#publishing costs

[andromedaexists]

It's Been a Week...

Seven days ago I introduced my book baby (Δάιος, you might have heard of it) into the world! On 10/10 Icky baby made his debut!!

So what has happened since then?

Well, my personal life has become a living hell but that's not what we're here to discuss. Today is all about self-publishing a debut novel.

Icarus came into the world on the 10th with a KDP ebook and paperback release. Those were soon joined on the 11th by an ebook, paperback, and hard cover wide release through the distribution channels of IngramSparks.

I have learned a lot with this process. Namely: IngramSparks is a fucking bitch when it comes to covers, Amazon will not provide quality author proofs so I have no way of knowing what my book will look like before it publishes, and that I need to give myself more time to work out the kinks next time.

Before I get too far into details, I want to highlight some numbers here. If you do not want to see publication numbers then you are free to go! Thank you for stopping by, though!

Okay, so here are my numbers so far:

I had sixteen (16) preorders on the Δάιος ebook through Amazon.

On release day, these orders processed. I also received another 3 orders that day, bringing the total number to 19.

Since that first day, I have received a total of 26 orders through KDP.

As you can tell, I had a significant dip right after pub day. This is mostly my own fault, as I am terrible at marketing and by virtue of my life going to shit I haven't even been shitposting about my book.

Of these 26 orders, 5 of them have been paperbacks

This is a lot better than I expected!! I think it's because I am so partial to physical copies that I tend to push those first and foremost before the ebook.

But these are just the amazon KDP numbers, I have also gone wide with distribution!

So how many orders have I gotten through IngramSparks??? None.

Not a one. That's to be expected though, a lot of indies sell through amazon first and foremost. I mostly set up ingram for two reasons: 1. I wanted to hold a hardcover edition of Δάιος in my hands but i really dislike the way that KDP doesn't offer dust jackets for their hardcovers and 2. Consignment

I just finished filling out some consignment forms for my local NE Ohio bookstores, we'll see if I get into any of them.

There is one other place I sell, though: my website. How many orders have I gotten there? 6!!

one of those images is different, because on my website I can offer something that amazon and IS can't. Physical goodies. The books on my website come with a pack of 6 stickers, a thank you card, and my signature! And technically I have 8 orders, but one hasn't come through yet from a friend in person and the other is for Shane bb who is getting an annotated copy of the book (I haven't finished the annotations yet lol)

So now that we have all the numbers out in the open, let's talk about money. How much did it cost for me to publish δάιος? A lot. It is possible to publish for much less than what it cost me, but I went out of my way to commission a cover artist that I just knew I needed to have and that cost me a pretty penny.

All in all, I spent $2,920.16 ($1,703.02 is the cover alone after conversion from GBP)

And how much have I made back so far, just in week one?

$73.46 from KDP royalties and $44.82 from my website ($94.95 - $50.13 for the books alone, not even counting the goodies and packing supplies) for a total of...

$118.28!!! That's a lot!!!

I am very privileged to have a credit card I can put my expenses on as I slowly pay them off, and I do not regret anything I have done in the creation of my book. Even if it makes me cry a little bit at how much I spent.

Now that the numbers are over, what are some positive things that have come of this and some negative things? (pos first)

I have published my debut novel!

There are 4 people who have read my debut novel and liked it enough to rate it on goodreads! (it has a 4.75 star rating atm!)

My book is BEAUTIFUL

Icky baby has been unleashed on the world!

I feel like I've finally accomplished something with my life

DID I MENTION THAT I PUBLISHED A BOOK???

the negatives:

I really don't like that the colors of the cover don't print properly, every copy I've gotten either lightens the contrast so you can't see the title or it darkens the damned thing and you can't see Icarus

I also don't like that IngramSparks doesn't support any letters outside of the basic latin letters on the spine of covers, because that means that my baby is naked under the dust jacket and that's just boring

Amazon Fuckt Up my print proof (i will attach pictures) and I freaked out about it for a good 4 days

I just realized today that I published daios with a placeholder chapter title about halfway through the book... so I fixed that but there are already more than 30 copies of the book in circulation with that error...

Idk if it's just my bad eyes but I feel like the text is too small in the print books. I would like to make it larger when I publish the revised edition next year

INGRAMSPARKS IS A LITTLE BITCH THAT WILL YELL AT YOU AND REJECT YOUR COVER IF YOU LOOK AT IT WRONG

I can order just a regular copy of daios off amazon and it will be here in two days. So why when I order author copies does it take TWO WEEKS TO SHIP

I really hate that the hardcover can't have creme paper. Like, gimme the offwhite. It looks so much better with my cover and the vibes of the story. Lemme use something other than bleach white please i'm begging

All in all, I learned a lot with this!! I had my ups and downs, I think I've done everything in my power to make this book successful, and now I just have to roll with it!

I will check in again at the one month mark, but yeah! That's it! Thanks for reading through this long winded post!!

The pictures, as promised:

And just in case you can't immediately see what's wrong:

The colors are off, the title has like a hard demarcation when it's supposed to be a soft glow and you can't hardly see Icarus down there

My name is brushed up against the edge of the book when it's supposed to have a decent buffer room

The spine is shifted. Why is the spine text partially on the front cover?

The colors are off on the back as well, the text is hard to read and it's too close to the edge of the book when it's supposed to be more centered.

For reference, here's the finally front cover on a regular paperback purchased through amazon (I.E. what a normal customer would receive):

[andromedaexists]

One Month Later (give or take 17 days)

I told y'all I would do an update to my full disclosure post once we hit one month of Δάιος being in the world, and this is me fulfilling that promise!!

It may or may not be seventeen days late though.... life's been a bit tough lately and this was the earliest I could to get to it 😅

ANYWAYS let's talk about what's happened in the last month and a half in regards to self publishing my debut novel: ΔΆΙΟΣ!

As I mentioned in the last update, Δάιος was initially published in eBook, paperback, and hard cover format through both KDP (Amazon's printing house) and IngramSparks. These are still the main was that I am selling my novel, but I have also expanded to include my own website as a store front with Ko-Fi possibly soon to come!

IngramSparks is still a bitch, but I have not run into any more issues with them. If anything, they've kinda come back with a redemption gift! There is a new beta program that I am a part of where I can create links and QR codes that lead customers to buying my book directly from IngramSparks.

This is amazing! That means that I can send people directly to my preferred printing house to buy a copy instead of having them go through a middle man and then wait for weeks for the middle man to get the copy and send it their way! PLUS I get a higher royalty this way! I'm really excited for this feature and what it could possibly do for indie authors in the future!!

KDP is also still a bitch but unfortunately amazon is my best selling platform so I'm stuck with it for the moment! I still can't get any author copies in my hands from them (I ordered 10 paperback copies back in October and they still have not printed and shipped. In this same amount of time I've gotten two orders of author copies from IS and honestly could have gotten more but I'm not selling that many just yet)

My website functioning as a shop is something I've wanted to do since I set up my website. I will say that I am looking at integrating the IngramSparks direct sell interface onto my site or possibly switch over to Ko-Fi, because good lord is sales tax wild. I have owned a business before (I think I still own the LLC too, even though I haven't been in business for a few years), so sales tax is not new to me and is something that I thought I was prepared for. What I wasn't prepared for was how fucked tax code is surrounding books. I genuinely cannot process it and most companies have a whole team dedicated to just US tax code, so selling through a company that will do those taxes for me is what I'm gonna have to do.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's talk numbers!

Since release day, I have received 47 orders through KDP

As you can see, there was a spike the first two days as preorders were processed and sent! Since then, I have had quite a few lulls. Most of these were due to the fact that I have not promoted my book like at all since publication.

Sure, I've made a few posts here and there (most of which are shitposts), but I have spent this past month and a half dedicating my time to my health, my schooling, and supporting my Palestinian siblings in any way that I can. That includes a complete (or near complete, as I have started to post once again as of late) silence on social media in order to amplify their voices.

Also it feels really icky to me to promote an anti-establishment book that hinges on a traumatized man overthrowing his government using riots when there is a literal genocide happening thanks to the backing of our government.

For these reasons, I have not been pushing my book as much as I should have as a debut indie author. Even still, I have received 47 orders on KDP. I am beyond grateful for each and every person who supported my chaos queers.

Of those 47 orders:

34 were eBooks

12 were paperbacks

1 was a hard cover

But don't forget: I've gone wide!

So, how many orders have I received through IngramSparks?

6!! 🎉🎉

Of these, 3 have been eBooks and 3 have been hard cover!! (no IS paperbacks yet...)

I am fairly certain that the eBooks are through foreign retail services like Kobo, since I have a decent group of Canadian and UK readers that would likely prefer that to Amazon!

The hard covers, well, I don't want to be too hopeful... but I think those were orders to bookstores! I applied to a couple in my area, and I really hope they love the book! Can you just imagine walking into a physical indie book shop and seeing your debut novel on their shelves?? That would be a dream come true!

One last place to look at numbers, and that is my website!

Since our last update, I have has two more orders! That means I have sold:

1 eBook

3 paperback

3 hard cover

1 sticker pack

Not too shabby! Especially given the circumstances at the moment!! I am looking at switching this over to Ko-Fi, but that will have to wait until after the holiday season when I can think again!

That brings my totals to:

It is very clear to me that Amazon eBooks are my bread and butter at the moment. Hopefully, I'll be able to sway it to IngramSparks direct or my own website, but hey! We're at a 60 sale milestone!! I'll take it!!

Now that we've gone through the numbers, let's talk earnings. Last time we talked, I told y'all that I spent $2,920.16 on the creation of Δάιος. That number has since gone up, since I've ordered more author copies. We are now sitting at $3,013.55 spent!

So, how much of that have I made back so far?

KDP: According to my calculations $105.82, but KDP is telling me that I actually made $118.77 (I think this is due to sales happening in other countries, I think the royalty rates are ever so slightly different in each country) IS: ??? Theoretically, $13.17 but I have no way of seeing that in my dashboard and probably won't see it until I hit like a $100 threshold with them Website: According to my calculations $117.93, but in actuality $122.93. There is no reason for this one to be off I need to figure that out (edit from future me: YOU DUMBASS IT'S THE $5 STICKER PACK)

That means I've made a ~$236.92 dent in the cost of my book!!! That's so exciting!!

I want to once again say that I know I am incredibly privileged to have a credit card I can put my expenses on as I slowly pay them off, and I do not regret anything I have done in the creation of my book. Even if it makes me cry a little bit at how much I spent.

On to the next thing! Here are some positives and negatives that I have not already mentioned.

Positive first:

My book is still a book!

My GoodReads rating has gone up a little bit thanks to another 5 star review! Icky baby is sitting at a comfy 4.8 right now!

The copyright has come in the mail! I need to frame it, but I fully own the copyright to Δάιος and the content within it!

People have already started asking for a book two 😭😭

Art commissions are starting to come in!

The placeholder chapter title has been fixed and no one noticed except for me! (and if they did, they didn't mention it to me)

And some negatives:

I figured out how to get creme paper for the hard cover editions, but I will have to completely re-do every step for IngramSparks using a new ISBN number and I just... don't wanna (maybe I'll do that right before the release of book two 👀👀)

People are asking for book two already 😭😭

I am mentally and physically at rock bottom right now and all my attention and willpower has been forcibly relocated to school. I need to graduate, I am only twoish weeks away. But that means I have not been able to do anything for this book and it hurts to see Icky baby stagnate like this when his story is meant to be shared

I was accidentally exposed to a two star review thanks to StoryGraph being too good of an app and not refreshing to the home page when I opened it to add a book to my tbr. This was... not a fun time

Now that we've made it through my incredibly long-winded post...

Thank yous for joining me back at the one month(ish) mark!! My next full disclosure update will be at the six (6) month mark. If y'all wanna keep updated with more shenaniganery that I get up to, make sure to check out my nifty newsletter or hand around here on tumblr (I promise I'll actually be back once I graduate. I just gotta. Get my degree.)

[bessmakes]

For a book Belt <https://beltpublishing.com> is publishing next fall, *Midwest Architectural Journeys* <https://beltpublishing.com/collectio

This small publisher did a rough breakdown of what publishing a book costs her. If you've ever been curious about what it's like behind the curtain, here's a peek!

[tahlianewlandcreative]

How much does it cost to publish a book?

How much does it cost to publish a book?

There is no single answer to the question, “How much does it cost to publish a book?” This is not only because there are different options for publishing a book, but also because books need different amounts of work—and therefore time and money—to bring them to a publishable standard. Add to that you have varying degrees of quality in the finished product. Unfortunately paying more does not…

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[division-mattresses-down-i]

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[publicationmanagementsm]

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[cissalynn]

Ergh. I found a publishing company that I quite like, but their packages start out at $1,450. Bro, I've got a kid on the way and only make $1,200 a month. I don't have that kind of cash.

Dreams though, so you know.

If anyone knows of a company that accepts submissions and publishes poetry, shoot me a message so I can check them out, thanks(: