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@booksandbeakers
Traditional publishing. A traditional publisher won’t charge you anything, they’ll only take a cut of the profit when your book sells. Spending money on marketing would be the only expense.
Yes, I used KDP. I tried IngramSpark for my last book and gave up because it was such a pain and way more expensive, so I went back to KDP. Formatting is quite a pain, but, yes, worth it. And if you decide to indie publish over the long run and learn to format well, that’s an excellent investment for future books. The short stories I formatted and published were great learning experiences and would almost certainly have enabled me to format my novel if I’d wanted to deal with the headache myself.
I can’t say for sure what the impact is of self-publishing and then pursuing traditional publication, but I can’t imagine gaining a readership would hurt (and indie publishing is beneficial to that end). It may still be prudent to refrain from that if the quality wouldn’t be great, but I doubt it would completely ruin your chances anyway.
I’m a freelance line editor, and I know a number of other freelancers I could refer you to for all different kinds of edits. (What the different types of edits are and why they’re important is another post series on my blog, if you want to look into that down the road.)
Speculative fiction author. Mythology nerd. Singer. Worldbuilding enthusiast.
Speculative fiction author. Mythology nerd. Singer. Worldbuilding enthusiast.
Why I Chose Traditional Publishing – Rachel Leitch
Speculative fiction author. Mythology nerd. Singer. Worldbuilding enthusiast.
Traditional vs. Indie publishing
Speculative fiction author. Mythology nerd. Singer. Worldbuilding enthusiast.
@booksandbeakers
M’kay, KP is liable to eat my post if I try to put links in it, so I’m going to lay everything out and then post individual links to each post I reference. I apologize in advance for how obnoxious that is, lol.
If you’d rather save money than time and you want a great-quality end result, traditional publishing is the way you want to go. It will take time, lots of revisions, lots of research, lots of querying agents, but once you get a book deal the cover, formatting, and final edits will be on a team of professionals who work in advance of royalties and don’t get paid until the book sells and they take a cut. Generally a bigger cut than a self-publishing platform takes, but then it does balance with the work they’ve done. And you get an advance to start out with, followed by royalties once that advance is made back in full (as I understand it).
In order to self-publish a high-quality book, you need to be willing to invest money in areas that are not your strength. If you have a lot of design experience, maybe you can do your cover and formatting on your own and just pay for editing. (Editing is something I always recommend investing in, even if you’re a good editor yourself; it’s never the same to edit your own work as someone else’s, and an outside eye is invaluable.) But most indie authors are not also designers, and you want a cover and formatting that looks professional and can compete with traditionally published book designs. I paid about $400 for the cover on my novel, and about $200 for the formatting. (I could have formatted it myself, but I didn’t want the personal headache of getting everything precisely perfect so it was worth the trade-off to me to hire it out.)
I have a blog post on traditional vs. indie publishing, followed by a series on the indie publishing process, and Rachel Leitch guested on my blog to talk about why she chose traditional publishing while I posted on hers about why I chose indie publishing. I think indie publishing can be highly rewarding, but which path you choose depends on your priorities, and indie publishing is often an expensive venture.
Whichever way you decide to go, I hope it works out great for you! And I’d be happy to answer more questions if you have them! I’m not as knowledgeable about traditional publishing, but I can help with the contrast of the two and I can talk about indie publishing at decent length. 🙂
Speculative fiction author. Mythology nerd. Singer. Worldbuilding enthusiast.
I’ve self-published a standalone short story, two short story collections, and a novel. I prefer self-publishing, personally, for the freedom it provides and for the opportunity to work with my own choice of collaborators (editors, artists, etc.), but I would like to try traditional publishing down the road as well for the sake of having the experience with both.
I’ve written a blog post outlining the pros and cons I see in each approach, and @rachel-leitch and I exchanged blog posts earlier this year that went over why I chose self-publishing and why she chose traditional publishing.
Like @wilder-w, I used KDP to self-publish, and for a chunk of this year I sold books through both Amazon and my website (the tool I was using for my site shop broke, or else I’d still be doing both; I need to get that fixed).
Canon Press and Rabbit Room Press are both awesome, especially if you’re looking into publishing non-fiction. If you’re a fiction author, Enclave Publishing would be my top recommendation (and when I do venture into trad pub, that’s where I plan to go), but the other two are still good choices.
I’m always happy to discuss this topic further (especially indie publishing), and I have further resources on my site, so if you have any more specific questions feel free to let me know! 🙂
Speculative fiction author. Mythology nerd. Singer. Worldbuilding enthusiast.
@felicity My pleasure!
Speculative fiction author. Mythology nerd. Singer. Worldbuilding enthusiast.
I can’t figure out her tag. That’s frustrating. I’ll have to look into that.
But here’s a direct link to my post on her blog, as well, so you don’t have to scroll down and find it.
Speculative fiction author. Mythology nerd. Singer. Worldbuilding enthusiast.
Got the tag wrong. @rachel-l? @rachel?
Anyway, here’s the post she wrote for my blog.
Speculative fiction author. Mythology nerd. Singer. Worldbuilding enthusiast.
I’ve self-published a standalone short story, two short story collections, and a novel. I prefer self-publishing, personally, for the freedom it provides and for the opportunity to work with my own choice of collaborators (editors, artists, etc.), but I would like to try traditional publishing down the road as well for the sake of having the experience with both.
I’ve written a blog post outlining the pros and cons I see in each approach, and @rachel-leitch and I exchanged blog posts earlier this year that went over why I chose self-publishing and why she chose traditional publishing. (I’ll link that in a second post so the forum doesn’t eat this post.)
Like @wilder-w, I used KDP to self-publish, and for a chunk of this year I sold books through both Amazon and my website (the tool I was using for my site shop broke, or else I’d still be doing both; I need to get that fixed).
Canon Press and Rabbit Room Press are both awesome, especially if you’re looking into publishing non-fiction. If you’re a fiction author, Enclave Publishing would be my top recommendation (and when I do venture into trad pub, that’s where I plan to go), but the other two are still good choices.
I’m always happy to discuss this topic further (especially indie publishing), and I have further resources on my site, so if you have any more specific questions feel free to let me know! 🙂
Speculative fiction author. Mythology nerd. Singer. Worldbuilding enthusiast.
Oh, having reread North! Or Be Eaten I can say I enjoyed it much more this time around and I’m not sure why I didn’t like it as well the first time? It features a culture I enjoyed, more character development for Tink and Artham (a couple of my favorites), and several other fun additions (to the characters, world, and conflict). It’s still not as deep as the last two, but it does start to bridge the gap in style, so if you disliked book one it’s likely you’ll prefer book two even if it’s not your favorite of the series, and, again, the last two are well worth the effort.
Speculative fiction author. Mythology nerd. Singer. Worldbuilding enthusiast.
I use Amazon/KDP. It’s been really easy and straightforward to use; my only complaint is that I don’t like having to support Amazon’s values by working with them. XP
I like the character/integrity of Vervante (an independent print-on-demand service), but they will cost you an arm and a leg; that’s why I didn’t publish with them, unfortunately.
AVOID IngramSpark; they’re both expensive and a massive pain in the neck. I tried using them for the sake of paperback pre-orders and gave up because there were so many issues. (And starting a shop on my site paid off, so it turned out to be a blessing in disguise!)
LuLu is the only other option coming to mind and I have no personal experience there, so the most I can say is that it’s another option to research.
I hope that helps! 🙂
Speculative fiction author. Mythology nerd. Singer. Worldbuilding enthusiast.
You four are my go to for any romance….besides, from what I know, you live for poetry too lol!Really? XD I mean, that’s cool, because I do try to be intentional with my portrayals of romance, but I didn’t realize it was such a prominent characteristic of my writing, lol.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any recent (a.k.a. well-written) romantic short stories besides those I’ve published (Lost Girl, namely, though to be honest it’s a little insta-lovey), and all of my poetry is cringe. XD I might have song lyrics that aren’t too bad… I’d have to check. I dabble in songwriting little enough that only a couple of my songs stick in my head, lol.
But your poem is really neat! I like the imagery. 🙂
Speculative fiction author. Mythology nerd. Singer. Worldbuilding enthusiast.
I recently got a public Insta account, where you can find me @hadassahwaugh_authorartist.Oh, that’s you! Cool! (I’m a bit slow to connect accounts across platforms sometimes, lol.)
And I was getting a lot more engagement in Insta than on my blog, so I kinda let the blog go, which I feel super bad about … I just find blogging so hard. It takes me a whole day to write a post and get it up, and I get frustrated with myself for not being able to do it faster. And I only have 13 subscribers so I feel like I’m doing something wrong …If something else is working better and you’re enjoying it more, there’s nothing wrong with focusing on that for a while. A blog, like any other platform, is meant to serve you. If it’s not doing that yet, maybe it’s not a good fit, maybe it’s not a good fit now, or maybe you just need to play around with it a bit more and figure out a way to do it that serves you. You don’t necessarily have to blog just like everyone else blogs. It might even be as simple as shifting your thinking and reminding yourself that you don’t have to blog faster in order to blog better. There’s nothing wrong with writing slowly as long as you plan accordingly.
Have you tried using Instagram to bring attention to your blog yet? That might be a good way to focus on the platform that you’re enjoying and build up the blog at the same time so you have more incentive to write as a bigger audience is waiting.
Speculative fiction author. Mythology nerd. Singer. Worldbuilding enthusiast.
Viking braids are great. My sisters and I actually do a variation of one of them fairly often.
Ooh, nice!
Oh, nice question! They have developed much of their skills fighting the other group, but much of them were developed before the Dehgavor. You see, there used to only be many unconnected tribes, with most of them being raiders, but after some particular event took place, the most connected groups banded together and formed the Dehgavor, a a practical nation that agreed against raiding. The raiding groups were offended, to put it lightly, and when some of the Dehgavor defended an Eirtanian vessel (this nation has been of old entangled with the Dehgavor groups) against a raid…. The Dehgavor have developed their smuggling and fighting skills to aid their “brethren of the land” (Eirtan) so, they have both developed them before and after, you could say. 😉
Ooh, that’s interesting! Especially with the Dehgavor defending the Eirtan; that sounds like a really interesting dynamic.
What your sea-dwelling folk do/ what is their occupation?
They’re mostly merchants. They used to be a thriving trading nation with a whole land-based territory, but a vast chunk of their territory was destroyed in earthquakes/tsunamis/floods/etc. and sank beneath the sea and now the Naftin (this culture) dwell in boats since they’re designed to work with the sea and stay afloat. They lost a lot of their wealth, and they still can’t hold onto too much of it since they have only their boats to fill, but they still work to ferry goods from nation to nation and they trade in some ocean-based commodities as well.
Thank you so much for the advice! I might try that for different cultures/nations in one world! (I have three major ones, atm.)
You’re welcome!
I have (*counts*) five different languages, besides the universal one (I think) and a similar amount of writing systems (based on the same basic runes, just different styles) and those come together with the location of the cultures/nations to create 10, maybe 12, different cultures, and so based on the different culture and language, that method could work quite well!
Oh wow! That’s super cool!
Speculative fiction author. Mythology nerd. Singer. Worldbuilding enthusiast.
