Hey people of Mastodon!
I have just (finally) finished the second draft of my novel, and the daunting task of self-publishing it is looming ever closer.
I've never done it before. If anybody has any advice, or anything they wish they'd known before they did it, I'd love to hear it.
@gremaure Congratulations! That's a lot of hard work!
If you're not familiar with it already, I highly recommend checking out Writing Excuses: https://writingexcuses.com The 1st & 2nd season especially have a lot of publishing nitty-gritty tips. Good for *any* solo business stuff, really.
(Caveat: I'm not a writer, but have several writing friends; personally I'm looking to get into copy editing and sensitivity reading and related stuff.)
oh, oh heck.
okay. here we go.
things you're likely already aware of:
* this will not suddenly make you a superstar in human culture
* unless you win the popularity/word-of-mouth lottery and then all bets are off, it might reshape your life radically
things maybe you're not (all subject to not winning the lottery above):
* this will change your taxes a bit, esp if you have a day job, but not in terms of more taxes, just more paperwork
* fanfic will happen sometimes, just be aware
* there's a ton of stuff out there to try to make it easier to self-publish, and some of it's paid, and some of it's not. don't lock yourself into a specific workflow without looking at the pros and cons of the elements of that workflow -- stuff that runs on your systems this year may be unsupported next year. evaluate a few options and then pick your best one, but keep your backup options in mind too.
* going wide is, AFAICT, the currently held wise move compared to uni-market
* that may change, as the market evolves. the entire self-publishing market has been radically shifting for a while now and it has not matured yet and likely won't for a while longer. don't assume it will pay for a second house, even if it produces that much money suddenly. treat it as bonus money, a one-time thing, and assume nothing about stability of income on it.
@gremaure If you go Kindle Unlimited, that means you have to be 100% exclusive to the Zon Empire. Possibly including samples on your website. I personally recommend against it; use Draft2Digital or Smashwords + Amazon *not* exclusive.
You'll probably get most of your sales from the Zon, but you'll pick up some from NeverAmazon folks too.
Make sure you've got decent grammar/punctuation editing. Beta-readers may suffice if you're lucky & get a pedantic English Major w/good grades.
@gremaure Use at least an email contract for art if you're not getting stock art. Some artists may have their own contracts -- read & get clarifications in writing if you don't understand something.
If you're both new at it, at least lay out what you want to use the art for & what the artist will want to do with the art. If something terrible happens & you have their Awful Cousin taking over their stuff, you'll need a Written Understanding for legal.
@gremaure Same for anything where you're using someone else's work; assume that 1 or you will die suddenly & you or they will have to deal with an incompetent or malicious heir. Formal contract best, but a clear statement of intent can only help if lawyers & judges get involved.
(This applies with tradpub or small press contracts, too. Always clarify, make sure malice can't eff you over. Even if you trust the other party, do you trust Cousin Malice?)
@gremaure Even as a self-publisher, remember Yog's Law: money flows TO the author.
You do wear several hats, though. Art director hat pays the artist. Editorial hat pays editors (they're expensive!). Publisher hat evaluates resources & services various places offer.
But if you give up control of any of that, with a service or however, make sure that you're getting $, not funding the service for little payoff to the author. Don't sell rights w/out knowing what you're doing!
Grem
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