Kirkus Indie

So in an effort to get an unbiased opinion on the merchantability of my book, I have contacted Kirkus. They have an "Indie review" for 1/3 the cost of the cheapest package iUniverse suggested, and it's composed primarily of just that: a review of the book. Yes, there's a substantial difference between a review of the book and the merchantability of it, but at least it's something... Should have it by the end of March. Here goes nothing...

Spending time and money to make you and your book look foolish

iUniverse Marketing

As any publishing professional will tell you - "A really bad book with good marketing will outsell a really good one with bad marketing".
 
In iUniverse's case, their marketing department is beyond bad. They are the sole reason I am considering recommending against iUniverse.

Their follies have included:

1. Promotional materials delivered with misspelled words, incomplete sentences, etc.
2. Two awful cover designs. Genuinely bad, with flaws even a complete novice would (and several did) remark upon. One portrayed starting a business with the visual metaphor of casting a piggybank into the water - literally throwing money away. The other emphasized the two words "Making Bad" out of the rest of the original title. I am beggared for words.
3. My first marketing rep went 1-for-7 in calling back on-time. These are appointments when he picked the time & day. Bonus points for no apologies, and also for lying (yes really) to his boss about when he'd contacted me.
4. My second marketing rep was hard pressed to understand English on a higher-than-high-school level. For instance, after 30 minutes of explanations on the phone, she was unable to understand the difference between "I want to pay for and receive a book review and then decide how much I want to spend marketing my book" from "I will only pay for any marketing program if you guarantee I will get a good book review". She just couldn't get her mind around the idea that I wanted to make an informed marketing investment.
5. My third marketing rep was so addicted to his script that he ended up speaking this sentence: "I understand, Mr Evarts, that you don't want to be portrayed as 'the expert' on this subject, but the way we're going to market this book is by marketing you as the expert." Seriously. At that point I said "Please don't call me again". He ignored that request and contacted me three more times. I asked to speak to his manager the last time. He promised the manager would call me back. No contact from either of them since.
   
6. None of the marketing or promotional materials used the recommendations I'd secured from both a well-known entrepreneurial author and a director of military.com. The guy's an E-10 for goodness' sake. His words carry weight with my target audience. Nor, of course, did they get any of their own.
   
7. Virtually none of the marketing and promotional materials were correct on the first delivery. Certainly, if taken as a whole, they were not worth the money I paid for them.

iUniverse offers no service in any of their packages where a professional publisher estimates the size of the audience for your book. Such an estimate would be a very useful offering to a budding author. No one can make guarantees or commitments - but professionals can and do make good estimates - publishing houses need estimates to scale print runs.

It is possible that such a service not available because it would cut down on marketing revenues. The marketing folks at iUniverse work on commission and have no stake in the sale of your book. It's in their best interests to sell you a $30,000 quarterly plan for selling your book "300 incorrect ways my daughter has tried to spell Welsh place-names" (i.e., something that will not have a wide audience) even though this will be a complete waste of your money as an author.

Professional and Affordable

The front page at iUniverse.com says:

Let our expertise work for you

iUniverse has helped more than 35,000 authors publish their books professionally and affordably.

(bold in original text, not added)

Unfortunately my experience puts a lie in those words- the image I would have had at their hands would have been both unprofessional and very very costly.

Soon I shall be an author!

At long, long last, I believe I shall shortly be "an author". I signed off on the between-the-covers content last week, and made what I hope is the last tweak to the covers today. Provided the changes to the cover come through ok, I will shortly be publishing my book.

Looking back, there's some interesting stuff in there: A year is a long time. Probably 40% of that year was spent with the ball in my court. Maybe more. It's certainly possible to self-publish in a lot less time than a year, and if I were to publish another book, I'd ballpark it in the 120-to-240 day range.  On a third go, probably 90-180 days.

As a first-time author, I was really surprised at several aspects of the process.

1. My skills in writing, my vocabulary, and my collegiate-level knowledge of punctuation and technical organization pale in comparison to those of a professional literary editor. I scored 99th percentile in the WEST test in college, yet I am no more than dust.
   
   Oh ye who condemns the greengrocer's apostrophe and hates "scare" quotes, ye who stands agog at the misuse of literally and infer, ye for whom a split infinitive is the beginning of a splitting headache: prepare to be humbled by the flaws and inconsistencies in your own writing. It hurt much more than I expected to see my writing critiqued.
2. As an engineer, I was completely surprised by just how much font choice and page layout impact the readability of a book. When you're reading a 2, 8, or even 40 page technical document printed in black ink on bright white 8.5x11 inch printer paper, courier mono spaced 10-point is just fine. When you're dealing with a paperback book using dark grey ink on beige 5x8 inch paper, the font suddenly matters a lot. So do margins, and leading whitespace.
   Don't even try to approve an electronic galley without actually printing it out in the format you're actually going to print with. On a white screen with black text and no left-right pagination, you're just not going to have a clue. This is a (trust me on this) financially expensive mistake. Don't make it.
3. By the time you've researched and written a non-fiction book, you actually are a minor expert on the subject. We all accumulate organic knowledge from our day-to-day lives. Independently researched information is different. Few adults ever take the time to put an academic quarter's worth of open-minded open-ended learning behind anything they do. If you have, trust me- you're at least a minor expert.
   
4. Like starting a small business, marketing is everything. If you want even moderate financial return on your book, plan to spend most of your time, effort, blood, and treasure marketing your book. If you used crayon and wrote your book in pig-latin, the editors will fix it. If you don't market your book well, you will sell no books.

That's all I've got right now.

Merry Christmas,
-Jeff

Back in gear

Today I am writing a little bit out of frustration. SO much has gone well, and I've really enjoyed the process of writing and publishing a book. Not only that, I've learned a bunch about an industry I didn't know anything about.

My book is finally through editing passes, and I'm getting a hardcover and a softcover sent to me so I can check them one last time before we start the presses. Like the editing folks, the printing folks at iUniverse are great to work with. I even have ISBNs now!

Personally I've set a celebration goal of 500 copies sold through channels as my "I'm a real author" benchmark, but the ISBNs do make me feel pretty professional.

More on the frustration parts after I cool off a bit. No sense writing a post I'll only delete in the morning. :)