You Asked For It: Ebook Formatting From A to Z

So I’ve been railing for YEARS that ebook formatting is not hard.  I’ve been doing it myself since I started self publishing in 2010 and I FINALLY got around to putting together a class to teach the rest of you.   It is available through WANA International.

Ebook Formatting from A to Z is an intensive 4 session class designed to teach you how to take your book from Word doc to all industry standard formats. You’ll be ready to self publish on any and all major platforms. Class is designed to take place over a period of weeks to give you a chance to implement the skills I’m teaching you in your own manuscript, with an opportunity for me to check your work and do hands-on troubleshooting. Each lesson is a streaming video that you can watch on your own time (as many times as you want). Then you’ll have access to interactive classrooms and discussion boards for more in-depth problem solving, as the need arises. This class will be most effective if you have a manuscript ready to format, as it is a hands-on skill.

It’s $160 a head and is available starting March 31st.   So…spread the word and stuff.

 

Get Back To Work!

I woke up this morning to a post by my pal Andrew Mocete that really resonated with me.  Write More, Market Less: The Proof.  It was, quite obviously, about how we should write more and market less.  He linked back to this article about self-publishing statistics, which I found quite interesting.  I was curious to see how I compared to the 1000+ respondents (a pretty small sample of the self publishing population).  I self published early and while I’m not among those making a living from my pen yet, I do seem to be doing better than the majority of their respondents.  According to this survey, self published women authors earn more than men (random and interesting–I’d like to know the gender breakdown of the overall sample).  And not shockingly, those who were rejected from a traditional house and then chose to self publish said rejected work were among the lowest earners.  There are a lot of other interesting factoids in there, but the part that really rang for me, which is what Andrew was drawing attention to, was this:

The Top Earners group spent more time writing than they did marketing, and those in the group who spent the least time marketing were making the most money. Out of all respondents, those who spent the most time marketing earned the least.

From ePublish a Book (share this quote)

I think, for those of us who are still struggling to balance day jobs and family and other obligations, that this is an incredibly salient point.  There is so much pressure to MARKET MARKET MARKET.  And while marketing is important, too many people aren’t good at juggling the two and wind up doing nothing BUT marketing and not actually working on the next book.  Or, worse, they wind up marketing so much that they annoy the poo out of everyone they know and tank their chances of building a good fanbase by their tactics.  (See Kristen Lamb and WANA International to learn the correct way to market without being an annoying eedjit).

Finding this balance is a challenge for me because I have such limited time, and admittedly, other than the social media I enjoy, I do very little continual marketing once a book is launched.  It takes me several months to write a book.  Red took about 8 months.  DOTH is looking like it’s going to be the same, if for no other reason than I lost about six weeks between moving and Daisy’s FCE (seriously, I need to just plan my years such that I take March or April off since life always explodes then).  These are full novels, 90-100k.  DOTH will be shopped traditionally, without being self published first, as Red was (I’ll talk about that experiment some other time), so if I’m to get anything to market for readers this year, it’s going to have to be a novella.  Novellas take less time, but still about 3-4 months to write well (shorter does not always mean faster).  The good news on that, the one I have planned is in the Mirus world, so my fabulous and patient fans will have something fun to read.  The bad news is that it’s still not Revelation.  I swear, I really am going to write that book.  It’s next on the docket after the novella (depending on what happens with the DOTH trilogy).  And I could write it next, but I really really want to have something to release this year, other than the anthology short story I’ll have coming out in October–because momentum on that series–I haz lost it.  Blame it on the teenagers who’ve hijacked my brain since last fall.

Anyway, the end take home message here, is that you have to find a minimal level of marketing (or dare I say, not marketing, but social media presence just so people know you haven’t fallen off the face of the earth) that you are comfortable with, and spend the rest of your available time writing the next book.  And, you know, save a little time in there to refill the well by reading or hitting the movies or doing something fun so your brain doesn’t esplode.

Now get back to work!

UPDATE: The ever thoughtful Gene Lempp provided me with a link to another post discussing the methodology of this survey which was–well, there’s no other way to say it, as I do this for a living in my EDJ–total crap.  Still, the point that you must always keep working on the next book is still valid.

The State Of Indie Publishing

So there’ve been big doings in the indie publishing world in the last week.  Barry Eisler turned down a half million dollar deal with legacy publishers, choosing to self-publish instead. Another traditionalist defects. And the indie world cheered.

Amanda Hocking accepted a $2 million deal with legacy publishers for a four book series. And the indie publishing world is FLIPPING OUT.  Holy schnikes, Batman, what is UP with all the cries of SELLOUT?  I am really pretty ashamed of the vitriol some members of the indie community have spewed Amanda’s way.

Here’s the thing, people.  Amanda never set out to be the darling of the indie community.  We put her there. She did not set out expecting to make millions.  All she did was write a bunch of books and make the brave step to put them out there, hoping to make some strides toward making a living so that she could quit her crappy job (a job I know full well is crappy because it’s the same one I had when I first got out of college, before grad school).  So the fact that she has to justify taking a $2 million advance (which she does with considerably more grace and poise than most of us could manage) is positively ludicrous.

This backlash against her is a sign of the sordid underbelly of the indie publishing movement. Because out there are a lot of people who are under the misguided impression that the indie publishing movement is some kind of mass rising against The Man (legacy publishing)–as if it’s a formal revolution and anybody who does anything else is a defector to the wrong side.

Is legacy publishing broken? Hell yes.  I’ve said it often enough, and I believe that they are struggling to prop up an antiquated business model with practices that are going to sink a lot of them before things truly change.  That is part of why I, and many others, chose the indie path.

But here’s the thing about the indie publishing movement.  Everybody has different motives for doing it. Some don’t want to deal with the stress of the query system.  Some have work that doesn’t fit the mold of what publishers find acceptable.  Some don’t want to give up creative control over things like cover art.  Some even WANT to BE publishers themselves to have total control over every aspect.  The only guaranteed commonality we all have is that we want to make a living doing what we love–writing.  This is not a one-size-fits-all proposition.  So to treat it as such and criticize someone for making a choice that’s different from yours is not only rude, it’s stupid (and I challenge anybody to turn down $2 million–that’s more than 99.99% of the population will ever see in their lifetime).

There have been people who’ve been kind enough to say I’m an inspiration and a role model. I can’t tell you how flattered and humbled I am by that.  I would hope that the example I’m setting is one of professionalism, high quality work, and paying it forward.  These are the things I strive for, the things that I believe are really important.  These are the things that helped me land an agent, even though I wasn’t looking.  They are the things that have helped move me along the path closer to my end goal of making a living as a writer.

But I want to make it very clear that I am not eschewing legacy publishing in totality. I have an agent who is very eager to shop my work and use my indie success to nail me a bigger advance and more favorable contract terms.  She is also very supportive of me continuing to pursue indie publishing projects.  In short, I will ultimately be both indie AND traditionally published because I believe that is the best means to achieve my ultimate end of quitting both my evil day jobs and writing professionally.

I don’t want to catch that same backlash when I announce future traditional deals, so I’m stating it plainly now.  My accepting a traditional deal in no way undermines what I’ve done as an indie author. It doesn’t mean I don’t believe in the indie movement or that I will stop putting out work on my own.  It doesn’t mean I’m going to stop supporting others who choose the indie path.  It will mean that for some of my work a publisher will do a lot of the stuff I have zero desire to do myself–editing, copy editing, layout, some of the marketing, etc.  That leaves me more time to do what I want: WRITE.  Because I don’t WANT to be a publisher.  I want to be a writer.

We are in the midst of a massive paradigm shift in publishing.  There’s no way to know how things will ultimately turn out, except that I believe it will place the author into a position of greater power.  The best thing for all of us to do is to use good business sense and take the path that gets us closer to our goals.  That path will be different for everyone, and it’s our job as professionals to respect that, congratulate our colleagues on their successes, and continue on our own journey–even if it’s a different one.