To Delay Or Not Delay

Book updates that suck to type

Well, it’s about that time. Where I go on talking about the ups and downs of self publishing. My manuscript has been done for a while. The book cover is close to done. I just need a blurb and to pay for it. My big delay, formatting. Which has been recently leading to me considering a few different routes. Should we get into formatting a bit?

On Musings, this was delaying the book too. A good formatter can be pretty pricey. This being a poetry book, you’d think its easier. Really I don’t know a ton about it. With Musings, I ended up just going through KDP and doing it myself eventually. I learned a thing or two but Amazon does make it easier and the final product really wasn’t perfect, if you’ve read the book, you’ve seen the formatting issues. This book, I want to do better. To me that’s part of growth. Now I’m debating a couple of options.

One option is potentially, watching a ton of YouTube and just trying to figure it out myself again. The issue, I really have a huge learning curve. I’d have to spend money on more software and money is the biggest issue right now. Option number 2, which is probably what I’ll do. I’ll look for someone cheaper that’s newer to give formatting a try. This second option may be the answer. It takes some serious time to go through page by page and get formatting right. This way too, it’ll be faster for me to break even and start getting some sort of profit on the book. Still, it’ll be at least $100 to get formatting done. But, once that’s done, and the cover is done, we can upload to Ingram and get ready for prerelease.

I guess this brings us back. Do I delay the book so that I have plenty of time for pre-orders and a pre-release campaign? Or do I just potentially rush the release? Funding a book myself is the toughest part. I considered trying to query it. None of the agents I was considering are taking manuscripts right now so that also blurs that option a bit. Delaying for a traditional deal would be worth it. Having funding for marketing would be amazing too. I think that’s something that’s more in the future for me.

Hopefully this series has been helpful to anyone looking to self publish. That’s really the goal with this specific series. I try to be transparent with the hardships of this. I think for the next book, I’ll try and save up for the book prior to writing it. I have a separate account now and have made an LLC to help me recover some of the costs. But this is still quite a road to travel, even with book two. Until then, I’ll weigh my options.

- Alden Crowe