Putting The Book All Together
Phew! I am done with all the revisions from the feedback from my editor and beta readers. Now what?
The content of the book needs to be formatted, a cover designed, and the final product uploaded for distribution.
Formatting
For self-published authors this will be dependent on your budget and skill. To pay someone else, from what I could find, could cost between $250-$1000. This depends on page count, formatter rates etc.
To do it yourself it would cost you:
Time researching and understanding the formatting requirements for each platform you plan to publish on.
Requirements are generally the same therefore one PDF of your book should be usable. However, it is always best practice to review.
The cost of the software/program.
Google Docs is free and allows you to download as a PDF.
Microsoft Word could be a one time software expense from a store, or their monthly subscription fee of $109 CDN a year.
Adobe InDesign = $27.99 CDN a month after a free 7 day trial.
There are other web platforms that offer “free” services to help you format however read the fine print. Will they use your personal information etc.
Draft2Digital - I have only recently heard about this publishing website, and they do offer free formatting however you have to publish using their site and they then take 10%.
Draft2Digital appears to be similar to IngramSpark, so I am going to do some more research and may do a separate journal entry on it, or add it to the “What I might do differently” list I am creating for book 2.
Your time to format.
For me I would say I spent a day or two formatting my 334 page novel. This included playing with different fonts, chapter headings and specialty margins for the ‘letters’ in the book.
Why I Chose Adobe InDesign
Honestly, I took a writing course through Airbnb - yep, Airbnb Experiences - and the author talked about it. She mentioned paying for the month(s) needed, cancelling and then repeating for the next book.
I don’t have Microsoft Word and Google Docs is generally very basic or finicky. As such, I watched a few YouTube video tutorials and decided, for my first novel I would use this program. The author of the course had offered to help if needed so I knew I would have support if YouTube couldn’t save me.
There are templates available that make putting a book together easy. I made my own, using instructions from YouTube and, once I got the hang of the little nuances, I found it very easy to use. Anything I couldn’t do I Googled, and there was generally an easy answer.
At the start, you set your margins, bleed and gutter (as needed) and how many pages. Some authors create different files for each chapter and combine them afterwards. However, I did one large file for my entire book. Pages can always be added or removed and settings changed as you go through the process. The book content then gets uploaded and the formatting begins. I am not going to go through step by step. Mainly, because this isn’t a journal on InDesign, but also, I am far from an expert. I am sure by the time my second book comes out I will have forgotten everything and will once again need the support of YouTube.
Designing a cover in InDesign on the other hand was troublesome, for me. I was using a photograph a friend had taken, and didn’t have the editing software to lighten the photo etc. As such, if the image needed any corrections I had to wait for them. InDesign would not allow me to make changes, even though Photoshop is in the same Adobe family. I found that particularly frustrating.
The importing of the image, the adding of fonts and using the IngramSpark and Amazon cover templates was easy. The overall graphic design aspect to try and create my vision would have been better suited in another program. In my opinion, if you want super simple you could use InDesign. If you want something with more layers or complexity, as I did, I would not recommend InDesign. Again, I am not a graphic designer and very new to InDesign, so it is possible there are ways to use the program better than my limited knowledge and Googling allowed for. In the end, I found someone else to design my cover, as the stress it was causing was affecting my mental health.
Would I use InDesign Again?
I am still up in the air on this. As I only need to upload a PDF to the publishing platforms I will be doing more research to see what is the most cost effective and user friendly option. Microsoft Word seems to be the economical solution and most widely used by authors. What I loved about InDesign was, once I got the hang of it, it was really easy to use. Let’s face it, I use Google Docs in my workplace, and have been since 2017, so I would probably have to watch just as many YouTube videos to use Microsoft as well. The ease of use aspect seems to be on even footing between the programs. Which means I may be back to price being the determining factor.
If you have any recommendations for programs please let me know in the comments. I would love to check them out!
Cover Design
I talked about this in last week's journal, and as I alluded to above, designing a cover was not a great experience overall for me. Yes, it was fun figuring out how to shade the lettering and placing my photo on the back cover. However, I have learned I do not enjoy graphic design and that is okay. This is a service I will pay someone to do if it brings me sanity.
If you, or someone you know, has this skill more power to you. Your cost will only be your time!
If you are paying someone else, cover designs can range from $100 - $1000s of dollars. Your budget will determine what you can get. Keep in mind that people judge a book by its cover and this is likely one area you will want to spend money on.
There are different services and people out there who will design your cover for you. BE CAREFUL. I have heard good and bad things about most of them. Do research not only on the service site but the designer if you can. I lucked out and had the final files reviewed by another designer to make sure images were not layered on top of each other and everything seemed okay. Apparently, this is a common tactic for scammers - who knew!
Get a contract of some sort. In some instances, the service website terms and conditions may be the contract so read it carefully. If you are scammed there may be little to no recourse.
Know the license details of any images used and obtain a copy of the license agreement. For example, if stock photos are used currently, with a limited license, 500,000 impressions are allowed (this includes use on social media, book covers, ads etc.).
Uploading for Distribution
Starting out in the self-publishing world, I was aware of Amazon and then, somewhere along the way, I heard about IngramSpark. Both services allow authors to upload their print and/or eBooks for distribution. There are many other platforms (Draft2Digital etc.), however at the time I was not familiar with them.
One thing I found with both Amazon and IngramSpark is that, although their electronic proof copies showed me that everything would print fine, it did not. The last word of one of my chapters was in the very last space allotted for a page. When it went to print it got pushed to the next page, which then put it under the next chapter’s heading. It wasn’t unreadable, but a lesson learned was to make sure no chapter ends at the bottom of a page. I ended up forcing the paragraph to the next page. It creates a bit of an awkward gap, but I would rather a gap then a chapter heading not aligning with the proper text.
Amazon
Let’s start with my experience using Amazon. It has only been about a month, and my book was only published on May 4, 2021. As such, I don’t have experience with their reporting. I have heard it isn’t great and that I should look into a third party platform that I can import or overlay with Amazon.
From the perspective of uploading my content - Amazon was easy! My cover and interior content passed their initial review/approvals and I ordered a copy to review to ensure it printed well. This is where I discovered my original cover wouldn’t work.
I have uploaded new interior content files as I made corrections and within 24 hours the new files were approved.
The original eBook cover file I had was not accepted, I am not sure why. And I was forced to use their cover creator. This was very basic and only had a few templates to choose from-none of which I liked. I felt it made my cover look very cheap. Thankfully, with my updated cover design, I could forgo the Amazon creator.
Tips:
When you set up the book, Amazon only lets you choose two categories to attach your book to. However, once it is set up, if you contact KDP Support you can have them add additional categories until you reach ten. If you are doing this, it does require you to go to each Amazon Marketplace web page and drill down to find the categories. I think this took me an hour to put together. As categories are constantly changing I will be reviewing every six months to a year to make sure my categories are up to date. The Amazon FAQ’s outlines exactly what information they need when you contact them.
As a Canadian, I found it was cheaper not to order a Proof/author copy but rather, approve my book to be sold in the marketplace and order a copy that way. With conversion and shipping an author copy was going to cost me over $30 CDN for my $14.99 CDN book. Yes, I risked someone randomly ordering my book, however it was highly unlikely and in the end didn’t happen.
What did happen, however, and this was my fault - is when I got my final “author” copy, before I officially launched my book, I posted a picture on Facebook. People bought copies and there was a minor formatting error that I hadn’t noticed.
Amazon’s customer service was amazing! I have reached out a few times and within 24 hours had a response.
I am still learning Amazon and I am sure there will be bumps in the road, but so far so good.
IngramSpark
My understanding was that if I wanted to get into bookstores and libraries I would need to go beyond Amazon. Understandably, neither of these businesses would support Amazon. I can’t remember where, but I had heard about IngramSpark. It appeared to be the go-to distribution platform to get beyond Amazon, and their site says they distribute to 40,000+ retailers, libraries, schools and universities around the world. Sounded good to me.
The catch - if you don’t have a promo code, it is $49 USD to upload both a print/eBook at the same time, or $25 to do them separately. Then it is $25 for updates to each file type, every time. You want to make sure everything is correct before you upload. This is why I can see many authors turning to Draft2Digital as they don’t (currently) charge these fees.
I am a part of a few author groups on Facebook, and I felt like everyone was saying the website was hard to use, as people kept getting errors with their documents. But everyone was saying it was worth it. So I braced myself for more technical learning curves. I didn’t need to brace myself.
I don’t know if it was because I used InDesign, and did not try to format the document in Microsoft Word or what, but the only error I got was that my PDF was not in the right format. All I had to do was redownload it - it took me 30 seconds.
Where I would say IngramSpark was lacking, was in customer service. They responded relatively quickly, however I made a minor change (added pricing in small font) to my original book cover and re-uploaded it. Then my book status was held. After talking to the representative, they said the system was waiting for a new cover as I had uploaded the same document. Which I didn’t, but the representative never acknowledged what I felt was the system not recognizing the minor change. In the end, when I uploaded the new cover design the issue was fixed. Subsequent updates to the interior content have been a breeze.
Overall, I would say IngramSpark has worked for me. I just need to keep in mind that their prices for ordering author copies are in USD and not CDN ;)
As this is my first novel, I was overwhelmed with all of the possibilities out there for me,from formatting, through cover design to distribution. I will be doing more research when I am ready to embark on publishing book two. However, to start, I went with what I felt would be the easiest and what fit my needs. I recommend any author take stock of what their goals are, where they want their book to go and in what format. Get the opinions of other authors - often people will post about negative experiences, so ask for the positives as well.
Thank you for joining me this week. Tune in next week, where I will talk about launching The Perilous Road to Her and what my first podcast experience was like.
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N. L. Blandford
May 9, 2021
