Publishing the Verdan Chronicles (Part 2)

My previous post went through the painstaking steps I took through 2014.  At that point, I'd spent about $500 publishing my books (most of it on the NY Book Fair mistake) and made about $20 in return.  That was alright.  This wasn't an investment and making any money was just the icing.  But based on some positive feedback, there was still the outstanding question of whether I could get others to read this.  So going into 2015 I made the following decisions.

1.  I needed to clean up my books.  There were still some grammatical issues and several typos that I wanted to clean up as best I could.  Sadly, I'm convinced that the author is the worst editor because mistakes are likely to repeat themselves without a fresh set of eyes.  But I was all I had (and all I could afford).

2.  I was going to continue to self-publish.  Entering the formal publishing arena would first involve writing Query letters, sending them to literary agents, convincing one of them to take me on as a client and then working with them to find a publisher willing to take a chance on me.  It was a lot of what ifs and maybes and I had no one to mentor me through the process.  If I was still in my twenties, it might have been worthwhile.  Certainly, going this route would allow me to work with a professional editor and resolve much of #1, but the time and potential cost with no guarantee of any return was just too great.  I wouldn't blame other authors for making a different decision on this front.

3.  I loved Amber's idea of getting original covers for the books.  If I was going to make more of an effort to sell them, then a nice cover to attract attention would definitely help.  I'd been inquiring into some artist prices ever since Amber made her suggestion.  At conventions I would check out artists whose work I liked and then talk to them a bit.  The first two I talked with had done covers for other books and were fairly well known in their field.  They were talking prices in the $3000 to $5000 range per cover.  Yikes!  That was a non-starter for me.  It was still a good idea.  Maybe I could find someone a little more reasonable.

4.  I needed to make sure my books were available in all the ebook channels.  Even from friends it was clear that many people prefer ebooks, while a fair number still preferred paper.  I needed to do both.

5.  All things considered, I decided to stay with Lulu.

6.  I needed to do some marketing, but it had to be affordable and not jeopardize my primary goal of having my story published and on my bookshelf.  For me, this was a bucket list item.  Anything beyond that was a dream.

So it's summer 2014.  I just finished my draft of the ninth and final book in the series and was ready to get more serious and see what would happen.  At Gen Con I was doing a pass through artist alley.  I was looking for artists whose work I liked and whose work was generally in the same genre as my writing.  Yes, if their presentation looked too big and professional I was convinced their prices would be higher.  I saw Amy Nagi's work and put her at the top of a short list of people I wanted to talk to.  

When I talked to Amy she seemed to know where I was coming from and what I wanted to accomplish.  I could tell she would be nice to work with.  All that was left was the dreaded "how much?" question.  I'm not going to publish her price (that's up to her if she wants to share it), but it was much less than what the other so called professional artists were charging.  Her work was very comparable.  Her only condition was that she would give me permission to use the illustration on my book, but she would retain all other rights.  I actually saw that a good thing and still do.

So by late 2014 I had my first cover.  I looked through Lulu's offerings and went with their cheapest publishing option, $999.  I can quote that since it's on their webpage for anyone to see.  Going up in price would include such things as them registering the copyright (which I'd already done) and providing me with an author web-site (which I already had).  I could have purchased some editing service, but that was getting out of my price range.  I had 9 books to publish and $9000 for me is a lot of money.  

I was willing to spend money, but only money I had (i.e. I couldn't afford to go in debt, spend money needed to pay bills, or jeopardize retirement for both me and my wife).  Some could argue that in order to succeed I needed to take more chances.  It's a valid point and if I was the only one who'd be hurt by a bad decision, then I would have thrown caution to the wind in pursuit of a dream.  But it was my dream and I wasn't going to lose our home or jeopardize the well-being of my family.  If success was going to happen, it had to happen on my terms.  I have no regrets over this decision.

OK, so Lulu was engaged and they published The Fourth Age.  It was made availabe through major channels such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble and iBook, which covered all my friend's requests.  Here comes the next lesson...pricing.  Lulu recommended prices for my book which I felt were insanely high.  Their point is that they wanted me to make some money.  My point is that no money will be made if no one purchases the book and even I wouldn't buy it for their prices.  We settled on $26.99 for the trade paperback and $5.99 for the ebook.

Does $26.99 seem high for the trade paperback?  Yep, it does to me.  But here's the deal.  Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other retailers demand a price at least twice the cost.  This allows them the option to discount the book if they so desire and still make money.  One drawback of self-publishing is that books are only printed as they are purchased.  This keeps inventory costs extremely low, but increases the print cost.  The cost of my first book was over $11, so any price I set had to be at least around $23.  I played with a few numbers and decided that if someone was going to pay that insane price, I should at least get $1.  Thus, the $26.99 price.  My cut of that is just a little over $1.

However, with Lulu I have the option of controlling my own discount.  The discounts available are in 10% increments.  Thus, if you purchase the trade paperback with Lulu, the price is only around $16 (40% discount) and I still get over $2 of that.  I would have taken the price a little lower if I could, but the next option was 50% off and at that price I got nothing.  Can't remember, but it might even be a loss.

The $5.99 ebook price is much more reasonable and I picked that price because it was on the low end of most of the ebooks in the market.  And even that gets discounted.  Last I looked The Fourth Age was avaiable for $4.61 at Amazon and $5.49 at Barnes and Noble.  And with an ebook over $2 of the price still goes to me.  Ebooks are a good thing for authors and probably for publishers.  Unless you like maintaining a personal library, they are probably better for readers as well.

So with the first book, I sold about 10 copies to friends (I could give away paperbacks, but ebooks had to be purchased).  I think 2 or 3 copies were sold to people I didn't know and that was it.  Lulu then suggested I buy some marketing services from them.  It made sense.  If I could attract some new readers, that might turn into revenue to help publish the remaining books.  Still, I was an unknown author and still not sure my books warranted a larger readership.

Lulu put together 3 packages for me that were in the $1,000, $3,000 and $6,000 range.  After a little bit of sticker shock I decided that I needed to stay true to my decision and not spend money I didn't have.  I had a $1000 set aside to publish the 2nd book, but decided to try the base marketing plan.  I felt I needed to try something or I would always wonder.  Mostly, $1000 buys you a press release and a mass email campaign to anyone who's expressed interest in being on their mailing list (over 10,000 people from what they told me).

In the end, I sold about another 10 books and made about $20 in royalties.  It set me back about 4-5 months before I could move forward with Dark Passages.  But I don't regret it.  I made the attempt.  Now I knew.  If you're going to market your book, be aggresive.  Dipping a toe into the water isn't going to cut it.  While Lulu attempts to sell me marketing after each book, I have stuck to my guns since the first book and told them no.  My goal is to publish my books, not waste money on marketing and possibly never see all nine books in print.

As a side note, Lulu sent me a list of tips and things authors could do on their own to help market their books.  I find it funny that I paid them and ended up with a common sense list that I could probably pull from the internet for free and it required that all the work be done by me.  LOL  Some things on the list include using facebook, twitter, setting up a web-site and so on.  I was already doing all those things.  Some of the things like reaching out to local news stations and trying to arrange an interview, I just wasn't comfortable with.  I am an intravert by nature.

So once I recovered from the minor marketing setback I've been moving full speed on getting my books "out there".  My goal now is to try and get all nine books published by the end of 2017.  At my current pace, it may be possible to get them out by mid-2017.  Volume 5 is in the pipeline and Amy is already working on the cover to Volume 6.  I'm only about 6% done with my final edit, but should have that done in a month or two.  By then Volume 5 should be published.  Funding is tight, but I have enough to at least get Volume 6 out.  It would be nice if more books sold (Total of 49 books sold since I republished in January 2015), but I'm being patient.  I do think there are people out there who would enjoy this series.  The trick is to convince them its worth their time to give it a shot.

So there's my journey.  If you learn anything from my mess, more power to you.  I wish everyone success, I really do.  My books are getting published and that's what I really wanted.  If those 49 books sold are the only ones I ever sell, then that's 49 books more than I counted on when I started this journey.  It's all good.

Next time I'll talk more about the progress on Volumes 4, 5 and 6.  The next two years are going to be a wild ride for the Verdan Chronicles.  I'm happy to welcome anyone to join me.   :-)