Liam Stirling – a successful self-published writer of our acquaintance – kindly agreed to treat us to a few words about using Amazon to go it alone. Check him out at http://www.herculesleek.com, or buy his first novel here: The-God-Particle
Liam Stirling
Not every story starts “Once upon a time…”
In the Hungarian tradition, for example, custom dictates that a fairytale begins “Once there was, and now there is not…” This is not a fairytale, but the opening is appropriate. I can’t promise a “happily until always”. So…
Once there was, and now there is not, a time when the only way for a writer to get their book to an audience was through traditional publishing. Mind you, go back further in history and you needed a whole roomful of monks to finish just one book, with each finished volume automatically becoming simultaneously a best-seller and well beyond the price-range of the average man-in-the-street. Which didn’t matter overly much, since the average man-in-the-street couldn’t read. Times change.
With the advent of the internet and the digitisation of the publication process the industry has, in many ways, become hugely democratised. Traditional publishing houses no longer hold the monopoly on what gets published, and the world of the independent author is thriving, but how do you go about self-publishing?
Let’s start by saying this is a huge topic, and one short article is barely going to scratch the surface. The first thing to establish, before we get to any of the practical details, is why do you want to publish? If it is simply for your book to be available, that’s great and you can plough on. But if you have any ambitions to create and grow an audience, you have to realise that publication is only one part of the process, and without effort put into marketing (which is not something that comes naturally to many authors), it is likely that beyond initial copies to friends and family, you will not see much activity on the sales dashboards. Unless you are a tier one star, even traditional publishers expect authors to take on the burden of promotional work. This could just be seen as part of the job of being an author, indie or otherwise. The point is, you need to be prepared mentally for your no-doubt wonderful literary creation not to fly off the shelf, and not to be disheartened if this is the case. The average number of sales for a book pre-self-publishing was about 500. Now it is closer to 150. Consider that there are some authors who shift books by the million, and you will understand that any sales can be considered a result! There are hundreds of thousands of books published each year and you are competing with them for readers. If you are hoping for sales, you will need a well worked out launch strategy. That starts at least six months out from the publication date.
If I haven’t put you off, let’s consider some simple steps of the how-tos of self-publishing. The first thing to decide is where you are going to publish. There are lots of avenues, but the biggest is Amazon, and that is where most people start.
There are certain givens. You have your book in great condition – it has been well-edited and formatted in Word or pdf format. They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. But people do and it quite literally pays to have a cover that fits with the genre expectations of your audience. A lot of advice suggests that if you are going to spend money on anything in self-publishing, editing and cover design are the places to do so. There are freelancers on sites like Fiverr if you don’t have skills yourself.
Once you have your edited manuscript and cover, you’ll need an account on Amazon’s Kindle Desktop Publishing (KDP) platform. If you are publishing printed versions of your book, you can upload a formatted word or pdf document. If you want to publish as an ebook (and many readers these days read digitally), you will need to upload a different format – either .mobi, .epub or .kfp (Amazon’s bespoke version). Amazon provide desktop software called Kindle Create which will convert your original into an acceptable format.
There are three screens to work through on KDP. The first is where you upload book title, description and search terms. You will need an ISBN for printed books, but Amazon can provide these. If you want to publish elsewhere, you will need to buy your own (easy enough to find online). The second screen is where you upload your manuscript and cover. The final screen is for setting pricing and distribution. You can chose between exclusive publishing with Amazon and a higher royalty, or retain more control for a lower percentage of sales.
That’s it as far as creating something that can be published. But it’s only the start as far as being a self-published author.
Liam Stirling is the author of The God Particle, the first Hercules Leek adventure which mixes fantasy, science-fiction and philosophy with a liberal sprinkling of laugh-out-loud humour. Liam is currently working on the follow-up The Ivory Tower and has a number of other titles planned for the series.
Liam began life as a baby, but professionally soon outgrew this calling and eventually moved on to study Zoology at Oxford University. Following a few years as a research scientist, he was subsequently a saxophonist in an marvelously unsuccessful reggae band, before the gravity of adult life sucked him into a career in IT.
When not doing the day job, he can be found doing the things that take up all the waking hours of a self-published indie author. But somehow he still finds time to play his saxophone and keep bees.
Liam’s short story “What About the Farmers?” retells the encounter of the demons Legion with Jesus on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. But you shouldn’t buy this, because if you visit his website www.herculesleek.com, he is giving away copies of the audiobook, narrated by the fantastic James Macnaughton, FREE.