Category: Dr Huxley’s Bequest

In which I tell you all about the mistakes I’ve made, so you don’t make them yourself if you decide to self-publish your own book. It’s a very long blog post. (If you’re not interested in the technical details of self-publishing, I recommend you skip to the end of the post. Or read another blog post instead. For example, here’s a post about scones.)

Self-publishing a book for the first time involves a very steep learning curve. If you choose to do it, you have to accept that you’ll bungle some things. The good news is that you’ll probably be able to fix your mistakes, although that could involve a fair bit of effort and/or money. But keep in mind that traditional publishing houses, with their vast teams of highly-experienced staff, also make mistakes, ranging from putting out books riddled with typos (looking at you, Gollancz), to having to change an offensive book cover due to public outcry, to being fined tens of thousands of dollars for publishing a ‘non-fiction’ book full of obviously fictitious claims.

I found the editing and cover design stages of publishing Dr Huxley’s Bequest pretty straightforward, probably because I’d had experience in these areas through my traditionally-published books. I’d then planned to ‘typeset’ the book myself, using a template. ‘Typesetting’, in the digital age, means turning the edited manuscript into a pdf, with the print arranged as it is in printed books, with a title page, chapter headings, page numbers, appropriately-sized margins and so on. This wasn’t something I’d done before so I’d need to learn a lot first. However, I really wanted the book out by the end of the year and I was getting closer to my planned publication date. Also, the book had illustrations and an index, which I thought would complicate matters. I figured it would be easier and quicker to pay a professional book designer to do it and that’s where I made my first mistake.

There are two options if you want to contract out this sort of work: large companies that specialise in all aspects of self-publishing, from editing to marketing, and freelance graphic designers. I began by looking for a local freelance book designer, but lots of them preferred not to work with self-publishers or else they claimed on their website that they welcomed self-publishers, then didn’t answer my emails asking them for a quote. One book designer with lots of relevant experience sent a quote and agreed to do the work, then didn’t respond to my subsequent emails (she did eventually email a month later to say she was ready to start work, after I’d already found someone else). Grrr. (I should point out here that all the editors I approached for quotes responded within 24 hours. What is it with designers?)

Anyway, with my publication date looming, I turned to the big companies that specialise in assisting self-publishers. I’m generalising here, but most of them exist to make money from first-time authors with no publishing experience. And there’s nothing wrong with that! These companies are providing a service that’s very useful to many new authors, but they do charge a lot of money for things that these authors could easily do for themselves. For example, it takes about fifteen minutes to apply online for a pre-publication National Library of Australia cataloging number (which you’ll need if you want your book to be stocked in libraries and appear on the National Library database). This is completely free of charge, but self-publishing companies will charge upwards from $100 to do this for you. Again, that’s fine, especially if the first-time author doesn’t know anything about the National Library and needs a lot of support at every stage of the self-publishing process, but all I wanted was someone to turn my Word document into a print-ready pdf and format it for ebook publication.

One thing I will say about these big self-publication-service companies is that they have informative websites and they respond immediately to queries. I decided to go with the only Australian company recommended by Ingram Spark (the printer/distributor I planned to use). The staff at this particular self-publishing company were always polite and responded quickly by email and phone to sort out the problems (oh, so many problems) that arose. Also, I got a discount on Ingram Spark fees through them. However, there were major issues from the start. I’d explained what I needed over the phone – someone to format my manuscript for print-on-demand and ebooks – and they assured me they could do that and the finished product would look just like my traditionally-published books. But when their quote arrived, it was twenty-one pages long(!), full of expensive options I didn’t want (such as a thousand-dollar ‘book coaching’ package) as well as ‘free gifts’ that were worthless to me – and the quote didn’t include ebook formatting, which I’d specifically requested.

We sorted that out and I got started with a designer who had ‘ten years experience with [major Australian publisher]’. He sent me three chapter samples so I could choose the font I wanted. Two of the samples were inappropriate for this type of book; the third was okay, but the font seemed a bit on the small side. I figured the designer knew what he was doing with font size, though, so I didn’t interrogate him about it (BIG MISTAKE). In any case, I was distracted by all the other problems, the major one being the end-of-line hyphenation. There were hyphens all over the place, in the most ridiculous places, which made it difficult to read the text smoothly. For instance, single-syllable words like there’ll (which shouldn’t be hyphenated at all) were hyphenated as the – re’ll. Compound words weren’t hyphenated between the component words, so a word like courtyard was broken up as cour-tyard. They told me that this was how books were printed these days (no, they’re really not) and that if I wanted words at the end of lines hyphenated in my required (that is, normal, conventional) way, it would have to be done manually (I later found out this was untrue) and I would be charged per hyphen.

Then when the first-pages proofs arrived, they were a mess. There were sentences and paragraphs missing, illustrations placed upside-down, chapter headers in the wrong places, and of course, there were all those hyphens I had to check and correct. Once that was fixed, I manually located all the page numbers for the index, the index was added to the back of the file, and we went through the whole proofreading process again. Then it was time to turn the book into ebook files, which involves stripping out all the print formatting (including hyphens at the end of lines) so the text is ‘reflowable’ and can be read on any reading device, with the reader choosing the font and size. Of course, they’d only removed about half the hyphens … This whole formatting process only took about four weeks, but was immensely frustrating. I’ve proofread all my traditionally-published books and believe me, it doesn’t have to be this stressful.

I sent the final files off to Ingram Spark to print a sample copy, and when the first paperback copy arrived I realised, with a terrible sinking feeling, that I should have spoken up about the font size at the start because the print was just too small. The book was readable (I own books with print that size or even smaller), but I thought a larger print size would provide a more enjoyable reading experience, especially for younger readers. (An experienced book designer should have known that. But as I wasn’t an experienced designer, I hadn’t picked up on it and made them change the size.) Rather than halting the whole publishing process, which would push the publication date into the next year, I decided to release the paperback as it was, then do another edition with larger print as soon as I could.

I then did what I should have done initially and discussed it with Nada, who designed the book’s cover. (I hadn’t even considered getting her to design the book’s interior, because I thought she only worked on really complicated books with diagrams and text boxes and other fancy design features. But if I’d asked her to do the interior design, it would have cost less and would certainly have saved me a lot of stress.) She was astounded at how messy the file was but was happy to increase the font size for me, except she happened to be overseas, which would make things difficult. She gave me the contact details of a local designer she knew, who, of course, didn’t respond to my email. Neither did another designer I emailed, but I finally found Diana Murray, who did an excellent job of sorting out what she politely called “unconventional typesetting” in the print file (apparently some of it was in Spanish). She increased the font size and her hyphenation was perfect – and the new hyphens didn’t need to be done manually! As this new edition had more pages, it needed a new ISBN (that’s the thirteen-digit number on the barcode) and I had to redo the index page numbers (ugh), but finally, it was ready to be uploaded to Ingram Spark.

So, Dr Huxley’s Bequest now has a new, larger-print edition of 350 pages (compared to 270 pages for the first edition, which is now out-of-print). It will be available to buy from next week (Monday, 15 January, to be precise), in all the same places the first edition was sold, for the same price. For those nice people who bought the first edition – rejoice! You own an extremely rare first edition of Dr Huxley’s Bequest, one of less than two dozen in existence! However, if you think the print is a bit small and you (quite reasonably) don’t want to buy the second edition, then email me some proof that you purchased the first edition (for example, a scan of a receipt showing the book’s ISBN) and I’ll send you a free ebook edition in epub format, which you can read on your iPhone, Nook reader, Kobo reader or other ebook reading device (unfortunately I can’t send you a free ebook in Kindle format, for Amazonian reasons).

Oh, and the other big mistake I made was setting a publication date in mid-November, just before the whole of Australia goes on summer holidays. This was a ridiculous time to start doing marketing and publicity (so I haven’t done any of that yet) and it made the process of issuing a new edition extra-difficult because Ingram Spark pretty much closes down in December. So, hooray for me, again. I’ll do a post about marketing and publicity once I’ve figured out how to do it.

In conclusion, here’s my advice for other self-publishers:

– allow loads of time for each stage of the process. The more stressed you are about looming deadlines, the more likely it is you’ll make unwise decisions.
– if you’re contracting out work, use someone who’s been personally recommended to you. At the very least, they should belong to an appropriate professional association.
– if you’re worried that something’s not quite right, speak up straight away! Don’t be afraid to ask lots of questions and make (polite) demands. You’re paying and you’re entitled to professional service.
– sometimes it’s better just to do things yourself. It’s certainly cheaper and you’ll learn a lot of useful skills along the way.

Feel free to ask questions in the comments if you want my ‘expert’ advice on self-publishing. (Well, I do have a lot of expertise in making mistakes…)

More in Adventures in Self-Publishing:

Why Self-Publish?
What’s This Book About, Anyway?
Editing
To Tweet Or Not To Tweet
Designing a Book Cover
Turning Your Manuscript Into A Book

The arrival of ebooks has made it much easier for self-publishers to get their work into the hands of readers, but I always knew I wanted to see Dr Huxley’s Bequest as an actual paper book that I could pick up (and be able to read, because I don’t own any kind of ereader). But how does a self-publisher on a limited budget, expecting to sell only a few books, go about turning their work into printed books?

At first I assumed I’d have to do it the way that traditional publishers print books, just on a much smaller scale – that is, pay a printer to produce a limited number of copies using a traditional press. But this means working out how many books you want and paying for all of them up front. I did consider using a crowdsourcing platform (such as Kickstarter) to fund a small print run, but the more I researched, the less attractive this option appeared. These companies take a significant percentage of the money raised and have all sorts of unappealing conditions attached. Anyway, I doubted I’d attract enough contributors to make it worthwhile. And even if I myself paid for a print run, where would I store all the books? How would I sell and distribute them to readers?

Then I did some research and discovered the amazing world of digital Print on Demand (POD) publishing. This means that you print only the copies that have been ordered, when they’re ordered. You can order just one book for yourself or hundreds of books. The POD publisher will print them in a couple of days and send them to you – or, even better, send them to the bookstore or library service that ordered them, charge them the price you’ve chosen for your book, deduct the printing and distribution costs, and pay you the remainder.

This is how it works. You, the author/self-publisher, send the POD publisher two pdf files – one pdf of the inside of the book, laid out the same way any printed book is, and one pdf of the cover art, with front, back and spine art fitted into a template that the POD publisher supplies. They store these files in their computer and whenever a book is ordered (either by you or by booksellers), this happens:

Isn’t that cool? You can choose from a wide range of book sizes. You can print paperback or hardcover copies with a range of binding types and jackets and types of paper. I can confirm that the printed paperbacks look just like the trade paperbacks you can buy in a bookstore. The only issue I noticed with the particular POD publisher I used (Lightning Source/IngramSpark) was that some of the colours on the cover were lighter than I expected, which I’ve heard isn’t uncommon with digital printing-on-demand. And you can’t do really fancy things with cover design, such as cut-outs and embossed lettering. It’s also more expensive to print per book than if you printed a thousand copies at the same time using traditional off-set printing. However, for a self-publisher, print-on-demand is an affordable and practical way to produce print books. You don’t have to pay warehouse costs and you don’t waste any paper if your books don’t sell.

The other good thing about IngramSpark, for Australian self-publishers, is that they have printing facilities around the world, including in Australia, and they can deposit your book sale earnings directly into your Australian bank account. That’s one of the reasons I ended up going with IngramSpark rather than Amazon Createspace, the other big name in the self-publishing world. I also thought IngramSpark would work well for me because they’re connected to dozens of online bookstores and library suppliers around the world. If you choose to distribute through IngramSpark, you give them information about your book (cover image, book summary, author information and so on) and they send it to all their affiliated booksellers, who then sell the book through their websites and catalogues. If you choose Amazon Createspace, the book is only sold through Amazon sites – which do reach a lot of bookbuyers, but not everyone wants to buy their books from Amazon.

For ebooks, a similar process occurs. The file is uploaded to IngramSpark in a different format (epub rather than pdf) and it doesn’t have to get printed, but it’s still listed and sold through a range of international booksellers, including Kobo, Apple iBooks and Barnes & Noble. However, if you want your ebook to be available for Kindle readers, you need to format it as a mobi file, set up an account with Amazon, and sell it through them. I had no idea which ebook format was likely to be more popular with Dr Huxley’s Bequest readers, so I’ve made it available in both formats. I’ll be interested to see the sales numbers and how much I earn from each.

I have skimmed over a very important step, though. You can’t upload a Word document, no matter how pretty it looks, to a POD publisher. So how do you turn your edited manuscript into formats that will look good when they’re read in either print or ebook form? You either do it yourself, which requires a fair amount of technological and design skill, or you pay a professional to do it for you. Now, remember back when I started this series and I said it could end up being a What Not To Do? Yep, this is the bit where I made All The Mistakes. That’s coming up in the next post.

More in Adventures in Self-Publishing:

Why Self-Publish?
What’s This Book About, Anyway?
Editing
To Tweet Or Not To Tweet
Designing a Book Cover
All the Mistakes I’ve Made (so Far)

Dr Huxley’s Bequest is about two Australian teenagers, Rosy and Jaz, who live in Sydney and speak Australian English. I think most of their Australianisms make sense in context. However, when I uploaded the Kindle version, Amazon.com was VERY CONCERNED about terms such as ‘esky’ and ‘ute’. So, for those readers who aren’t Australian, here’s some additional information about the Australian terms and cultural references in Dr Huxley’s Bequest.

Firstly, an esky is a portable cooler or ice box, usually made of sturdy polypropylene. Inside is ice or those freezable ‘ice’ bricks, which keep your freshly-caught fish, barbecue meat or canned drinks nice and cold. Eskys are usually big enough to use as a picnic seat or, if your boat sinks, a flotation device. Apparently in New Zealand, they call them CHILLY BINS! New Zealanders have the best slang.

A biscuit is a cookie. I’ve talked about this before.

Australians, including Rosy, are very fond of putting slices of pickled beetroot in their salad sandwiches and hamburgers. We also put canned pineapple on pizza.

A ute, or utility vehicle, is a pickup truck with an enclosed cabin for a couple of passengers and an open flat-bed platform at the back. According to Wikipedia, the Australian ute was “the result of a 1932 letter from the unnamed wife of a farmer in Victoria, Australia asking for ‘a vehicle to go to church in on a Sunday and which can carry our pigs to market on Mondays’.” Traditionally, Australian utes have a couple of hay bales and some cattle dogs bouncing around in the back. In Dr Huxley’s Bequest, Jaz’s dad keeps his gardening equipment in his ute.

A eucalypt is a eucalyptus tree or a ‘gum tree’, native to Australia and to other parts of the world. You already know that, don’t you? I don’t know why Amazon.com had a problem with the word. Anyway, there are hundreds of different types of eucalypts, all beautiful and usually home to a lot of interesting and extremely noisy wildlife. Some of these animals are extremely possessive of ‘their’ gum tree:

While on the topic of big bullies, Ned Kelly was a murderous, racist thug who is inexplicably worshipped by many contemporary Australians. He was born in 1854, the son of an Irish convict, and started his criminal career at the age of fourteen when he bashed and robbed a Chinese-Australian farmer. He spent the next ten years stealing cattle and horses, robbing farmers and shops and banks, and killing people. He’s best known for his decision to make body armour and helmets out of old ploughs. This, he asserted, would be bullet-proof. It was, but it was also extremely heavy, which made movement difficult, and it didn’t cover his legs. So when Ned Kelly was finally cornered, the police shot him in the legs and he fell over and was captured, and later hanged. Captain Moonlite is another bushranger mentioned in Dr Huxley’s Bequest.

Finally, Rosy makes a brief reference to ‘Slip, Slop, Slap’. This was a very successful advertising campaign in the 1980s, devised by the Cancer Council of Victoria to encourage Australians to protect themselves from the sun. That’s because Australia is a very hot place and contains a lot of fair-skinned people vulnerable to deadly skin cancers. In the ad, a singing, dancing seagull tells people to Slip on a shirt, Slop on some sunscreen lotion and Slap on a hat:

If I’ve missed anything and you find something confusingly Australian in the book, feel free to ask about it!