
How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017 - zhubert
http://www.zhubert.com/blog/2017/02/25/how-to-self-publish-a-novel-in-2017/
======
ilamont
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
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.

~~~
thedz
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
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.

~~~
BeetleB
>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.

I assume you read mostly nonfiction, then?

~~~
exergy
I'd say the author's voice shines through even clearer in fiction though.
Authors certainly can exercise flair when writing history or something, but
even more when they invent a fictional world and develop and atmosphere and
characters within it.

When a fiction writer comes up with a plot, or even a turn of phrase that
blows my mind, that's one of the best things about reading. Like "how did he
think up all this?!"

~~~
thedz
> When a fiction writer comes up with a plot, or even a turn of phrase that
> blows my mind, that's one of the best things about reading. Like "how did he
> think up all this?!"

Typically the answer is: hard work and iteration, and many times not by
himself. I think you're partially falling for the fallacy of the singular
author completing a perfect work with unflinching vision. IMO this is
incredibly rare.

Take, for example, Harper Lee and To Kill a Mockingbird. It's an amazing book.
It's a novel that might at once feel effortless and also an unaltered vision
of the author. But it's actually the result of years of editing
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Lee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Lee)):

> Ms. Hohoff was impressed. "[T]he spark of the true writer flashed in every
> line", she would later recount in a corporate history of Lippincott.[16] But
> as Ms. Hohoff saw it, the manuscript was by no means fit for publication. It
> was, as she described it, "more a series of anecdotes than a fully conceived
> novel".[16] During the next couple of years, she led Lee from one draft to
> the next until the book finally achieved its finished form and was retitled
> To Kill a Mockingbird.

Everything from the narrative structure to the title to characterization is
refined, over and over again.

The goal with feedback and subsequent editing isn't the dilution of an
author's vision, it's the opposite. It concentrates and clarifies the vision
with each successive pass.

------
austenallred
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.

~~~
username223
> we're ebook only so far

Any insight on "piracy" rates? I recently published something print-only, and
was considering offering a PDF (layout matters). It's a completely different
"vertical," so the rest of your experience isn't too relevant.

~~~
kriro
A good take on this from a writer friend of mine: the people that "pirate" the
book were likely never going to pay for it. But they could very well recommend
it to people who might prefer buying it. The more it gets "pirated" the better
as that means it's likely to be a decent book. I kind of agree with this and
my gut says avid readers (which are always your #1 target due to word of mouth
etc.) are generally fairly likely to pay for books.

I also once saw an author online who had a similar sentiment and offered a
"did you download this book somewhere" button where you could donate a freely
chosen amount of money to "ease your mind" and support future releases that
worked rather well (to his own surprise). Trying to think of the name but
can't I'll edit if it pops into my head.

~~~
username223
Thanks for the feedback.

My book is neither tech nor mass-market, and I've heard from another author in
the area that "piracy" doesn't seem to be a major factor. It's also a large
enough file to be a pain to email or put on a free blog, and unlikely to turn
into a reliable torrent, so accidental or casual mass distribution is
unlikely. Hm...

------
scandox
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
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
FWIW I work as a fiction editor for a publishing house. I only mention that
because I'm really not that a technical person. I'm more on the arts side.

I accept that some bad books succeed, but this really is vanishingly rare.
Subjectively even many so-called bad books have really excellent qualities -
especially in narrative structure.

So there are Bad Books and then there are BADly written books.

I agree also with your point: build it and they will come doesn't work.
Marketing is essential. But ask people to swallow an unreadable book - which
is most books people write - and all the marketing in the world won't save
you.

~~~
zhubert
I definitely agree with your initial post, I'm just not able to offer advice
on how to write a good book as I may, or may not, know how :)

In the writing groups I've participated in, there seem to be a number of
authors that are scared off by the process of getting their work out there.
I'm hopeful that this post will help them overcome the technical hurdles in
doing so.

~~~
joeax
There is a book out there called "Writing the Breakout Novel" by Donald Maass.
The book was a tremendously help for me in deconstructing my plot and
characters. I rewrote and even rearranged entire chapters. I had subplots that
had no closure that I rewrote to provide an ending.

I invite you to check out my novel's Amazon page and read some of the reviews.
Even the negative reviews praise the story itself, while slamming my writing
style :)

~~~
mkaziz
Would you mind answering a few questions? I'm curious how you published your
novel (self vs traditional), how you marketed, what your sales were like, etc.

~~~
joeax
Yeah no problem. Find my contact info at timecrossers.com

------
teach
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.

~~~
zhubert
Does Gumroad have a solution for VAT? That was one of the things that lead me
to use Amazon instead.

Happy to update the post with alternatives.

~~~
vram22
>Does Gumroad have a solution for VAT?

Not the person you asked, and haven't tried the feature out myself, but saw
this a while ago:

How We’re Handling VAT at Gumroad:
[http://blog.gumroad.com/post/110080508463/vat](http://blog.gumroad.com/post/110080508463/vat)

Here is an excerpt from that page:

[ We’ve talked a lot in the past about how we approach building Gumroad: We
ask ourselves what creators are spending time on that isn’t making things, and
then we figure out how to do those things for them.

We are tackling VAT in the same way. Going forward, this is what creators on
Gumroad need to do to properly handle VAT for their digital products:

Go back to making awesome stuff.

In other words, we’re on it. Gumroad will collect VAT as required and remit it
to the EU. You won’t need to fill out any forms, register for anything, or
send anything out. Your (EU-based) customers, will see (and pay) the added VAT
on their purchases. ]

:)

------
vgt
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
> 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".

~~~
vgt
If you can write a great novel in one or two drafts, more power to you. I
mentioned that it's not an absolute rule, especially for established
experienced authors.

However, if you're an aspiring novelist, and you are frustrated that agents
are not responding to your query letters with 5 pages of manuscript, and
you've only done one or two drafts, there's a good chance that your book just
isn't ready.

The other point I make is that the self-publishing industry allows for books
that are objectively "not ready to enter the market" to enter the market, and
at a ratio that overwhelms books that ARE objectively ready. This skews the
market.

~~~
sacado2
Yes, that's true, but I think self-publishing authors (at least on the ebook
market) adapted. Amazon is very good on this market. More often than not, if
you want to make money in that niche, you better publish series with a free
first episode. If your book sucks, the reader will put it back very fast.
Nobody will buy your series, and your book will quickly get lost in the abyss
of amazon's search engines.

So, it kinda works. People who know you will be able to download your awful
book, while innocent anonymous amazon customers will never find it by
accident.

> However, if you're an aspiring novelist, and you are frustrated that agents
> are not responding to your query letters with 5 pages of manuscript, and
> you've only done one or two drafts, there's a good chance that your book
> just isn't ready.

Yes, but the question is : is it worth keeping working on that book or is it
better to forget and start working on a new one ? There is no definitive
answer, but abandoning forever the first novel I ever wrote was the best
decision in my writer life. YMMV.

------
gozur88
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
> "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
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
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.

------
dlubarov
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/pr...](https://myaccount.lightningsource.com/documents/LSI/files/pricing/USPricing.BW.pdf)
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.

------
sireat
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.

------
cstross
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.

~~~
zhubert
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
> 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.

------
zitterbewegung
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.

------
eslaught
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
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.

------
mindcrime
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
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.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
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.

~~~
Nomentatus
Scrivener now spits out epub and I believe mobi formatted final products if
you wish. Use is non-trivial however.

------
Balgair
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.

------
username223
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.

------
robotkdick
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.

------
marvindanig
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-
super...](https://blog.marvindanig.com/2016/03/17/how-to-write-a-superbook/)

Disclosure: I'm the developer/engineer.

~~~
sonicaa
This is very interesting. Does it use markdown as well or just plain
markup/html in the manuscript?

------
dredmorbius
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-
un...](http://www.bowker.com/documents/self-publishing-report-in-united-
states-2008-2013.html)

~~~
alimw
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
Approaching 1 million annually.

That's 1 per 317 Americans.

------
6stringmerc
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.

~~~
munificent
> 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/bo...](http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-
news/bookselling/article/72450-print-book-sales-rose-again-in-2016.html)

------
rekshaw
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_29...](https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=AH8RA6CMVRN8Y&ref_=pe_2983330_227202760_kdp_BS_D_pgs)

~~~
zhubert
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.

------
innocentoldguy
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
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.

------
valine
> 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
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
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
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.

------
gkya
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.

------
ajeet_dhaliwal
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
I'm happy that this might to useful to you in the future!

------
MLR
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
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/).

------
marak830
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
Hurray! That's fantastic!!

------
innocentoldguy
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
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.

------
BorisMelnik
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.

------
arc_of_descent
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
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).

------
skookumchuck
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
Only one man can save the fate of mankind...

~~~
skookumchuck
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....

------
faet
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
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
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.

------
crpatino
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
>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
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_charac...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#1._Purpose_and_character_of_the_use)

~~~
rev_bird
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
> Oh, I'd readily admit mentioning a cartoon character is fair use

It's probably not even an otherwise-infringing activity that would require
fair-use analysis. At least if we are talking about copyright; if the
character name is also a trademark, that may be a different story.

------
morehuman
Prolifiko are doing a great job of supporting writers via its app:
[http://www.thememo.com/2017/01/04/prolifiko-writing-tool-
pro...](http://www.thememo.com/2017/01/04/prolifiko-writing-tool-prolifiko-
kickstarter-publishing-news-write-track/)

------
necklace
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
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
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
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
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.

------
dagenleg
tldr:

\- use proprietary tool №1

\- enslave yourself to Amazon

\- use proprietary tool №2 from Amazon

~~~
Dotnaught
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-
cre...](http://selfpublishingadvice.org/watchdog-ingram-spark-vs-createspace-
for-self-publishing-print-books/)

~~~
marvindanig
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.

------
yazbo_mcclure
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
I don't understand, I didn't see any reference to Facebook aside from the
standard social media links at the bottom.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
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=...](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.singularbook.com%2F)
.

~~~
zhubert
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.

------
DrNuke
Talking arty, literary novels are form more than content, so why self-publish
a literary novel if form is strong enough?

~~~
crpatino
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.

