Useful Stuff for the Indie Author Part 1

As an indie author, I focus most of my budget on editing. One, because I want to get a FANTASTIC book out there, and two, indies in general have a bad reputation. And that bugs me. Some of us put really terrible stuff out in the world, I won’t deny it. But then again, so do many trad publishers.

Anyway, putting a high quality book out there means my budget for everything else is quite…restrained. And making a book is not JUST about writing and editing, oh no, my friends. I wish it was.

So here are a few things that you, as an indie on a tight budget, will need to take care of (besides writing a great book):

THE TECHNICAL STUFF

  • The basics: Writing an enticing blurb, your copyright page, your back matter, dedication, acknowledgments, about the author, etc
  • That was the easy part. And no, I’m not joking
  • Designing book covers for your ebooks and print books (a.k.a. becoming a Photoshop ninja and spending some money (an average of $23 per book cover), on websites such as Shutterstock or Getty Images). Granted, Photoshop is expensive as fuck, and if designing is not really your thing, there are tons of cheap cover designers out there, but it’s really hard finding a good one. Sherry at SwoonWorthy is actually super great and not at all pricey. She made my SWORD WITCH cover

switchamazon

  • Formatting your book for print. It’s incredibly time consuming, but here’s a pretty great book to get you started
  • Drinking half of a wine bottle as you learn how to do the above
  • Creating an ebook file. Heard of Scrivener or HTML coding? Ha! You better. If you want to stay away from HTML like moi, and you’re on windows, use Scrivener + Sigil +Kindle Previewer. It’s a rather quick learning curve. If you’re on Mac, just go with Scrivener.
  • Drinking the other half of that wine bottle
  • Understanding technical stuff, such as ISBNs and ASINS. And going for ASINS and alike because IBANS are expensive as fuck. You can buy them later when you start making a profit
  • Uploading your book into the necessary platforms
  • Curse all said book platforms (Yes, I’m looking at you, fucking Createspace)
  • Pricing your book
  • Hitting that “publish” button
  • Crying in the shower, hoping it is all over now that your book is published.

But guess what? You haven’t even started.

Next post: THE MARKETING STUFF a.k.a. Just Shoot Me Now

 

dorothy parker

C.S. Wilde writes about fantastical worlds, love stories larger than life and epic battles. She also, quite obviously, sucks at writing an author bio. She finds it awkward that she must write this in the third person, and hopes you won’t notice.

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Posted in Marketing, Publishing, series, Writing
21 comments on “Useful Stuff for the Indie Author Part 1
  1. Mike says:

    Indie publishing is a great option, but folks have to realize what’s involved.

    Great Parker quote, by the way!

    Liked by 1 person

  2. djmorand says:

    Just to add to your list, there is a great Podcast out there, AuthorStrong. The host has a tutorial series for Scrivener, he is also working on a guide to Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign. I use the latter. But the short tutorial is free. authorstrongtutorials.com is the site to check it out. That was an invaluable help to me with setting things up in Scrivener.

    Liked by 1 person

  3. djmorand says:

    Reblogged this on Official DJ Morand Author Site and Blog and commented:
    Because this is awesome and not sharing it would be a crime.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. livingincyn says:

    Definitely useful. Can’t say I agree with you on the quick learning curve for Scrivener, though. I find I spend a LOT of time in Scrivener (especially during the editing stage) just trying to remember/ figure out how to do something that I did once before. 🙂 But the wine… yeah…

    Liked by 1 person

    • C.S. Wilde says:

      Oooh I gave up on that. I only use scrivner to compile the project,when everything is ready. So my projects are 99% done in word actually hehe only when I want to convert to epub do I transfer everything to scrivener

      Like

  5. adeleulnais says:

    A great post thank you, as I am nearly at the point where I self-publish the first one, I am book marking this page and will reference it constantly. Must get in a supply of wine.

    Liked by 1 person

  6. You have a budget? (Sinks into Python Four Yorkshiremen mode. . . ‘I used to dream of having a budget.’) But Photoshop CS 2 is free to download from the Adobe website. Reasons are too complex to go into here.

    Looking forward to the next post. Marketing. If anyone ever finds the holy grail of marketing they’ll become richer than Bill Gates!

    Liked by 1 person

  7. Reblogged this on TheWordSmithe and commented:
    An interesting summation about indie publishing!

    Liked by 1 person

  8. Mon ☠ says:

    Oh I want to be an author as I improve my crazy English 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  9. Deb says:

    I bookmarked this for the near future. Thank you.

    Like

  10. Oh, I shivered and cringed and nodded (and went for the wine) as I read this. I actually hired a friend (she was cheap) to code my first book to become a Kindle. I got smart when I made it into a softback. Joel Friedlander has created some great templates with all the coding done- you just copy and paste in your chapters. Granted, it still took me hours (I kinda edited, still, while I did it) but the template worked really well. I agree with the need to hire someone to edit our books before they’re published. And I also use ‘readers’ first, and a critique group before I spend the money on an editor. I have been told that we need to spend just as much $$ on a good cover. I haven’t done that yet – I use my own photos and a cover template. Need to get better at that.

    Liked by 1 person

  11. […] Source: Useful Stuff for the Indie Author Part 1 | C.S. Wilde […]

    Liked by 1 person

  12. mcfrye2016 says:

    Thanks for sharing this! I reblogged it with comments at http://mcfrye.com/2016/04/06/useful-stuff-for-the-indie-author-part-1-c-s-wilde/

    Liked by 1 person

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