Hey folks!
Today, I'd like to discuss my experience with self-publishing through Kindle Direct Publishing.
Available here! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CM289B9N
Why KDP?
To be honest, I chose to self publish for two reasons.
First, I have no idea how one finds a publisher for something like a book of prompts. It seemed unlikely to be something I'd easily find a publisher for as I don't think many of the formal publishers really do much to target this demographic. I could be wrong, but that was my thought process, so I focused on what I knew would be a way to get my first book out there: KDP.
Second, I really just wanted to try self-publishing out to see how hard it actually was. I had seen various YouTube videos suggesting that KDP was a super easy method to get your book out there and I'm always a little skeptical of YouTube personalities that say something is super easy so I wanted to test it out myself.
Why a book of prompts?
When I initially started to look into KDP and self-publishing, I was considering writing a much longer and more detailed 'Guide To Worldbuilding for TTRPGs' which would have adapted parts of my #WorldbuildingWednesdays posts as well as included a bunch of new content that I haven't published here.
I ended up choosing to go with 500+ Worldbuilding and Writing Prompts because I wasn't sure that KDP would be the route I actually wanted to take in the long run. Doing something smaller felt like less risk if the whole endeavor went sideways unexpectedly. Additionally, I'd already been putting out prompts for almost two years at that point, so I had a ton of content that I could clean up and use for the book just kind of sitting around. What better to test something I've never tried before than a book that's already half made?
Additionally, I just really like the idea of a book of prompts. I still occasionally look to other people's prompts for inspiration in my writing, so I thought that making a book I could flip through and use would be great! As of today I've published 663 prompts on HIVE and there are an enormous amount of those that I've not yet gotten around to using myself. Flipping through old posts here isn't the worst task ever, but it's a lot easier to crack open a book.
For the book I did a bit of editing to the prompts and spent a long time trying to categorize them into sections that made sense. Prompts that deal with buildings are (generally) all in one section, prompts that deal with culture (things like art, expression, food, clothing) are in another, etc. This makes it a lot easier to use the prompts in book format for me (and hopefully for you). There is of course overlap between some categories, but that's to be expected. Prompts can often apply to more than one category, particularly with my slightly longer prompts that ask a series of follow-up questions. Prompt 661 for example:
Describe a planet where travel between dimensions/realities is possible. How is this done, and how frequently do folks pop from one dimension into another. How long ago was travel discovered/created and how has that impacted the world(s) where this takes place? How many people have access to this ability to travel through dimensions?
Depending on how you choose to answer this, it could apply to military, culture, economy and trade, politics... the list goes on! Now, this one isn't in this book of prompts, but it's a good example of how a lot of the prompts I write could be used to inform a number of different aspects of your worldbuilding.
How easy was KDP?
Okay, I've strayed enough - time to get back on topic! Actually using KDP and getting set up to self-publish was, all-in-all, surprisingly simple!
KDP requires some basic information about you as a creator, and asks some questions about your banking information (so that you can get paid, if you choose to go with a direct-deposit), and depending on your country may withhold a percentage of your royalties for your personal taxes.
In Canada, they don't withhold anything - so whatever royalties I earn end up coming straight to me, and that's both good and bad. On the one hand, having 100% of the earned royalties released to me means that I get to put more aside for my next book. On the other hand, it also means I need to be somewhat mindful to keep track of the payments sent my way so that I can properly disclose that income at the end of the year and pay tax on that myself.
When it comes to creating the book itself, KPD is fairly streamlined. There are two more complicated parts which I'll touch on shortly, but for the most part you're just filling out a simple form and selecting options from a few drop-downs.
The three sections shown in my first screenshot are the entire process - Details, Content, and Rights & Pricing. For the most part, they are similar to the screenshots I've posted. A bit of text and some drop-downs or radio buttons takes you through the vast majority of the process and is very simple.
The harder parts
As I mentioned above, there were two sections that were a little more difficult. The first is creating or sourcing a cover/back cover. This is absolutely something you could do yourself, but as my art ability begins and ends with drawing tabletop dungeons... I chose to hire someone off of Fiverr to create a cover and he did an amazing job for a reasonable cost (about $65 CAD) and it only took about a day and a half. If you're artistically minded or have friends able to do that for you, you could probably do it yourself and save yourself that cost or you could shop around more than I did. That said, I absolutely love the cover designed for my book, so I personally will be hiring this man again when I'm ready to seek a cover for my next book.
To do this yourself, there are some pretty handy templates that KPD provides and you can whip up the PDF image in any of the common image manipulation programs I know of (Photoshop, GIMP, etc).
The key here is that it's all one image and you have to leave appropriate space for the sections they mark (like the spine, barcode, etc). If you're doing this yourself, the Previewer is going to be your best friend as that will attempt to show you where your cover might have issues. Once you have everything in place though you simply save it as a PDF in GIMP/Photoshop/etc and upload it. Easy as pie!
The second section that I found a little difficult was just getting the manuscript format to be correct. The standard book size is 6 inches by 9 inches, and if you're like me you use Google Docs for everything. Google Docs doesn't have a great way to set margins to fit that size so you can either do what I started with and just guess at the margins (which I do not recommend) or you can do what I ended up doing: get the Page Sizer extension for Google Docs and simply set the pages themselves to be 6x9.
I think if you use Word or a different program like that, you may have more customization options and you can avoid the Page Sizer extension. You can also download one of their templates, but I found that to be more trouble than it was worth in Google Docs.
Even these two points aren't actually that hard to work around. It took a bit of looking through Google results to figure out how to set the margins simply with this extension, but otherwise it's a pretty easy process.
Honestly, the hardest part of self-publishing with KDP is just writing your book (and getting it edited). I think the hardest part for me personally was writing the back cover blurb! I'm not great at summarizing my own work, so making a blurb was really difficult and I sat and stewed on what to say there for a very long time.
So, how is it going so far?
Well, my goal for this was honestly just to have a book in my house that had my own name on it. I didn't really do this for profit, but since publishing it's sold 15 copies as far as I can see.
My one significant gripe about KDP is the reporting available to authors. For paperback copies at least, we only get orders recorded in reporting when they ship. Which means I usually don't see a purchase until a few days after it was actually placed. I'm used to being able to see more metrics, so it's weird that we don't get to see a secondary line graph or bar chart of current orders prior to shipping.
I also don't get to see any referral data - so there's no way to tell if email campaigns, twitter, peakd, or word of mouth is the driving focus for these sales. In many respects the reporting could be better.
That said though! I did sell 15 books so far, and to 'break even' on the cost for the cover I was hoping to sell 10, so that's really nice! Now anything extra will be being set aside so I can afford a cover for the next book and pay a professional editor.
Speaking of costs, I think it's probably interesting to some of you to see that breakdown.
For my little book, it costs about $3 per book to produce. Amazon takes 40% and I get 60% of regular distribution. For "Expanded Distribution" (which is an optional addition) that flips - I get 40% of those sales.
If you enroll your paperback in Expanded Distribution, we'll make your book available to distributors so booksellers and libraries can find your book and order it.
I'm a huge fan of public libraries, so having the chance to get my book into a library is absolutely worth it to me. I'd donate it if I could, honestly. I love the idea that folks in the wide world are using my prompts!
So, all in all I've made about $30 CAD on the book (which is going to be set aside for the next book), and sold 15 or so copies since it went live on the 31st. Most of those are honestly family and friends, so I expect that the sales on this will trickle down a lot now.
This may get a bump when I upload the eBook version, as I know a lot of folks like to be able to read on their phones and tablets. I always like the feel of a book in my hand, which is why I focused on physical paperback first... but I'm hoping to publish the eBook version this weekend.
If folks are interested in the sales/finances of this, I don't mind talking about that stuff and I could do a 1-month follow-up if that's of interest.
In closing
I really hope that this may be helpful to someone else considering self-publishing. It's a fairly accessible way to get a book out there and the Print-On-Demand nature of the service is pretty good quality. I don't have any complaints so far about the quality of the book.
If you've had something kicking around in your head that you wanted to publish and put into the world, this is definitely one of many options available to you, and is honestly exactly as easy as folks say it is.
That's all from me for today.
All the best folks!
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