…or, If you thought writing your book was hard; wait until you try to sell it.

While I put off editing my next episodic story collection let me help some of you new self-published authors who have yet to do anything on the publishing side. You are editing your writing and fantasizing of posting it to Amazon–wait, we skipped a few steps… a whole lot of steps. So let’s go back to the beginning.

If you are writing for more than your own enjoyment you will want to post it up online. If you want to try to make some money and pursue the dream of being a writer rather than a writer-hyped-something else then you’ll need to upload it to one and probably more online book stores. Amazon is probably the one you have on your brain, but what about Apple’s iBooks or Barnes & Noble’s Nook or Kobo? Then there are places like Smashwords that are hybrids of stores and digital wholesalers. (I’ll come back to this later.) Or small but niche eBook sellers like AllRomanceEbooks for amorous books?

Later on we will talk about getting your writing ready to upload to these stores, but even before that you have to know where you will be sending your finished book. Each store has different requirements for covers, formats and acceptable content. You need to be thinking of all this as you write and edit. You can throw what ever you want up on your own website, but your cover will be determined by the lowest common denominator of stores you’re targeting. I’m not even talking about the cover content (for you romantics and eroticists), I’m talking about the actual pixel size and total byte size. It’s not as bad as the first gold rush five years ago but you have to be wary of these things.

And the format of the book… Amazon wants its own unique format for Kindles, but will take your ePub and do digital magic to it so it conforms to its proprietary format. Both iBooks and Kobo use ePub, but have different requirements. (I’ll speak more about ePubs later.) It’s odd that you’ll write in what ever you feel comfortable in (I use Evernote) and format your book in another program (I use Sigil) and then you need to output practically a variant version for each story you want to sell.

And each store has a different upload procedure and unless you are super prolific I guarantee you you will forget or get mixed up between stores.  Some allow you to edit your writing when you inevitably find that dastardly typo. Other stores will require you to not just upload a complete new file but to suspend sales of your book while they take 24 hours to OK the new file. Still ready to self-publish your book?

So that was easy to register and get ready to send up the next great American novel right? You are American right? No? Well all the big e-book stores (save Kobo) are American. And if you are not American you can’t sell on their stores–anywhere in the world unless you have proper taxation information. Namely what you’re going to need is to contact the IRS and get an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN). Basically this number allows you to sign on to these American stores by saying you are not a U.S. resident and don’t have to have taxes withheld. It is defect necessary if you are not an American citizen or legally in the U.S.

And while we are talking about taxation, do you have a business? It’s not necessary to have one and I wouldn’t recommend creating a limited liability company until you actually have meaningful money flowing in and out, but should you be writing as a sole-proprietorship? Could you write off your stock photo or editor costs on your income taxes? Each jurisdiction will vary and it won’t really matter until you start making money, but if you are going to pay taxes on your hard-earned writing, it’d be nice to only pay the right amount of taxes.

And while we are caught up in bureaucracies, do you need ISBNs? You know those bar codes on the back of books that allow tracking in the book trade. In some countries (like mine) getting ISBNs is free after jumping through some hoops, but if you are American it can be costly. You can get “free” ones from some publishers, but those can only be used for their own ecosystem. You might want to skip ISBNs to start especially if you only want to publish digitally. Just keep in mind when you want to turn your collected 250 000 word werewolf epic into a “proper” book you’ll need one.

That seems like a lot of hassle just to sell your Klingon poetry right? So why not just sell it yourself and truly be SELF-published. OK, sounds good because now your book store isn’t taking their cut (roughly 30%) and you’re getting all the cash. Wait, what?!? Yes, Amazon, Apple et al don’t sell your book for free. They take a cut of your sale (and often don’t pay you until you reach a certain threshold). If you’re web-savvy you can grab a CMS (I use WordPress) and set up a digital store (something like EasyDigitalDownloads) and be off and running. Except you’re not. How are people going to give their money to you? Payment gateways, namely PayPal. There are others, but once you weigh your options you’ll probably feel dirty as you sign up for a PayPal account. And whether it’s Elon Musk’s old company or another gateway (like Strip), they’ll take a cut of your sale just like the credit card company does at your brick and mortar book store. But it’s way less than 30%, usual 2.9% and a quarter per transaction. But you are doing a lot more work to get more. And make sure you sign up everyone to your mailing list who even looks at the website address. (More on this later.)

Or maybe you aren’t that web-savvy and you want to pay a software as service company a monthly fee to sell off a customized webstore. It’s way less work and hassle than running your own site, but you are putting out money even if you don’t sell a thing. (Technically you are also doing so with a self-hosted website on a reseller, but a lot less.) I really have a hard time recommending to someone dipping their toe into selling their writing to a site that charges them just for showing up. But it is an option.

And you do have a website right? Does it look like a default install page? Have you sexed it up a bit? Where’s your mailing list sign up? (Still teasing the mailing list, so wait for it.) You have images of your book covers and little blurbs? And what is the purpose of your website? If you are selling off your own website then you want to focus on selling books. If it’s an informational page then you still want to have all your writing being sold, but with links to where you sell it.

My site is here to get you to buy it from me (hint hint). I put the books up front. I only really focus on the books that are available. And if you’re not ready to buy now, then I’d like to entice you to sign up for that newsletter (more teasing than a stripper) to remind you of new books and that maybe you’d like to buy some time in the future.

Build it and they will come… is such a load of malarkey. Build it and it will die a slow death. Time to put on your marketing pants. (Sorry I didn’t tell you you’d have to wear pants for this.) So, you have a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Tumblr, Pinterest and such account right?  No, not a personal account for family and friends, but one for your writing. (I mean if you wanted to thin your social media contacts you could spam them with your lycanthropic historical romance, but that could be awkward at PTA meeting and family picnics.)

And you will now have to work those social networks, wait… Have you heard of Goodreads? If not go look at the site, I’ll wait, but not too long. So for you guys who go there how do you find it? Oh wait, they’re back. So, like most things today Goodreads started as one thing and became another. On the surface it’s a review site, but with your marketing pants on it’s a social network. If you can get people to read and review your work than it can spread with you doing very little. And in essence all the social media is front loaded marketing in the hopes that a few influential people pick up your torch and do your marketing for you. But it’s a lot of front loaded work that rivals your actual writing. (I could have written a short story in the time it took to write this blog entry–MARKETING!)

MAILING LIST, made you look! Your chance of getting someone interested in following you on social media isn’t easy. Getting people to your website not the hardest thing in the world. But how do you keep in contact with people who don’t follow you or can’t remember that cool author site they saw last year with that great soon to be released shape changer space opera. A mailing list. You will basically want any one vaguely interested in your work to sign up to your mailing list. I rarely go to some websites, but I know upcoming products from their companies because _I_ signed up for their mailing list. So while I go about my business something I might be interested just drops into my mailbox. And this is the key to a good mailing list, it tells already interested customers that something is available to buy even if they don’t visit your website, social media or think about you all their waking moments. It allows you to keep in touch with your audience even when you have nothing for sale so that one day they can think about you every waking moment–or buy from your back catalogue. It’s not surprising many author’s social media link to their mailing list sign up rather than their website or stores.

Still reading? Haven’t scared you off yet. Well let’s get back to where we started this.

You finished writing and now you need to edit your work. I don’t mean check for spelling mistakes or typos but editing. Only crazy people would edit their own work because we can’t see our own errors. Sadly our brains tend to see what we meant to write rather than what we actually typed. Spell checkers can fix mistakes and intentional “errors”, but they can’t check readability. Even if you start by editing your own writing get someone you trust to give it the once over and note mistakes or awkward passages. After you “fix” those problems have them do a second once over.

Or you could get someone to professionally edit you book. The real problem here is you might pay the editor more money than your book generates. If you become Internet successful, I’d start getting stuff semi-professionally edited. Bad writing can be fixed, but not unread.

So remember that cover we talked about before. Ya, how do you get a cover for your soon to be Pulitzer winning work? Well if you are like most self-publishers you’ll turn to stock photos and more specific micro stock photo companies. For as low as $6 you can buy a picture to slap on your book. Of course you need to drag it into a photo manipulation program and add the title and your name–WAIT! What are you writing? A picture of a high heel pulling a thong off long legs–for a children’s book?!? I kid. The real problem with micro stock is that you can’t use the photos for some things and at $6 your favourite photo is already used by 10 other books because the micro stock selection is small.

If you write fiction of a titillating nature you get it from both ends, double entendre intended. Many micro stock places don’t allow you to use their photos for “porn” a loose and near pointless term and the places like Amazon have equally undefined community standards about what is acceptable. I’d say use common sense, but no one else does so good luck with that.

You edited your book and you have a cover you love, but apparently e-readers don’t use Word documents. Let me tell you about ePubs. OK, let me sum up ePubs. ePubs is an open source reflowable book format supported by most e-readers. It is basically a website inside a zip compressed file. No kidding. Most e-readers except Amazon’s. Yes, the big dog uses its own format, the current one being a hack of the ePub standard. Luckily you can upload you ePub to Amazon and they will convert it. Unfortunately creating the ePub is not easy, even for web-savvy people. There are a few programs (I use Sigil), but there are lots of ways to break your ePub and make them unreadable. There is a validator, which you both love and hate until all the errors disappears.

Or remember Smashwords (mentioned above)? They and a few other companies can do everything for you from editing, covers, formatting and even uploading to the e-book stores–for a fee. If you don’t care or want to know how to do any of these things just hit the ATM and let someone else do those things for you. Finally you are ready to be showered in money right?

Umm, how much do you want for your magnum opus? Yup as nice as your cover is and how great your writing if you don’t price your book properly it will sit on the virtual shelf gathering digital dust. Obviously too high a price and no one will buy it, but if you price it too low it signals that maybe your book isn’t as good as “real” books. Or worse you have a run away success and undervalued your book and now got much less than what people would have paid you.  There are numerous articles on how to price your writings. Go read some. My advice is give away a small fragment to convince people they should give you money. Never give way significant writing for free, it devalues your other work. Charge $1.99 for short stories and $2.99 or $3.99 for novels. Play with your pricing until you find what gets you the most revenue. At first you may forgo revenue to grow your audience. Just remember you grow your audience to sell future writings.

And it’s always about the next “book”. Don’t spend too much time patting yourself on the back for getting your complete book to market. Yes, it was a monumentus task and truly incredible, but if they bought one book and liked it then they’ll want more. I would be sad to hook a bunch of readers to then tell then you had nothing more for them. (Unless you’re George R.R. Martin, you bastard!)

So now that you’ve finished your first draft, the real lifting begins. It may not be as fun as writing your book, but it does have its moments. And if you want to have a chance of dropping the hyphen from your writing career you don’t need to know how to do everything, but you do need to be informed about how your book will find its way into readers hands.