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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

#61

Post by austenallred »

username223 wrote: post #59
austenallred wrote: post #9

I just finished my first book, and I went a little bit different of a route than the author here. I know this isn't very DIY, but it's probably worth knowing it's an option: I simply hired someone who works at a book publishing company to edit and typeset the book for me on the side. The person I hired does it for a living and is incredibly good at it. Let's just say it's not the most lucrative career choice, so I ha…

> we're ebook only so far Any insight on "piracy" rates? I recently published something print-only, and was considering offering a PDF (layout matters). It's a completely different "vertical," so the rest of your experience isn't too relevant.

It's not really a concern that I have; I haven't seen any evidence of it popping up.

If you're really concerned you can use gumroad, which will allow you to stamp each .pdf with the user's email when they bought

Re: How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017

#62

Post by BeetleB »

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.

>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.

If your goal is to make a lot of money selling, then "Of course!"

However, I submit to you that King is not a massive success because he targets the average. He is a success because he writes well. His plots and stories are not that great - even his fans agree. But his ability to suck you into a story is quite strong. As he said in his book:

"The job of a storyteller is to get out of the way!"

This means no fancy literary devices that let the reader appreciate the choice of words - that alerts the reader to your presence, and distracts from the story. It also means strong settings and descriptions.

Re: How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017

#63

Post by exergy »

BeetleB wrote: post #57
exergy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what you account for as feedback. If we are narrowly talking about plot twists when writing an entertaining thriller, than yeah, by all means, make sure the audience gets it. Also, there is much to be said about a sharp, crisply edited book that doesn't meander or ramble pointlessly. On the other hand, in general I almost exclusively read books and blogs because I'm interested in what the author has to say…

>On the other hand, in general I almost exclusively read books and blogs because I'm interested in what the author has to say, rather than what I'd like to hear. I assume you read mostly nonfiction, then?

I'd say the author's voice shines through even clearer in fiction though. Authors certainly can exercise flair when writing history or something, but even more when they invent a fictional world and develop and atmosphere and characters within it.

When a fiction writer comes up with a plot, or even a turn of phrase that blows my mind, that's one of the best things about reading. Like "how did he think up all this?!"

Re: How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017

#65

Post by walterbell »

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...

Does KDP Print require granting exclusivity to Amazon?

Re: How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017

#66

Post by Finnucane »

necklace wrote: post #58

Seems I am on a downvote streak lately so I'll keep going; why would you not use (Xe)LaTeX? If I was too lazy to use that I would probably use something like bookdown.

Well, you could, at least for the print part, if that was what you were comfortable working in. LaTex is sort of notorious for being designer-unfriendly (something like ConText might be better if you want more design flexibility). But if you don't actually know anything about book design or typesetting (like most self-published authors) then at least it might keep you from making a true horrorshow by using a common stylesheet.

If you want to do epub/kindle publishing, then you need to be able to output that into the necessary html files those formats are constructed out of. This is a little chore, but a manageable one.

Re: How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017

#67

Post by onion2k »

teach wrote: post #41
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'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 (w…

Good to know. Thanks.

Re: How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017

#68

Post by Finnucane »

j2kun wrote: post #60
necklace wrote: post #58

Seems I am on a downvote streak lately so I'll keep going; why would you not use (Xe)LaTeX? If I was too lazy to use that I would probably use something like bookdown.

I am using LaTeX, but I'm almost certain it will be a pain when I go to the eBook step, since they all have their own formats and I'm not aware of any tools that can render the math formulas in my book faithfully on all of them.

This is a problem. In epub, you can use MathML, but support on reading systems is spotty. You could embed something like MathJax, but that would also depend on there being scripting support (not all systems have it). On the Kindle, there is none--no Latex, no MathML, no scripting, nothing for math support at all. Your only choice is graphics. SVG or high-res PNG works best. Though on a Kindle, there's no "S" in the SVG (i.e, the Kindle can't actually scale SVG). Occasionally we do a math-heavy econ book here, and it is always a compromise.

Re: How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017

#69

Post by username223 »

Interesting. I recently published a paperback in a different space (color, lots of figures), and made completely different choices. I can't write anything nearly as long or specific as your blog post here, but in brief:

* I used XeTeX plus my editor of choice.

* I sent it to a few friends, listened to what they said, and read and re-read until my eyes bled.

* I avoided Amazon like the plague, instead using a small print-on-demand shop with reasonable prices.

* I sold via pre-sales, my personal website, and consignment at small bookstores.

Re: How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017

#70

Post by joeax »

zhubert wrote: post #35
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 definitely agree with your initial post, I'm just not able to offer advice on how to write a good book as I may, or may not, know how :) In the writing groups I've participated in, there seem to be a number of authors that are scared off by the process of getting their work out there. I'm hopeful that this post will help them overcome the technical hurdles in doing so.

There is a book out there called "Writing the Breakout Novel" by Donald Maass. The book was a tremendously help for me in deconstructing my plot and characters. I rewrote and even rearranged entire chapters. I had subplots that had no closure that I rewrote to provide an ending.

I invite you to check out my novel's Amazon page and read some of the reviews. Even the negative reviews praise the story itself, while slamming my writing style :)

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