This
month marks my first year as an Indie (independent) author and publisher. Since
technology and business systems have played a greater part of my working life
in 2012 than in any other year of my career, I thought I would review the
challenges.
THE KOBO
ISSUE
KOBO, bless ‘em. Is this digital e-book platform
really geared up for self-publishing authors? Their website is pretty, in a
twee kind of way, but their customer care people don’t seem to have a clue
what’s happening when you have a problem. In November, I uploaded the first of
my Sprite Sister books. On the basis that Vol 1 went through okay, I started on
the other five titles. I filled in the information and ticked the boxes: I’ve
uploaded and re-loaded my e-title files numerous times on Amazon, so the
process is not unfamiliar. Except the other five titles didn’t upload.
Somewhere in the great KOBO computer system they got stuck.
You are 75% of the way through, the system told
me. But I filled in all the information,
I ticked all the boxes, I’ve uploaded the files, I kept telling them. Round
and round I went, but my titles remained 75% complete.
The customer care department were of little help.
Please would you explain what has happened, they kept saying. I have, I repeated, pulling out more hair.
Why can’t you see that? Are you not
connected to the system?
I spent three weeks waiting for KOBO’s website department
to unravel the mystery, then gave up and deleted my files. There won’t be any
Sprite Sister books on KOBO for the time being, until I have mustered
sufficient energy to grapple with their systems again.
THE BLOG
NIGHTMARE
I want to find a way to write about my big,
complicated family, but it would have to be anonymously. My mother has
Alzheimer’s and there’s a lot to say, some of it hilariously funny – though
probably not to my sisters – and some poignantly sad. ‘I need a voice!’ I kept telling myself. And if I wrote a humorous
family blog, maybe it would get picked up for a magazine column, I reasoned.
On a sweltering August afternoon, my daughter
tried to set up a new blog account for me, under a new name. She galloped along
and I tried hard to keep up, but somewhere, somehow, a button was pressed and
suddenly all my blogs and my entire
Google identity vanished into cyberspace. I was too shocked to speak. My daughter
left the house very quietly.
I tried to tell Google, ‘I am who I say I am!’. But the door would not open: I was locked
out of my own account. I no longer existed on Google. After hours of confusion
and panic, I managed to create a new blog. I was able to re-load the text and
photographs on my Sheridan Winn blogs. However, I lost the photographs on all
my Authors Electric blogs.
In terms of sheer panic, this experience felt as
if it took years off my life.
PRINT ON
DEMAND AND SUPPLYING THE LIBRARIES
Well you can’t. It’s as simple as that. Here’s a
business conundrum if ever there was one for a self-published author with
print-on-demand titles.
Libraries buy their books from Peters’ Bookselling
Services. Lightning Source, my print-on-demand publisher, supply to Bertram’s
and Gardner’s distributors, but they do not supply to Peters – nor will they,
they tell me.
If you write series fiction for children, as I do,
you’re pretty much dependent on library borrowers. I can probably persuade
Norfolk libraries to order my books, as it’s home turf – but what about Taunton
or Aberdeen? You don’t think of this as you set out to self publish: but you should.
We might be able to order them from Amazon on this
occasion, Norfolk & Norwich Millennium Library told me. My local library,
this is the one with the highest footfall and borrowing levels in the UK. The
librarians wanted the ‘new-look’ Sprite books: it was just a question of how to
acquire them. I offered to supply the books, but this method was declined. As a
special request, and for this one occasion, they would order them from Amazon.
I think libraries are amazing and Andrew Carnegie
a far-sighted human being, but I wish, as a self-published author, that library
purchasing systems would be more flexible. No doubt this will change in time as
readers ask for the books of self-published authors, but in the meantime this
was possibly the biggest single blow, financially, of 2012. The prospect of my ‘new-look’
series not being in libraries is depressing.
SUPPLYING
THE BOOKSHOPS AND HOBSON’S CHOICE
Lightning Source, which supplies my
print-on-demand paperbacks, allow me to set the bookseller discount, so I
thought I would give 25%. But, as print-on-demand books, my titles would also
be non-returnable. Would the bookshops stock them? No, I reckoned, but they
would order them in for a customer.
Henry Layte, owner of The Book Hive and a
long-time Sprite Sister supporter, said he’d happily stock the new-look Sprite
Sisters, but the standard discount was 35%.
Ah. Right. So that means I sell the book at £7.99;
the bookseller takes £2.80; Lightning Source takes £3.42. And I’m left with . .
. £1.77. Hm. Bit less than I’d expected as author and publisher.
THE
PROOF ISSUE
Beware the print specs! Should you colour correct
the jacket or not? Should you leave I the trim marks on the pages? You need to
know these things if you are supplying files to a print on demand printer. Lightning Source's media
department has very specific
requirements and if you don’t meet them, you may flounder. It took weeks of going
back and forth with the artist who’d drawn my new jackets and Lightning Source,
to get the files for my six titles absolutely spot on.
Also, I urge anyone publishing as print-on-demand
to get a physical proof before signing off the print run. Yes, it costs, but
you will see things there that you won’t see on the electronic proof. For
instance, I didn’t spot that the text for Sprites Vol 1 was grey, not black, on
the electronic proof. I’d loaded the wrong file by mistake. However, not
realising, I approved the proof and ordered a box of copies at £160. Bad move.
Thankfully I was able to reload the text with the correct file for a fee. More
cost.
THE
DISAPPEARING EMAIL NIGHTMARE
Where did
they go? Where are the hundreds of mails that were in my Inbox a minute ago?
Argh . . .
In October, with an unerring ability to press the
wrong button, it transpired I had somehow switched to another mail identity
within Entourage on my iMac. With the help of my trusty Mac man all was
restored, but it was, to say the least, a little worrying.
ALL MY
E-BOOKS FREE ON AMAZON PRIME!
What? Not just one, but all six? I didn’t say you could
do that! Or did I? Was was it I
agreed with Amazon . . .
Then I remembered I’d signed up for Kindle Select
– and one of the conditions was that Amazon could offer your books thus. Quickly,
I unselected that option but it won’t come into effect until January. Until
then, you can get all six of my e-books free if you are a member of Amazon
Prime.
WITTERING
Twitter has the effect on me similar to flashing
lights. I want to turn away.
I know I should do it – all Indie authors do to rpomote their books –
but I just cannot summon up the enthusiasm. I realise I am Grumpy Old Woman at
last.
FACEBOOK
Non starter (see Twitter).
EIN OR
ITIN? UNRAVELLING THE US TAX SYSTEM
In the early summer, I decided to apply for a US
tax number. A fellow Indie author advised me to call the US Embassy in London.
Apparently that department gives you another number to ring, and, when you get
through to that department, they will
give you an EIN over the phone. I waited an hour to get through, then hung up.
Leave it, I thought – and did until I tried to
register with NOOK last week. This e-book platform, owned by Barnes &
Noble, requires you to have a US Tax ID Number to register. But now that I have
a company, do I need an EIN or an ITIN? Perhaps my accountant can sort this –
for a fee . . .
WRITING
Way behind. I keep receiving mails from my readers asking when
the 7th Sprite title will be finished. Earlier this year I was
confident I’d have Magic at Drysdale’s
School written, edited and published by Christmas. And when are The Earth Stories coming, other readers
asked?
The truth is I’ve so busy with the business and
technology side of things that the writing has got pushed back. If I want to
get the book out by February, I have 40,000 words to write by the end of the
year. Ha.
HOWEVER
. . .
Early this year I set out to:-
·
buy back the
Sprite Sisters book rights from Piccadilly Press
·
sell my sixth
title direct to Fischer Verlag for publication in Germany
·
commission
new jackets for the original five Piccadilly titles
·
re-publish
the six stories as print-on-demand paperbacks and as e-books
·
start writing
a blog for my website
·
write a
humorous blog anonymously
·
write and
publish the seventh Sprite Sisters book
·
find an agent
to sell my books in Japan
It took months to re-edit and re-format the six
books, and it cost a bomb. But it’s all done and I now have a terrific set of
paperbacks and e-books to send to the US and out to film production companies,
as well as sell.
I managed six out of my eight aims, which is not
bad going considering the multiple challenges faced this year.
Next year I’ll aim to be more techno-savvy – but
that may be a bit of a long-shot.
My best wishes for a happy and prosperous 2013 to
one and all!
My thanks to Chris Winn for his wonderful jacket illustrations and to
Simon Cheshire for all help with the formatting. We got there in the end!
Sheridan Winn is the author of the
bestselling Sprite Sisters books.
