Publishing Your Ebook: Don’t Go It Alone

A year ago, when I pub­lished A Real Piece of Work, I did it the hard way.

I for­mat­ted and con­vert­ed the book myself.

Although I have some web design expe­ri­ence and am rel­a­tive­ly com­fort­able with HTML and XML, and although the final prod­uct turned out great, it took me a sol­id month of 16-hour days to get the ebook for­mat­ting cor­rect.

That’s a month that I was­n’t writ­ing, was­n’t doing any­thing cre­ative.

I drove myself to exhaus­tion and lost all of that time. Time I could have used to hone my craft. Time dur­ing which I could have writ­ten at least 30,000 words.

That’s a third of a nov­el.

For­tu­nate­ly I did­n’t try to design the book cov­er myself. Work­ing from a sketch of mine, a graph­ic design­er friend, Elis­a­beth Pinio, designed a beau­ti­ful cov­er, sav­ing me count­less hours and headaches. (Con­tact me to get in touch with her.)

Fast for­ward to June of this year, when I was pub­lish­ing the sec­ond nov­el in the Dako­ta Stevens Mys­tery Series, The Rich Are Dif­fer­ent. Just think­ing about all of the work involved made me anx­ious and irri­ta­ble.

I did a test-run of for­mat­ting the book by myself, but I could­n’t get it to come out right. The soft­ware tools had changed, and I had for­got­ten a num­ber of steps in the process. Mean­while, I had promised my read­ers that I would release the book at the end of the month.

Yet, despite all of this, I was reluc­tant to hand over this cru­cial part of the process to some­one else.

Bot­tom line: I did­n’t trust. I did­n’t trust some­body else to han­dle this task for me. I did­n’t trust that some­body else would do as good a job, or that my project would mean as much to them as it did to me.

One night I was up in the mid­dle of the night. I could­n’t sleep with all of the wor­ries I was car­ry­ing around, and I found myself going to Google and search­ing for ebook for­mat­ting and con­vert­ing com­pa­nies. There were several—too many, in fact—but they all looked too slick, too imper­son­al. I want­ed to work with a per­son, some­one who would allay my fears, address all of my con­cerns.

And then I hap­pened upon Ebookconverting.com, run by a woman named Lisa Despain. She offered a lot of free infor­ma­tion on her blog, and she had a friend­ly video about the process. My instincts told me that she was the right one for me.

I decid­ed to take a Kierkegaar­dian leap of faith. I con­tact­ed her.

Besides com­mu­ni­cat­ing via email, she took the time to speak to me on the phone for a good forty min­utes. She answered all of my ques­tions, addressed all of my con­cerns.

Now, Lisa and Elis­a­beth are ter­rif­ic pro­fes­sion­als in their fields, and while I high­ly rec­om­mend both of them, you might have oth­er peo­ple in mind. That’s fine. Because this piece isn’t about spe­cif­ic ven­dors; it’s about trust­ing oth­er peo­ple to be a part of pub­lish­ing your ebook.

Con­sid­er the oppor­tu­ni­ty costs of doing every­thing your­self. Time spent on for­mat­ting and con­vert­ing your book into ePub and Mobi files is writ­ing time lost. Also, how much is your time worth? Because it’s going to take a lot of time—especially if you’re a new­bie.

You’re the writer. Make your focus the writ­ing—pro­duc­ing as great a book as you pos­si­bly can. That’s a hard enough job.

To that end, I strong­ly rec­om­mend hir­ing an edi­tor and/or proof­read­er for your book. The num­ber one com­plaint by read­ers about many indie-pub­lished ebooks is that they’re poor­ly writ­ten. If you’re a writer ask­ing peo­ple to pay for your work with their time and mon­ey, you can’t be dis­mis­sive about this.

You want your work to be as well-writ­ten and as error-free as pos­si­ble. Not only because you want every read­er to have a great expe­ri­ence, but also because you know that the qual­i­ty of your work deter­mines your long-term rep­u­ta­tion as a writer.

Do you want a rep­u­ta­tion for read­able and well-writ­ten, or con­vo­lut­ed and slop­py? As the knight in Indi­ana Jones and the Last Cru­sade remarks, “Choose wise­ly.”

In his book The War of Art, an inspir­ing look at what it takes to be an artist (espe­cial­ly a writer), Steven Press­field argues that a pro asks for help and rec­og­nizes his or her lim­i­ta­tions. Pros hire oth­er pros to han­dle aspects of their work so they can be freed up to focus on what they do best: the writ­ing.

As writ­ers, by nature we’re inde­pen­dent crea­tures. Most of us are sus­pi­cious of “com­mu­ni­ties,” which is under­stand­able. But if you want your writ­ing to thrive as an indie-pub­lished author, it’s imper­a­tive that you inter­act with oth­er writ­ers and peo­ple involved in indie pub­lish­ing. Reach out to them for help, and be will­ing to help oth­ers who come to you. Pro­mote their books or ser­vices to the extent that you feel com­fort­able.

Final­ly, help bol­ster the rep­u­ta­tion of indie-pub­lished books by turn­ing out a qual­i­ty prod­uct. Hire oth­ers or barter ser­vices in order to do that.

In oth­er words, when it comes to pub­lish­ing your ebook, don’t go it alone.

By Chris Orcutt

CHRIS ORCUTT is an American novelist and fiction writer with over 30 years' writing experience and more than a dozen books in his oeuvre. Since 2015, Chris been working exclusively on his magnum opus. Bodaciously True & Totally Awesome: The Legendary Adventures of Avery “Ace” Craig is a 9-episode novel about teens in the 1980s. It’s about ’80s teens, but for adults (in other words, it’s decidedly not YA literature), and he’s applied this epic storytelling approach to the least examined, most misunderstood, most marginalized narrative space in American literature: the lives and inner worlds of teenagers.

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