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A Newborn Babe in the Middle of a Desert....

Self-publishing a novel

Long before Kindle and the ebook, a long-forgotten website called No Spine uploaded books for users to read on their desktop computer. They charged a modest fee to read the book, a percentage of which

they passed on to the author. This was at the dawn of the 21st century. The internet was still a recent phenomenon accessed only via a phone line. Pages loaded in instalments, and movies took a day to download.


 I had just completed my first novel. For some unfathomable reason, literary agents had failed to appreciate its brilliance. Disheartened and with nothing to lose, I submitted my book to the site. I suppose, in doing so, I became a self-publishing pioneer.


 Although innovative, No Spine was doomed to failure. After all, who wants to sit at a PC for hours reading the amateurish scribblings of semi-literate would-be authors? My Magnum opus sold zero copies. I suspect most other novels on the site fared the same. I don’t know how long No Spine lasted, but virtually no historical record of it exists on the internet.


 Sadly, the 2011 revolution passed me by. The kindle became popular while I was operating a now-defunct movie review website. I was too busy dissing Transformers: Dark of the Moon to notice that traditional publishers were losing their status as literary gatekeepers.


 In 2016, I dusted off the manuscript and tried again, choosing Amazon this time. I cobbled together a cover using a stock image. As homemade covers go, it was ok, but it was clearly the work of an amateur. I gave no thought to marketing or promoting the book, or building a website. The idea of advertising never entered my mind. I simply uploaded it to Amazon and waited for the money to roll in. It was like leaving a newborn babe in the middle of a desert and expecting it to crawl home.


Fast-forward to October 2023, when I took a week off work to study the Self Publishing Formula course run by Mark Dawson and James Blatch. Whatever one might think of Mr. Dawson’s current woes, I can testify that the course, while not cheap, has proven invaluable. To be honest, most of the advice they provide is freely available online if you’re prepared to search for it. But the fact is you don’t know what you don’t know, and the SPF course walks you through the entire self-publishing process. Without it, I doubt I would have achieved even the modest success I have so far.


 And, no, I’m not an affiliate.


 So, anyway, it took me most of the week. Armed with all I had learned, I felt I had at least given myself the best possible chance of succeeding. I had one recently finished novel ready to go, two more in their final stages, and a 40,000+ word novella to use as a reader magnet. I also had a reasonable budget set aside for the costs associated with self-publishing, including advertising.


 One thing I now wish I had done was to carry out a comprehensive preliminary analysis of the costs involved. I should also have monitored expenditure more closely. It would have been wise to allocate sums from within my budget to the different costs. For example, £x for the website; £y for the mail delivery service, etc.. I paid on a first come, first served basis; I didn’t have to skimp, but the speed with which I burned through my reserves was alarming.


 It’s important to understand that, initially at least, you’re not likely to get any of your money back. Unless you’re very lucky, your first book won’t be a best seller. You’ll make a loss. Perhaps quite a sizeable one. So, don’t go assuming you can use the proceeds from the sales of your first book to finance the publishing of your second. Chances are, it won’t happen. At least it won’t be so expensive to publish your follow-up because some of the initial costs are one-off payments or annual subscriptions.


 Despite my previous experience, I could have saved money by once again designing my book cover. This time, however, instead of using a royalty-free stock image, I considered creating artwork using AI. In the next part of this ongoing saga, I'll describe how I fared—and discuss the thorny moral implications involved.

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