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How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017

zhubert.com

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Re: How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017

#41

Post by teach »

onion2k wrote: post #7
teach wrote: post #3

How to self-publish a paperback novel, that is. Looks like a lot of good advice! For my use case (self-publishing a digital-only book): I wrote "Learn Java the Hard Way" using Leanpub and I was pleased with the experience, but their build tools are closed-source and sort-of creaky and the tweak-compile-preview cycle is WAY too slow for my workflow. I intend to use Softcover for my next one. Recently I switched to Gum…

I'm writing a technical book at the moment and looking at a couple of ways to get it to print. Is there a particular reason why you're looking at Softcover, or is just "better than Leanpub"?

I'm very particular about how I want certain parts of the book to work, and with Leanpub there was a lot of random tweaking of Leanpub-flavored Markdown to try to please the parser.

I'd change a thing, press build, wait 9 minutes and check to see if that fixed it. In particular, woe is me if I wanted to use a mathematical formula.

I like that with Softcover I can use a local build system and can fall back to LaTeX (well, PolyTeX) to give me much better control.

Re: How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017

#42

Post by zhubert »

rekshaw wrote: post #33

Nice guide, although it is more of a 2016 guide. Amazon recently launched the public beta of KDP Print making CreateSpace redundant. https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=AH8RA6CMVRN8Y&ref_=pe_29...

As soon as they have author proofs, I'll switch over. The interface of KDP is really nice, trust me, I can't wait to switch.

Re: How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017

#43

Post by teach »

thewhitetulip wrote: post #22
onion2k wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm writing a technical book at the moment and looking at a couple of ways to get it to print. Is there a particular reason why you're looking at Softcover, or is just "better than Leanpub"?

I have published two tech books on leanpub, if you like markdown then leanpub is great. Earlier it used to be free, but now they charge 99$ for carrying a book, their rates are awesome, you get something like 90% of tge book sales

For the record I didn't publish on Leanpub. (Well, I did but I didn't send many customers their way.)

I just used them to get a nice-looking PDF and sold it myself from my website using Stripe to accept credit cards.

Re: How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017

#44

Post by vxNsr »

amelius wrote: post #19
ilamont wrote: post #5

The author mentions getting a copy editor, but I would also advise hiring a development editor and/or getting feedback from beta readers. Quoting Stephen King (1): Show your piece to a number of people—ten, let us say. Listen carefully to what they tell you. Smile and nod a lot. Then review what was said very carefully. If your critics are all telling you the same thing about some facet of your story—a plot twist tha…

With this approach, your novel becomes an average of what the masses like to read, rather than what you wanted to say. Engineered for the masses, so to speak. Which, of course, could explain why King is so successful.

I think King is actually telling us to do the exact opposite. The only time he suggests listening to feedback is when everyone is agreeing that something doesn't work. But if everyone is giving different feedback he advocates for ignoring all of it because then it is just pandering.

Re: How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017

#46

Post by chasing »

amelius wrote: post #19
ilamont wrote: post #5

The author mentions getting a copy editor, but I would also advise hiring a development editor and/or getting feedback from beta readers. Quoting Stephen King (1): Show your piece to a number of people—ten, let us say. Listen carefully to what they tell you. Smile and nod a lot. Then review what was said very carefully. If your critics are all telling you the same thing about some facet of your story—a plot twist tha…

With this approach, your novel becomes an average of what the masses like to read, rather than what you wanted to say. Engineered for the masses, so to speak. Which, of course, could explain why King is so successful.

Depends on your goals.

If your goal is to write something just for yourself -- maybe to practice a technical element of the craft or just to have total artistic freedom -- then go for it! That's actually a fine goal. I work on many creative projects that are Just For Me.

If you're interested in other people enjoying your work, though, it behooves you to get feedback on what you're creating. If nothing else, I think it's good for an artist to learn to intuit his or her audience's reactions. A band or a stand-up comic gets on stage every night and gets feedback, but for a writer it can be tough.

Re: How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017

#49

Post by scandox »

j_s wrote: post #37
scandox wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW I work as a fiction editor for a publishing house. I only mention that because I'm really not that a technical person. I'm more on the arts side. I accept that some bad books succeed, but this really is vanishingly rare. Subjectively even many so-called bad books have really excellent qualities - especially in narrative structure. So there are Bad Books and then there are BADly written books. I agree also with y…

I really appreciate the practical advice you're sharing as someone in the trenches of this specific process. What is the first action that should be taken by someone wanting to self-publish? Something about getting the product in front of a critical audience ASAP to prevent wasting time creating something that even marketing can't save?

Well I don't want to oversell my wisdom here. I have a specific outlook on all this and commercial success is low down on the list of priorities I think about. That said:

The trouble with getting stuff in front of a critical audience is that you don't get many chances. If you run after friends and family with a manuscript, you may also find your circle of acquaintance rapidly shrinking.

So, I don't think you can treat it exactly like an MVP :). However, to talk in "HN" terms the equivalent of an MVP in the literary scene is probably a short story. If you can write one good short story, the chances are you've cracked a great number of the problems of writing a novel. So I always strongly advise people to write short work and share it. And that is less intimidating to your potential audience. Also it's likely you can get feedback from magazines and so on. With a novel - it's very hard to get feedback in a timely fashion, or with any detail.

Now, of course, novels have significant other challenges, but at least you've addressed style/voice and basic story-telling.

What I find about technical people (even mildly technical people such as myself) is that we have a big disadvantage: rationality. The thing is that being reasonable often makes for bad story telling. You need to have a little bit of cruelty and unreasonableness to generate an emotionally convincing world. I find writers with a technical background portray rational actors and lack a sense of drama (I do anyway). To give an example, they resolve conflicts too early. They find using "miscommunication" to be a kind of cheat. They don't like information hiding (ironically!)...And these are all staples of provocative fiction.

Anyway, sorry I haven't really clarified much there.

Re: How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017

#50

Post by fundamental »

zhubert wrote: post #23
teach wrote: post #3

How to self-publish a paperback novel, that is. Looks like a lot of good advice! For my use case (self-publishing a digital-only book): I wrote "Learn Java the Hard Way" using Leanpub and I was pleased with the experience, but their build tools are closed-source and sort-of creaky and the tweak-compile-preview cycle is WAY too slow for my workflow. I intend to use Softcover for my next one. Recently I switched to Gum…

Does Gumroad have a solution for VAT? That was one of the things that lead me to use Amazon instead. Happy to update the post with alternatives.

I've currently got one product up on Gumroad and they seem to add VAT to the overall cost in countries which use it. I did end up getting a few complaints from customers about their lack of handling VAT IDs though.
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