Hello writers! Digital publishing?

[Christine Gallagher]

I have written nonfiction books and had some TV movies made, and now have written a novel which I think is the best thing I've ever done. But it's so hard getting someone to rep it. I'm amazed how hard it is. I get some encouraging feedback like you're a good writer but I'm not in love with the book....kind of thing.
Does anyone have experience with digital publishers so I can skip past the agency part of it?
Cheers!

 

[Robinne Weiss]

A number of us here have self-published books. There's a lot to think about before you decide to go that route. You might want to check out the Alliance of Independent Authors for advice and information about platforms, marketing, editing and such.

 

[Marc Joan]

Welcome! Good luck with the novel. I've no experience with self-publishing, I'm afraid.

 

[Carol Rose]

First of all, welcome to the Colony!

Evernight Publishing is a digital first publisher. I'm also published with Siren-BookStrand under a different pen name. They're both digital first, meaning the books are e-books, though some do go to print. Both are royalty paying publishers. I don't pay for anything. They take care of cover art, editing, formatting, ISBN, and uploading to various third party vendors, as well as their own website. I have no complaints working with them.

Not sure what you write, but most digital first publishers publish romance.

What else would you like to know?

 

[David Newrick]

Welcome Christine. I am taking the old-fashioned route to crafting a novel over a few years and seeking representation by an established literary agent.

If you want to self-publish (which is what I think you mean) then there is a host of advice out there and a lot people ready and willing to take your money to achieve it. A few people I have met have published and sold via a system on Amazon which you may want to investigate. Other than that I can't help you.

Good luck with your work.

 

[Howard]

Welcome aboard, Christine!

I have self published two books on Amazon through the Kindle program. It was an excruciating process.

First thing thing to consider is if you have any budget for promotion. You may think that word of mouth and other people's reviews will get you noticed, but it won't. There are literally thousands of books released onto Kindle each week, so your opus will vanish like rain into the ocean.
There are many ways to promote your work, and Amazon offer a lot of them, but they all cost.
I lucked out with my first book, as detailed here: https://colony.litopia.com/index.php?threads/trolling-for-reviews-an-fyi.3457/
Relying on that happening would be foolish, though, I fear.

Also, as a final warning, consider editing. I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote and published my first book. Like, no clue at all. I could not afford an editor (175,000 words is not cheaply proofread) so I had to do it myself and...well, I sucked. Even though my book was cheap as chips, people still took the time to bitch and moan that I had typos or had used the wrong word. People really have WAY too much time on their hands!

Good luck however you move forward. Personally, I will never self-publish again. Its book deal or nothing for me

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Welcome to the Colony, Christine.

If you can afford to hire professionals to help you with editing, formatting, book cover design, promotion/publicity/marketing, then you'll be more successful at self-publishing than most writers who do everything for themselves. The reason that most authors seek a traditional publishing deal is to have a publisher do that tiresome work for them; it's why I've made 400 queries in the last four years!

Having said that, these days a book publisher expects their author client to be an all-singing, all-dancing self-promoter running a blog and social media profiles with hordes of followers and a willingness to attend public events to meet the public. An agent might be disinterested in representing you as a shrinking violet. In these days of limited attention spans and multiple distractions, it's all about making a quick sale of your book to potential readers—interesting them in the concept via an elevator pitch and trading on your image as an author.

My attitude is, that if a book company expect you to do all of that, and for a mere 15% of the sales of your book (minus 15% to your agent), then why not do it for yourself and keep most of the profit?

Self-publishing ebooks and making money from it isn't easy, though, for you have to find ways to make your novel stand out—the dreaded process of discoverability. It's likely that your book will simply disappear among the hordes of other titles on Smashwords and Amazon. In 2013-2014 I self-published 44 books online. Last year, I edited them all and joined the queue on Smashwords to upload the corrected versions. Intrigued as to how many other writers were doing the same thing, I made a note of how many volumes were on the site when I started. It took me about an hour to get my new books online, waiting for approval by their editors, and in that time there were 400 new books published. I've just checked their total and it stands at 464,917 books! How would a reader choose your book from half-a-million others?

That's the key problem to solve—your book is a snowflake in a blizzard! I'm returning to self-publishing soon: just call me Scott of the Antarctic....

 

[Carol Rose]

Digital publishers are *NOT* "self" publishers. We're talking apples and oranges here, folks. Unless I have completely misunderstood @Christine Gallagher's post. Even if I have, the differences are important enough to be pointed out.

Self-publishing is exactly what it sounds like. YOU do all the work. You pay for editing (or forego it), you pay for an ISBN, you pay to format it (or do it yourself), you pay for a cover (or make it yourself), you assume all the marketing/promo. You also keep all the royalties, unless you get into the Kindle Direct thing with Amazon. I've never looked into it, so I truly have no clue why they keep part of the royalties, or what authors get for that, other than Amazon skewing their rankings so KD authors are always higher than anyone else.

Digital first publishers *ARE* "traditional" publishers. I don't pay for/do any of that on my own, with the exception of any marketing/promo I choose to do. I earn royalties, just like I would from any publisher. The only difference is that the book goes to e-book first, and print second - if it goes to print at all. Why would anyone choose this route over self-publishing? Tons of reasons. Support, not having to shell out all that cash up front for editing, covers, etc. with no guarantee of making back the money, and the backing of an established publisher and its team, not to mention its loyal readership.

 

[Marc Joan]

Maybe I misunderstood the OP, but I thought she was mainly trying to avoid agents, which made me think that when she said 'digital' she meant 'self' ... perhaps she will return and clarify ...

 

[Patricia D]

For the same reason you're citing, I signed with a digital publisher, and they e-pubbed my first three books. The publishers are nice people, but it hasn't really worked. I should have done more thorough research. They publish a variety of genres, but they are primarily a romance publisher. I write mysteries. For futures, I would make sure any publishing company I signed with had a presence in the mystery market. The contract said they would seek reviews - seeking and getting are two different things. They would not agree to any "extra" marketing - not even when my first book won the industry award for best mystery. On the positive side, they took only digital rights and after two years, I could request my rights back. I have rights to two back already and can get the third in a couple weeks. I republished the books with new covers (I didn't like their covers, and wasn't about to pay to use them) in hard copy and as e-books, using Amazon/createspace and lowering the price to what I thought was more appropriate for the market. I'm selling more books but still not very many.

Good luck going forward and deciding what works best for you.

 

[Carol Rose]

Maybe I misunderstood the OP, but I thought she was mainly trying to avoid agents, which made me think that when she said 'digital' she meant 'self' ... perhaps she will return and clarify ...

You don't need an agent to submit to digital publishers. You submit directly to them.

And yes, I do hope she comes back to clarify what she meant.

 

[Howard]

@Carol Rose DOH! Yeah, I didn't really read the question, did I? Brain frazzled from editing. Nothing to see here. Move along...

 

[Robinne Weiss]

And if it's only agents you're looking to avoid, many publishers (particularly smaller ones) will take unagented submissions. It pays to have a look at their submissions pages.

 

[Marc Joan]

Exactly: not all conventional publishers require agents, and many conventional publishers have digital arms. Is it the case that no digital-only publishers require agents? If so, I just learnt something!

 

[Carol Rose]

Exactly: not all conventional publishers require agents, and many conventional publishers have digital arms. Is it the case that no digital-only publishers require agents? If so, I just learnt something!

I wouldn't say none of them do, only because there might be some I'm unaware of that do, but I haven't run into any yet that require an agent.

However, just to confuse things further, there might be larger pubs with digital arms that still require agented submissions. Like @Robinne Weiss said, it's best to look at their submissions page.