as promised, i wanted to detail the step by step process of how i went about self publishing my latest release, a horror novella called Bloodletting Go. for others’ reference as well as my own in the future. but please note: i am not an expert! i am still learning! so much of this process was trial and error, and i’m sure there are better methods for certain parts that i’m unaware of at this point. but this is what i did, anyway!
another note before we begin: Travis Baldree’s Medium post on this subject was immensely helpful to me! i did do a few things differently, but highly recommend checking out his process, too.
1. write the damn thing
self explanatory. have a complete, polished manuscript. hire a (HUMAN) editor or a beta reader if you can swing it. make your words and your story the best they can be. everything else comes after that.
2. inspect other published books that you like
take a closer look at a comparable book from your shelf (comparable in genre, subject matter, length, etc). what are its dimensions? is the cover matte or glossy? how is their copyright page formatted? do they have a table of contents? chapter headings? acknowledgements or other back matter? there are a million other minutia you should take stock of.
other books are going to be your greatest resource when it comes to interior and exterior formatting. consider the creative choices their authors/publishers have made, and take inspiration from there. see what works and what doesn’t, and think about why.
2.5. get an ISBN (or several)
i’m putting this in between steps because it can technically happen at any time in the early process. each edition of your book needs its own ISBN (which is like a social security number for your book, allowing retailers to find and purchase it). a paperback edition needs its own ISBN, which is different than a hardcover edition, an audiobook, an ebook, and so forth. those ISBNs are tied to each edition of your book, no matter the vendor.
in the US, you can buy ISBNs through Bowker. their purchasing and assigning process is pretty straightforward. but the numbers are… expensive. you can buy 1 ISBN for $125, or 10 ISBNs for $295. the good news is that they never expire. so i went with the latter option; i needed at least 2 ISBNs for my novella (paperback and ebook editions), and will probably use the other 8 at some point over the next few years for other projects.
Bowker also offers barcodes to purchase alongside your ISBNs. don’t bother with this. there are free online tools that can do the same thing for you, and depending on your publishing service of choice (Amazon KDP and/or IngramSpark), they can also generate one for you.
once you make an account on Bowker and get your ISBN(s), go into one and fill out the required fields with information about your book. i skipped most of the non-required fields. add yourself as an author, and add an approximate future publication date. change the “title status” to “active” and the target audience to “trade” for fiction.
for the book price, you likely don’t know that yet, so select “not set.” this will give you flexibility to change/define the price later on.
3. interior formatting
first off, i write all my manuscripts in a program called Scrivener, which i bought several years ago (for that reason, this number won’t be included in my final cost calculations). around $50-60 for a lifetime license. it suits my needs just fine! there are other programs you can use that are more expensive, but i wasn’t too bothered, despite the curveballs Scrivener’s compile/export files sometimes threw me. Scrivener is nice because it’s a clean, organized, and customizable interface for drafting, and you can specify your interior print and ebook formatting all in the same file. Scrivener may require a whole other blog post to get into the specific settings i used (mostly discovered through trial and error)… help forums are your friend.
figure out the dimensions you want for your book. overall dimensions, as well as margins. set those into whatever program your manuscript lives in.
be sure to include front and back matter. again, look to other published books that you admire / are comparable to yours to determine what you want your front and back matter to look like. generally your front matter will include a title page, copyright, and dedication. back matter usually has an author’s note or acknowledgements, and a short bio/”about the author” (a few sentences will do). if you’ve published other titles, i’d recommend including a list of them or a brief synopsis in one of these places.
once you’ve got all this, do a few test exports of the whole file. (scrivener, the program i use, allows you to have different tabs for front/back matter, the main manuscript, and other content. makes it easier to identify which parts of the file you’ll be exporting/compiling). triple check the formatting in the exported file, especially in any front and back matter. when it’s looking how you’d like, take a look at the page count. that number will determine the width of the spine of your book, leading directly into…
4. exterior formatting
at some point by now you’ve probably fantasized about your cover artwork. now’s the time! do some research on (HUMAN) artists whose work fits your vibe, see if they design book covers, and commission a piece. you can commission either a standalone front cover, or a full wrap (includes front, back, and spine). rates depend on the artist. or, do it yourself! just be sure to commission (or DIY) it with the correct dimensions you set for interior formatting earlier.
i commissioned Evangeline Gallagher for my cover artwork and the title design, and paid $500. very much worth it, she killed it.
this is where your page count will start to affect things. there are a number of calculators you can use to figure out the width of your book’s spine based on your page count (and paper thickness, other minutia you can specify depending on the platform you choose to publish on).
Amazon KDP has a really helpful cover calculator that gives you clear guidelines to account for print variation (aka crops and bleeds). i shared this template directly with my cover designer so that we were all on the same page in terms of sizing and text/art placement.
same thing with IngramSpark; they also provide their own cover calculator that spits out a template for you. you’ll need an account there in order to go in and play around with that calculator. note that the paper over at Ingram is ever so slightly different in thickness from Amazon, so your spine design will need to be adjusted between the two platforms if you’re publishing through both.
5. pricing, royalties, & marketing
research other books in your genre, coming out roughly in your year, with your page count. and set your retail price from there.
both IngramSpark and Amazon KDP have calculators that can help you determine your print cost, which is taken out of your royalties / compensation.
on Ingram, i listed Bloodletting Go for $10.99 a copy. i set a 55% wholesale discount (more on that later), and it costs $2.97 to print one copy. so i make roughly $1.77 per copy sold on Ingram.
Ingram also gives you the option of specifying what to do with returns. you can select no returns (bookstores take the risk of not selling your books and being stuck with them), returns with destruction (books can be returned to Ingram and destroyed), or returns with shipping (books can be returned and shipped to you for an additional shipping fee, which i believe is taken out of your royalties). this may bite me in the ass later, but i selected no returns. i didn’t want the risk of being charged for shipping returns, nor the risk of losing royalties. does that make me a selfish bitch? maybe. but a cautious one at that. i’ll take lower sales numbers from bookstores over the hassle of returns.
6. miscellaneous notes (sales reports, wholesale percentages, etc.)
these first few weeks since release have been interesting as i navigate sales reports for the first time. i want to share a few findings:
Amazon KDP’s sales dashboard does not update as often as it should. ebook sales and page reads seem to show up daily, but paperback sales are only “processed” when the order is shipped, not when a customer first places an order. this could be a gap of several days, up to a couple of weeks.
you would think that if someone ordered your book and physically received it in the mail already (which you’ve seen with your own two eyes), that sale would appear on your dashboard. not so, in some cases, apparently! as i have learned through multiple back-and-forths with their support agents, if your paperback is sold through a distribution partner, it will take even longer for the sale to appear on your dashboard at all. here’s the direct quote i got from chatting with a live agent:
“Your royalty will appear on your Sales Dashboard approximately 30 days after the end of the month in which the sale occurred and will be paid approximately 60 days after the end of the month in which the sale is reported. For example, if an Amazon order occurred in October, then this sale will report at the end of November, and will be paid at the end of January, along with other sales reported in November.”
so i suppose it’s just slow going. it is frustrating to not have updated sales numbers to work off of in the moment, but hopefully they appear eventually.
i also have a gripe with IngramSpark. their wholesale pricing percentages are not as clear as they should be. i set my wholesale discount to 55%, thinking that meant that bookstores would be able to purchase my book at a 55% discount. in talking with a local indie bookstore, i found out that after setting the wholesale discount to 55% on my end, Ingram then takes 10-20% as a distribution fee. so the actual discount that bookstores receive is closer to 40%. maybe that is ignorance on my part, but it should be made clearer to authors what discounts they are able to offer for wholesale on the retailer-facing side of things.
7. my total cost breakdown
- developmental editor: $100
- cover designer: $500
- interior formatting: $0 (DIY)
- ISBN: $295 for 10 numbers (used 2 = $59)
- marketing: $0 (all organic so far)
that’s $659 if we’re only counting the 2 ISBNs i used for this project. not too bad imo.
anyway. i hope this was helpful to someone! i know i’ll be coming back to reference this post myself next time around. and again, i am still new at self publishing and there are probably better ways to go about parts of this process, this is just what i did for my novella! and it’s been working fine so far.
so… if you wanna buy that novella and support a queer indie author from maine, please do so! and let me know what you think of it with a review! buy Bloodletting Go on bookshop (.) org.
e. m. roy 