Now that The Fractured Prism has been out for a couple months, I want to reflect a bit on the writing and publishing experience. There’s been a lot that I’ve learned by accident or the hard way, and I’m still learning a lot of the lessons, especially on the publishing side of things.
First of all, I’m loving writing The Prism Files and am really excited for Crimson Reigns to be released in the next couple of months. It amazes me how different it is writing a second book compared to the first. Once you have the momentum going, you can keep the story going instead of having to build everything from scratch. That being said, you also have stuck yourself on one path with some things, and you have to keep to them. Book 2 probably was less of a challenge, though, largely because it wasn’t building the story from scratch, and I actually had a clue about what I was doing (okay, half a clue, but it’s better than no clue).
There’s a long list of things I’ve learned from the writing process. I hope that if you’re reading this, and are interested in writing a book, that it can be helpful.
Note: I am a discovery writer (aka a “pantser”), so I tend to have an extremely general idea of what I’m going to write and just go with it as I write. If you’re a planner, then you’ll have a slightly different process, but these things should still apply
Writing a novel is really daunting when you think about it. A novel has to be normally greater than 50,000 words, and most are at the very least 70,000. That’s a lot of words, and it can be hard to know where to start. The key I’ve found is to put aside as much time as you can each day, even if it’s 15 minutes, to just write. I write on my lunch break at work and then for at least an hour at home. That allows me to normally write somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000 words a day, depending on how easy or hard the scenes I’m working on are. If you can only do 250 or 500 words a day, though, that is still a novel a year. Considering many authors take years to write a book, that is a perfectly fine pace. Heck, if that still seems too daunting, try a novella (around 35,000 to 50,000 words). Normally getting started is the hardest part, but once you catch your stride, writing is both fun and somewhat addicting.
Another lesson I’ve had to learn is that writing a book means you actually have to share the story. Even if that’s your intent (it should be), it can be hard to put up a piece of work you’ve put a ton of time into up for criticism. If you do the work, edit well, and get advice before publication, though, you’ll do great. Not everyone will like the book, but some people will love it, and learning to take the praise and critiques well at the same time is a big step. It’s extremely rewarding, though, and your writing will be better because of it. Plus, you get to share a story that you wrote with people, and there’s no other feeling like that.
Now, the publication process can be either an absolutely head splitting headache, really easy, or something in between. I’ve had my moments of all three of those feelings. Before you write your book, though, I recommend asking yourself some questions: Do I want to actually sell my book? Do I want Amazon to have complete control over my author life? If not, am I willing to accept some lower royalties on other platforms even if it’s harder and more expensive to get on them? Am I willing to spend money to make money?
Publishing to Amazon is easy. You create a Kindle Direct Publishing account (KDP), download Kindle Create, put your word doc book in Kindle Create, and upload it as an e-book (plus a paperback if you want). E-books get great royalties (70%) if you keep the price at $2.99 or above (and only 35% below that). They’re easy to set up. You need nothing but a cover, a description, a price, and your book. You can choose to be exclusive through Amazon and get into Kindle Unlimited or go wide. If you go wide (like I am after trying out being exclusive with Amazon), then you can’t use Kindle Create, though, as the program specifically only creates your e-book to be readable on Amazon, so you’ll need other software (if you need ideas, send me a message). Amazon makes things super easy with high royalties, and this is a major reason they’re killing the competition.
Paperbacks are a whole different monster. You can follow the Amazon exclusive route above and get a KDP ISBN for free, but you can’t use the ISBN anywhere else. I tried this and considered it a mistake, as I wanted my paperback at Barnes and Noble and other stores. That being said, ISBNs from Bowker are not cheap, and if you’re not serious about trying to sell your book, just stick with the free one. It’s also more difficult to format a paperback for non-Amazon, because Kindle Create doesn’t work here either. You can pay someone to format it for you, or you can slam your head against the wall for two days and beg Word to cooperate. I did the latter. It worked. I didn’t have to pay anyone. Still, it was tough.
I’m getting into audio books right now, so I’ll share that experience soon. It seems fairly easy through ACX to get a narrator, though.
That brings me to this point: you can pay someone to do anything that isn’t writing the book (and some people do that too). It can be very expensive though. Covers can cost hundreds of dollars. Editing can cost hundreds to thousands. Add in ISBNs, advertising, formatting, etc. and you can dig yourself a hole before you publish. But, if you publish the free way through Amazon, make your own cover with Photoshop or Canva, and wrestle your friends and family into editing for you, there’s little upfront cost, and with a little advertising, money to be made. You have to do it right, though, and that takes time and work to learn. I did it that way. I made my cover, edited by myself and with family, and did everything myself. It was difficult, I learned a lot, and I messed up a few times. Mistakes are okay. Nobody expects perfection from a new author. There will be moments you’ll be really mad about your decisions, but when you’re done with it, you’ll be proud
I recommend mixing some paid help in with your own skills:
If you’re not a decent graphic designer, don’t try to do your own cover. If the cover is bad, no one will read your book. If it’s good, it’s worth its weight in gold. If you don’t have a large budget, hire someone from Fiverr.
If you’re not great at grammar and don’t have friends and family who are, then hire an editor or at least use Grammarly. They’ll make your book good, readable, and find story-line errors you missed.
If you don’t know how to advertise, then don’t hire a marketer, learn how to use Amazon ads. It’s not hard to learn, and marketers will just steal your money for little gain. You probably won’t have a massive advertising budget, so you want to be in control of every penny.
If you can’t format the book, safe yourself a headache or five and hire someone to do it or buy a software that does it for you. It’s worth it. Fiverr works here too.
Now, I know this was a lot of information at once, so I’m planning to have smaller, bite sized, blog posts about a lot of these topics. I made mistakes with a lot of this stuff, and I want to make sure other people don’t. Publishing is difficult, but if you took the time to write the book, it’s worth at least going the straight Amazon route if not going the whole way. You’ll thank yourself later.
For a great free resource on self-publishing, take a look at the Self Publishing Formula podcast. They cover every question you’ve ever had and more. Feel free to email me at Brendan@Brendan-Noble.com as well if you have any questions or need advice. I’m happy to help however I can.