The Brave New world of Self-Publishing a Novel

I grew up in an analog world. When I was in elementary school, I would hang out at the public library after school until my parents came home from work. It was there that I began my love affair with the written word.

Throughout high school, I read paperback novels for my English classes and submitted hand-written essays that received passing grades despite all the spelling mistakes. In university, I wrote my essays by hand and then hired typists to prepare the manuscripts, who were happy to type verbatim what I gave them. Unfortunately, misspelled words were still scattered here and there on the crisp white 20-lb. bond paper.

While I was an undergraduate, the personal computer came on the market, and although I was aware of its presence, I was not an early adopter. That would come when I became a graduate student, lugging a PC clone and a dot-matrix printer into the tiny office I shared with another graduate student on the floor that housed the English department at the University of Manitoba. Armed with a rudimentary spell-checker, I made my spelling mistakes disappear.

Fast forward ten years, and I was sending out print copies of an essay, The End of the Canadian Empire and the Rise of the Intelligent Network, to small presses, but despite my best efforts, they all passed on the project. Undaunted, at the turn of the century, before the advent of Google and Amazon, I proudly announced that I would publish my text on the Internet. I hired someone to format my Word document into HTML, and I posted the text on a makeshift website I had cobbled together on a site operated by a local Internet service provider.

Unfortunately, I had no idea how to direct potential readers to the site, and after realizing that I was the sole proprietor of a site that no one but a few close friends knew about, I decided to pull the plug and live to write and fight another day. Ironically, although there is no digital trace of my site, I still have a hard copy of my essay stored in a box in the basement.

Fast forward another twenty years, and I am about to self-publish my debut novel, The Lost Souls of Guayaquil. So much has changed. First, if you have the writing skills and have read a ton of novels, as I have, you don't have to leave home and attend a writing program at a university. Everything you need to flourish can be found online. The amount of information devoted to the art of novel writing is staggering: craft books, video courses, podcasts, and blogs, to name a few.

Once you've made your way through a first draft and are looking for feedback and direction, you can find a wealth of advice on a platform like Reedsy, which offers a full range of helpful articles and videos on writing, editing, publishing, and marketing, including the services of publishing industry professionals. In my case, I chose a platform called The Novelry, where I enrolled in a course called The Big Edit, where I actually learned how to edit, thanks to the video lessons and the many video conference calls with published authors and other aspiring novelists.

Faced with the choice of self-publishing or finding an agent and embarking on the Herculean task of finding a traditional publisher to print my novel and then distribute it to a network of booksellers, I chose the self-publishing option without hesitation.

After talking to a number of successful novelists, I learned that very few writers have their first completed novel published—only about ten percent. For those who were lucky enough to have their manuscript picked up by a traditional publisher, it usually meant completing two, three, or more novels beforehand.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the whole point of the exercise was to get your finished novel into the hands of readers. Why wait until someone believes that the publisher can pay all the people (editors, proofreaders, graphic designers, and marketers) for all the work that goes into getting your novel ready for publication and still make a profit on printing and distributing it? In other words, your novel may never reach an audience unless someone believes it has a chance of selling 10,000 copies.

What is an aspiring novelist supposed to do? Keep writing, keep grinding away, keep a stiff upper lip, and all that bullshit?

Not in today's publishing ecosystem.

The advent of Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) has made it possible for an aspiring novelist to reach an audience, no matter how modest (friends and family) or large. Just look at the success of the multimillion-dollar bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey, a novel originally self-published as an eBook and print-on-demand paperback. Don't worry. If you are successful with your first novel, traditional publishers will know where to find you, but in the meantime, consider another option.

Amazon offers its KDP service to publish and distribute your novel at no initial cost and offers royalties (60–70%) depending on the price you charge for your novel and the program you sign up for—a percentage that no traditional publisher can come close to matching. Of course, making your novel stand out from the hundreds of thousands of other novels Amazon publishes each year requires time, energy, money, and a willingness to learn how to use many of the indispensable digital tools available to the indie author online.

But these are things you can control. You don't have to rely on the whim of an agent to take an interest in your manuscript, or on the off chance that there's an editorial and marketing team that loves your work.

Also, you don't have to sell 10,000 copies of your novel on KDP to make a profit, but you do have to do the work and hire professionals to bring your novel up to traditional publishing standards. That means hiring someone to do developmental, line, and copy editing. Also, given all the time and energy you've put into the project, don't try to publish it on the cheap. Invest in a professional graphic designer to create your book cover, someone to write your review or blurb, and to properly format your eBook and print-on-demand versions.

In my case, after writing my first novel, I invested about $4000 and a year of my time to edit it before publishing. Now I have the opportunity to offer The Lost Souls of Guayaquil at a much lower price than a traditionally published novel, and it will be available in both eBook and print-on-demand paperback throughout the English-speaking world. I'll make a profit if I sell 1000 copies at the starting price of $6.99 for the eBook and $12.99 for the paperback. If necessary, I can lower the price and offer steep discounts periodically. Something I couldn't do with a traditional publisher.

When it comes to marketing in the twenty-first century, an aspiring novelist no longer needs to hope and pray for a favorable review in a print publication or fleeting space on display tables in brick-and-mortar bookstores.

Traditional media has given way to social media. To reach potential readers, anyone can use the social media platforms where readers hang out: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X (formerly known as Twitter), but you must invest time in creating content for each of the social media platforms you choose to use.

While you're at it, take the time to create an eye-catching website. I recommend Squarespace, but there are definitely other options out there. With a website, you can direct potential readers from social media platforms to your site, where they can find the link to buy your novel, find out more about you, and who knows, they might even send you an email to tell you how much they loved your story. To stay in touch with your growing fan base while you're working on your next novel, you can start a newsletter and automatically manage your mailing list with an email program like MailChimp.

As you get closer to your launch date, you should consider sending advance copies to people in exchange for honest reviews that will appear on your Amazon landing page. You'll need to go beyond friends and family to get these reviews, as they may be inclined to give you an overly favorable review, which Amazon frowns upon.

To find readers willing to trade an honest review for a free advance copy, I can suggest LibraryThing, a book cataloging service with more than two million users that offers an early reviewer service (I gave away 15 free PDFs of my novel in exchange for reviews), so you can expect to see some of those early reviews as soon as your launch page goes live. Again, to save you time and effort, you can subscribe to BookFunnel, an indispensable tool for indie authors that allows you to securely send advance copies to your reviewers in the format of your choice.

After your novel is published, Amazon will begin transferring funds to your bank account. Royalties are paid monthly, approximately 60 days after the end of the month in which sales were reported, as long as you meet the minimum payment threshold. Easy, Peezy.

Once your baby has left the nest, you might consider investing in an advertising campaign. Amazon would be the best place to start since their site is where motivated readers looking to buy their next book congregate.  Amazon has a program where you can commit as little as five dollars a day, and you are only charged for the number of clicks your ads generate. It requires minimal effort on your part, as they will use your professionally designed book cover to attract readers.

After that, you can step back and be proud of what you've accomplished. Only ten percent of those who set out to write a novel will finish it, and only three percent will publish or have their novel published.

Then use everything you have learned and start working on your next one.

Best of luck!