It’s been four years since I first published The Redemption. I thought I might sell a few copies. It’s up to around a thousand. The Switch, which I thought was actually a better book, sold in the low hundreds. Great, you say!

So I pressed on and wrote Five O’clock Follies with Dick Brundage. A lot of fun and I learned so much about the Vietnam war. And now, I’ve gone back and finished my first (unpublished) book, The Connection. The latter is out with my larger group of beta readers, another first for me.

The point of this post (and parts 2 and 3) is to pass along my experience to other self-published writers or anyone thinking about going down this path. I hope it helps.

The Finished Product

So you’re going to write a book. It was kind of a bucket list challenge to me. To finish a first draft is a real accomplishment. I found out I have a knack for this. It’s the part of writing I enjoy tremendously. With four books under my belt, I’ve put together about 450K words. I’ve found I can gen-up a first draft in about four months (even while I’m working full-time). My only advice here: Don’t stop. Write through the first draft. Get it on “paper.” Work from there.

I wonder how many never make it this far. Everyone seems to have a book in their head, yet few finish a first draft. Since I can do it somewhat effortlessly, I believe there’s a writer in me somewhere!

So you have a first draft. Here comes the fun. Revise…revise…revise, find outside editors and beta readers, and copy edit (grammar, spelling, etc.). Then of course, there’s the book cover, the blurb, generating the ebook, and putting the word document into a printable format followed by determining where to publish, advertising, etc. I DID ALMOST ALL OF THIS MYSELF, though now I’m turning more and more to others to help.

It’s a ton of work! I have some advantages. I have a lot of technical skills, and my other hobby is photography. So I do have a bit of head-start on some people.

First thing after the draft is done, I let it sit for a few weeks. Then I start the revision process, It takes me 4 months for a first draft, but 6 months for revisions. I revise, revise, revise until I have a nearly (90% done) completed product. Then I would hand it off to my trusty beta readers, my spouse and my daughter, both ridiculously avid readers. (For my latest book, I’ve expanded to a much larger set of beta readers.) At this point, what I really want from beta readers is whether the book makes sense and is it something they enjoy reading. That’s partly why it needs to be nearly complete. In the traditional publishing environment, I would have an agent and a paid editor (and a publishing house). I couldn’t see plucking down as much as I might make on a book for an editor. Editors would argue that their service would increase the readability and value of the book enough to justify it. That may be true. I wasn’t willing to do that on my first few books.

After clearing it through my personal editors and beta readers, I returned to revision. Painstaking revision. Then the copy-editing. I did this part myself. Spent a GREAT deal of time re-learning and learning grammar-related info. Strunk and White, WD Grammar Desk Reference, Chicago Manual of Style are some of my go-to books. I’m sure there are a few grammatical mistakes in my books, but my readers have only pointed out one error so far.

Finally, after about a year, I’d have a finished manuscript.

The Cover

The experts will tell you the cover is a big part of whether someone will buy your book. They will say it needs to give some indication of what the story is about. The latter statement is debatable. Go to a bookstore (yes, they still exist) or look on Amazon. Covers might give you a sense of the book (is it dark, lighthearted, emotional?), but it won’t tell you what the book is about. I think the cover simply needs to grab your attention.

For my first novel, The Redemption, I used the Cover Creator from Createspace (which has been absorbed into Amazon’s KDP platform). I selected the picture (my photo) on the right cover above. The original cover (not shown) was kind of amateurish but that’s what I had. Back then, all I wanted was to publish a book. One book. I didn’t really care much about a cover. It would only sell a few copies anyway. 🙂

For my second book, a local company created the cover (the artwork on the left). It is definitely more of a scene that takes place in the book. Simple, yet effective. Still not certain that I have captured what I wanted on the covers, but they are not bad.

I produced the covers myself for The Five O’clock Follies and The Connection. Used a photograph from my co-author for the Follies and one of my own for The Connection. Believe I’ve at least pushed past the amateurish covers to semi-professional. The covers could be better; I acknowledge that. It’s a place where I need improvement whether that comes from outside or within my own skills.

The Blurb

I HATE writing the blurb. This is the back cover description of the book (or the description on your Amazon page, depending on how you define it). I received a lot of feedback from friends and other writers. My advice: Spend MUCH MUCH time on this. Outside of gaining attention with a nice book cover, the blurb is what really sells the book (as long as you have a few good reviews too – more on that later). There is a lot of advice out there on writing blurbs. Google it. Spend time on it.

I tend to use much of my back-cover description for part of my Amazon page description, though they are a bit different. The back-cover of The Redemption is shown above. The description on my Amazon page is here.

I’ve never been satisfied with any of my blurbs.

The Vendor or Where to Sell My Book and Pricing

Like many self-published writers, I’ve stuck with the Amazon KDP platform. Though it has its flaws and Amazon finds ways to keep you tethered, it does make self-publishing a breeze. And with KDP select, you get 70% commissions. I sell both print and ebook versions, and the book is available through the KindleUnlimited program where subscribers read it for free (Amazon pays me for pages read).

The sales breakdown over two books and four years: 66% ebooks, 12% print, and 22% KindleUnlimited. Of course, I have to estimate the latter, making the assumption that everyone who reads KU pages reads the whole book.

Part of the reason for the high ebook number is likely the price. It’s tough to price a print book on Amazon for under ten or eleven dollars and make any profit. Ebooks can be priced as low as 99 cents, but you have to price them at 2.99 or above to be in KDP Select (and get the 70% royalty).

Some thoughts on ebook pricing. The big boys (and girls), big-time authors, tend to sell their ebooks in the 10-15 dollar range. The self-publishing crowd tends to stick around 99 cents to 4.99. There’s an interesting gap in between. I’ve played around with pricing a lot. What seems to work for me is 2.99 to 3.99, but the royalties aren’t enough to pay for the advertising (more on that later in part 2).

You’ll also see people encouraging giving your book away for free. In my experience (a sample of one), my giveaway was essentially useless. I gave away a lot of books but received no significant bump in reviews (the supposed benefit of “free”). See my blog entry on giving away books here.

That’s it for part 1. Part 2 will talk about my experience with reviews (both Amazon and Goodreads), putting the book together for the print and ebook versions, and advertising (eye-opening). Part 3 will deal with where I’m headed after this four-year adventure (it may surprise you).