What I’ve learned from self-publishing my debut novel
I’ve finally finished publishing LISHKA, all three versions—hardcover, paperback, and eBook. It’s been a long (long, loooooong) process and I’ve learned so much along the way.
1. Everything takes MUCH longer than I expected.
Like…everything. From writing and editing, to design, to researching how to self-publish, to submitting content and waiting on proofs (to then be checked, edited, rinse and repeat), publishing is a very long process. To reduce stress, I did not set a firm launch date. I had a lot to learn, and so I allowed myself flexibility to figure things out at my own pace, to fail softly, and to account for unexpected surprises. In all fairness, I gave myself a bit too much grace, as I blew past all soft deadlines not just by weeks, or even months, but by YEARS. Whoopsies.
Each editing phase took much longer than I anticipated and required extra edit rounds, in large part due to my lack of self-discipline and the fact that the book, quite frankly, needed a lot of work! Every time I thought “whew, surely the next phase will be quick!”, the next phase swanned in and produced hefty edits.
The design process alone took well over a year, which I did not expect. Initial concept rounds went quickly due to the high-skill of my designer—we landed on the final cover after 2 concept rounds, and the final interiors after maybe 2-3? The schedules slides happened with the interior layout. My designer is in high-demand, and I got us immediately off-track by missing my manuscript handoff date by months (due to the multiple editing rounds needed, see above). Finishing the work became a juggling act against our calendars. She needed more time to turn around edits due to balancing other clients, and my meticulous word-for-word review meant I often needed at least a week to get her feedback. It didn’t help that the bulk of our work together kept landing between Oct-Dec, the busiest time of year. I was ruthless in reviewing the work too, and so we had many interior design editing rounds. Aside from meticulously QA’ing against the final manuscript, I did things like measure the distance of the dagger section dividers between text to ensure consistency. Which leads me to my next point...
2. Chasing perfection has a cost.
Because I methodically checked my files so many times, I took probably twice as long to get through the design phase. Even when I clicked the “Publish” button, I had a lot of anxiety about possible errors both in the layout and in the novel itself. You’d think I would be slamming that button with excitement and satisfaction, then dancing off to celebrate. Not so much.
My anxiety was so bad that when I published LISHKA in the very first version (paperback), I did not publicly announce it’s release. Instead, I ordered a copy and waited until I could verify the book had indeed printed ok. Despite my caution, a friend discovered the book pre-announcement and ordered 10 copies. Cue my huge sigh of relief when my test copy arrived with no errors (at least none that I’ve found yet!).
My perfectionism meant that it also took a full 4-5 months after the paperback’s release to publish the eBook and hardcover versions. I’m not saying I would do anything differently—it’s very important to me that this book be as high quality as I can possibly make it. In the end, I am so satisfied with, and proud of, the final result. But I did lose months where I could have been selling books, and LISHKA could have been finding more readers.
All this being said, anytime I decided to rush the process and cut corners, I inevitably made mistakes. For example, I thought I had the right file for my hard cover copy but I didn’t actually click through every single page of the digital proof. When I received the physical proof, I realized I had used an older version of the file. Always ALWAYS go through every single page on the digital proof before approving. This is not perfectionism. This is due diligence. Lesson learned.
3. The administration part is tough.
Even though there is a lot of helpful information online, self-publishing is overwhelming. I researched the bare minimum, finding that I’m simply not that interested in the process side of things (surprising, given my day job is in project management). Ironically, this is probably the area where I did the least amount of overthinking.
Amazon KDP
Amazon KDP was relatively straightforward to navigate (other than almost getting scammed by fake Amazon KDP, grrr), but there were a few bumps.
Searchable content: From it’s publish date in August 2024 until end December 2024, LISHKA was not searchable on Amazon. At launch, several people asked me about this—if you typed LISHKA or my name in Amazon’s main search, nothing would come up. The only way to organically find it would be to select the “Books” category and search there. I assumed this was because the book was new, and needed a certain level of interest to hit some kind of search algorithm. I even tried making ‘Lishka’ one of the keywords in the metadata, but that also yielded no results. Recently, a friend and fellow indie author informed me that because I had checked the ‘explicit content’ box in the metadata, there was a block on my book. She advised that this box is really only for actual erotica (which LISHKA most definitely is not!) and doesn’t need to be checked for anything else. Apparently Amazon had made a recent change to this selection that affected a lot of author listings. Arg! So I promptly updated my metadata and now the book is searchable.
Print Proof weirdness: Regardless if you check the ‘I have a barcode’ box on your proof, the author proof still gets sent out with an Amazon barcode stamped across the back cover. Thankfully, it doesn’t double print on the real ‘live’ version, but my designer had to reassure me here when I thought there was an error with either the design, or Amazon.
Formatting the description: When I first published the paperback, the description in the Amazon listing appeared in huge bold font. After a moment of oh no, I figured out it’s pretty easy to get back into the book details in Amazon KDP. I had originally just copied the description in from a Word file, and because it looked fine in the text window, I assumed all was well. This is not the case. To get the text to appear correctly, you need to make use of the formatting tools in the description box—I fixed this by selecting the ‘Heading 4’ option for the larger font size, “Normal” for the rest of the description. Luckily, submitted changes get reviewed by Amazon pretty quickly and the listing updated by the next day (it might even have been same day, I don’t remember exactly).
Quality of the print: I was super pleased with, and surprised by, the high print quality. I had worried the paper would be too thick or would not have that trad-publish feel. My fears were in vain. The ‘creme’ paper option is quite lovely; it has a nice texture and feels in-line with traditionally published books. Amazon paperbacks do have a stiffer binding, however, yet I was relieved to see my LISHKA paperback maintained a decent enough flop (this is VERY important in a paperback). Because of the slightly stiffer spine, I opted to open up the interior margins a little more, so the reader doesn’t need to severely crack the spine to have a comfortable reading experience. Which of course was another design change, meriting more review and another round of print proofs.
Ingram Sparks
Ingram Sparks was considerably more stressful to navigate. Their platform is not intuitive and I definitely bumbled my way through using it.
Pricing: Figuring out how to price LISHKA on Ingram Sparks was a pain because the platform doesn’t automatically convert USD to the other currencies (like…wtf?). So I entered my prices on Amazon first (which does convert, good on you Amazon) then used those conversions to help me properly fill out Ingram Sparks. I almost wondered if there was an error on the site, because I read something that says conversion is just a guide and actuals will reflect current market, leading me to believe it should have converted for me. Then I had to figure out the discounted % and decide if I wanted to make books returnable. I opted for around 40% (to a big ole’ notice saying I should go up to 50% or bookstores would be less interested) and I opted for no returns (to another notice saying this means people would be less inclined to buy). But going up on a discount and allowing returns means I’d actually be losing money on the books, unless I raised the cost of the book, which I don’t want to do.
Proof copies: When researching other author’s experiences with Ingram, I read that Ingram Sparks doesn’t do proof copies. Which seems crazy cause we need to make sure our books print ok before people spend money on them! The process I went through to get a physical copy to review is:
Upload files and check a box saying yup they are right (even though there is no way for you to preview the files in that moment.)
Wait for Ingram Sparks to take several days to process the files and provide a digital proof. I did not receive any email notifications of the proof, I only found out by logging into my account and seeing they needed to be approved. Although then on the next few proofs I did get an email…so I don’t know.
Approve the digital files, which then made my books technically available to purchase (um, what??). I tried to mitigate this risk this by setting my Publish date a month out, meaning that any orders placed won’t go into affect until that date. I figured a month was enough time to get and approve a print proof.
Buy a copy of the book—once my title said now available, I had the option to buy a copy ahead of the publish date. I ordered a paperback and a hard cover to confirm that the books print as expected. The printing takes longer than expected (5-15 days), so that made me super nervous about getting them in time to validate ahead of the On Sale Date, which I cannot figure out if I can change! Luckily, I discovered there is a rush service (which actually is only like a few dollars more), so I was able to get them pretty quickly. Which was great, cause I made THREE different mistakes on the hardcover, meriting three rush proofs!
Fixing mistakes: Ingram allows you to upload new files for free up to 60 days after your publish date, so at least there’s that. Though of course that means that if you don’t catch it in time, people could order your book with the error.
Next time, I’ll leave Ingram Sparks alone until I have the Amazon proofs in-hand and have confirmed the books have no errors. I should have waited on the Ingram Sparks hard cover, I was just so sure I had checked everything and, quite frankly, was ready to be done with LISHKA that I rushed it. Pretty much every author that talks about Ingram Sparks has something negative to say. They need some serious UX overhaul here.
It’s worth noting again that for both Ingram Sparks and Amazon print books, the creme paper is ideal. This paper type yields a lovely quality print and the weight is neither too thin nor too stiff. Amazon’s creme paperbacks are a smidge “fluffier” shall we say, so the Amazon paperback is just a tiny bit fatter than the Ingram Sparks paperback (which is a little denser). I did accidentally order the groundwood paper on my first hardback proof with Ingram Sparks - it makes the book fatter and lighter (pro) but the print isn’t quite as nice, and the paper is thinner, so the font on the other side shows through a bit. Ingram Sparks actually says the paper is less transparent, but I found this to be the opposite. I can see the appeal for a mass paperback, but it wasn’t what I was looking for.
All the rest of it.
Aside from all of the above, I also learned how to:
Price the book for the end user. I did some ‘market research’ at my favorite bookstore and decided YA books are priced way too low (LISHKA is not YA so this was more of a side observation). Before settling on a price, I confirmed that I could make a small profit publishing with both Ingram Sparks and Amazon KDP. I tested prices in these platforms to identify what my royalty would be, based on how much they take for printing and overhead. I wanted to make LISHKA accessible, but also didn’t want to lose money selling this book.
Obtain and fill out my ISBNs. I got the 10-package from Bowker, because you need an ISBN for each version of your book (digital, hardcover, and paperback). The 10-package is by far the best deal.
File a copyright, a step that is not required to publish as I automatically own the copyright as the creator. However, since I’ve read so many stories about authors’ works being stolen and resold online, I wanted this additional legal protection.
File LISHKA with the Library of Congress, which is also not required to publish but something I decided I wanted to go for. This meant I needed to include the LoC number in the published novel, and mail in a physical copy of the ‘best’ version (I read this as hardcover).
We won’t even get into marketing, as I cannot say I’ve learned much here, other than it’s really hard.
4. Publishing is a dopamine rush, that also has a crash.
I’ve spent so long dreaming about holding my book, that I don’t know that anything could live up to my expectations. When I first held my novel, I was excited but also a bit critical and therefore it felt kind of anticlimactic. It didn’t help that it turns out I didn’t quite like the size I had chosen. The next iteration was much better and matched what I’d dreamed of.
When I finally announced I’d published LISHKA, I got so much fanfare and congratulations from my friends, family, and coworkers. It was incredible and such a heady rush! The month after, I kept checking on sales and getting excited with seeing the sales number increase (it meant someone new was going to read LISHKA!).
But reviews didn’t really come in, and slowly my sales stopped as well. I mean, I’m not doing anything to market LISHKA so I’m not surprised. But I think the magic comes more from the act of creating something cool. And now that it’s published, while I do quite often hold and fondle my copy of LISHKA, there is a definite feeling of ok…now what?
And so I’m onto the next book (which I’m currently procrastinating on by writing these learnings!).
