Decision Time

Kindle 3 moved all major operates to the bottom. No comments on this point. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I have made the decision to engage Authoright to provide a publishing package for my book Crucial Evidence. Gareth Howard, the CEO, has experience of both self publishing and of traditional publishing deals and he is passionate about authors having the choice of how to publish and indeed,making the right choice; something that suits them rather than the agent or publisher. Indeed the message I took away from the Author Lounge at the London Book Fair is that if a writer wants to keep control of the publication and marketing process then direct publishing is a good alternative. When I saw a publisher last year at the Winchester Writers’ Conference she said the publisher would want a series of five books, while I though three would be sufficient to take my main character Cassie Hardman from successful junior barrister to QC. Indeed I’m not sure I want to write so many books based on the same character or to write books to someone else’s timetable.
I am aware of some authors who have written amazing books getting very little marketing support from their publishers and having to do so much themselves. Paying for those front tables or window displays in well-known bookstore
is costly, only the books publishers think will be best-sellers get that kind of treatment, otherwise it’s do it yourself.
So perhaps direct publishing is the way forward for me. Decision made, I sent off quite large sum of money (think of it as vet’s bills for that imaginary horse) a copy of my manuscript and a synopsis and wait for Authoright to copy edit the novel and produce a cover, just as if it was produced by a mainstream publisher. I may be self -publishing but that does not mean it is going to be anything less than professional.
On another front I have formatted my skinny volume of poems for Kindle, very difficult, and for a paperback on CreateSpace, much easier; the two Amazon platforms for self-publishing. The proof copy arrived on friday and I need to check it for errors and then continue with the publishing process. Although the book will be for sale, it’s really a memento of our time living in this sixteenth century farmhouse which comes to an end this summer.
Second Quote
Last Friday I had a meeting with the director of another company who provide publishing services to those wishing to publish their own books. The cost will be about the same as the first quote I received, but there are differences in the services they provide. If I went with the first company I would have to provide my own cover design, whereas if I chose the second, the cover will be designed for me. I think that is quite important as the cover has to look good for both the paperback book and the thumbnail size used by Amazon for sales purposes.

An on-demand book printer at the Internet Archive headquarters in San Francisco, California. Two large printers print the pages (left) and the cover (right) and feed them into the rest of the machine for collating and binding. Depending on the number of pages in a given book, it might take from 5 to 20 minutes to print. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The cost with the first company would give me five hundred copies of my novel whilst the second company prefers a print on demand, so only a few copies. Both methods of printing have their advantages and disadvantages, which it seems to me probably balance each other out.
The big difference is in the approach to marketing the book. Whilst both provide marketing services, the second company provide a much longer and more intensive service and, I think a more personalised one than the other.
I think I’ve decided that the marketing is so important that if I want my book to have the best chance of success, I would be better with the second company, but I’ll wait for the paperwork before I make a final decision. After all, the lawyer in me says, the devil is in the detail.
And just so that I get an idea how the self publishing platform works on Kindle I have decided to publish a slim, in fact very slim volume of poems I wrote while I was doing my MA in Creative Writing. I’m really doing it for myself to try and learn if Kindle and CreateSpace is a good way to publish, rather than to attract any sales. But you never know!!