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How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017

• ajeet_dhaliwal 10y ago
  Thanks for this, it's interesting to see an article that goes from showing step zero all the way to selling on Amazon. I tried getting my novel published in 2012 and was rejected by many literary agents to the point I was having trouble finding any left that I had not submitted to. I considered self-publishing at the time but decided against it. I'll keep this bookmarked should I choose to self publish in the future.
  • zhubert 10y ago
    I'm happy that this might to useful to you in the future!
• ilamont 10y ago
  The author mentions getting a copy editor, but I would also advise hiring a development editor and/or getting feedback from beta readers. Quoting Stephen King (1): Show your piece to a number of people—ten, let us say. Listen carefully to what they tell you. Smile and nod a lot. Then review what was said very carefully. If your critics are all telling you the same thing about some facet of your story—a plot twist that doesn’t work, a character who rings false, stilted narrative, or half a dozen other possibles—change that facet. It doesn’t matter if you really liked that twist of that character; if a lot of people are telling you something is wrong with your piece, it is. If seven or eight of them are hitting on that same thing, I’d still suggest changing it. But if everyone—or even most everyone—is criticizing something different, you can safely disregard what all of them say. In the same piece, King advises “if it’s bad, kill it.” (“When it comes to people, mercy killing is against the law. When it comes to fiction, it is the law.”) 1. http://www.jerryjenkins.com/guest-blog-from-stephen-king/ http://www.jerryjenkins.com/guest-blog-from-stephen-king/
  • amelius 10y ago
    With this approach, your novel becomes an average of what the masses like to read, rather than what you wanted to say. Engineered for the masses, so to speak. Which, of course, could explain why King is so successful.
    • elastic_church 10y ago
      Not for if it's just one thing He says ignore the gradient
    • thedz 10y ago
      IMO, this is an artistic fallacy that needs to die. Responding and adjusting to feedback doesn't undermine the integrity of a work or weaken its authenticity. Cycles of feedback and iteration are common to all work in every medium. Obviously, you can take responding to feedback too far, but the idea of the artist-in-a-tower-birthing-a-fully-grown-work-whole is an inaccurate idea at best, and a damaging assumption at worst. Like King says, ignore the outliers. But if no one understands a plot twist, or everyone dislikes something you really like, maybe take another swing at it. Iterate a little more. Creative output is the art of refinement as much as anything else. (Good editors can also often help substitute for peer feedback)
      • exergy 10y ago
        Depends on what you account for as feedback. If we are narrowly talking about plot twists when writing an entertaining thriller, than yeah, by all means, make sure the audience gets it. Also, there is much to be said about a sharp, crisply edited book that doesn't meander or ramble pointlessly. On the other hand, in general I almost exclusively read books and blogs because I'm interested in what the author has to say, rather than what I'd like to hear. Cal Newport discusses the idea of craftsmanship in a way I really like. When you're building a table or a bass guitar, there are better and worse woods for the application at hand that have little to do with how the craftsman feels about them. They are, to an extent, impersonal and external to him. A song or a poem, by contrast, have everything to do with the author and little in the way of objectivity about them. Of course, all of this is a case of finding an optimum balance.
  • zhubert 10y ago
    Howdy, author here. Completely agree on the early reader feedback. I went through two rounds of readers (alpha and beta) and it was immensely helpful in grinding down some of the rough edges of the book. A development editor would be fantastic as well, I honestly just didn't know where to find one!
    • jeffwass 10y ago
      How did you work with your alpha readers? Ie - did you wait for your first completed draft before showing them the whole thing, or did you show them chapter/scene works-in-progress as you wrote them?
      • zhubert 10y ago
        I gave the 15 alpha readers a "finished" book, by which I mean, I thought it was ready to go, so I had already edited it myself a few times. The consistent feedback I received from those readers weighed heavily on the major edit which followed. I had made some mistakes, no doubt about it. The work is now better for it. I then gave the "finished" book to a much smaller group of beta readers and repeated the process. Then I went through the book a few times myself to improve the flow. Finally, it went to the copyeditor.
        • ilamont 10y ago
          Thanks for sharing your experience about using beta readers. I think this is so important for any type of media creation, from books to music to videogames. I am actually developing a framework that explores this called Lean Media: What is Lean Media? It’s an approach to creating media content that emphasizes low-cost production, careful observation/measurement of audience feedback, and fast iteration. Properly incubated and carefully scaled, Lean Media projects can attract loyal audiences and grow into successful works and brands. (more information via http://leanmedia.org http://leanmedia.org) Would you be interested in being profiled on the blog about your approach to using beta readers? If so please email me at ian -at- leanmedia.org ... I think what you are doing would provide a great example!
    • 10y ago
  • douche 10y ago
    Alternatively, you can take a different page out of King's book, and get ripped on Schlitz and PBR and cocaine and write away in a blackout haze. Most of us probably won't produce some of our greatest work like he did, however [1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cujo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cujo
• dagenleg 10y ago
  tldr: - use proprietary tool №1 - enslave yourself to Amazon - use proprietary tool №2 from Amazon
  • Dotnaught 10y ago
    Others offering self-publishing advice stress using both Amazon CreateSpace and IngramSpark/Lightning Source for broader distribution. See: http://selfpublishingadvice.org/watchdog-ingram-spark-vs-createspace-for-self-publishing-print-books/ http://selfpublishingadvice.org/watchdog-ingram-spark-vs-cre...
    • zhubert 10y ago
      This is good advice. My post will eventually include other markets as well, but I just haven't got that far along.
    • cableshaft 10y ago
      Okay cool, thanks. I have a friend who's a librarian and she strongly suggested not using CreateSpace because you won't get your book in as many places (i.e. not Barnes and Noble, not smaller bookstores, not libraries) through CreateSpace, but she didn't really know who else to use instead. I'll have to look into IngramSpark/Lightning Source.
    • marvindanig 10y ago
      Not everyone wants to live by amazon or even succeeds with it. Try https://bubbl.in https://bubbl.in for example if you wish to sell your work like a responsive book straight on the web. Zero lock-ins and great sales outside of a garden if you will ;) Full disclosure: I'm the developer/engineer behind the service.
• austenallred 10y ago
  I just finished my first book, and I went a little bit different of a route than the author here. I know this isn't very DIY, but it's probably worth knowing it's an option: I simply hired someone who works at a book publishing company to edit and typeset the book for me on the side. The person I hired does it for a living and is incredibly good at it. Let's just say it's not the most lucrative career choice, so I had the entire book (198 pages) edited and typeset by a professional for about $400. This also had the added benefit of letting me write and get feedback from early readers using google docs, which was incredibly important. I ended up paying her a pretty big bonus on top of that (as we pre-sold $110,000 worth and since publishing a couple days ago have brought in another $2,000 - all straight profit since we're ebook only so far and not on Amazon) but for my time and sanity it was very, very worth it.
  • danielrm26 10y ago
    I'd love to know who you used.
    • austenallred 10y ago
      Email me, and I'll introduce you. Email in bio.
  • kristiandupont 10y ago
    Congratulations! May I ask how you managed to presell that well with your first book? Did you apply any specific marketing techniques?
    • austenallred 10y ago
      Haha, well it's a book about Internet marketing (we wanted to create a practical step-by-step guide that read like a programming tutorial), so we've tried hundreds of things over the years and know what works. We made a promise to use only the things in the book to sell it. We ended up changing the marketing messaging to "the ultimate growth hacking guide" from "a step-by-step guide to user acquisition" because that performed 200% better in our A/B tests, and I'm still a little bitter about that, but the money soothes my bitterness. So that was important. Our biggest winners tactics-wise were sharing the first couple chapters on Medium and cheating a little bit, doing the same on Reddit, with a link that said "if you want more like this pre-order the book," and we worked Twitter pretty well and did a few guest speaking engagements, but no silver bullets, just a lot of lead ones. Link to a chapter on Medium: https://medium.com/startup-grind/seo-is-not-hard-a-step-by-step-seo-tutorial-for-beginners-that-will-get-you-ranked-every-single-1b903b3ab6bb#.pdu1jdvfu https://medium.com/startup-grind/seo-is-not-hard-a-step-by-s... (Link to pre-sales page, for reference: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-ultimate-growth-hacking-guide-secret-sauce-marketing--2/x/14399717#/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-ultimate-growth-hacki...) FWIW, we sell it direct-only to not deal with fees at https://secretsaucenow.com https://secretsaucenow.com
• yazbo_mcclure 10y ago
  Ugh Facebook really? I would want t read it but how do I remember? An email would work maybe. But a text would get me for sure but I don't have Facebook
  • bamie9l 10y ago
    I don't understand, I didn't see any reference to Facebook aside from the standard social media links at the bottom.
    • pbhjpbhj 10y ago
      I think he's referring to the "book club" on http://www.singularbook.com/ http://www.singularbook.com/ which is a link to Facebook. That homepage also has a 3MB image of the cover on it, bit excessive. Google reckon on saving 2.8MB by image optimisation (or 3.4MB when targetting desktop), https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.singularbook.com%2F https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=... .
      • zhubert 10y ago
        I created the Facebook group for readers who are reading the novel as its released serially online (for free). Each week I release three more chapters on the website (www.singularbook.com), not on Facebook. It was just something to do for fun :) Yep, the cover image is a bit excessive. My gulpfile didn't have that image in it but I'll get that sorted out.
• teach 10y ago
  How to self-publish a paperback novel, that is. Looks like a lot of good advice! For my use case (self-publishing a digital-only book): I wrote "Learn Java the Hard Way" using Leanpub and I was pleased with the experience, but their build tools are closed-source and sort-of creaky and the tweak-compile-preview cycle is WAY too slow for my workflow. I intend to use Softcover for my next one. Recently I switched to Gumroad for fulfillment and I have been incredibly happy with them. Highly recommended.
  • onion2k 10y ago
    I'm writing a technical book at the moment and looking at a couple of ways to get it to print. Is there a particular reason why you're looking at Softcover, or is just "better than Leanpub"?
    • thewhitetulip 10y ago
      I have published two tech books on leanpub, if you like markdown then leanpub is great. Earlier it used to be free, but now they charge 99$ for carrying a book, their rates are awesome, you get something like 90% of tge book sales
      • teach 10y ago
        For the record I didn't publish on Leanpub. (Well, I did but I didn't send many customers their way.) I just used them to get a nice-looking PDF and sold it myself from my website using Stripe to accept credit cards.
        • thewhitetulip 10y ago
          How much does Strip charge you for transactions? Is it cheaper than Leanpub?
          • teach 10y ago
            Stripe is quite a bit cheaper: 2.9% + $0.30 per successful card charge.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• scandox 10y ago
  Forget all the tooling. There are two battles: 1. To write the best book you possibly can 2. To print, market and sell that book Far and away the most important thing is No. 1, because No. 2 cannot happen effectively without that. And the bar is high - very high. So in many ways the battle is lost or won by the time you've put down your pen. Yes marketing and distribution are incredibly important. Design too. But none of it is going to do much good unless the book really works. And making a book work is not hit and miss. It's the product of a very exact type of knowledge and skill - this is especially true of genre work. Of course, there have been a few tremendous exceptions - but you'll know if you're one of those. So with self-publishing, as with ordinary publishing: first write a great book. For that the tools you need are: 1. Someone who can give you tough feedback and who knows what they're talking about 2. A writing group for softer, more regular feedback 3. Long practice in writing shorter work 4. Long practice in critical reading of other people's work, especially unpublished work. You'll never make a mistake once you see that mistake and understand it in someone else's work.
  • j_s 10y ago
    There is a danger that any nuance you've intended accompany your main point may be lost, since this is indeed how a lot of technical people think: "If you build it, they will come", meritocracy, etc. It is the reason there are a lot of great, undiscovered products out there. However, marketing is the biggest piece of financial success (this may not be the chosen goal). Pretty much all non-technical activity can be classified as marketing except for required business paperwork. Writing something is literally the starting line. Proof that "none of it is going to do much good unless the book really works" is not reliably true, by counter-example: https://www.google.com/#q=bad+books+bestsellers https://www.google.com/#q=bad+books+bestsellers Random technical example (fast NTFS filesystem metadata search) I almost lost because I forgot to bookmark it after reading the only HN comment I've ever seen mention it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13738309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13738309 And further, I just found the child comment sharing another utility! Edit: Focusing more on preventing misinterpretation.
    • scandox 10y ago
• MLR 10y ago
  I've been toying with the idea of a site for original written works, in the same vein as current fanfiction sites or Deviantart. I imagine it would end up working along the shareware model, x chapters here for free and purchase access to the full story, or something along those lines - though if there is a market for it you could use it as a streamlining process for publishing houses I suppose Is anybody aware of a site like that in the wild already?
  • crb3 10y ago
    Not with your proposed marketing mechanism, but there's https://www.fictionpress.com/ https://www.fictionpress.com/ -- a spinoff of https://www.fanfiction.net/ https://www.fanfiction.net/.
  • alexeckermann 10y ago
    Im CTO at a startup that is working in that space — https://tablo.io https://tablo.io We currently offer a way to streamline creation, sharing and publishing of work through to the iBooks Store. Going forward we are focusing on being a new home for publishing.
• rekshaw 10y ago
  Nice guide, although it is more of a 2016 guide. Amazon recently launched the public beta of KDP Print making CreateSpace redundant. https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=AH8RA6CMVRN8Y&ref_=pe_2983330_227202760_kdp_BS_D_pgs https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=AH8RA6CMVRN8Y&ref_=pe_29...
  • zhubert 10y ago
    As soon as they have author proofs, I'll switch over. The interface of KDP is really nice, trust me, I can't wait to switch.
  • walterbell 10y ago
    Does KDP Print require granting exclusivity to Amazon?
• zitterbewegung 10y ago
  I self published a book of my poetry on Kindle Direct publishing 5 years ago see http://a.co/iw4r1jq http://a.co/iw4r1jq I also used lulu to make a physical copy. For lulu I think I used Microsoft word and for kindle you could just make a HTML document to be published . The tooling in this article is great but as other people have pointed out marketing your book is more important. The article should be titled how to typeset a novel in 2017.
• DrNuke 10y ago
  Talking arty, literary novels are form more than content, so why self-publish a literary novel if form is strong enough?
  • crpatino 10y ago
    Not sure what you meant, but I think an appropriate answer would be: for fun and profit. It is a bit like saying, why go climbing the mount Everest if lots of people have already done so. Indeed, why trying to do stuff nobody else have done before, exclusively? If billions of people have already existed before yourselves, all the good stuff worth doing will have been done over and over again, and the only original stuff left will be JackAss(TM) material.
• morehuman 10y ago
  Prolifiko are doing a great job of supporting writers via its app: http://www.thememo.com/2017/01/04/prolifiko-writing-tool-prolifiko-kickstarter-publishing-news-write-track/ http://www.thememo.com/2017/01/04/prolifiko-writing-tool-pro...
• arc_of_descent 10y ago
  I'm curious. Do you jot everything down on Scrivener? Or do you also write on paper? Lately I've been carrying a notebook everywhere I go and I'm starting to write much more.
  • zhubert 10y ago
    Both. Ideas for the story accumulated in a Moleskin for a few months before I started writing. I also carry around a little field notes booklet in my backpack/pocket a good bit of the time. Makes me feel like a creative :) The major edit was done via 3x5 cards. Each card had a scene, the values it turned on, and the actors in the scene, so I sort of treated it like a screenplay. 3x5 cards are really nice for juggling things around (though Scrivener does has a corkboard view, I liked the paper approach for this step).
  • cableshaft 10y ago
    For journal-style writing, I'm finding using a physical notebook and bringing it with me is definitely the way to go. It's a constant reminder that I should be trying to keep it up, instead of being buried in the file system on my computer. I also like how I can easily add drawings whenever I feel like, or how easy it is to bring out while at lunch and write a few pages. I personally haven't been able to make that work with writing stories, although I have found printing drafts and marking them up physically can work.
• rrajdev 10y ago
  http://krishna-kanaiya-photos-images.blogspot.com/2017/02/holi-ki-shubhkamnaye.html http://krishna-kanaiya-photos-images.blogspot.com/2017/02/ho...
• cstross 10y ago
  NOTE: Step 2: Write the Novel ... You know, the easy part. For those who have never written a novel, writer is being sarcastic here. The equivalent in terms of reference more familiar to the regulars on HN might well be: "Step 2: study for a CS degree, then decide which industry you intend to disrupt, learn how it works, and come up with a strategy. Oh, and write the killer app." This is just the framework for the business plan: it's helpful, but it's insufficient on its own.
  • dredmorbius 10y ago
    Yeah, what would you know down on the farm? ;-)
  • zhubert 10y ago
    Deeply sarcastic indeed! Writing Singular was probably the most emotionally trying and, at the same time, rewarding challenge I've tackled. It even feels weird to describe it that way, it's simply been a part of me for the last two years. I'm curious how that changes from the first book to the twenty-first?
    • lutusp 10y ago
      > I'm curious how that changes from the first book to the twenty-first? For your answer, compare "The Right Stuff" (1979) to "I am Charlotte Simmons" (2004), both by Tom Wolfe. The second book, apart from being unreadable, seems not to have been written by the same person.
• necklace 10y ago
  Seems I am on a downvote streak lately so I'll keep going; why would you not use (Xe)LaTeX? If I was too lazy to use that I would probably use something like bookdown.
  • j2kun 10y ago
    I am using LaTeX, but I'm almost certain it will be a pain when I go to the eBook step, since they all have their own formats and I'm not aware of any tools that can render the math formulas in my book faithfully on all of them.
    • Finnucane 10y ago
      This is a problem. In epub, you can use MathML, but support on reading systems is spotty. You could embed something like MathJax, but that would also depend on there being scripting support (not all systems have it). On the Kindle, there is none--no Latex, no MathML, no scripting, nothing for math support at all. Your only choice is graphics. SVG or high-res PNG works best. Though on a Kindle, there's no "S" in the SVG (i.e, the Kindle can't actually scale SVG). Occasionally we do a math-heavy econ book here, and it is always a compromise.
      • j2kun 10y ago
        What is your opinion on publishing a math-heavy e-book (like, equations on every page, inline and offset)? I don't think I will be able to do better than having a physical book paired with a pay-to-download PDF.
        • Finnucane 10y ago
          I guess it comes down to what the market is, how much work it would take to do the conversions, and what compromises you're willing to take. Inline math is easier to deal with, usually it's just a matter of making sure the characters display correctly. Complex multi-line math is where things start to fall down. If this is a specialized technical reference that is of interest to 500 people, it might not be worth a lot of work to sell 20 copies on Kindle.
• faet 10y ago
  I have some of my books on Amazon KDP and a few not. KDP is nice because it's easy. But, the exclusivity can suck.
  • malloreon 10y ago
    You are mixing up terms. KDP refers to the entire publishing program. KU, Kindle Unlimited requires exclusivity but you get paid by page read.
    • Nomentatus 10y ago
      He may be referring to using KDP's freebie program, that requires exclusivity. I keep waiting for Amazon to be dinged for monopoly abuse on that policy, but I'm still waiting.
• username223 10y ago
  Interesting. I recently published a paperback in a different space (color, lots of figures), and made completely different choices. I can't write anything nearly as long or specific as your blog post here, but in brief: * I used XeTeX plus my editor of choice. * I sent it to a few friends, listened to what they said, and read and re-read until my eyes bled. * I avoided Amazon like the plague, instead using a small print-on-demand shop with reasonable prices. * I sold via pre-sales, my personal website, and consignment at small bookstores.
• 6stringmerc 10y ago
  Very nifty guide and honestly very needed in the DIY space I think. Mostly because I feel long-form print (specifically hard copy) is occupying a smaller and smaller market share year after year. There's definitely still demand - as in airport bookstores - but the ROI doesn't seem very appealing. My experience was through Smashwords and I was pleased with the platform. Never even recouped the $10 or so fee to get the ISBN number hah. It's a nice opportunity - self publishing, that is - and I think lots of amateur writers should feel compelled to give it a try. Nothing is quite like the artistic experience of working very hard on a piece, getting it out into the world, and almost nobody paying any attention to it. Except a couple purchases by relatives. Not everybody gets to be Chuck Tingle, which, while fiscally successful, is the literary equivalent of the contents of a mop bucket at a seedy peep show joint. Ugh.
  • imjustsaying 10y ago
    Is Dr. Tingle fiscally successful?
  • munificent 10y ago
    > I feel long-form print (specifically hard copy) is occupying a smaller and smaller market share year after year. Actually, after several years of decline, print sales have been bouncing back in the past couple of years: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/72450-print-book-sales-rose-again-in-2016.html http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bo...
• Balgair 10y ago
  This is not related to the article, but US-based HN readers may benefit from it: You can set up an account with your local library to 'check out' books for your Kindle completely free. If you an avid reader like me, this saves a lot of cash in buying those books and reading them once or twice. There are some restrictions on the number of titles and the length of 'check out' though. Each library has different rules and stipulations. Check out if your local library has this program, most cities do by now.
• innocentoldguy 10y ago
  Scrivener exports to Word, and various other formats. Working with large manuscripts in Word is a challenge, and it lacks many of the writing features of Scrivener. I've personally never had a problem with Scrivener's Word exporter, and have never felt like I needed to purchase Word.
  • zhubert 10y ago
    Largely driven by my copyeditor only working in Word. Given that incorporating their recommendations was much easier with change tracking in Word, it was a very useful addition to the toolbox.
• vgt 10y ago
  My wife is an aspiring novelist (on her 9th draft of the novel) with an MFA in fiction and some experience working for a literary agent. Some perspective from that side: - 99% of all drafts sent to literary agents are objectively non-publishable. Simple lack of quality, lack of maturity, or other quantifiable factors. One or two drafts is not enough, even for experienced established novelists. Sadly, you can often tell within the first 5 pages, and even within the first paragraph. - Out of the 1% that have the potential to be publishable, at least 4 drafts, and often much more, are required to reach the quality desired to actually be publishable. - Good novels that are simply not what the agent/publisher is looking for at that time is also a factor, but a very distant one relative to just quality of work. - In fact, if your novel is "good" but the agent/publisher is not inclined to pick it up, they are more inclined to ask for a full draft, to give great editorial notes, or to give referrals to other agents/publishers. - If an agent thinks that they cannot take a specific "Good" book to market, they will frequently give pertinent feedback and often suggest specific revisions in order to make such a book marketable. - At PNWA and other literary conferences vast majority of attendees bring single or maybe two-draft. I should note that "number of drafts" is not an absolute requirement. Different folks write differently, and having a high number of iterations on your novel is not an indication of quality, rather than indication of prerequisite work required to produce a good product. So while the publishing world is far from perfect, and both publishers and agents tend to gravitate towards what's fashionable, the reality is that the vast majority of aspiring work is simply far from finished, despite the authors' claims (this doesn't preclude garbage like "50 shades" from seeing the light of day, mind you). Self-publishing gives those 99% a window to self-publish with only marginal quality controls. This in a way has the potential to overwhelm the system, and the objectively higher quality works can get drowned out in the noise. Not to mention that, once self-published, a book is highly unlikely to be re-published by a traditional publisher, especially for a first-time author. I'll close this tirade on a positive message. If you're a writer, you've already succeeded. The inner battles fought every single day for months and years on end alone make you a winner.
  • sacado2 10y ago
    > One or two drafts is not enough, even for experienced established novelists. cough Elmore Leonard cough cough Robert Heinlein cough > Not to mention that, once self-published, a book is highly unlikely to be re-published by a traditional publisher, especially for a first-time author. That's a good thing. I think more writers should be in a "fire an forget" mode, i.e write a book, self-publish it, have readers or not, and move on to the next story. Rinse and repeat until you are able to write good stories. I think it's much better for self-esteem to be able to think "I already wrote 5 novels. Most are shit but, hey, it's getting better and better every time" than "argh, I have to write that first novel from scratch, for the fifth time. I'm fed up with it. I've been working on it for 10 years. I feel like I won't ever finish it. Maybe this writing thing is not for me".
• innocentoldguy 10y ago
  One thing I would suggest, which isn't mentioned in the article, is to join a writing group. It will give you an opportunity to both give and receive constructive criticism, see what works and what doesn't, and will help improve your work overall (if you listen to the criticisms, anyway).
  • zhubert 10y ago
    Excellent advice. I tried to stay focused on the technical side of production in this post as reams could be written on how to improve the writing side.
• valine 10y ago
  > The lingua franca for most writing is Microsoft Word so you’ll have to buy that eventually... I don't understand why something as ubiquitous as writing necessitates spending $100 on software from Microsoft. A plain text editor works out of the box. If you have a need for more complex formatting you could use LibreOffice, OpenOffice, Pages (comes free with a new Mac/iPad), WPS Office, etc. I get that Word has is the standard and all, I just don't understand why the agreeded upon standard needs to cost upward of $100, especially for something as simple as word processing.
  • zhubert 10y ago
    It wasn't the formatting actually. Change tracking of the proposed edits from the copyeditor was greatly expedited through Word's toolset. While I could have copied them all over by hand, I figured I'd likely introduce other errors in the process. Clicking accept/reject was worth the peace of mind.
    • jessaustin 10y ago
      It's my (possibly false...) impression that those who find Word's "Track Changes" valuable, have never used diff/patch or any of their many descendants (i.e. git etc.) Trying to keep two contributors' work straight with Word's "Track Changes" is a hair-pulling challenge. With more people, forget about it. In large groups, I've found even "change the third sentence in the ninth paragraph" requests via email to be better...
      • zhubert 10y ago
        I can't address the general impression, but as someone who spends nearly every moment of my day in git (and only twenty percent of my day dealing with conflicts, I jest) I think my advice is more towards impedance matching. When working with folks outside of tech, something like Word expedites the process as it's their native tongue. While tools like diff and patch are great (I was a Unix admin at Amazon back in the Jurassic period), they'd limit my options for copy editors.
  • SwellJoe 10y ago
• gozur88 10y ago
  The copy editor is a sore point with me. It's getting more and more common for me to run across jarring errors in novels. I don't mind so much if it's a digital-only 99 cent Kindle book, but if I spend six bucks on a book I don't expect to see duplicate sentences or incorrect word choice. "Tow the line", for example, or "then" when "than" would be correct.
  • lutusp 10y ago
    > "Tow the line", for example, or "then" when "than" would be correct. My favorite recent malapropism, seen more and more often and in increasingly exalted locales, is "reign it in". "Reign" is what a monarch does to a kingdom, "rein" is what a cowboy does to a horse.
• chipotle_coyote 10y ago
  I'm not sure that figuring out the tooling for indie publishing is too difficult these days. I recently published my first novel, and while it actually isn't self-published--it was accepted by a small press I'd worked with before--in terms of the tooling, it's being approached as a self-published project: I did the typesetting myself, for both ebook and print. (Like Zack Hubert, I used Vellum for the ebook, although I did the print version with LaTeX, which I'll probably write up a short guide to sometime.) While my press paid for the cover art, printing, ISBN, and other stuff, and they've done some advertising, a lot of the promotional work is left up to me...and in a lot of ways I think marketing is a much harder problem to solve. My novel came out of an intensive workshop led by a Nebula, Hugo and World Fantasy Award winner (Kij Johnson), has a blurb from a recent Nebula novel nominee (Lawrence Schoen, author of BARSK), was available for pre-order, and I've done what I could to promote it...and it turns out all those people saying it's tough to get your book noticed are, surprise, absolutely right. tl;dr: while I'm interested in how Mr. Hubert produced his book, I'm more interested in how he finds an audience for it. (Beyond writing an article about it that gets linked on the front page of Hacker News!)
  • zhubert 10y ago
    I'd love to read about using LaTex. Even though I've read TAOCP (shock!) and been a physics grad student, I'm still semi-scared at the notion of using it for fun. Most of my grad buddies (in experimental physics!!) had endless challenges with it. Surmountable, of course, but I wanted to aim for an easier skill set.
• dredmorbius 10y ago
  If you're not of the "I'm writing because I can't not" personality, you might also want to consider self publishing book statistics. http://www.bowker.com/documents/self-publishing-report-in-united-states-2008-2013.html http://www.bowker.com/documents/self-publishing-report-in-un...
  • alimw 10y ago
    Not sure what point you'd like to make with those statistics. That a lot of books are written? Probably more interesting to a prospective author would be statistics on how many of them are read.
    • dredmorbius 10y ago
      Approaching 1 million annually. That's 1 per 317 Americans.
• eslaught 10y ago
  I think the author missed the most important point (maybe they haven't gotten this far yet): marketing and especially market-fit. If you just want to release an ebook or even in paper, you can do that easily. If you want to release an ebook and have it be a success, that's really hard. It's hard even for traditional publishers, and it's certainly not any easier for self-published authors. Anecdote: I helped my grandmother release her first book (here: http://carolynnslaughter.com/book/ http://carolynnslaughter.com/book/). The technical aspects are frankly not that hard. For anyone with halfway reasonable technical skills, launching a book is simply a matter of following various instructions online. How much did we sell? Pretty close to rounding error of zero. Honestly, we were never expecting much success, because the book is fairly academic. Edit: Less anecdotally: "Ninety percent of your book’s success will be determined by the quality of your book. The other ten percent is distribution, marketing and luck." (From Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/145431 https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/145431) I understand that as HN readers we gravitate towards technical solutions. But the sibling comment by scandox is on the nose here. The hardest problem by far is writing a book that people will be willing to pay money for. The second hardest problem is marketing it, and all these other technical aspects come somewhere after that.
  • zhubert 10y ago
    I think there are many reasons for writing, only some of which are success/financially motivated. Personally, I wanted to write a story about Lisp machines, Bostrom-inspired Artificial Intelligences, and a journey of discovery/adventure in the vein of my favorite stories (www.zhubert.com/reading). Not everyone gets excited about Lisp machines, so I'm not expecting a mainstream market. That said, marketing was out of scope of my original article and quite a challenging problem, I agree.
• marvindanig 10y ago
  Shout out to @zhubert, cool article -- thanks for sharing it! This is how I'd write a novel in 2017 and do it for one web instead: https://blog.marvindanig.com/2016/03/17/how-to-write-a-superbook/ https://blog.marvindanig.com/2016/03/17/how-to-write-a-super... Disclosure: I'm the developer/engineer.
  • sonicaa 10y ago
    This is very interesting. Does it use markdown as well or just plain markup/html in the manuscript?
• mindcrime 10y ago
  CreateSpace is fine as self-publishing /print on demands goes, but just FYI another option is Lulu.com. Disclaimer: I used to work for Lulu, but no longer do, and have no financial stake in them. Just wanted to point out the existence of another option.
• lutusp 10y ago
  Quote: "TL;DR: Scrivener, Vellum, KDP, Createspace" Scrivener is US$40, Vellum is Mac-only and US$200, the other two are unnecessary/replaceable and IMHO should be a list of equivalent options -- once you have a manuscript, which can be created using any number of free tools. Someone who imagines writing the Great American Novel, but who also expects to have to pay a premium for each step along the way, may not grasp the essence of novel writing -- how it fits into the big picture. There are any number of free word processors able to organize a book project into chapters and sections. Self-publishing is also free or should be. My favorite story about novel creation is that of Andy Weir and The Martian. Weir started the project as a series of blog posts, got very useful feedback from his readers, improved his content on that basis, and the project grew nearly on its own. By the time Weir wanted to talk to publishers, they already wanted to talk to him.
  • oddevan 10y ago
    In terms of Scrivener, keep an eye on bundle deals and software discounters like StackSocial. I was able to get my copy for around half-price, and the organization and feature set provided for those $20 is well worth-it. Now, to be fair, I could write the entire thing in Markdown and be happy. I don't need Scrivener. But for what it does and how well it does it, it's worth looking at.
  • chipotle_coyote 10y ago
    To be fair, he's describing the tools that worked for him. Scrivener is for taking stories from notes through first draft; it's not a word processor in the same way Word and LibreOffice are, and there's no direct free software equivalent. You could use free tools for the same tasks, but you'll do those tasks differently--and that might be preferable to you, depending on how you work. Scrivener is very powerful, very flexible, and very idiosyncratic. Vellum is similar, but there are direct free software equivalents, most notably Sigil, a GUI ePub creation tool. Alternatively, you could use Pandoc to assemble an ePub from Markdown (or any of the seemingly several thousand other markup dialects Pandoc knows). I ended up using Vellum for my book because it was incredibly smart about taking a DOCX file exported from Scrivener and turning it into a properly sectioned and tagged ePub, and adding new sections, artwork, metadata and overall book styling is trivially simple. Sigil and Pandoc are great, but they're also lower-level tools by comparison, with both the advantages and disadvantages that implies. For me personally, it was worth spending $30. Self-publishing is also free or should be. Well, it's as free as you want it to be. In my experience, YMMV and all other appropriate disclaimers, producing an ebook which seriously competes with ones from traditional publishers requires skill not just in writing but in editing, graphic design, typesetting (or ebook production), and (depending on the cover) illustration. If you have access to all those skills without spending any money, awesome, but it's kind of a tall order.
• dlubarov 10y ago
  My advice would be to look at the pricing of CreateSpace versus Lightning Source/Spark before choosing one. And keep in mind that LS is the only one which lets you control the Ingram discount, down to 20%. Here's the LS pricing guide: https://myaccount.lightningsource.com/documents/LSI/files/pricing/USPricing.BW.pdf https://myaccount.lightningsource.com/documents/LSI/files/pr... and here's the CS pricing: https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/Royalties.jsp https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/Royalties.jsp For example, I sell a very short book via LS. The MSRP is $2.99, I set a 20% Ingram discount, and the print charge is only $1.56 (though the pricing guide now says $1.72; I think it's increasing soon). So I make $0.84 per book. With CreateSpace the lowest possible print charge is $2.15 per book, and given their fixed 40%/60% sales channel fees, it wouldn't be possible to sell the book for as low as $2.99. LS isn't always cheaper though; you should do the calculation for your particular book size and page count. Working with LS does make things a bit harder. You have to buy your own ISBNs, spend time waiting for certain manual processes (like for them to review your account application or a new book), and deal with their clunky website. But for me, it's worth the effort to be able to publish short books much more cheaply.
• robotkdick 10y ago
  The article addresses the finishing rites for self-publishing, but the note on tl;dr at the top should be expanded to say something like: writing a novel is the equivalent of starting a small company. It takes at least three months of focused effort to write something worthwhile for an experienced novelist, a year or ten for a novice. Also, it might be helful to note tha the likelihood of making a living from writing is dependent on how fast an author can complete each novel.
• sireat 10y ago
  If you plan on translating or writing in another language beware of KDP! Time for my annual rant on KDP and Amazon not caring about writers in non-English. The list of supported languages is incredibly limited: https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A9FDO0A3V0119 https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A9FDO0A3V0119 Finnish is allowed but Estonian is not... it is ridiculous. Latvian and Lithuanian is not allowed, Russian is not allowed etc etc. It took a shaming campaign by the British press to get Welsch added. This restriction is so silly when the book comes out perfectly on Createspace paper version. It looks fine doing my own conversion for the Kindle but Amazon will not let me publish the books in unsupported languages. I do editing and typesetting for a non-profit as a hobby/volunteer effort and end up publishing the paper books on Createspace but ebooks have to go through Kobo and other non Amazon venues.
• crpatino 10y ago
  More or less off-topic question. How to not get sued by overzealous copyrights holders? I have an idea for an informal Chemistry 101 notebook. I might end up making comparissons between cartoon characters and periodic table elements: Hydrogen ~= Tinkerbell, Hellium ~= Master Yoda, Lithium ~= Philoctetes (from Hercules movie), etc. It is not reassuring that most references in that list are owned by Disney Co.
  • rev_bird 10y ago
    >How to not get sued by overzealous copyrights holders? I might be misunderstanding, but why is it unreasonable for the holder of a copyright to object to an author using their work without licensing it? This in particular seems like a pretty clear-cut example of actual infringement.
    • Nomentatus 10y ago
      Not sure why you don't see the mere mention of cartoon characters as lying outside fair use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#1._Purpose_and_character_of_the_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#1._Purpose_and_charac...
      • rev_bird 10y ago
        Oh, I'd readily admit mentioning a cartoon character is fair use, but it seems like using the actual image of a cartoon character is infringement—what else IS a cartoon character? Where's the line? If one person can put Tinkerbell in a science book, why can't I publish a "Disney characters coloring book" without a license? I'm admittedly not an expert, but there have been many rulings stating that characters themselves can be covered by copyright,[0] and fair use is supposed to allow for commentary and criticism, not just "oh, that's nice, I'll use that." It's not very different from just putting people's photographs in a science book, is it? [0] http://fairuse.stanford.edu/case/dc-comics-v-towle/ http://fairuse.stanford.edu/case/dc-comics-v-towle/
        • dragonwriter 10y ago
• gkya 10y ago
  Literature doesn't work this way... It's hard to get your first book published because you are unknown in the literary circles. One has to start with introducing themselves in literary journals (or even blogs), publishing short stories, reviews, essays, etc. Probably none of the acclaimed authors started out with a big novel. Then, publishing with a known editor is easier, and has many positives: their name alone helps increase the amount of potential readers.
• marak830 10y ago
  As someone who is working with another chef to release their own cook book and associated app, this and the comments are immensely helpful. Thank you :-)
  • zhubert 10y ago
    Hurray! That's fantastic!!
• nrdwavexe 10y ago
  why would you let this man write books? give him honest work please. HONEST WORK
• skookumchuck 10y ago
  If your scifi book synopsis contains one of the phrases: 1. journey to the end of the universe 2. the fate of the universe hands in the balance 3. voyage to the end of time I put the book back on the shelf.
  • cableshaft 10y ago
    Only one man can save the fate of mankind...
    • skookumchuck 10y ago
      With thrillers, they synopses all sound the same. A grisly murder, a dark secret, and one person must follow the clues to find the murderer before he kills again. Zzzzzz....
• BorisMelnik 10y ago
  I would add to the start of this: prerequisite: Mac computer I've recently self-published using Windows / Linux and didn't have these tools available. I will say that Createspace is an awesome company. I just think its brilliant I can upload a PDF, and in a few days I can buy 100 copies of it on Amazon, and have it shipped same day.