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The story so far – In January 2024 I decided to self-publish Phosphate Rocks: A Death in Ten Objects after my previous publisher (Sandstone Press) went into liquidation.

It’s been a delight to discover how smooth the technical side of self publishing can be with the right partners – hats off to superstars SoA, ALLi, kid-ethic, BookVault and Kobo.

I’m now all set up and ready to go. But here comes the hardest part. It’s a crowded marketplace; there are so many great books out there. How does an author connect their labour of love with readers who might not only appreciate the result but be willing to pay real money for it?

Full disclosure – in the first two months I sold 25 books without any paid advertising. (I’m am engineer – I need a baseline for calibration. How else will I know what works? I’m also Scottish…)

I understand that self-publishing is a long game, but in order to pay back the direct expenditure so far, I would need to sell 288 books at full price. If I add in the indirect costs it will be decades…

I decided to turn to the experts for help. I spoke first to Sam Missingham and she directed me to her lovely partner in crime, Katie Sadler.

My Q&A with Katie was written especially for my very first Substack post. It’s repeated here, but I’d love it if you’d take a look over there and tell me what you think! And do subscribe – it’s free!

Start of Marketing Q&A

1.    Katie, how did a nice girl like you end up in a place like this?

After working in the marketing teams of Ebury Publishing (PRH), HarperFiction (HarperCollins and Quercus (Hachette), I started working directly with authors to help them with their marketing in the autumn of 2018.

I’d wanted to go self-employed for years but found taking the leap extremely daunting. Fortunately / unfortunately, I had a personal crisis that autumn, which meant I needed to earn an additional income. At the time I was doing a 4-day-a-week maternity contract for Quercus, so I used every evening and my 5th weekday to build up a client base and a second income. By the time the contract came to an end, I was ready to take the plunge and work for myself. Since then, I’ve worked with a huge range of authors and publishers on their marketing – helping them set up campaigns that they enjoy, and which drive sales.

2.    What’s the difference between publicity and marketing?

Generally marketing is around things you can either pay for or do yourself, whereas publicity is linked to activity on other people’s channels. But there is a lot of overlap. For example, in house, the marketing team will often work with influencers (whether they are paid or not), but publicity will organise blog tours with those same influencers. And then marketing will be the ones interacting with those people when the tour runs. Social media generally falls to marketing, but oftentimes you’re working with other people’s platforms. It used to be very clear cut (publicity = reviews or features on press / TV / radio), but in the digital sphere it’s gotten muddier!

3.    How much of your work is for self-published authors and is it increasing or decreasing?

About 60% of my work is directly with authors (vs the work I do with publishers) and of those, about 70% are self-published. I’d say the work I’m doing is changing, rather than increasing / decreasing. There are a lot of authors out there doing an incredibly professional job now with their publishing, which is fantastic, but I think there is SO much information about marketing out there now that it can be really confusing, so I hope that they work I do with people gives them a clear path for their marketing, rather than feeling like they have do everything under the sun at the same time. A lot of authors I work with now have tried a lot of different things, based on (totally fine!) online advice, but they’ve not necessarily done it with any strategy behind it, so it has become messy and overwhelming.

4.    How do you approach a new project?

When I start a new project, I have a short questionnaire I send out to people to get a sense of their goals, and the marketing they have done so far. A lot of what I do is auditing people’s existing marketing (including things like their Amazon page, website, social media etc), so this gives me somewhere to start in understanding why their current activity isn’t helping them reach their goals (and what a better approach might be).

5.    How much does it cost?

I run a free Facebook group with fellow marketer Sam Missingham, called The Empowered Author and have a free-to-£7 a month Substack where I talk about marketing and behind-the-scenes of my freelance life. For authors that want to have a marketing brainstorm and planning session, I do a one-and-a-half to two hour call, with follow-up action points for £200.

 

For authors who want me to do a full deep dive into all of their activity and give them a step-by-step plan to take forward, that ranges upwards of £750-£1000 depending on the complexity. I would say that the deep dives are for people who have already reached a level of success with their publishing, but they are stuck where they are or feel like it’s not really working as well as they want it to, whereas the other offers are more suitable for people who are either just starting out, or who haven’t really made any money from their books yet. 

6.    How long does it take?

The full plans take me around a week to do, as I look into their comp authors, often rewrite blurbs, usually suggest different categories and keywords, do a page-by-page analysis of their website, write content plans for their social media and newsletters etc. They are extensive! I then break each part down into actions so that authors have a checklist of things to work through and refer back to.

7.    What are your top tips that apply to most authors

-Get the basics right. Having a good cover and book description is crucial and should not be overlooked
– Marketing is a team sport. You don’t need to hire a marketer to create a team – find your tribe of authors and work together as much as you can to brainstorm ideas, share lessons, build one another up, and generally get the word out about each other’s books. 
– Don’t try to do every social media channel. Pick the one or two you enjoy most, and really try to do them well, instead of spreading yourself too thin. Focus on the things you find fun!
– Try to see things as an experiment. That means setting out your hypothesis, deciding what the experiment is going to consist of and how long it will last for, and reviewing your results to draw conclusions. But it also means knowing that some things will work and others will fail – that is normal and happens all the time in house. If something isn’t working, review what you’ve done to see if there’s an element you can change or improve, or move on and try something else.

8.    What are the golden rules – the do’s and don’ts of marketing?

– Don’t worry about being annoying when you are launching your book. You’re going to have to talk about it a lot, but the only person who sees everything you share is you.
– THAT SAID – don’t just say ‘my book is out, my book is out, my book is out’. Yes, you need to tell people your book is out, but I’m sure there are a million different things you can say about your book that are more interesting – find the hooks that make people think ‘oooh that sounds like a good book’

9.    Do you ever refuse projects? Why?

Yes, all the time. This is mainly down to two reasons. Either the author has unrealistic expectations that I know I can’t help them with (eg: getting them to the Sunday Times bestseller list when their book is out next week and they have no budget or existing platform. This is a request I get a variation of regularly, and I turn it down every time), or they want someone to run their social media. I can create social media content for people, but I don’t think it’s good practice for anyone to pretend to be someone else online, and also don’t think social media works for authors without them spending time to build genuine connections, so don’t take those briefs on.

10. Can you tell me about one of your favourite projects? 

I absolutely loved working with Claire Duffy earlier this year. She has stopped focusing on Amazon, and is selling directly to readers, running her publishing as a small business. This is obviously a massive challenge, because Amazon is such a huge part of the industry. We talked about her positioning and about making sure her website is as clear and easy to navigate as possible, as well as some ways that she could use her location-based writing (it’s all set in Glasgow) to reach in-person readers. She really dove into the recommendations, and had so many brilliant ideas of her own. It was very rewarding to hear that she hit her first quarter goals this year, and her April activity is looking really exciting, so I hope she’ll meet her goals this quarter, too.

11. Good books sell on word of mouth alone. Discuss. 

Yes and no. Word-of-mouth is really important for marketing, and a big chunk of my job in marketing was trying to generate early word-of-mouth. Getting other authors and book bloggers and booktokkers and booksellers and librarians and book clubs etc all reading early copies and talking about it can make a huge difference for a book’s success but that doesn’t happen by accident. I worked on a book last summer which was a ‘word-of-mouth success’ but the reason it was so successful is because the publisher saw more positive reviews than expected coming in from booksellers and amplified that by getting two people to work on it for a significant part of their work days!

12. How much difference can a good marketing campaign make to book sales?

I think it can make all the difference in the world, but then I’m biased. 

In-house (inside a traditional publishing company), the key titles that have a lot of marketing support behind them will often have daily sales reports coming through, so you can generally see if your activity is working. And of course there are other measures you can look at like Amazon chart position if you’re traditionally published or the Amazon estimated royalty graphs if you’re self-published. There’s one author I’ve been working with for the last 2 years, and I’m quite obsessed with his Amazon sales – I go in every day to see what kind of impact the activity we’ve run has had!

13. Tell me a joke…

What’s a pirate’s favourite thing about marketing?
The ARRRR.O.I

End of Q&A

Enormous thanks to Katie for answering my questions – if you have some of your own you can contact her at https://katiemorwenna.co.uk/

Phosphate Rocks: A Death in Ten Objects by Fiona Erskine is available from Drake the Bookshop and online here, there and everywhere

Bookshops – full of passionate, well-read, book-loving people – are businesses. Often, especially in the case of small local independents, precarious businesses. Competition – especially from Amazon and the big supermarkets – can make life tough.

So before you march in with Navel Gazing – a Personal Odyssey and demand that a Bookshop display your books, it’s a good idea to try and understand the bookshop business model.

The first thing worth knowing is that – in the UK at least – bookshops make most of their money in the run up to Christmas. They may not want to stock your Interesting Bath Plugs – a Prose Poem at the end of October when the glittery hardback anthologies and annuals start to arrive.

The second thing you need to know is that most publishers supply books on a sale or return basis, with especially generous terms at Christmas. The bookshop will expect to take 40% to 60% of the cover price.

Richard Drake tells me that Drake the Bookshop in Stockton-on-Tees must sell an average of 500 books a week to cover staff salaries, rent, rates, utilities etc. They stock 33% children’s books and 67% for adults. While they love to support local authors, they have limited on-site storage and display. A book that doesn’t sell is taking up valuable shelf space from something that will pay its way.

Your personal relationship with a bookshop matters. Are you already a customer? In a local book group? Many bookshops will be happy to stock books from local writers they know. You’ll need to make an appointment, and if you can agree terms, you then supply the agreed number of books with a clear delivery note, followed by an invoice if any sell. The bookshop will typically expect to earn 35% to 55% of the cover price, and for you to take back any books they don’t sell after an agreed time.

Other bookshop owners agree. Any title that takes up space has to earn its keep. Another great bookshop in the North East has 6,000 titles on the shelves and the owner estimates they need to sell about 100 books a day to cover overheads. If you divide the running costs per day by the number of titles, any book on the shelves needs to pay ‘rent’ of £0.07 per day or turnover at least one sale every 2 months. If it hasn’t sold in the agreed time, it needs to be removed and returned or destroyed.

The brutal fact is that self-published authors are not going to make much money from selling small numbers of print books via bookshops. You’ll do well to earn as much as you would from a conventional publishing deal (~12% of the cover price) and you will be doing a lot more work and taking a lot more risk. For Phosphate Rocks it looks like this.

Of course, that ignores the cost of the author’s time ordering, delivering and invoicing plus personal transport costs to and from the bookshop. And it ignores money tied up in stock and the trip hazards in your front-room – if you want to keep the postage costs down, you need to order more than one book at a time.

To reach out beyond the bookshops close enough to supply yourself, ALLi suggest you investigate a company like Ingram Spark who supply the distributors that bookshops use when they’re not ordering direct from the publisher – distributors like Gardners in the UK.

I followed that advice and now any bookshop, anywhere in the world can order Phosphate Rocks through the ISBN (978-1-7385120-2-7 since you asked), and it will be printed and shipped locally.

Three problems:

1. If you match the traditional delivery terms (sale or return) any books that the bookshop return will be destroyed AND you’ll be charged the printing cost. Your measly 1% profit could quickly become a significant loss over which you have NO control.
2. If you match the traditional discount terms (at least 55% of cover price) then you’ll either have to put your price up or sell at a loss (plus the risk that you’ll have to pay for returns).
3. If you allow firm sales only (no returns) and set the discount to ensure you make a profit, your book becomes pretty unattractive to most bookshops.

No one in their right minds would choose this model to supply bookshops if they wanted to earn money from writing. Publishers can only make it work with huge print runs which bring the unit costs of printing and distribution down to a level at which they can make a profit.

The publisher takes all the risk (and therefore cost) of a five thousand book print run if only 250 books sell (the average for literary fiction according to this blog).

In summary, Print on Demand (PoD) is low risk but also low financial reward. But, hey, for many self-published writers, the pleasure of seeing their book on the shelves of a much-loved local bookshop makes it all worthwhile.

What I learned.

If you really want to get your book into a bookshop – read this first

DO

1. Find a printer who is not Amazon, every bookshop’s greatest rival. Many bookshops won’t stock self-published books printed though Amazon (KDP) so you need to find a printer who will supply their distributor (eg Ingram Spark supply Gardners who supply many UK bookstores) or deliver the books yourself.
2. Start local – this is probably one of the few things that is easier for those outside London and other big cities. Find your local bookshop and start visiting. Attend events and buy books long before you ask them to consider stocking yours
3. Email the bookshop first with
   • a reason your book is right for the bookshop – eg local connection
   • 2-3 line synopsis
   • 1-2 lines about who you are
   • Jacket picture
   • Factual stuff
     • Format (eg paperback)
     • Retail price
     • Cost to bookshop (often expressed as a discount))
   • Other
     • Genre (eg crime) – where does it sit in the bookshop
     • Comparable books
     • Competitor – or comparable titles and authors
     • Reviews
     • Local publicity lined up or in the pipeline (e.g. features, interviews or extracts in local news media)
     • A few sample pages

DO NOT

1. Don’t arrive unannounced with a pile of books
2. Don’t send an email that includes a link to an Amazon site. If you want to share reviews then copy paste the review into the document you send. (And remember Amazon owns Goodreads, so same applies)
3. Don’t expect a bookshop to take books printed via Amazon (KDP print). Some may make a special exception if they know you well, but only if there is a compelling reason
4. Don’t pester the bookshop to ask about sales
5. Don’t expect to get unsold books back if you fail to collect within the agreed time

Phosphate Rocks: A Death in Ten Objects is available in stock at Drake the Bookshop in Stockton on Tees and can be ordered from all good bookshops.

Publisher : Snickered Mole
ISBN: 978-1-7385120-2-7

Back to Mistake #5 – e-books

The real beauty of self-publishing is the ease of creating e-books.

I’m a big reader of e-books, especially when travelling. Whether you read e-books on a Kindle, a Kobo e-reader, a B&N Nook, your phone, tablet or computer screen, it allows you to carry your library with you when you’re on the move.

It can also be good for authors. Conventionally published writers typically receive 25% of the sales price of an e-book. If you self-publish, that income can rise to 70%.

Many self-published authors also make money from page reads on Kindle Unlimited by agreeing to give Amazon exclusivity. For Phosphate Rocks, I chose not to, for several reasons.

Firstly because as a reader, I don’t subscribe to Kindle Unlimited. I’m guessing it rewards prolific authors with a strong series brand who produce several books a year. That’s not me.

Secondly because I love libraries and if you restrict yourself to Amazon only, your e-book won’t be available on Overdrive and the Library reading app – Libby.

But the main reason was my discomfort with the stranglehold of Amazon in this market.

In all cases the first step is to convert your typeset manuscript (see previous blog – Mistake #4) into an EPUB file. Then you load it up, add the cover image, some METADATA with details about the book and finally set the prices in all regions.

It’s hard to blame Amazon for being so good at what they do. They have an excellent platform for readers, writers and publishers and they deserve credit for making it so slick.

However, I wanted to give others – like Kobo and B&N a try.

My initial mistake was pricing – did I set it too high?

I read a lot of e-books and I know myself that if an author is new to me, I tend to wait until a special offer comes along. Even for authors I already know and like, I rarely pay full price for an e-book. I’d almost always rather spend that money on a physical book.

So here’s an experiment – for the rest of the month of March, the e-book of Phosphate Rocks is available at a special price on KOBO (and FREE via Kobo Unlimited) and from Barnes & Noble at 50% of normal price.

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/phosphate-rocks-3

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/phosphate-rocks-fiona-erskine/1141360592?ean=2940185796283

Use code BNPROCKS50 for 50% discount

Back to Mistake #4

Continue to Mistake #6

I’m not sure I really understood what modern typesetting was. In the olden days of mechanical printing presses, a human selected individual letter stamps made of lead, grouped them into blocks to form words, and positioned them in wooden frames to make pages. The whole assembly was then inked and pressed onto paper.

Digital printing changed all that didn’t it?

Turns out there’s still a bit of work to do.

Fortunately, this is one area that has a great solution.

I wrote my story Phosphate Rocks – A Death in Ten Objects in Microsoft Word. I tried Scrivener for a while and it has many good features,  I always come back to MS Word. Over time I’ve taught my grammar and spell checker what to tolerate. I like the simple thesaurus. I use Heading Styles and a Navigation pane to manage the story flow.

After many rounds of editing with my previous publisher, Sandstone Press, the most up to date version of ‘the work’ was a pdf file.

I went to an online ALLi forum, had a good moan, and got some useful advice. From there I found Reedsy and their excellent free typesetting tool.

https://editor.reedsy.com

First step was to convert the pdf file back to MS Word. The alternative would have been to compare it with the last word file I had and redo every individual revision – I discounted that option as a lot more work.

There are free online pdf convertors, I but I have one upstairs. The love of my life has Adobe Acrobat Pro so this step was relatively straightforward, although it did involve some negotiation and the house is cleaner than it was before. Like my cleaning skills, no conversion is perfect and in retrospect I should have checked the file more carefully before proceeding.

Next step was to load the MS Word document into the Reedsy editor.

The editor accepts DOCX (Microsoft Word Open XML Format) and ODT (Open Document Text) files, up to 250Mb.

Uploading (or copy-pasting individual chapters) respects the original formatting. Indents are added, text is perfectly justified, margins, headers, footers, and page numbers are added .

After a few style decisions, suddenly I had a beautifully typset and indexed book again. Brand new pdfs, ready to print in a range of trims (sizes) and an e-pub ready to load and publish.

Isn’t it nice when something you were dreading, turns out to be surprisingly easy? Better than easy, the Reedsy editor platform is a really well-designed writer-friendly tool and made the final reviewing and checking steps a positive pleasure. And (for the moment at least) it’s free.

The Reedsy platform opens up lots of possibilities for paid collaboration with editors or translators or (if you have complex figures and table or want to specify other fonts and layouts) additional typesetting services, all with complete revision control.

I’ve even experimented writing directly to it.

So what did I learn about typesetting?

 My mistakes #4

1. I spent far too long trying to establish who owned the digital files after my publisher, Sandstone Press, went into liquidation. As the author I only owned the content, not the appearance and it took the Society of Authors (SoA) to remind me of that.
2. I fretted about the different file formats (epub and mobi and pdf and doc…). The ALLi forum was great for practical help, but all the information is out there on the internet, you just have to decide you’re not going to let the jargon beat you.
3. I should have spent more time cleaning up the file converted from a pdf to word before uploading it into the Reedsy editor. But making changes in the editor did help me to get to know the platform better and it’s a lovely space to work in.
4. Choose your spellcheck language in the editor (eg English GB rather than English US) before you start your final checks.

What I learned

There are some fantastically helpful people on forums like ALLi, but in the end you have to do some work yourself.

The Reedsy typesetting tool is user-friendly and free.

Financial update

Self-published sales to date – 15

Number of full price sales required to offset external cost to date – 389

Phosphate Rocks – A Death in Ten Objects is available to order from all good bookshops, is in stock at Drake the Bookshop. It can also be found in ebook and audio format HERE.

Back to Mistake #3

Continue to Mistake #5

First the Financial Update

Self-published sales to date – 13

Number of full price sales required to offset external cost to date – 391

Adventures in Self Publishing – Mistake #3 – Back to book covers.

Last week I introduced you to the FABULOUS Mark Swan at kid-ethic who kept me sane through all the blunders I made. Have a look at his beautiful covers HERE.

A few things you might find it useful to know.

1. DO NOT try to design a book cover yourself. Find, and pay, an experienced professional.
2. E-book covers are relatively easy to upload. Dangerously easy.
3. Paperback covers are many orders of magnitude more difficult to get right. There are spine widths and bleed and PPI’s and other things sent to confound you.
4. Whatever you do ALWAYS PAY FOR A PRINT PROOF before you order any serious number of books.
5. Print on Demand (POD) means more variability.
6. You’ll be glad of professional help.

e-book

On all the platforms e-books are made really easy for you. Upload a cover image (.jpg accepted by most) and your book cover is ready.

Easy! Or too easy? Dangerously easy.

To get a good-looking book cover, it’s not enough to have the right illustration, information and typeface, you also need it in the form of a good quality image with a size ratio of 1 (width) to 1.6 (height). If you use different dimensions, each platform will either crop or distort the picture.

KOBO: Advice Here

KDP: Advice Here

Barnes and Noble: Thank you Sarra for the Advice Here

Paperback

The paperback cover is a bit more complicated. How on earth do you choose the book size?

First thing to learn is it’s called the trim. Multiple pages are printed on rolls of paper and then cut (or trimmed) to the specified size.  Within limits, the larger the book – the fewer the pages and the lower the cost of print-on-demand.

Many UK trade paperbacks are UK B format, but most self-publishing platforms have a US Bias, so I opted for a single size available across the platforms which was closest to the original  Sandstone Press edition of my book.

Bookshops, for understandable reasons, don’t like buying from their greatest rival, Amazon, so I selected Ingram Spark a printer who could supply Gardners in the UK who in turn supply bookshops.

I selected 5” x 8” trim, black and white on crème paper inside , with a full colour cover in a matt finish.  

With a single trim, I thought I’d only need a single cover design across all platforms.

Think again:

Here’s where I really tried the patience of the saintly Mark Swan at kid-ethic.

For the same book, of the same size, with the same number of pages, I needed a slightly modified design for each platform.

I’m not quite sure what I did wrong with Barnes and Noble, but they wouldn’t let me use the same ISBN (unique identifying number) that I’d used for KDP and Ingram Spark, so I had to release another of my precious numbers. I’ll need 17 full price sales from B&N to cover that – sales to date with B&N – ZERO.

Ho hum.

And I’m still wrestling with Ingram Spark, although a wonderful human being called Clair is helping me and is a welcome change from the infuriating chatbots on other platforms. The Ingram Spark computer says NO every time I load the cover (even through it meets all their stated requirements), and when I took the plunge and ordered a proof, it arrived with unequal borders.

To conclude – the one blunder I didn’t make was to try to design my own book cover. My talent starts and stops  with elaborate doodles and I never considered doing this part myself. However – even if I possessed the talent and experience to get that part right – what I hadn’t realised was quite how much other technical stuff is involved – sizing, colour density, bleed, margins, borders, dots per inch, file size…

What I learned: self publishing doesn’t mean doing everything yourself. Know your limits and pay for professional help. It may save your sanity…

You can buy Phosphate Rocks: A Death in Ten Objects from Drake the Bookshop in Stockton UK – the only bookshop who currently have stock of the new design. Also available from Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and You-know-Who.

Pity sales are still sales…

Back to Mistake #2

Forward to Mistake 3a – Q&A with Kidethic

Q&A with kid-ethic

How did a nice boy like you end up in a place like this?

My name is Mark Swan. I am older than makes sense to me and I live on the south coast by the sea. I run kid-ethic studio and produce book covers and album art and listen to a lot of music. I left university with an illustration degree and no real idea where I could fit in the creative industry. I worked as an illustrator for a fair few years doing magazine and newspaper article illustrations including a weekly column in the Financial Times. I loved film so I contacted Sight and Sound magazine to do some illustration work. Sight and Sound is run by the BFI and my folio was passed to their publishing division. Luckily I was given a commission to create the cover for a book about Alfred Hitchcock. I had never really considered doing book cover work but it was the eureka moment and a whole career opened up to me. I didn’t want to be cornered into any one style, which is a risk for illustrators, but book cover work allowed me to work in many different style, mediums and genres.

First option selected for new cover

How much of your work is for self-published authors ?

I would say that my work for self-published authors is on the rise. Some authors have made a real name for themselves through self-publishing and have built huge followings which has inspired others to take control and go it alone outside of the normal publishing channels. I find it really fantastic that authors now have this option given how hard it can be to get published and all the rejection that goes with it. I really do love working directly with authors. I feel so much more a part of their journey and creative vision.

Option rejected

How much does it cost?

The price really does vary from project to project, publisher to publisher and country to country. You will be looking at anything between £150-£2,000. Hardback covers cost the most to design, then paperback, e-book and then audio. Audio is generally licensed by the company producing the audio book and they tend to adapt the artwork themselves.

Option rejected

How long does it take?

Anywhere between 30 minutes to several days. Some ideas and designs come very quickly whilst others really have to be wrestled with, tamed and developed. I feel if a design isn’t clicking after a few days then it most likely never will. That said you can be working on two designs that are going nowhere and then find that if you combine the two you get a finished cover. Once you have an approved design there is usually a big gap until you complete the rest of the cover and then another gap for it to be printed and then released. All said, the project can last around a year to a year and a half.

Option rejected

How do you approach a new project?

A typical brief will include a synopses, an indication of genre and the readership the publisher is trying to attract and examples of other book covers or images  that have the right feel. Objects or key locations can be really useful.  I try to get hold of the manuscript so I can get a feel for the book and its style. I won’t read to much as I don’t want to know any particular plot details or twists should they colour my creative direction. This has lead me to having read many more books than I have finished! I’m also a very slow reader. Lots of times an image will form in my head whilst reading the brief. If not, I will look at creative books or go to a picture library (online websites of illustrations and photography that can be licensed) and type relevant words into their search engines and see what images come up and then move forward, jumping from image to word to image to word. I find just writing down words and then then going to the thesaurus can generate visual ideas.

Option rejected

How many alternatives do you present?

I have a rule to do a minimum of 3 initial visuals for the author/publisher to choose from. In a few instances I have done only one if I felt I had hit on the right direction (but only with people who I have a good working and creative relationship with). I’ve done projects that have been approved on the first round of visuals and then some have gone on for a very long time with many many many iterations. Generally speaking, the more people involved in the decision, the harder it is to get a design approved, but it can also go the other way as well. Authors spend so much time and pour so much soul into their books that they can have a clear image or feeling on what they want the cover to look like and so getting a cover approved that matches their vision can be tough. I would say that if an author has come to you directly then they see something in your style and concepts that they click with and tend to trust you with you creative vision. Either way I like to try and work with a client and combine our skills.

Option rejected

What additional information do you need?

At the beginning I will need the title, author name, subtitle and hopefully any quotes that will appear on the cover. Also I will need the dimensions and whether it’s a paperback or hardback or both. Later, when the cover image is approved, I will be sent the final cover copy and the spine size plus ISBN to lay up the rest of the cover.

Option rejected

What are the golden rules?

Like all creative endeavours, there are no rules. There are some things that need to be considered when designing. Say for instance the cover is going to be primarily online then you need the design to have an impact as a thumbnail. Think about your genre and reader demographic. When I think of covers that have been successful, they tend to be ones that step outside of trends and do something fresh whilst having strong connections to their genre. I  read a great quote today that really struck me: “ If you follow the crowd you will only get as far as the crowd”

Colour scheme rejected

Do you ever refuse projects?

Not really. The only reason that I turn down work is when I’m really busy and can’t give the project the time it deserves. I suppose I would turn down certain projects for ethical reasons but I’ve never encountered that problem so far. I have had to turn down projects due to their budget but that said I’ve certainly done projects with small budgets because the project excites me creatively

Colour scheme rejected

Give me a design example of one of your favourite projects

I really love doing poetry books and the cover I did for the complete proems of Philip Larkin is one I was really proud of: http://kid-ethic.com/?portfolio=the-complete-poems-of-philip-larkin I’m also a huge horror fan and loved doing the Six Stories covers: http://kid-ethic.com/?portfolio=six-stories

Give me some examples of really bad covers ?

There is one set of covers that always bugged me. These books did very well so I’m sure I’m not going to upset anybody involved, but I always felt that the UK covers for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo were not very good. A real missed opportunity. But like I said, they sold very well. I see lots of over bad covers, mainly in the self-publishing world. Mostly this can be down to font choice. The correct font choice really can make or break a design. (And this one’s even worse – other corkers if you follow the link HERE)

Both the above are most definitely not by kid-ethic

How much difference does a good cover make to book sales?

I think that it can be very important indeed. We are drawn to things that we find attractive, intriguing and new. Sometimes what draws us is familiarity. I liked that so I’m sure to like this so will buy it. A great cover can often suggest the quality of a book. If it looks professionally done then this means that what is inside must be quality. A bad cover could suggest a bad book lies within. 

Most definitely not by kid-ethic

Tell me a joke…

Did you hear about the woman who invented the knock knock joke? She won the Nobel prize.

Mark, the cover doctor, can be contacted HERE

Phosphate Rocks: A Death in Ten Objects is available from Drake the Bookshop HERE or online at Kobo HERE and Barnes and Noble HERE (and the other place here).

Option Selected!

Back to Mistake #2 Continue to Mistake #3b

The story so far – In January 2024 I decided to self-publish Phosphate Rocks: A Death in Ten Objects after my previous publisher (Sandstone Press) went into liquidation.

Adventures in Self-Publishing – Mistake #2 – To _ISB_N or not to _ISB_N?

When do I need an International Standard Book Number (ISBN)?

If you self-publish, you become the publisher. By definition. You can use your own name, delegate to a third party or create an imprint. Great advice from ALLi here

I chose to create an imprint.

My husband came up with the name. Kid-ethic provided the cheeky log.

SNICKERED MOLE

A prize to whoever unravels the anagram first.

At first I assumed that I could reuse the ISBN (International Standard Book Number) for Phosphate Rocks.

It’s just a reprint of the same book, I reasoned. Surely the same identifying number applies? That way I can retain all my lovely reviews.

Think again.

An ISBN is unique to one particular edition of one particular book in one particular format (ebook or paperback or hardback or audio). It also identifies where a retailer should go to order copies.

The ISBN is specific to the publisher. If you change the publisher (from Sandstone Press to me as Snickered Mole) you have to change the identifying number. An obsolete ISBN is no use. Any order made via that ISBN will be sent to the publisher of record.

The wrong one. 

In civilised countries like France and Canada, ISBNs are free. But in the UK an ISBN costs £91 each (or ten for £174). That’s a steep upfront cost. And do you need them at all?

Most print-on-demand and ebook-producing companies will offer to provide the ISBN (or ASIN with Amazon) for free.

So why pay for your own? Why not just tale a free number?

Once again I turned to the Society of Authors for advice.

If you publish with Amazon, Amazon will give that print-on-demand or ebook edition an ASIN (the Amazon equivalent of an ISBN).  The work will be listed as in stock and available on Amazon, and the information in the ASIN will also increase the work’s chances of appearing in Amazon’s bestseller rankings. An ASIN-version will not be available to other retailers.

If you plan to publish exclusively on say Amazon, and have no desire to get your books into libraries  then you don’t need an ISBN. Amazon will assign you a unique number (ASIN).

Having both a version with an ASIN and one with an ISBN is entirely possible

ASINs are provided only by Amazon. If you ask Amazon also to publish a version with an ISBN, while it will thereby appear on the databases of other retailers, few are likely to want to order stock from Amazon – their main competitor. So generally better to have the ISBN version produced by an entirely different company.

Owning your own ISBN makes you the publisher of record. It allows you to retain control rather than delegating it to the platform you’ve used to distribute: KDP, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, Bookbaby, or anyone else

What I learned?

• You don’t need to buy your own ISBN but it gives you more control if you do. See ALLi advice for guidance below.
• You certainly don’t need to buy barcodes, most self-publishing platforms will generate a barcode for you from the ISBN as will any good cover designer.
• You can transfer reviews to a new version of the same book with a different ISBN

Progress Update to Feb 9 2024

• Drake the fabulous Bookshop (Stockton UK) restocked with print paperbacks
• Phosphate Rocks in print is now available through Drake, Barnes and Noble and wholesaler Ingram Spark (who supply Gardeners in UK and other bookshops worldwide).
• First Ingram Spark Print Order has shipped
• Second of two test translations from English to Italian delivered.

Financial Update

• Self-published sales to date – TWO!!
• Number of full price sales required to offset external cost to date – 404

Back to Previous – Adventures in Self Publishing Mistake #1

Continue to next – Adventures in Self Publishing Mistake #3

Adventures in Self-Publishing – Mistake #1 – Rights: Who owns what?

In January 2024 I decided to self-publish Phosphate Rocks: A Death in Ten Objects

There was never any doubt that the rights to publication of ‘the work’ (Phosphate Rocks) reverted to me after Sandstone Press went into liquidation. But what does ‘the work’ consist of exactly?

My first mistake was to take far too long trying to establish who owned what – in particular the cover art, typesetting and associated digital files.

I am hugely grateful to the Society of Authors (SoA) who guided me through the morass. The annual membership fee is an absolute bargain – if you’re in the UK and not a member, join now. The SoA had been involved with the original 2020 Sandstone contract which meant that that the rights reversion was straightforward. They then negotiated with the liquidator (McLenan Corporate), audio licensee (WF Howes) and ebook distributor (Faber Factory).

Anyone who has tried to do this themselves knows how difficult it is to get so much as an acknowledgement of a query. As an individual, it’s almost impossible to find the right person with time and authority to get something resolved. If I’d had to commission separate Scottish (Sandstone was based in Inverness) and English lawyers myself, I’d be bankrupt before I even got started.

In my naivety, I couldn’t see what value the cover art and typesetting had to anyone else. If I chose to self-publish, I imagined that who-ever owned it would be happy to hand it over as a gesture of good will or for a nominal fee.

Think again.  

The rather pithy advice from the SoA after many fruitless exchanges trying to identify who owned what was:

‘Whoever owns it, it’s not you.’

I joined The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) – another subscription that’s worth every penny – and through them I found an excellent typesetting tool on Reedsy.

Then I contacted the original cover designer – Mark Swan at Kid Ethic – and that’s where the fun began.

More on that next week

Summary

My mistake #1: Trying to acquire what was not mine.

What I learned?

1. Get an independent professional review of any contract BEFORE you sign it.
2. Join organisations designed to support authors like SoA, CWA and ALLi. Quite apart from free guides, seminars and professional advice, you get access to groups with similar interests who can be wonderfully generous with practical help.
3. It isn’t enough to put your books out there, somehow you have to find the readers too!

Progress Update to 2nd Feb 2024

• Ebook now available  through Barnes and Noble and Amazon as well as Kobo (Kobo were the simplest, clearest and quickest by far)
• Amazon reviews successfully transferred (90 reviews, average 4.3*)
• KDP Print Proofs arrived
• First of 2 test translations of 1000 word extract from English to Italian delivered (I may lack sense, but I certainly don’t lack ambition)

Financial Update

• Self-published sales to date – ZERO
• Number of full price sales required to offset external cost to date – 379

You can buy Phosphate Rocks in audio or ebook from Kobo or Barnes and Noble or Amazon

Print Book – Physical stock at Drake the Bookshop – more coming soon

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