I’ve just returned from a summer break in Turkey and once again, thanks to my wonderful eReader, I was underweight as far as luggage was concerned. Which was just as well because, according to the very nice check-in staff at Gatwick, Monarch have a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to anything over and above their 20 kilo limit. They even weighed our hand baggage!
And I’m not alone in my worship of electronic reading gadgets with news, this week, that a struggling writer has landed a book deal with a major publisher after putting her novel online and promoting it through social networking sites.
Louise Voss shot to the top of the Kindle charts after publishing the book in digital form herself after being rejected by literary agents. It attracted the attention of publishers HarperFiction, which offered her a six-figure, four-book deal. As a result her book ‘Catch Your Death’ will also be printed and stocked in bookshops in the traditional way.
Louise’s book is for adults but, by coincidence, I have just finished writing an article for October Writers’ Forum magazine featuring children’s author Karen Inglis who is publishing her novel ‘The Secret Lake’ through Amazon.
Karen ruled out the traditional self-publishing companies early on as being too expensive. Some sort of online print-on-demand option seemed the best solution and, after a great deal of research, she opted for Amazon’s CreateSpace (www.createspace.com). The best thing about this process is that it costs nothing – although Karen did opt for a few extras including paying money for a decent cover image.
CreateSpace offered the added bonus for Karen to be able to eventually put her book out there as a Kindle edition through KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). Although she will also publish it with Smashwords (www.smashwords.com) as she is keen to make her book available to as many different e-devices as possible.
Of course, like Louise Voss, Karen knows that, despite the hard work involved, publishing her book is, in fact, the easy bit. Marketing and actually selling her book is the next part in the process and is equally important. She has already created a buzz on Twitter – @kareninglis – by tweeting on her progress with the book and she has set up a Facebook page especially dedicated to The Secret Lake – facebook.com/thesecretlake. The next step is to get something up on the newly emerging GooglePlus – Google’s answer to Facebook. If you’re interested in learning more about ePublishing visit Karen’s blog at www.kareninglis.com
But for all my raving about eReaders I have discovered a disadvantage to my wonderful reading gadget. It’s not much good when it stops working for no reason whilst stuck on a small sailing boat several miles out to sea off the Turkish coast!
Thanks for the mention, Louise
I should add for anyone just starting out on the self-publishing route that I’ve found that, while CreateSpace is truly excellent for providing the free templates needed to format the book’s interior (and the book cover if you wish)- and has a great support forum – I’ve ultimately discovered that Lightening Source UK are best to go with for distribuiton if you’re based in the UK – both because of better royalties and the fact that the books get printed in the UK. The ‘downside’ with LS for ‘beginners’is that they do not provide any templates or hand-holding – and (I think) require you to be a limited company in order to deal with them (I think I have this limited company point right, but will confirm on my blog in due course – as it happens through my professional writing I have a company that I have been able to route through).
It took quite a lot of going around in circles to discover the Lightening Source angle, as much of the ‘starting up’ guidance comes from self-publishers in the US who use CreateSpace.
I should also add that you don’t need to sign up with CreateSpace (which is for print on demand self-publishing) to publish e-books to Kindle. Many authors go straight to Kindle and never create hard copies at all…but in the children’s market(for now at least)I don’t see that as an option!
As Louise mentioned, I shall over coming weeks be populating my blog www.kareninglis.com about what I’ve learned along the way now that I finally have The Secret Lake up on Amazon in the UK and the US. (Another learning point, they are listed as ‘temporarily out of stock’ just now – which is Amazon speak for ‘the files are just having final checks before we release them’!)
As Louise says, the next task is marketing – and I’ll be blogging about my experience of that too!
Karen
Just to add that I’ve since been told that it is not necessary to be a limited company to deal with Lightening Source…so don’t let that put you off if you’re UK based – however do bear in mind my earlier comments about no hand-holding.
On a separate note, I’m delighted with the double page spread now out in the October issue of Writers’ Forum! Many thanks for the interview, Louise, and I hope it will inspire others! Karen
Thanks, Karen, and good luck with the book. Just to let everyone know The Writers’ Advice Centre may well be using this route to launch its new list. In which case the ‘hand holding’ would be done for you. We’ll keep you posted.