In the last few days, I’ve responded to inquiries as to whether an author can do everything oneself. My response to those questions is to ask another question: Yes, you can produce your book yourself, but should you?
To determine whether you should produce your book, it’s important to ask yourself some basic questions.
- Have you written the story? If you haven’t written the story yet, then it’s far too early to even begin worrying about the minutae of publishing. Especially if you’re writing a novel and you’re not already famous, no one cares about your book. Publishers won’t care because you have no track record. They don’t even know if you can or will finish writing the manuscript. You have no built-in audience of fans slavering to purchase your book. Literary agencies sell books to publishers. If you don’t have a manuscript, then they have nothing to sell. Write the story first.
- How good a writer are you? Just because you have a wonderful story burning a hole in your gut doesn’t mean you have the skill to express it effectively. Even if you do have the ability of effective expression, how good is your command of narrative structure and grammar? Setting your masterpiece aside and letting it marinate in your subconscious while you focus on other things will give you a bit of necessary objectivity when you return to it to review, edit, and revise it. If you thought your first draft was ready for public consumption, this simple tactic of putting distance between your brain and your story will surprise you with the errors riddling your draft.
- Do you know what kind of editing your manuscript needs? If you’re not aware of the different levels of editing (the basic three are developmental, line, and copy editing), then you absolutely need an editor. Can you use editing software? Of course! You should if you have the knowledge and critical judgment to know when the software’s “corrections” are actually incorrect.
- Are you experienced in page design? There’s more to designing the interior pages of a book than filling them with words. Page design directly affects the reader’s experience with the content. If you don’t even know what the proper tools for page design are, then hire a book designer. If you don’t understand that designing for print differs from e-book formatting, then hire a book designer.
- Are you a skilled graphic artist? The cover of your book is its more important marketing piece. A cover has multiple purposes. It indicates the book’s genre at a glance through alignment of color and style and imagery. It distinguishes the book from its competition via the same factors. That’s difficult to do. The artwork and placement of artistic elements (e.g., images, typography, color, shapes) all contribute to an effective book cover. Unless you’re intimately familiar with the expectations of your genre and a good graphic artist and understand concepts like “bleed” and “resolution,” then hire a professional cover designer.
- Are you an effective copywriter? The blurb on the back cover of the book is its second-most important marketing piece. Many authors are content writers, not copy writers. Copy writing has a singular purpose: to convert a potential customer into a buyer. It makes the sale. If you’re not good at copy writing, hire a marketing pro who is.
- How eagle-eyed are you? While understanding that perfection cannot be attained—you can always tweak things—a proofreader brings that necessary nitpicking expertise to bear in ensuring your entire book—the cover, page design, back cover blurb, and book contents—are as correct as humanly possible.
Of course, if you’re embarking upon this grand new project without any concept as to how the industry operates, there are other questions you should ask yourself.
- Do you want to pursue traditional publishing, self-publish your book, or hire a hybrid publisher to publish it for you? (Yes, “pursue” is emphasized for a reason.) Whichever option you choose, do your research. For traditional publishing, look into the Writer’s Market, Literary Marketplace, and Writer’s Digest. These are chock-full of valuable information. For self-publishing, see above. If you want to hire a publisher (i.e., pay to publish), then consult Writer Beware for bad actors, those vanity presses that exist to exploit naive, ambitious authors.
- How good a writer are you? If you have a wonderful story premise but you’re not sure you have the skill to develop it and bring it to life, consider hiring a ghostwriter. It will still be your story, but written better than you could have done. Or perhaps you have a really rough rough draft. Hire a book doctor to develop and expand upon what you have. Again, it will still be your story, just better than you could have written it.
- How good are you at marketing? This is one aspect of publishing a lot of authors fail to consider. These days, regardless of your publishing path, marketing your book falls on your shoulders. Marketing encompasses direct sales, social media outreach, promotions, and paid advertisements. If you’re skilled at marketing, more power to you! Put those skills to good use!
Publishers employ teams of professionals to produce quality books. Not perfect books, quality books. If you decide to self-publish, there’s no shame in hiring a team of professional freelancers to perform those tasks you either cannot do or don’t already do well.
DON’T FORGET AMAZON PRIME DAYS: OCT. 7 & 8
This big day for retail sales is almost like the Friday following Thanksgiving, which opens up the holiday sales season. This year Amazon Prime Days are on October 7 and 8. Sellers on the world’s most ubiquitous online commercial platform will be offering discounts and incentives to boost sales of their merchandise. That includes authors.
To that end, four of my books will be discounted to 99¢ (e-book format only):
- The Falcon of Imenotash (fantasy)
- The Eagle at Dawn (paranormal romance)
- Hogtied (MC romance)
- Shot from the Hip (western).
For less than a buck, you can’t go wrong. Give them a try!