The Kingfisher Has Landed

RedWombat

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So I'm self-publishing a novella.

In my day job, I'm a children's book author with a major house, and I wanted to self-publish under a pen-name for a couple of reasons. For one thing, when you write children's books, it gets very difficult to write things not for children under your own name--the publisher mutters about branding, and more horrifyingly, you get e-mails from parents saying "My 9-year-old loves your books! I'm going to buy him everything you've ever written!" and then you're running in slow-motion toward the keyboard yelling "Nooooooo.....!"

Well, that may just be me. But anyway, pen name. In this case, the author T. Kingfisher has written "Nine Goblins."

My agent was cool with this--she loves this particular novella but couldn't place it for love or money and told me it'd be a good thing to self-pub, as long as I use a pen name and send her a copy. So with the blessing of all parties involved, off I went, and we'll see if this turns out to be a cool thing worth doing with future novellas or one of those "And let us never speak of this again" experiences.

I hired an editor, who made it better. As I happen to be an illustrator in my day job, I was able to do my own cover art, hopefully without bringing shame to my ancestors.

Formatting it for e-pub made me wail and gnash my teeth and scream at the heavens, so the less said about that the better. (Die, Scrivener. Die and be eaten by feral artichokes.)

The initial plan is release for 3.99 on Smashwords and Amazon. Depending on how it goes, I may add directly uploading to B&N in hypothetical future publications.

Annoying things I have noticed already: Amazon, while preparing to upload your book, apparently holds it in unalterable limbo. A fairly major formatting error came to light early in the process and I have to wait until it goes live before I can fix that. This is stressful.

My primary audience is readers of my blog, which happily numbers a few thousand people--they're already pouncing on the Smashwords version and have been very good about pointing out formatting issues for various devices and the so-far-two typos that made it past the editor. Each typo fills me with horrifying shame and makes me want to curl into fetal position. I hope this reaction passes quickly. I also hope the readers will continue to be patient with me.

(I kinda wish I could figure out a good give-away that wouldn't break the bank for those nice people. Maybe I'll just give them all ranks in the Goblin Army...)

I had been railing about the e-pub thing on Twitter for the last few days, and when I finally said that I thought it was done, I was still so deep in "e-pub horror rage urge to kill rising" mode that I didn't actually include links to the book. I am told this is not the way to market effectively.

Beyond mentioning it on my blog and occasional Tweets, I have no current marketing plan at this stage. I have a large enough platform currently that I'm hopeful the book will make back the editor's fee--beyond that, we'll see how it goes!
 

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Congrats and good luck. I've been thinking about a novella or three, myself, but haven't got to it yet.

Formatting it for e-pub made me wail and gnash my teeth and scream at the heavens, so the less said about that the better. (Die, Scrivener. Die and be eaten by feral artichokes.)


It really shouldn't be an ordeal. Scrivener can generate decent ePub files, but I used it to dump the text into HTML, edited it and added my own CSS, and then converted to ePub using Sigil. Took a couple of hours.
 

RedWombat

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I am told that it's easier the second time around. My real horror was the discovery that Smashwords wanted a .doc and I had to go re-jigger it for them.

Another thing learned: Just assume that I will accomplish nothing the day the book is released except putting out fires and curling in fetal position.
 

girlyswot

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There is a point during the kdp upload process where you can preview the book and make changes. Unfortunately, they offer you the option to skip ahead, so it's very easy to miss this stage. But when it is open for editing again, you should be able to do this.
 

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Best of luck, RedWombat!

The kdp upload process can be a bit confusing. I hit publish before the book was ready, so my publication date is actually two weeks before I'd intended, which didn't really make a difference in the scheme of things. I've learned to be a bit more careful, though. :)
 

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You might have gone through formatting and upload hell, but at least you did it. I chickened out and had it done. I'm afraid to read the directions on the Smashwords formatting instruction site, not wanting to know what I'll have to go through to get that job done. I'm a tech bozo, and that will never change.

tri
 

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Congrats and hope it's a huge success!

Curious, though. You said you're marketing it to your blog readership. Is this separate from the readership for your children's books? If not, how are you protecting your children's books writer reputation from any fallout from this presumably adult novella?
 

RedWombat

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Great question!

I had a blog long before I was a children's book author, so they're mostly fans of the blog, the art, and a webcomic I did along the way. (I dabble in a lot of things.) The children's books have honestly been a fairly new development, career-wise. While many of my current blog readers do pick up the children's books, they're doing it more in support of an author they like than as their introduction to my work.

I'm not publishing anything I'd be appalled that anybody know was actually written by Noted Children's Book Author (and indeed, my name is on the copyright notices and About the Author and whatnot) so my primary goal is not so much anonymity as...mmm...brand separation?

I will undoubtedly miss out on a chunk of sales from existing fans who won't connect the pen name, even though I say on my blog "THIS IS MY BOOK IT IS UNDER MY PEN NAME I AM THIS PEN NAME PLEASE MAKE A NOTE OF IT" because there are lots of casual fans who don't keep up with the blog, but that's part of the price of admission.
 

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Another thing learned: Just assume that I will accomplish nothing the day the book is released except putting out fires and curling in fetal position.

I'll make note of that for when my release day arrives. LOL!

It sounds like you are in a really good position for success. Keep us posted. We'll be here cheering for you.
 

RedWombat

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And to my intense horror, the book can be purchased through Amazon, but is NOT "published" on the back end, so I can't fix the rather severe formatting bug that only came to light after upload. Which is certainly a sinking feeling of dread.

So, I think if I were doing this again, I'd do Smashwords first, leave it up for a day or two until everybody informed me of the (perhaps inevitable) bugs, and THEN send it to Amazon.

ETA: Really did take about twelve hours from upload to being "published" on the back end, despite being for sale for several hours there. Not sure how long it will take to push the corrected version live. I'd say it's a cautionary tale to double-check, but in all honesty, two people went over that thing a zillion times and didn't catch it, so it may be a matter of the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley.

Fortunately it's only sold a half-dozen of the mis-formatted Amazon copies so far and my readers have been very gracious about it--it's a duplicated section of text, not a missing one, and I expect I'm the person most appalled by it.

Won't lie, so far it's all been a fairly horrifyingly stressful experience and I felt like a total failure at professionalism for a bit there. However, starting to get some cheerful reviews in, which is nice.
 
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RedWombat

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Yay! Book earned back production costs. (i.e. I paid the editor $500 to edit.)

That took about 170 copies worth of sales, and took around a day. (Again, Results Not Typical.) Sales are about evenly split between Smashwords and Amazon, although it's been up on Amazon a much shorter length of time, and I expect that to rapidly overtake Smashwords.

My prediction (she said, fumbling in the dark) is that I'll get a couple of days of fairly solid sales, probably a bump when I'm able to point to an iBooks version, and then it'll taper off, with occasional bumps. We'll see how it goes...
 

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I was watching your tweets during the uploading process, and wincing in sympathy. I also had to re-upload mine right afterward, and honestly, there are still several typos I and my editor/betas missed, that I need to go back in and correct.

I'm currently in the "actually relieved no one's buying it because I'm horrified that this is the best I could do" stage of SPing (which is probably just my default stage) so I feel your momentary yearning toward the fetal position.

I've always adored the little stories that go with your art on your gallery page, so I'm excited about the novella!
 

RedWombat

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Aww, thank you!

And yeah, last night I was screaming "Oh god, no, people are buying it, they have to stop, it's BROKEN!" and tearing my hair out.

But today is better, anyway.

Despite hiring a very good editor (and she is!) the fans have tracked down two more typos. At this point, I'm waiting a day or two before pushing out a new version, just so I can try to catch everything.

Could be worse, I suppose--even my trade books have a weird glitch when my About the Author page is printed twice, facing each other, and it's taken them most of a year to fix THAT...
 

Spell-it-out

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Hi Redwombat, great to hear it's going so well!
 

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Yay! Book earned back production costs. (i.e. I paid the editor $500 to edit.)

That took about 170 copies worth of sales, and took around a day. (Again, Results Not Typical.)

That's fantastic! Congratulations, and I hope the trend continues.
 

Ann Joyce

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Congrats on earning your production costs back so quickly, RedWombat. I hope you continue to have great sales!
 

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Despite hiring a very good editor (and she is!) the fans have tracked down two more typos. At this point, I'm waiting a day or two before pushing out a new version, just so I can try to catch everything.

It's almost inevitable. I've seen typos in trade published books too. That's what we get for working with human beings.

Yay! Book earned back production costs. (i.e. I paid the editor $500 to edit.)

Congrats! And so quickly! That is my worst case scenario goal--please if nothing else let me at least earn back production costs.
 
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RedWombat

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So five days in, and the initial rush has slowed a bit, but we've moved around 450 copies. Twice as many sales on Kindle as on Smashwords, despite it being released on Smashwords, for all intents and purposes, a day earlier.

Good reviews on both sites, but I have no idea how that translates into sales--I have no idea how many people are buying it because they're existing fans, and how many (if any!) show up and say "Hmm, this was #19 in Kindle Epic Fantasy for ten minutes on Wednesday! I'll give it a try!"

(Which only goes to show what I've always suspected--books are damn hard to double blind!)

Two friends have asked me whether I'm happy with sales (reasonably so, all things considered) and what my ultimate goal is. That was an interesting question. Obviously I wanted it out there so readers could get it, but I could get that posting it for free, so what counts as success?

After some contemplation, I think I'd consider the novella to be successful if it meets SFWA qualifying market numbers--i.e. five cents a word.

For a 40K novella, that's two thousand dollars. Not a lot of money for the amount of work that went in, and I certainly won't be quitting my trade publisher any time soon (it is to laugh) but still a couple of months of rent and coffee money.

So after expenses, that's 835 copies. Standing at more than half that, it looks pretty doable---may take a bit, but given the long tail on these things, I think that's a realistic goal.

We'll see if I still feel that way in a month, mind you...
 

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I snagged a copy, read a few passages to my best friend, and she bought one, too. I watched her do it last night, so we're both on board.
 

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Dude, awesome! Thank you!
I sent my son a link, too, and tonight I had dinner with him and his kids (home from college for the weekend) and they're all raving about NINE GOBLINS! So another sale for you, plus one more via a friend on the phone late last night.
 

RedWombat

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Oh my god, I have heard of this "word-of-mouth" but never expected to see it in the wild! You are awesome!

We literally just sold the 500th copy, so yay! (It helps that I have utterly awesome fans...)