Last month, the Wellington branch of the NZSA held a panel discussion on Indie Publishing pros and cons. The lovely Eileen Mueller left us a wealth of resources, including a suggestion to join the group 20BooksTo50k on Facebook. When I joined, it was like reading an entirely new language. I’ve always thought I didn’t have the time to self-publish, which is quite possibly true. I have three school-age kids, a day job, and I’m querying my first novel while trying to finish my second. But if you do it right, the generous insights shared in that Facebook group show that the royalties are so much greater that you don’t have to sell anywhere near as many books to earn a decent return.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t have enough information to say Indie publishing isn’t for me, so I’m going to dip a toe in the water and see what happens. I’ll treat it as an experiment or a 101 course. I’m still aiming to traditionally publish my novels, but I’m going to have a go at putting a Novella series up on Amazon and see what happens. See how much of my time I have to invest to start getting anywhere, or if I can get anywhere at all!
I’ve already discovered that the learning curve is steep. Every little part requires research, even just how to get around the huge bank fees I would get charged to receive what is likely to be modest royalties in New Zealand. I’m also realising that as well as being careful not to over-invest, I really want to do all the things myself. I guess that’s the Kiwi in me. It’s exciting learning new things. It probably wouldn’t be the way to go long-term, but at this stage I reckon it will give me a better understanding of what I need to pay for and why.
So, in the spirit of sharing my trial and error process. Here’s what that meant for what I hope will be my first cover:
I joined another Facebook group specifically for Indie covers. I started trawling through people’s mock-ups and the feedback they were getting. The two biggest things I learned that I may not have immediately thought of were the level of contrast needed to ensure a cover still looks good as a thumbnail image and in black and white, and the importance of matching your cover to your target genre.
I trawled pre-made cover sites and Fiverr, looking for a low-cost option, and realised that I needed a better idea of what I wanted before I would be able to tell a designer. So, I started playing around with Canva, which is always dangerous because it’s fun. By the time I had a concept I was happy with, I was pretty happy with the image as well. Intellectually, I know designing a cover yourself when you’re not a designer is probably a bad idea. But I’m experimenting so I’m just going to go with it. If I get super scientific, I’ll pay for a future cover and compare the results.
You can see my sequence of designs at the bottom of this post. The early ones definitely show why you shouldn’t design your own cover lol. Hopefully the last one that I’m going with will pass muster with readers.
Would She Be Gone will be the first in a near-future sci-fi thriller series. I recently posted a shortened excerpt from one of the early scenes to Twitter.
Here’s a sneak-peek at the blurb. Short and hopefully intriguing, like the novelette. The protagonist is not the woman speaking in the tweet above.
In the not-too-distant future, the Librarian Algorithm enforces tailored censorship that protects citizens from words and stories that could cause trauma or crime.
Detective Virginia Wright is going undercover in the criminal world of spoken poetry to hunt down suppliers of illegal open-access e-readers. She has buried herself in her work ever since her mother died. But when her remaining family are arrested for literary crimes, her world starts to crumble. And when the criminal she is supposed to catch gives her the most precious gift of all, her moral compass is sent spinning.
