Self Publishing a Fantasy Novel

Hello and thanks for dropping by! So this month I thought I would do something a little different and document my approach to getting my next novel out into the world. Before I get there though I will of course give you guys a brief update as to any progress on my other projects.

The White Haired Storyteller

The Dark Harvest

THE DARK HARVEST is a fast paced, contemporary, sci-fi crime thriller, set in the secretive world of medical research.

"Dr Suzy Watson is a brilliant scientist who learns that despite its life saving possibilities, her life’s work is about to be mothballed. When she complains to her new, misogynistic boss she is sexually assaulted and forced to leave. Stealing the software program she dedicates herself to continuing her work. Culminating in the creation of an anti-ageing vaccine which has many but often fatal, side effects." https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dark-Harvest-secretive-operations-throughout/dp/B0CPCB56T2

As mentioned previously the sales for my debut novel have been disappointing - this month not a single purchase was recorded. I even ran an ad campaign and reduced the e-book price by 50% but sadly no takers.

When I looked at the figures in detail the big issue seemed to be that people where simply not even looking at the ad. I know this because the way ad's work on Amazon is that I am charged each time someone clicks the ad. They also provide a number for 'impressions' which is the number of times the ad was shown to potential buyers. Because both of these figures where well below the average I can only draw one of two conclusions. Either my book is being shown to the wrong audience, or, the cover and story blurb doesn't appeal.

The advantage of being an independent self publisher is that I can make changes so I will begin work on a second revision on this book, however as you will see from the resto f this blog it will not be a high priority given my current workload.

Tahira The Elemental

TAHIRA THE ELEMENTAL is a fantasy set in early European and North African prehistory. It's a tale of maternal love with strong female characters who have to fight to survive in a male dominated world where violence is common place.

"Orphaned on her sixteenth birthday, Tahira's life was about to take her in a different and at times violent direction. Unbeknown to her, there is a path she must follow, it is her destiny to become an Elemental but there is a price to pay."

As mentioned last month my editor suggested some changes which required quite a lot of effort. Having said that the book is so much the better for it and is now with my proofreader. I am tentatively aiming to release this story mid September but I still have things to do in preparation, as you see later in the blog.

The Keyholders Apprentice

THE KEYHOLDER’S APPRENTICE is an 86k word comic fantasy novel set in a world that is a mirror to a pre-technology Earth. It’s full of fun with popular music and other cultural references. It is a satire on the world of music and the glorification of rock icons, but told through an original story with contemporary and diverse characters. It also satirises societal views on misogyny and diversity.

Had some more feedback from a couple of literary agents this month. One said it had merit but not enough for them to fully get behind the project. The other advised that they didn't believe it would appeal to the market. Any author would attest that this is pretty par for the course. Last year it was reported that less than 1% of all queries made to literary agents resulted in a request for a full submission, and even this is not a guarantee that the agent will take you on!

My literary 'hero' is the late Sir Terry Pratchett and his Discworld series of books. This story is a satire along these lines but clearly the literary world has moved forward. But, maybe out of stubbornness, I will self publish this and the rest of my World Of Rock books. I plan on drafting the third book in the series in September and tentatively hope to release all three in December this year - nothing like a scary deadline to get the juices going!

The Problem With Death

This story follows the adventures of The Keyholders Apprentice and his crew. It's now a year after their arrival and things had begun to settle down but something is amiss. The number of child births the witches have to help with has dropped off, there are more and more ghosts wandering around and Death is having a mid life crisis.

The initial draft of this manuscript was completed several weeks ago and has been metaphorically collecting dust on the shelf since then. Now that I have finished editing Tahira The Elemental I will review and redraft this prior to sending of for its developmental edit.

The Author's Eye Podcast

This is a brand new venture that I have been working on along with my co-presenter the incredibly talented and award winning author DEBRA EVERY. Her new book DEENA UNDONE is due for release on 8th Oct 2024 and is currently available to pre-order, check out the following link.

https://debrakevery.com/book/deena-undone/

Right that's the plug out of the way for her book and now back to the podcast.

So the idea with this is that each week Debra and myself will discuss issues affecting authors as they navigate the decidedly tricky world of writing and publishing their books. This will be both entertaining and educational and will appeal to all authors as well as readers interested in hearing from writers.

So how will it work, I hear you ask?

Authors with differing levels of experienced will be invited onto the show to discuss/promote their work. Along side this there will be tips and tricks to help authors along their way as well as discussions on literary world news, for example, in the first episode we will talk about the 'movement' called Fossil Free Books and the impact it has had on UK book festivals. We will also have a short segment of what we are calling 'Performance of the Week', as a challenge I wrote a short story (3-5mins in length) prior to recording the podcast which I then read for your entertainment/derision (tick as applicable).

The Author's View

As mentioned last month the publishing industry is brutal. It is driven and controlled by big corporate. They exist to make money and lots of it, and, as an author we get lost in the nuances, the politics and the sheer frustration of it all. What we want to do is write whatever that form will take. As mentioned previously, early indications from the literary world are that I do not write commercial fiction. My stories cross the various industry defined genres. My latest novel is a classic example, it is a pure fantasy. A young woman's life is turned upside down following the death of her father making her an orphan on her 16th birthday. Its a tale of magic, myth and legend but, I have set it in earth's prehistory and it's early civilisations - there's not a magical, imagined kingdom in sight.

With that said I determined a while ago that I would only self-publish Tahira The Elemental. Now I have experience of doing this with Amazon KDP - my debut novel The Dark Harvest was released that way. But as mentioned before the results have been a little disappointing from a sales point of view. Having had time to reflect I believe that I rushed this out. I have published hundreds of diaries, logbooks, journals and other low content books on Amazon before with some success and, naively I thought that a high content novel would follow a similar process. Our survey said 'nah'!

So this time I thought I would spend a lot more time to research my options, looking into alternatives and trying to come up with a clear plan. In my previous life as a senior IT manager the thrill of creating plans and executing them was a joy - by the way I am fully aware that this makes me out to be some kind of nerdy weirdo!

Before I delve into the details I need to make it absolutely clear. This is my approach and I don't know whether it will work, that it part of the journey. Therefore anyone else about to embark on their self publishing journey should do their own research to see what they think will work best for them. I repeat, the following is what I am doing personally because I think it works best for me and is therefore not a recommendation.

I am however prepared to make some recommendations but they relate more to the book itself rather than the publishing side of things. As someone who has tried to do all things themselves I would highly recommend to all self publishers to hire a development editor and get your covers created professionally - if your budget allows obviously! The difference it has made to my work is amazing.

An Approach To Self Publishing

So how am I going to distribute my work? Notice how I say distribute, I am not going to talk about selling/marketing your books as I have covered this in a previous blog. Well before I share this it's best to try and explain the three main options available to you.

Direct Sales : One way to distribute your books is via your own website (assuming you have one). You will simply need to find a company to print your books for you. You can use an 'offset printer' such as Book Printing UK but you will have to pay up front for their services. I was quoted approximately £1150 for 100 hardback books with future orders at "9.75 per 100 books) . So assuming I sell my hardback for £15.95 each (ex. delivery) I would make £4.45 per book. Payment would be immediate.

Print On Demand : Rather than directly selling your books and dealing with the postage etc. you can set up an account with a publisher such as Amazon KDP. You load the book onto their site and you send your customers to their site. Each order is printed out one at a time. This is a very common approach, this also has the benefit of potentially being found on the Amazon website itself i.e. without you having to send your customers to it from your website. The other advantage is that you have access to other book formats, e-books and paperbacks (again you will need to do the uploads and formatting).

Depending on which figures you believe Amazon is currently responsible for anything between 75-85% of online book sales. There are other companies such as Ingram Spark, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Publishing, Lulu and others who provide similar services. Collectively this would account for between 90-95% of online book sales (again dependent on which figures you accept). It would however require you to have an account with each and to upload/format your book to each of these sites in addition to Amazon KDP.

Each of these companies have slightly different charging models but suffice it to say that it is more expensive to print one book at a time, clearly the economies of scale would be lost. However for the sake of simplicity lets stick with a projected hardback sale on Amazon. For a retail price of £15.95, depending on exchange rates, I can expect to make £2.75 after print costs and commission payments to Amazon. I will get paid this after 60 days.

Aggregator Book Publishers : There are a growing number of companies who will distribute your books for you to as wide a global spread as possible (each company has a slightly different reach). You simply upload your book to them and 'hey presto' your book will reach the masses automatically. Books are again printed on demand.

As you would expect these services are not free, but then again what is? So companies like Bookbaby and Publishdrive will charge you upfront for this service. I mention these two because they have different charging models. Bookbaby charge a fee per book whilst Publishdrive run a monthly subscription model. With both of these options you will keep all profits minus the charges made by the outlet that sold your book. For example if Amazon sold your hardback you would receive the £2.75 mentioned before. However there reach is beyond Amazon, it will include all the other companies (and others) such as Ingram Spark, Kobo etc. They can also make your books available to libraries as well.

For Book baby the cost depends heavily on the format for distribution but lets assume you want them to distribute e-book, paperback as well as hardback to every site they can get it too you will need to pay upfront anything between $300-$500.

Publishdrive use a monthly subscription. For one book its normally $14.19, for 6 its $20.99, 18 is $41.99 with their top 'Pro' level of up to 48 books per month costing £83.99. Things to note one book is not a title it is the format i.e. if you want to publish/distribute an e-book, paperback and hardback this would be classed as 3 books. They do run regular promotions and discount schemes so always worth checking that out if you are interested.

There are other aggregator publishers that run on a commission basis and basically take a % of any royalty payments you might receive. Draft2Digital, Lulu and Ingram Spark are examples of companies who do this. The commission these companies take depends on the format of the book sold but expect to pay approximately 10-15% for e-books and 15-20% for physical books.

So what's my plan of attack?

Let's get real for a moment, I am a first and foremost a writer, end of story (forgive the pun). I have spent over 30 hours researching the pro's and con's for each and every approach to getting my next book out there. It has given me a level of comfort regarding my plan of attack but it doesn't mean it's right for everyone.

My basic premise is to try and get my story out to as wide an audience as possible, however that has to be managed practically. I am extremely busy and do not need to create/administer an account with every tom, dick or harry that is out there. I just want to write, its bad enough that I have to all the other things associated with writing such as editing and proofreading - and don't get me started on marketing the damn thing!

Anyway, rant over! I have come to the conclusion that such a panacea is not currently available. For me there will have to be a compromise solution. Before going on to outline my approach it is worth mentioning that Amazon and other companies do offer an expanded distribution scheme on top of their normal services but once again the commission rates reduce significantly impacting your profitability.

Talking of impacting profitability I have decided to use the commission based aggregator Draft2Digital (D2D) to distribute my paperbacks and e-books. Yes this will further reduce any payments I might make from any sales but it does allow me to have only the one account rather than setting up accounts with everyone else. Currently D2D don't offer their service for hardbacks so I plan to use a company called Bookvault here in the UK. There is normally an upfront charge of £19.95 per title with a further commission payment taken per sale - I did however find a discount code for a free trial so well worth having a look yourself should you want to go down this route.

There is an other advantage to using D2D in that they have a strategic relationship with a company called Findaway Voices who are an aggregator for the audiobook format. Now this is currently outside the scope of this blog but is something I am seriously considering as part of my book launch. Sign up to the website to keep yourself posted for when I publish the next blog which is going to be all about audiobook creation and distribution.

The End Is Near

As ever I am always happy to hear from any bookworms, so if you have any questions/comments/opinions please drop me a note, I would love to hear from you - my only request is to be civil - oh and to be a real human!

Til next time - please take care and stay safe!