Book Baby – The Field & Midnight House

The Field – From Word Doc to Paperback, Part Seven

Posted on September 16, 2018September 16, 2018 by Ian Dawson

Here are a few takeaways and final thoughts I have about self-publishing The Field:

It’s important for your own creative sanity that once you make the leap from your novel being your baby to publishing it either as an eBook, a paperback, or both, it is now a viable, marketable product. This means that you have to put distance between you the author and you’re the person trying to market and sell what is a now a viable commodity.

This distancing will also help you in the event your get a negative review or criticism you don’t like. The person may not have liked your product, but they still bought the product and you reap the benefits either way. By taking this more objective and business-like approach to each work, you can then free up your mind to write the next book, and the next, and the next.

Distancing yourself emotionally from your completed project will also help you think more clearly when it comes to the marketing and sales aspects of your work. It’s not at all helpful if you get wrapped up in a minute detail that occurs during the publishing process and your obsess over something that in the end has an easy fix. Case in point: I talked in a previous post about the paperback being priced at $14.63 due to production costs. I agonized over this for half a week, sure that my book was now doomed for failure because it was too expensive. Then, a Book Baby rep suggested I create a promo code to decrease the price. Boom. Problem solved.

I had I been thinking like a salesperson and been more pragmatic than emotional, I could have solved the problem without the needless drama. Leave the drama for the page not the publishing.

Know that if you are self-publishing that you are going to have to do almost everything yourself. Yes, there are sites like Book Baby that will guide you, but when it comes to getting the word out to a wide swath of people, just know that you are the best marketing tool there is. So use social media, your own website, co-workers, family, and friends to get the initial word out. If you want to, you can enlist the aid of a marketing company – like I did with Smith Publicity – to spread the word farther. But again, while they will be assisting with press releases and other aspects, the project is still driven by me and my knowledge and passion for the project.

There are also dozens of videos on YouTube as well as blogs that can give you insights into how to market your book either inexpensively or for free.

Also, make sure that you have the means to afford all the aspects of doing this yourself. There are inexpensive and even free alternatives if you want to publish your eBook on Amazon or even on your own blog chapter by chapter. Don’t go into debt or sacrifice eating or bills to do this. And if you do, make sure you budget and keep track of all your expenses.

So, what would I do differently. Well, for the next book I will definitely publish the eBook and paperback as part of the same project. The reason: it’s cheaper. I could have paid 50% less if I had gone with one of the packages offered through Book Baby that allows you to do both. But I thought just an eBook was easy money. As of this post I have sold more paperbacks than eBooks, so that shows what I know!

I also learned that the best strategy is to budget your time in an efficient manner, especially if self-publishing is a side business and not your full-time occupation. I work six days a week at my main job, so everything involving the book is like having a second job. It’s important to give yourself some downtime and not burn yourself out with everything that now needs to be done on top of all your other responsibilities. Your novel won’t get published any faster if your agonizing over pricing at 4am. Trust me. It’s not worth losing sleep over.

And that’s my self-publishing journey. It was definitely worth all the time, effort, and expense, and I will definitely be doing it again soon. If you have any questions, comments, or further advice you’d like to share, please feel free to leave a comment. I look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks for reading!

The Field – From Word Doc to Paperback, Part Six

Posted on September 15, 2018September 12, 2018 by Ian Dawson

Here’s where things get a bit more complex when it comes to self-publishing. You’re no longer in the digital realm when it comes to a paperback, you are in the real world and that means there are many more variables at play. Let’s talk about them!

For the eBook I did everything online with no assistance from anyone. If I ever had a question – and this has been true since day one of this experience – Book Baby responds to emails very, very fast. With the paperback, I set up a call with one of the Book Baby people to go through all the details that go into making a paperback a reality. We hashed through book size, page count, page color, would I need a cover or provide my own, and host of other questions.

After the call, I emailed Steven Novak and he got to work on the paperback’s cover. I think it turned out great!

I went through the familiar steps on Book Baby’s website, but the nice thing was since it was just a new version of the same book I didn’t have to deal with as much technical stuff. Then I had to decide on what price was best for the paperback. Since this is Print-on-Demand, the price was set at $14.63, which I initially was concerned was too high a price. I’m a new author, who’s gonna invest almost $15 for my first book? (I would soon learn that there are a lot of people who are willing to pay that price, which was quite a nice feeling)

A consultant at Book Baby advised me that I could create a promo code on their site to reduce the price, and I did just that. You can order your copy here and use the promo code FIELD20 at checkout to save 20%!

When I got the proofs for the paperback I jumped up and down even higher this time. They looked AMAZING! I had been a bit unsure of the whole process before I got the proofs, but the final product was definitely exciting!

All the pieces were in place. I had ordered 125 copies for myself (well, not only for me, that would be a tad odd and narcissistic), and was awaiting their arrival. I got the email from Book Baby that the four 22-pound boxes of books had been shipped. I was glad for the sake of not getting a hernia that they were in four separate boxes.

Then on Friday, September 7, 2018 at 9:30PM, I got an alert on my phone that UPS had delivered the books. And they were on my doorstep. And we have a package theft problem at my complex. And I live 40 minutes from where I work!

I clocked out and rushed home (as fast as one can in L.A. traffic on a Friday night). I arrived just in time to see the sprinklers turn off in front of my door. Where the boxes were. Now all wet. Yay.

I hefted the wet boxes into the apartment and dried them off. I opened the first box, planning to unload them all to ensure there was no water damage, and I froze. There, from inside the box, staring back at me was my novel: The Field by Ian Dawson. It was a profound moment. I took the top copy out and flipped through it. The new book smell hit my nose the smell after a new fallen rain (or it could have been the smell of wet cardboard box, who know?). I then pulled them all out of the boxes and luck was on my side: no water damage!

Now I had 125 books ready to go. Where were they going? Well, remember in my last post I talked about Smith Publicity? Well, I’ve teamed up with them for a three-week media blitz in late September, and I needed copies to send to potential reviewers and interviewers (more on that experience soon!). Plus, I knew that family, friends, co-workers, and those who helped me get the novel done and published wanted copies, too.

So, after all of this, from the push from the woman who cuts my hair to publish the damn book, to getting the paperbacks in wet boxes on my doorstep, what have I learned and what will I do differently with the second book (Coming Spring 2019!)?

Come back tomorrow for the final post in this series to find out!

The Field – From Word Doc to Paperback, Part Four

Posted on September 13, 2018September 12, 2018 by Ian Dawson

Yes, yes. I’ll admit it. Yesterday’s post was pretty technical. Metadata. Pricing. Websites. While they aren’t exactly sexy topics, they are important parts of the self-publishing puzzle, which is why it’s a good idea to know about them. So, today, let’s talk about a few more exciting topics.

So, you’ve submitted your manuscript, your cover, and input all the important info needed to launch your eBook on various sites. Well, while you’re toiling away at your website, a busy group of people in another part of the country are converting your Word doc or other files into a polished and professional-looking eBook.

The nice thing about Book Baby (and I’m sure other self-publishing sites do it, too) is that they constantly email you to let you know the progress of your book. You can also check the status of your project on their website as well. I was very excited to get the email announcing that my proofs were ready for me to view. I will confess that when I opened the file for the first time and started to go through the pages I jumped up and down (I really did this, I’m not lying). It was an exciting feeling to finally see what I had written converted into a format for others to read and enjoy on their tablets or phones.

That part done and approved, I had to wait for the book’s official release onto Amazon and other sites in order to move on to the next step: reviews.

Readers’ Favorite (https://readersfavorite.com) is a site that works with Book Baby and allows you to do a number of helpful things with your book. You can sign up for their Press Release program, you can participate in their Book Exchange Program, and you can have your book reviewed. Now, you have to pay for the reviews, but I found this was a helpful way to get new eyes on my book and to get some legitimate reviews to use on my Amazon page and website. I paid for three reviews, having no clue what I would get.

About a week later I got all three reviews back and they were all very positive, five-star reviews! But, me being a skeptic about things, I did do some digging to find other reviews written by these particular reviewers and they weren’t just handing out five-star reviews across the board. That added to the legitimacy of their reviews, which was a good thing!

I set up a profile on Readers’ Favorite, and then took the time to add myself to a few others as well. I worked on my Amazon Author’s Profile and my Goodreads Author Program Profile (https://www.goodreads.com/author/program?rel=nofollow) to get my name and book out there. The more ground you cover the better.

The Field by Ian Dawson was officially launched as an eBook on July 4, 2018, and I was pretty excited. But other than my family, friends, and co-workers, how could I get others to buy the book? In a word: Publicity. In more words, stop by for tomorrow’s post!

The Field – From Word Doc to Paperback, Part Three

Posted on September 12, 2018September 11, 2018 by Ian Dawson

In its most basic terms, metadata is data about data. A novel is filled with data, and Amazon and other sites use data (keywords) based on the data in the novel to categorize your book and make sure that when certain terms or phrases are searched that your novel pops up.

The keywords Book Baby and I chose were:

If you do wish to change these in the future for your novel you can, and it takes about 24 hours for the changes to occur on Amazon.

Now on to pricing. Since it was my first novel, I didn’t want to charge a crazy amount, but I also wanted to make sure that I could make some money off each sale. I decided on the lowest amount that gets you a maximum return on Amazon: $2.99. At this price I get 70% of the sale and Amazon gets 30%. Any lower and I get 35%. $2.99 seemed like a fair price since it is affordable for an eBook and my main goal was to get people to download and read the book.

With all that in place, I did a few more accounting-based steps about where you want your money sent and at what set amount would you like the money sent to you, and awaited the proofs for the eBook.

But did I just sit around waiting for that day to arrive? Quite the contrary! I knew I had to create a platform for people to learn about my book, so I created a website using www.wordpress.com. I started with a pretty basic and bland theme and format, but eventually took the time to make it my own. I opted for the business website option, which costs a bit more but gives you more freedom and options with your design.

Tomorrow, I’ll talk about proofs, other book sites I joined, and getting early reviews. See you then!