self publish ebook or paperback?

[shamguy4]

I'm still writing my novel but things are moving forward and thats good.
I'm part of a few writing groups on facebook and there is one that makes me feel like I'm in the twilight zone. It's about publishing.

There are some writers that write and publish books in a week!? I'm not sure how thats possible. I'm guessing the books aren't very good. Or they are simply erotica books that require very little plot or brain.
They don't come across as writers, but more like "get rich quick" schemers. Their goal is to publish books in hopes of making money. They hope to publish 20 books and in doing so reach 50K USD.

Anyways, from this I got a bad taste in my mouth from self publishing and didn't want my book lumped in with these books. I'm writing a new adult fantasy.

Then there is data online that suggests paperback is still more popular than ebook. I see them always posting about how ebook is all that matters and its what their audience prefers. The reality is I have never read an ebook. I only read from real physical books. It's how I would want my book read and its how everyone I know reads.

Lastly I want my book to look professional with a dust cover with foiling and all. Its a new adult novel and thats how the good ones look to me.

So is it better to self publish or traditional publish? Can i self publish and still have a hardcover book with a fancy dust cover made? Assuming I hire a professional designer for the cover and all...

I figured I would try some hyrbid approach where I get the books printed at some printhouse and then ship them to amazon and sell them on prime. I know this costs more up front but it sounds more professional then print on demand. but what do i know?

I just don't want my book to look like some cheap DIY project with a hideous cover.... there are lot of these on the facebook groups for self publishing. People always asking if their cover looks nice. It never does.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Firstly, writing erotica is tricky and not to be written off - I have friends who write it and get fed up with being brushed off as rubbish.

As to the other - it’s up to you. The group you refer to (I left because I found the focus on money over quality too much) is working to a very specific book selling model.

Here’s some stuff to think about:

Genre matters. If you write romance, e book is king. Nothing else gets a look in. You need a generic cover that shouts romance. You need to understand the conventions of the genre. In sf mil sf and space opera are both massive online and not so much in print sales. Whereas if you write Kids books or lit fiction it’s more about paperback and bookstore sales. You can find this data out from Author Income - it’s stats breakdown are very good.

You can self publish any way you like. You can make your print book available any way you like - but do your research first because it’s trickier to have to change an isbn later to switch distribution. You can go high quality or cheap as chips.

If you want to be trad published study how agents work and what they want. If you want the flexibility of self publishing research that. There are pros and cons to everything

 

[G.T.]

You take what you need from 20booksto50k and ignore the rest. The biggest benefit of that group is the number of people in it. That's a large dataset to learn from. It says it in the name; the premise is 20 books can get you 50k a year if managed properly. Most of the posts are people sharing their progress towards that goal.

To be honest, even if you got physical copies made yourself and started selling them on amazon you would have to learn the same lessons. Advertising on FB, Amazon, marketing blurbs, keywords, growing a fanbase, newsletters, landing pages, redirects to your book page etc. 20booksto50k is great for that because most of that stuff had nothing to do with the quality of the book itself. Long term, sure, having a well written, well edited, book will serve you well but if it is marketed incorrectly, has a poor cover, or is so niche it will never have a big reader base then it will languish. A large number of people sharing their lessons learned and what works for them is helpful, even if you never read any of the books.

Amazon has a print-on-demand service I believe, where they will sell physical copies of your book, you don't have to get that done yourself. There are other platforms that do something similar, even so far as to utilizing amazon for sales, IngramSpark is one I think. My knowledge of this is not very good, others might be more familiar.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Incidentally a local historian near us had great success printing his own and going nowhere near Amazon. It will now go out of print and become collectible. You don’t have to do *anything* to be a success.

 

[Ogma]

I would say that you are treating the ebook/paperback thing as an either/or which it isn't. The difference in production between an ebook and a paperback is basically typesetting and the cover. The ebook is a bit cheaper version to produce, but I guarantee you, all those people saying they sell a lot of ebooks have a paperback version as well. It is a fact that in most circumstances the ebook outsells the paperback by a considerable degree because it's cheaper for the reader. The paperback being more popular than ebook is for publishing as a whole, including physical bookstores which is a struggle for self-publishers to access. It's also skewed by children's books. (You can't do a virtual Where's My Tiger?) and adult coloring books and the like.

As G.T. says, I wouldn't discount 20booksto50k's advice. You don't need to follow it if you don't want to, but equally you don't want to spend your time reinventing the wheel either. Your book isn't going to get "lumped in" with anyone else's simply because you're part of that group. Readers are only interested in the finished book.

KDP Print is the Amazon print on demand and allows you to sell on Amazon. It has wide distribution option, but a lot of authors use Ingram Spark for that. Ingram Spark allows you to do stuff like hard backs for instance. You can use the same interior as KDP print (for the same trim or size) but the cover is in a different format so if you have a cover designer make sure they can provide that version. You would need to own your own ISBN to link the books from KDP and Ingram rather than taking a KDP ISBN. ISBN is specific to a publisher fixed on the format and trim rather than the distributor.

All this stuff sounds a bit overwhelming

 

[shamguy4]

Thanks for the responses.
@Ogma the ISBN stuff confuses me. I thought that’s just a barcode you get for your novel. I didn’t know it matters where you get it.

My brother in law wrote a book. He told me he got an isbn from some site. It was free. He had it printed at a print house nearby with a fancy cover with gloss on the letters.
he had tons of books all over his house for a year and he sold them on Amazon Prime and at his fundraising events he handed them out.

it wasn’t fiction. It was a “how to fund raise” book. So I guess it depends on your audience and market?

I want my book to be available in all options. I just figured most people reading fantasy wanted a paperback or hard cover. I guess I’ll look into the stats.
Thanks

 

[Jo Zebedee]

ISBN are the number of each individual book and specific edition - it is how your book will be found throughout its career. If you go amazon only, you will not be able to be sold in bookstores. If you go with your own isbn you can be added to databases, including Amazon’s everywhere

 

[Ogma]

The ISBN is required to distribute to bookstores and on-line retailers.

If you are selling on Amazon only, it makes no difference whether you use a KDP ISBN or your own. In fact, depending on what country you live in, owning the ISBN (in effect you are being your own publisher) can have extra costs. Aside from buying an ISBN, you also made have deposit copies to your country's libraries of record.

But supposing you want to distribute beyond Amazon, to other on-line retailers and book stores. The Amazon ISBN is Amazon's property. You can't use that on Ingram Spark. I think you buy an Ingram Spark ISBN? They definitely offer free ISBNs to US users.

But here's the problem.

Ingram distributes to Amazon among all the other places. With two ISBN's, you end up with two versions of the same book on Amazon at different prices.

However, if you use your own ISBN, only one version appears on Amazon (the KDP version).
The net effect is it's neater to have your own ISBN.

Also, very important this, if you can't remove old paperback versions off of Amazon. You can change them except for the trim size and title and a few other bits, but you can't remove them completely. (I think this is connected to the secondhand market. The assumption is that there are copies still floating about that might be sold by third parties.) So if you end up with two ISBN's, you end up with two records on Amazon permanently.

 

[Montero]

You might also want to look at tax positions if you are in the UK, trying to sell in the US.
Amazon wraps it all in their service.
Smashwords offered a cheapish ISBN service for people in the US but not in the UK the last time I looked. And you have to do your own US tax form if you sell with Smashwords - or wave goodbye to the (any) money.

 

[HareBrain]

I'm trying to decide at the moment between Amazon's ISBN and my own. I've got no plans to sell anywhere but Amazon at the moment, and I like convenience, but I also hate committing myself for eternity.

 

[shamguy4]

I'm trying to decide at the moment between Amazon's ISBN and my own. I've got no plans to sell anywhere but Amazon at the moment, and I like convenience, but I also hate committing myself for eternity.

Sounds like your own is the smart route.

I won’t discount 20Booksto50K
I just find it unreal that some people are pumping out a new book every 3-4 months.
The big authors out there don’t even do that. At least not the ones I read….
So I wasn’t sure what to think of the group.

One person on there says that once you go the self publishing route, that book will never be picked up by traditional publishing company.
is that true?

 

[Ogma]

Andy Weir (The Martian) was self-published. Hugh Howey. Michael J Sullivan. There are several others. But the thing is a self-pub book would have to show it can sell a lot to draw the interest of publishers.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I'm trying to decide at the moment between Amazon's ISBN and my own. I've got no plans to sell anywhere but Amazon at the moment, and I like convenience, but I also hate committing myself for eternity.

I’ve had to try to unravel it for Inish and it’s very messy - would have been much easier to buy my own isbn in the first place. Abendau is less of a problem since it sells very little but Inish has longevity so take that into account too

 

[shamguy4]

All this is talk for me of something in the future... I'm excitedly jumping ahead.
when i finish my book I'll come back with the rest of my publishing questions.

I make websites for a living so I plan on playing to my strengths. I'll make a site for the book... Maybe let people read the first chapter free. I'll probably allow you to read another 2 chapters if you unlock them by sharing the site on your social media...
I have interesting ideas...

But I'll remember to buy my own ISBN's

 

[Astro Pen]

Do grab yourself a recent copy of The Writers and Artists Yearbook It contains a lot of advice on finding agents, self publishing etc' albeit a bit patronising and 'luvvy'.
Also check out Jericho Writers. Jericho Writers • Jericho Writers
You can glean quite a bit without joining them. For example:

How to Get a Literary Agent in 8 Simple Steps | Jericho Writers

Get a literary agent in 8 simple steps - including where to look, how to write a query letter, and how to deal with rejection.

jerichowriters.com

 

[Montero]

All this is talk for me of something in the future... I'm excitedly jumping ahead.
when i finish my book I'll come back with the rest of my publishing questions.

I make websites for a living so I plan on playing to my strengths. I'll make a site for the book... Maybe let people read the first chapter free. I'll probably allow you to read another 2 chapters if you unlock them by sharing the site on your social media...
I have interesting ideas...

But I'll remember to buy my own ISBN's

Amazon offers the first three chapters for free as a sample.

In the fullness of time look into BookFunnel. I'm on several authors mailing lists and they do giveaways through BookFunnel - novellas, shorts and recently advance reading copy - and I did go and leave a review.

Bear in mind that however wonderful your website, you have to get people to come and see it.
There are a lot of readers on Goodreads. Try joining a few sf groups there and just joining in the chat.

 

[shamguy4]

@Jo Zebedee
What is Author Income and where is that found?

The reason i started this thread was because someone on 20Booksto50k said to me that "the self-publishing market is for eBooks only" and "traditional publishing is a completely different market".
Is this true?

Here I was hoping to use self-publishing to reach the readers from the traditional world because its the books that I read. From Neil Gaiman to Harry Potter. I'm writing an urban fantasy and I'm looking to grab those kind of readers.

 

[Montero]

I read quite a bit of self-published and some I've bought in paperback and some in eBook - I prefer paperback as a reading experience but for the last couple of years have finally had a smartphone and read books on that - and they are cheaper.
I don't think there are any simple hard and fast rules. My totally anecdotal experience is that it varies with reader and genre. There is a group on Goodreads dedicated solely to eBook fantasy and sf. I think that sff is one of the genre with a greater eBook presence (and again this is just my impression, no hard data) because more techie people read sff. It's not the sole province of techies of course, just a higher proportion of techies.
Then again, I've seen reviewers who prefer paperbacks to eBooks and are not keen on reviewing eBooks - including in sff. These days you can do a paper copy based on your Kindle file - I've not tried that myself - but that does mean you could start with Kindle and add on paperback.
There is also the audiobook market - some people listen to a lot of books while they are doing something else. It is a big expense to go audio, but it is another chunk of the market. There are self-pub audio books out there, some read by the author, others by someone the author hired. Reviews comment on both the quality of the book and the reader on the audio file. If you are doing autobiography or memoir, a part of the readership will complain if it ISN'T read by the author. But in that market some of the readers complain if there isn't enough details on what the author felt about the events they are narrating. (And that is digressing into something best put on the pet hates thread..... )

 

[G.T.]

The reason i started this thread was because someone on 20Booksto50k said to me that "the self-publishing market is for eBooks only" and "traditional publishing is a completely different market".
Is this true?

Go back and tell the person who told you this, that they are 100% wrong and shouldn't be giving out false information like that. They don't know what they are talking about. When you go to Amazon do you see a category for Self-publishing books, where you can choose to buy only self-published books? No, you can't, because there is no 'self-publishing market'. There is just the book market and both self-publishers and traditional publishers can sell their books there; ebook and physical book.

The confusion arises because, generally, self-publishers only publish ebooks. Not because they have to but because it is cheaper and easier to do that. It is more complicated and will cost you more to also sell physical copies of your book. But you 100% can sell physical copies as a self-publisher if you want.

Even before ebooks existed, you could self-publish physical books by contacting a printer and getting books printed and selling them. It was a hugely expensive process for an individual but it was possible and is still possible. There are cheaper methods for selling physical copies now, as mentioned previously, but it is still more expensive than just selling ebooks.

It's annoying to think that there is someone out there who thinks they are helping by spreading misinformation.

 

[shamguy4]

I think I’m understanding. Thanks for the responses. I guess I’ll just make sure to publish it in as many ways as possible.

I have goodreads app but it’s hard to use and I can’t find the right groups to join or chat with.

lastly the same person said that the chance of my first book making any money is pretty much null. It will take a few books to break into the market. Is that true?

It seems that was his experience. He wrote a novel and it didn’t do well. He wrote a few other novels until some of his novels started to get read

Here I am working my butt off for my first novel. I wanted it to be perfect. I had dreams! It’s a bit disheartening to hear all this stuff.
I think the only way to write a novel is to believe that it can and will make it. How can I write a novel knowing that it’s not going to do well?