I wrote two more books!

A couple of years ago I told the story about how I got my first book published back in April 2021: 

https://whitenois.blogspot.com/2021/04/i-wrote-book.html

But I’ve written two more books since then and I figured it was time to update my thoughts on the whole process.

People may be curious about whether it’s a better idea to go through a regular publisher or to self-publish. It really depends on your expectations. If you go through a traditional publisher, they may not be as excited about your book as you are. They are under no obligations to even try to sell your book if they don’t think it’s worth their effort. They might want a re-write. Even if they do pick it up, they might want to sell it a certain way that you’re not thrilled about, but you may not have the final say. Of course, I’m telling this from the perspective of an unknown or unproven author. Once a publisher does decide to publish and promote, you have a leg up on the self-publishing option, because they can put their considerable editing and marketing tools into motion. This could help with how much you end up earning for your book, because you’ll get more money if sales are good, unless they offer you a lump sum settlement up front regardless of how much the book sells. If that’s the route you take, trust me, you’ll never get as much money as they think the book will earn them. You may get a better designed book cover because they have the resources to create one. Will you like it? Maybe. Ultimately, they are in control. So you’d best be happy with what they’re offering and how they choose to market your book.

Self-publishing gives you all the control and all the responsibility. Not only do you need to write the content, you also need to design the covers. You need to find your own editor. You need to figure out whose platform you will distribute through, and there are a few options. You can even select them all, although this will potentially get you less royalties with each of them than if you go exclusive with one platform, like KDP. Are you only interested in selling as an ebook? Easy. Do you also want to sell a physical copy? Now you have to properly format your transcript to fit the size of the physical book you choose. This is easier said than done. Bleed and margins and gutters and headers, oh my! Then you become the promotion team, because you’re on your own. You can pay extra to have the platform promote the book for you, but this is not a guarantee that more eyeballs will actually discover or buy the book. So it’s best to assemble your own crew of promoters and this is also a painful experience, because most of your friends don’t really care that much about your new book. No, not really. But - you’re in control. You get to put it out there and try to get eyeballs to notice.

Another thing I found is helpful is ensuring that your readers leave feedback in the marketplace they bought from. Books with no reviews and an averaged score of 3 stars isn't going to persuade many potential buyers compared to a dozen or more reviews and an average score of 4 stars or higher. And don't worry about the odd bad review. Your material isn't going to please everyone.

You have to ask yourself, is it worth better marketing to maybe earn a bigger return, or is it better to take full control and try to get a bigger audience yourself, and a piece of every sale? Are you going to make a lot of money from it? Probably not. A decent amount of money? Not likely. Enough to have made it worthwhile? It’s doubtful. So just do it for the joy of being able to write and create something and hope that it connects with people. My two latest books are about my 6-month tour in Alert Nunavut in 1989/1990 (The fox, the wolf and the zoo) and the story of my military career (Signal path). If you buy them, you’ll make me very happy. No seriously, just go buy them already.

https://www.amazon.ca/Fox-Wolf-Zoo-winter-Nunavut-ebook/dp/B09QTX3VYT/
https://www.amazon.ca/Signal-path-Karl-Plesz-ebook/dp/B0BP9M8DC9/