Memoranda

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!