Publishing Your Novel

So, you wrote a novel. Well done! Now, there is a hard task ahead of you and it’s time to make some decisions. You’ll spend a lot of time on logistics of the things to come. Se brace yourself and once more, onto the breach!

Publishing your novel is a long process that depends on your willingness to work hard and learn new skills. Whether you’ll go into negotiating with publishers or self-publish – you’ll learn a lot.

As I am preparing to publish, hopefully this year, I researched my possibilities and I must tell you, I am very strongly opinionated on the subject.

Basically, if you want to publish a novel, you have two choices ahead of you:

1. Traditional publishing
2. Self-publishing

We’ll discuss both, I’ll tell you what I think and you’ll choose the right path for you and tell me what you think!

These two differ in every aspect – to begin with editing process, then designs and finally marketing.

Before we begin, I strongly believe that it all comes down to personal preference. I know I have self-published and traditionally published authors among my readers and both groups do a great job.

Traditional Publishing

Traditional publishing is a mainstream process of publishing your novel via a publishing company. It means you are selling the rights for your work to a company that chooses to publish your book.

It might be my need to have the control over everything, but I am uncomfortable with this. Of course, a publishing company isn’t an evil corporation that is out there to grab money on the expense of its authors and readers.

Publishing company, indeed, is trying to earn money but it’s the same with self-publishing only it is you who is out there to promote and earn.

The one thing you usually need to do when seeking a publisher is finding an agent who could negotiate a good deal for you.

Here’s how publishing works: you write a novel, pitch it to agents, one agent wants to represent it for a commission, agent sends it to a publisher, publisher decides to buy it, you get a paycheck and your book gets published. But, when publisher hands you five or ten thousand dollars for the rights, they sell the book at their pace and you get little or no commission from the sales until publishers earn the money they gave you.

First of all, finding an agent who has good contacts, likes your novel and wants to represent it is a long and tiresome process. I’ve been reading recently a lot of posts on being rejected – it happens. It’s not the end of the world but we all at one point hope the first agent we send our book to will fall in love with it.

After months and months of sending queries and on the brink of loosing your hope it happens! An agent wants to pitch your book to a publisher! Let’s say publishers love it at once and you start another process that takes months. Revising your novel to suit the emotional beats bound to have readers fall in love with your novel – your idea gets deconstructed and reconstructed to suit the market. That’s a good thing when you’re writing to sell (okay, I might be too harsh now).

And finally, your book is done and it gets published – you get a few deals to promote your book in bookstores and then you all sit down and wait.

The truth is, publishers have all the rights and their advertising consist of putting the book on shelves, covering their loss (the one they payed you) and waiting for the book to sell. You don’t have the right to publish a few chapters yourself to get the public interest. They won’t want to make you a star author – they have those already.

It’s not all so dark, you have a lot of help during the process. They will do the editing for you but the amount of things they’ll want to change can’t be forecast.

Once it’s published, you get around 25 complementary copies of books that are too expensive compared to Amazon. All the rest you need to buy at a discount (not at the printing cost).

Now, imagine being an author full-time and waiting to have your book bought!

Self-Publishing

This was a revolution in publishing. This way of business suits my personal taste of having the full control over editing (even if I mess up, I learn from my own experience), I can experiment, I’m in charge of design and the most importantly I advertise my work.

No everyone enjoys the idea of this, but after three years of studying communication, writing content and marketing it is my passion.

Once you’ve written your novel you have two options: pay professionals to edit your book, prepare it for publishing and design the cover OR you do it yourself!

If you have professional do it, it can cost a bit of course but you don’t have to choose that path. The beauty here is that you can get a free software to design covers, advertise on your website and via social media and have friends or followers read your novel, mark what they like and what they dislike and edit it yourself.

Amazon and their partners offer you possibilities and freedom in publishing.

I know it sounds like I’m advertising for them (if I did I’d have to tell you that, but I’m not, I’m just a fan).

First thing you should do when self-publishing is, of course, having a group of people willing to go through your novel and help you shape it a bit (if you want, but you don’t need to do it if you’re feeling avant-garde).

Then, use software to design your covers while preparing your audience for the big launch. Do the preparation for publishing (text alignments, breaking, etc) and just upload your manuscript, set the launch date and prices.

There are three major opportunities: e-book version, print and audio.

All three are free! Amazon and partners take a commission (30% usually, 50% for audio and 70% for e-books that sell for under $2,99). You get free printing on demand, free publishing on Kindle and free recording of audio version.

The only thing you have to worry about after all this is getting your audience to the book. And it’s usually done by publishing a few chapters, running a blog or a site and having social media presence.

I’ll go in depth about Amazon and partners later. This is all you need to know for now about your possibilities in publishing your novel.

Good luck and keep writing!