Two unrelated things

[oursin]

Father update: still in hospital, might be out tomorrow, might be out Wednesday, according to sister on phone this p.m. a bit better in himself - has been a bit out of it either from the infection or the medication.

Many thanks for all the good wishes.

***

The other thing, is that I would wish to solicit the plethora of wisdom and experience that may be found among my dr & gentle rdrz, concerning self-publishing.

Recommendations/non-recommendations?

If you have self-published, what would you have liked to have known before you started?

What have I not thought of that I should think of?

Any other thoughts not contained under the about headings.

Gratitude in advance.

Comments

[tree_and_leaf]

I hope he continues to improve.

[oursin]

Thank you.

[sonia]

I've self-published twice in print via LightningSource in the US. I recommend it for detail-oriented folks, because your book gets listed with Ingram and can be ordered from bookstores and libraries. However, you have to do ALL FORMATTING yourself and it is 10x as much work as it looks like up front. lightningsource.com

I would have liked to know how to use the Adobe suite (InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator) much better before I started. I chose to use InDesign because I really care about the book looking professional. It does that, but it's a lot of work to learn to use. I did a whole lot of web searches on how to do different things. Also transferring to an ebook from there is again 10x as much work as it looks like it should be. I'm just now writing up my notes on that.

I hired someone to do my first cover, very happy with the results, and modified my second cover from that. Hired someone to copy edit. Also got kind friends to look things over for me.

Looks like UK ISBNs aren't through Bowker, but anyway you need at least one, maybe another for a follow-on ebook.

There are so many details. Not even sure if these notes remotely address the areas you're interested in!

Best wishes with your project!

[oursin]

Very useful, thanks!

[castiron]

At work, I've tried using InDesign to export an epub, and I quickly figured out it was faster to export each chapter in Adobe Tagged Text, open the files in BBEdit and do complex search/replace to turn everything into XHTML tags, and hand-roll the epub than to use ID's epub export and edit it into something reasonable.

[sonia]

... wow. I did a mix of pre- and post-processing, but yeah, the unvarnished export is basically useless.

[littlered2]

Hope he continues to get better and is out soon.

[oursin]

Thank you - no updates as yet as to whether he is discharged today or tomorrow.

[mamculuna]

Hope for the best for your father!

I self-published on Amazon. It was remarkably easy--but so far, I have done only the Mobi version. The really hard part is publicizing and selling, which I'm not very ambitious about, so I can't tell you good ways to do that.

You will have to do some reformatting, whatever platform you use, but Mobi on Kindle is the easiest.

[castiron]

A friend from another online forum recently self-published a book in print and ebook through Amazon (gratuitous plug); she found it reasonably easy to do. She's in the U.S., though, and I'm not sure how well the distribution and payments work for UK authors.

Nielsen is the ISBN monopolizing granting agency for the UK. As Sonia says above, Lightning Source can give you the potential for very wide distribution, but you'll need to buy and provide your own ISBN. Amazon will assign an ISBN for you at no charge, but some bookstores are reluctant to carry a book with an Amazon ISBN, so if you're pursuing the possibility of bookstore sales, you're better off going through LSI. (At least for US distribution. I know some people I can ask about whether there's a better POD printer for UK authors to get books into UK shops, but given Ingram's ubiquity I wouldn't be surprised if LSI's it.)

If you're buying ISBNs and you think you're likely to self-publish more than one or two books, buy a bigger block of ISBNs. The per-ISBN price drops rapidly the larger the block you buy.

[contrary_cal]

Best wishes to your father.

You might know this already, but something I've just encountered in my early explorations of self-publishing and how it overlaps with my editing plans: don't let Smashwords or any other self-publishing company supply your ISBNs, as they will then be listed as the publisher of your work and that will make it harder for you to do what you want with the MS (and may affect how much you get in the way of royalties? Can't remember that offhand).

Also, you'll need a different ISBN for every version of the book, even if they're all electronic: iTunes, Amazon, Smashwords etc.

Oh, and make sure your cover design is simple enough to be striking and memorable at thumbnail size, as that's all most people will see wherever you choose to sell it.

If you're selling through US-based companies you'll need to deal with their tax system at some point.

I'll add more if I remember anything further!

[antisoppist]

Good wishes for your father's continued improvement. I have no idea about the self-publishing but send moral support and encouragement!

[shewhostaples]

Best wishes for your father.

I use Lulu, which flicks between brilliantly intuitive and infuriatingly byzantine depending on where one is in the process. (More here.) Most of what I know I learned from ankaret (there is some really good stuff about Lulu-wrangling on her blog) and the rest I worked out for myself with a lot of cursing.

[ankaret]

I wish someone had told me to keep in mind when making ebook covers that they will need to look good at the size of a monochrome postage stamp when people are looking for a new book in the Kindle Store or similar.

I do mine through Amazon and Lulu. Lulu provides handy Word templates for its various print book sizes but I'm not sure how well these work if you instead use OpenOffice or similar.

The bloke who runs Smashwords is helpful and friendly, but I cannot make their formatting software work and I've given up trying. On the other hand I last gave up trying a good couple of years ago and they may well have improved.

I am very excited to think of the Comfortable Courtesan meeting a wider audience.

[shewhostaples]

I've had no problems using the Lulu templates in OpenOffice.

[oracne]

What are your goals for the self-pub? Do you plan to follow it up with others, or just do this one?

Nice covers (at thumbnail size) do make a difference, from what I have gathered, so it's worth getting someone to do it if you are not graphically inclined.

[oursin]

This is actually The Thing from That Other Blog, that started out as a three-line jeu d'esprit and is now 800K+ words - so it would be several volumes.

[oracne]

From what I have learned from others, multiple books work better than one-offs. First book can be cheaper or free after a while. Matching covers and, eventually, a "book bundle" of the whole series, or first 3 volumes, or whatever, also apparently do well after a point.

You might want to consider joining the Romance Divas forum - there's a wealth of information on indie pubbing.