Top five things you might not think about when publishing a novel

Everyone forgets the hidden costs - or doesn't consider certain things - of the publishing industry, if you're self publishing, its the cover design and the formatting, for example. Here are five things that people tend to forget when publishing a novel!

Cover design

The beauty of this is that you've got a few different ways to do this. You could, if you wanted, create professional looking graphics yourself using services like Canva. The cover to my first novel, The Burning Throne, was made using Canva. The best part of this is that, if needed, you can update assets, remake the cover, ect, without having to consult anyone for a quote. Be warned, though, because you'll want to change it every few months like I do. You can also hire people to do it for you if you've got limited graphical design skills using services like Fiverr or Reedsey, but both of these in terms of cost vary wildly.

Formatting

Formatting is something that you can either do yourself with the right understanding and training or use my guide on Formatting (linked in recommended posts). If that's too much trouble, you can either hire a professional to do it for you, as if you want specifics such as drawings, then there might be added costs - I'll do a guide on how to do this!

The keys to understanding Formatting, though, is that it turns your manuscript ( an A4 word file) into a document you can love (normally also a word file but it looks like a book). All of these things are personal preference, and I format all my books myself.

Blurb

Writing the blurb is something you think of writing and go "It's like a summary!" But it's a lot more complex than that. I'm currently writing a post on writing blurbs and how to, so when that's up, I'll link it in the recommended posts! Basically you've got to condense your document into a back jacket. It's harder than it sounds.

Publisher to go with

This is a choice of taste and a massive choice. There are so many different publishers you can go with, and if you go traditional, then you won't need to worry as your agent will try to find the best fit for you.

If you're self publishing, though? This is a massive choice. You can go through so many different avenues. Though, you need to be aware of different 'vanity presses' (these people want your money and nothing else. if you are asked to pay upfront for your stuff, you're better off doing it yourself., but this is different from small presses, who are genuine.

If you need to have a place to start, I want to recommend Draft2Digital, who is the people I use to do my novels and work and I'll do a guide on how to publish through these guys and what they can offer you, as trust me, its incredible. Best part is its all free to you, but they only take 10% of your sales compared to other places, and also allows you to manage everything in one go from audiobooks, ect and they even format it for you, but these might not work for everyone!

Marketing

From writing press releases to scheduling interviews its hard to know how much of an authors job is writing and how much is writing for marketing preposes. especially if you o into the realms of non fiction writing, most of your job is going to be preparing for interviews and taking them instead of writing - especially if you chose to do tours around the country and what have you. you've got to make sure that you know who you're up against and see, if you can, try to get them to collaborate with you and forge relationships that you can use in your favor in the future.

Royalties

these royalties vary wildly from where you get your income from. Traditionally, you've got your advance, where you get a lump sum of money and any you earn on top of that is what you take home. When you're self published, you take home money per book additionally to any other royalties you earn, for example from audiobook subscriptions, patron 'pledgers' ect. For tax purposes, you need to make sure you keep track of how much you're earning to pay tax on these as well as for finantual sake.

If you've got any questions, don't hesitate to ask them in the comments! I'll be writing more of these posts soon!