Indie Publishing Advice

Questions and Answers

Q. How do I get my book listed on online retailers?

A. For e-books, you upload your files directly to the online retailer’s site. However, there are a lot of them! The biggest one is Amazon, which you distribute through Kindle Desktop Publishing (KDP). For all other online retailers except for Kobo, we used Draft2Digital, an amalgamator. D2D does take a small cut of the profits, but it’s worth it for the time you’ll save not dealing with numerous e-book platforms. The reason we distributed separately to Kobo is because they distribute to Overdrive for library sales; we thought Unnatural Creatures would be a good fit for libraries.

For print books, as long as you’re in the Ingram catalog, your books are automatically listed on all online and brick-and-mortar retailers including Barnes & Noble. So, if you use IngramSpark for printing your books, you’re good to go! (Yes, Ingram and IngramSpark are basically a monopoly.) However, Amazon also offers POD printing through Kindle Desktop Publishing (KDP) for their site. As for Lulu, though they do offer distribution to Amazon and beyond, we couldn’t get the pricing to work.

What we did: we used both IngramSpark and KDP. However, KDP print books can’t be set up for preorders, which is frustrating. To circumvent this, we had Ingram distribute my softcover books on Amazon for preorders until publication; upon publication, we swapped out to KDP.

Related note: you might be wondering if you can’t do preorders with KDP, why not stay with IngramSpark all the way? Bottom line: you make a far higher profit per book. For example, we only make about $2 a book wholesale through IngramSpark; on KDP, it's about three times as much, much as we'd prefer to support indie bookstore sales. 

Q. You mentioned royalties. How do those work?

A. With POD, you’re paid a royalty, or percentage, of every book you sell, and you set this percentage. Sounds good, right? However, you need to take into consideration:

1. What price the market will bear. Yes, the higher the book price, the more you’ll make. But if you charge too much, people aren’t going to buy. Conversely, if you charge too little, you won’t make a profit. Worse, you could end up owing money especially if there are book returns involved.
2. Book manufacturing costs. POD costs more per book than offset, full color printing more than black and white and so on. This is the reason why some of our books are only sold direct.
3. Wholesale discounts. To distribute to retailers, you need to set a wholesale discount so they can make a profit. Generally speaking, the standard discount is 55%. To figure out pricing for your book, check out IngramSpark’s pricing calculator, which is fun to play with.
4. Book return policies. To distribute wholesale to brick and mortar bookstores, you have to accept returns, ie. books they’re unable to sell. Without a return policy, bookstores won’t stock your book. However, returns means you have to refund what they’ve paid. This can really eat into your profit. To be safe, estimate that as much as 30% of your books will end up as returns.

What we did: when the pricing works, we use IngramSpark for all retailers save Amazon, where we use KDP for paperback. (Again, this is because we were able to make a higher profit on KDP.) However, we set up the hardcover of Unnatural Creatures on IngramSpark as a hardcover library edition with a no return policy and 40% wholesale discount. Generally speaking, libraries don’t do returns because they’re not a retail middleman selling to a consumer. They’ll also tolerate a lower discount.

Q. What’s the process for print copies?

A. Except for KDP, we used IngramSpark and Lulu for everything, including advance reader copies (ARCs), which we sent out for trade reviews. You’ll need to have your book files designed and ready to print. (More about book design software below.)

We mainly use Lulu for ARCs because their platform is easier to navigate than IngramSpark. They’re also faster—we've experienced frustratingly slow ffulfillment with IngramSpark. You can also print ARCs via KDP, but they’ll arrive with an ugly printed stripe on the cover to prevent reselling.

For comparison's sake, we do price offset print runs, especially if we're selling in bulk on Kickstarter or to a retailer. Offset is a far cheaper per copy, but you have to pay upfront to print these higher quantities. Distribution is more complicated too, unless you're shipping direct. However, sometimes offset makes sense for self-publishers. One example: a bulk book sale to a price club, such as Costco.

Q. How do you distribute to libraries and bookstores?

A. For some books, we use Ingram to distribute to bookstores and libraries. This is really straightforward because we printed with IngramSpark, who handled payment, printing, and shipping of my books. 

However, marketing books to bookstores and libraries is an entirely different matter. (By marketing, we mean how you persuade bookstores and libraries to stock your book in the first place.) For bookstores, we relied on trade reviews to spread the word—more about trade reviews below. For libraries, we relied on both trade reviews and direct outreach using WorldCat to see which libraries had previous books already on their shelves. Finally, we also paid for an IBPA promotion at ALA conference. However, we had a hard time quantifying how effective it was.

As for bookstores, we didn’t do outreach beyond trade reviews except for sending ARCs to Barnes & Noble—we only have so much resources. In terms of profitability, it made more sense to focus on libraries, where we made nearly three times as much per book sale. Plus no returns to worry about.

Q. You received trade reviews for your books. I want to know how you managed that.

A. Ah, trade reviews, the bane of authors everywhere! They can really make or break a book. To get trade reviews, we do the following:

1. We send out professionally designed ARCs to review outlets about six months prior to publication. (Photo below.)
2. We use NetGalley to distribute e-ARCs. 
3. ARCs included endorsements from established authors, which helped to establish credibility. 

What we did: We pulled together a press list, which included outlets that had reviewed earlier books. (Poets & Writers has a great book review outlets list.) Surprisingly, some reviewers preferred NetGalley e-ARCs over print ARCs, which saved money on our end.

Q. What about paid review services, such as those offered by Midwest Book Review? 

A. We decided not to pay for reviews. Not only do these reviews add up financially, but booksellers and librarians know they’ve been paid for; we think this undermines their effectiveness unless you get a starred rave from, say, Kirkus or Publisher’s Weekly. (Yes, Kirkus and PW have pay-to-play reviews.)

Q. How do you best market your books on a budget? Everything costs money: cover designs, author tables at festivals, consignment fees at indie bookstores, entry fees for book awards…

A. Indeed, everything costs money—it can be really daunting! We think authors need to create a budget and a hierarchy list in regards to potential profitability. For example, if your budget is limited, it makes more sense to spend money on a great book cover design than to buy tons of ads, which won’t be effective if your book cover isn’t professional. (To our mind, the book cover is the single most important factor influencing sales outside book content itself.) 

In terms of the profitability hierarchy, we haven’t come across consignment fees for stocking books in indie bookstores, though we're sure they exist. On our end, we decided not to focus directly on getting my books into indie bookstores since the potential for profit wasn’t high enough to warrant our limited resources. Instead, we focused on direct sales and online retailers.

We also didn’t pay to enter contests or apply for awards since we're uncertain how helpful they are for book sales, though it’s certainly affirming to win awards. (FYI: the audiobook of Unnatural Creatures won an AudioFile Earphones Award, which didn’t cost us a cent.) Our bottom line: would a Big Five enter a book into this contest? If the answer was “nope”, we skipped it. We also looked at their previous years’ winners to see what the books looked like and whether their sales and reviews got a bump. Again, profitability hierarchy.

We haven’t paid for author tables at festivals since they’re a lot of work and time. That said, some authors do great hand-selling their books and love meeting potential readers—you need to decide where it falls on your personal profitability hierarchy.

What we do: We push for pre-publication consumer reviews on NetGalley, which was really helpful in getting word out. We run Goodreads giveaways, which helps plumped up a book's “To Read” numbers. Post publication, we run Facebook ads, which do seem to boost sales. That said, Facebook ads require research and patience: you have to test various ads and gradually scale up, checking for profitability as you go. We also paid for a Bookstagram tour, which was really great in getting the word out.

Q. What software did you use to design your books?

A. We use Vellum for print and ebook. If you’re on a Mac, we highly recommend it. The covers were designed in Photoshop. However, The Goddess Tarot 25th Anniversary Book and Tarot for Storytellers were designed in InDesign. Both books had so many graphics that a more powerful design program was required, especially since one of those books was full color.

 Q. Did you do your promotional campaign yourself or did you have outside help?

A. All design was by Kris, but bear in mind she has decades of professional experience as a book designer. Though Photoshop is her “go to” program, she also used Canva to design promotional videos and many of the graphics. We recommend the paid version because it offers such a wealth of resources: photographs, videos, premium typefaces. It works out far cheaper than licensing individual photos and such.

As far as the promotion campaign itself, we set up a task schedule. We also outside feedback. For the most part, we hewed close to schedule.

Q. I would love to find out how traditional publishing has been different than indie for you, and in hindsight any lessons you’ve learned from your diverse breadth of publishing experience.

A. The main difference is that we have total control as an indie publisher.  However, this also means we end up with all the responsibility, though we have lots of support and help. (We're grateful to everyone who’s helped!)

We always say that this isn’t self-publishing as much as it’s self-directed publishing: you’re the one making decisions and telling people what to do. The financial chain is also different. With a traditionally published book, you get paid an advance in three to four parts leading up to publication. With an indie-published book, the money comes after it’s published unless you've run a Kickstarter for upfront costs. Think of indie publishing as a marathon as opposed to a sprint.

Another surprise: in many ways you work as many hours on book promotion as you would as a traditionally published author. These days, unless you’re very, very lucky to have won a “golden ticket” as an author, most publishers expect authors to take on the lion’s share of promotion. Also, we think readers truly don’t care who publishes a book as long as it’s a compelling read and professionally produced. The bigger issue is book discoverability—how will readers find your book?

Q. What non-writing skills are most important (ie, Photoshop, video editing for book trailers, etc.)?

A. The ability to multitask yet stay focused. In terms of creating promotional graphics, Canva is an easily accessible tool for non-designers and is far more reasonably priced than Photoshop, which has quite the learning curve. It’s also really easy to create book videos and social media reels on Canva.