You’ve long dreamed of writing stories for a living. Or, perhaps you’ve always wanted to publish your research and educate readers about subjects that fascinate you. If so, you are like millions of other aspiring writers who have dreamed of the same thing. So what makes you different?
You found yourself here at 80percentdone.com! Our blog is designed to help writers navigate the confusing path to become published and selling books.
We have been where you are and can help lead you to becoming a published author. We will share with you what has worked for us and what has not. By following our three easy steps, you will be able to be a successful author. Success means different things for different people.
We know that the hardest part of becoming an author is completing your manuscript. Once you have finished it, you are truly 80 percent done and well on your way to selling copies of your book!
Step 1 – Writing the Manuscript
The first thing you will need to do is complete your manuscript. I know, right? Sounds easier said than done. Believe me! I get it. It is a TON of work to write a good manuscript. However, with work, you can do it. Set aside time each day to write a little at a time. Eventually, you will complete your first draft. Remember, your first draft does not have to be perfect. Just get all out onto paper or screen everything you want to say. Some folks, like myself, find it easier to write using an outline as a guide. Others, like my wife, prefer to let the ideas free flow from her. Whatever your method, focus on getting all of the information out and then you can move on to step two.
Step 2 – Editing, Editing, Editing
The second step is editing your manuscript. It helps if you have someone in your family with a literary background or English degree. If you don’t, let someone you trust read your manuscript. Let them partner with you. It’s an unpaid partnership for them, of course, and more of one out of love. Find a family member or friend to help you. The thing is to locate and eliminate all spelling errors and grammatical mistakes that are unintentional. I say “unintentional”, because sometimes we may want a character speak in a particular vernacular that does not follow proper grammar.
The next thing to look for is to make sure all of your story arcs line up. You don’t want readers to get lost. You want them to follow the story. Remember, a book is similar to a movie. It has a beginning, a rise in action, a climax and an end. We edited our book New Breed four times before we felt it was ready for print. You may find yourself in a similar situation.
Step 3 – Publishing
The next step is to publish your work of art. Congratulations! You have truly done most of the work already. You are 80 percent done! Getting published is easier in today’s market than it ever was before. Previously, in order to get published, you had to practically win the lottery. You can still mail hundreds of pitch letters and your manuscript to publishers and literary agents. You can still get lucky with any of them, provided they come down from their ivory towers long enough to give you a minute of their time. The truth is, they are very busy and prefer to only work with well-known authors. It sucks, but it’s true. We have found self-publishing to open many more doors for you to be a successful author!
So, what do you use to self-publish? We have used several avenues and can advise you on each of them. First, we wanted to sell digital copies on Kindle and chose Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. This was extremely easy to use and very fast. You can upload your book in the required format and start selling within a few days. It was relatively painless and we love it! Next, we wanted to sell print copies of our book. We started with CreateSpace. Again, this was an easy process and very user-friendly. Best of all, the commissions are decent as it is print on demand so you don’t have to carry a lot of inventory. A LEAN business is a profitable business! If you are someone who doesn’t want to do all of the work yourself, you should use an all-in-one service like SelfPublishing.com. They are the experts at helping authors through the self-publishing maze.
After selling a few hundred books or so on Amazon, we knew that we wanted to greatly expand our reach. We decided that Barnes & Nobles was a great fit for us since we love visiting our local stores. Barnes & Nobles has their own Print-On-Demand service called Nook Press. This is a fairly easy service to use and start publishing for a decent price. However, what we found is that the local stores do not want to carry books created in Nook Press! It sounds crazy, but that’s what we have learned through trial and error. If you only want to see your book in print, you can use Nook Press as a print service. However, Amazon’s CreateSpace is a much better experience for that. After speaking with Barnes & Nobles author services representatives, we learned that they prefer authors work with a major book wholesaler, like Ingram. We used IngramSpark and it was a headache! It is not a very user-friendly platform and it was aggravating to use. However, if you want to be carried in Barnes & Nobles bookstores, you need to be on Ingram’s wholesale list. The reason is that Barnes & Nobles wants the 55% wholesaler discount. Yes, that’s the price to be sold in Barnes & Nobles. You won’t make anywhere near as much selling this way, but it gives you access to the casual shoppers at Barnes & Nobles in malls across the country.
So there you have it. The three basic steps to become a published author. In our future blog posts, we’ll share our experience with marketing your book, getting invited to bookstore author events, what marketing works and what doesn’t, and more details on using tools to help you succeed as an author.
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