one critic is sometimes another critic’s favorite part.

One key is looking for patterns. If several separate people think your tense isn’t right for the story, they may be on to something.

It also makes a difference who’s doing the critiquing. Sorry, but all else being equal, an experienced opinion from a writing professional should probably carry more weight than your writing group’s opinion (unless your writing group has a best-selling author or two in it).

That doesn’t mean the professionals can’t be wrong. They sometimes are.

When it comes down to it, you have to develop enough experience and maturity to judge your work yourself, and that isn’t easy. I’m still working on it.

“My Favorite Animal, the Book Scorpion”

Apparently there are tiny scorpions that protect your old books against booklice.

I never knew about this until I read about it in a blog entry by E. H. Kern.

Come to that, I didn’t know that much about booklice.

For a lot more than any sensible person really wants to know about book scorpions, check out this Scientific American article.

I’m still coming to terms with the concept of eyelash mites.

Now that I think about it, the best book ever involving eyelash mites is Jay Hosler’s Sandwalk Adventures, A wonderful look at Darwin and natural selection from the viewpoint of both Charles Darwin and a smart and engaging little eyelash mite.

All-time SFF book sales list

The Wertzone lists the best-selling science fiction and fantasy authors of all time.

As the website says, there’s no guarantee how accurate this is, but it’s interesting.

Terry Pratchett is Number 11.

Terry Pratchett, RIP

Announcement via PJSM Prints

I don’t have much eloquence right now on this. Suffice it to say that Terry Pratchett was one of my greatest inspirations to write, and is prominently mentioned in the acknowledgements of my first book.

Neil Gaiman explains the true secret to becoming a great writer

Right here.

Photo: EPA/YONHAPNEWS

Agents WILL look you up online.

If you’re trying to get published, remember that anything you put on the internet may be used against you in the court of public opinion. Heck, that’s good advice even if you’re not trying to get published.

A survey of agents, editors, and art directors finds that not only do most of them look up potential clients online, but a large majority of them have rejected someone because of what they found (!). Okay, it’s admittedly a small sample, but very informative.

(Thanks to Debbie Ridpath Ohi for the survey, and Richard Sutton for the tip.)

Nook’s new POD service

Nook Press has come out with a Print-On-Demand (POD) service.

Note that this isn’t like Amazon’s Createspace — Barnes and Noble isn’t going to put your paperback up for sale online or in stores. It’s more like an alternative to Lulu.

I fed Castle Falcon into the system to see what I would get. Like Lulu and Createspace, you upload PDF files for interiors and covers.

The purchase price is lower than for Lulu books. My hardcover dust jacket version would cost me $16.42 at Nook versus $22.55 for the Lulu version. A Nook casewrap version is $14.92 versus $19.55 at Lulu. A Nook Press 9×6 paperback is about $10.00, compared to $6.80 if I order a copy of my Createspace version, so they don’t beat Amazon’s price for author orders. They barely beat Amazon’s $11.69 retail price. There don’t seem to be any quantity discounts.

I don’t know what the binding and printing quality for the Nook version would be. My main complaint so far is that the Nook cover creator is primitive compared to the options available for cover creation at Lulu or Createspace.

Nook lets you upload a front and back cover PDF image. That’s it. For dust jacket covers, front and back flaps are plain white. Nothing else. You get to pick a spine color: black, white, or tan. Spine text is in a font of their choosing (see my Nook Press cover below).

Check out that elegant spine art. Not sure where that white rectangle under the barcode came from either.

On the other hand, Lulu and Createspace have several methods for making covers ranging from easy-to-use online template options all the way up to advanced single-image options where I can upload one image, an actual layout that wraps all the way around the book, flaps and all (see my Lulu dust jacket below). The latter is a pain to create in Photoshop, requiring careful attention to size and positions, but at least I control everything and the spine looks like it belongs to the cover.

It’s possible the Nook POD system will improve. It’s cheaper than Lulu, but I won’t be using it unless I can bring things like covers and fonts up to my standards.

“Making a living from writing books: what works, what doesn’t”

Good article by Emma Darwin on what it takes to make a living on your writing. “Item 1” is something I noticed a couple of years ago: that many successful new authors, particularly self-published ones, are immensely prolific. They turn out book after book in a relatively short time, and while they might not all be literary masterpieces they are good enough to keep readers coming back. These books are often parts of a long story arc, or a series built around a familiar set of characters, which builds a large audience for the next book. A number of success stories in recent years involved authors who put up a series of stories online, drawing in repeat readers with cliffhangers and multiple stories about favorite characters. Then they moved into self-publishing, usually e-books, and started to make money at it. Again, they put out a lot of books. In some cases, their sales became robust enough to attract traditional publishing contracts. You’ve seen these authors online–the enthusiastic ones with ten or twenty “works in progress” and two or three ongoing series. In the Romance genre, they’re legion. Unfortunately, while this discovery impressed me enough to post a picture of Scheherazade next to my computer, I also realized I’m not very good at this kind of writing. Ah, well. (Thanks to Elen Caldecott for flagging this.)