Occam's Razor

So I published a book! It’s self-published and no, I won’t link to it here. This blog is, or attempts to be, anonymous, although someone with enough time could probably figure out who I am. Also, the book is technical. It’s not like I am writing the great American novel.

I’ve always wanted to write the great American novel, but even in retirement I can’t seem to find the patience to write it. First of all, publishing a novel through legitimate (not self-published) channels is probably too high a bar for me. My wife has been trying for decades to get something published. She’s published a lot of fan fiction. She’s a very good writer, probably better than me, so if she can’t do it, I figure I probably can’t either. Second, I probably don’t have the patience for it, although being retired I really can’t claim that I don’t have the time anymore. Self-publishing this technical book though was doable. It remains to be seen if it will also be profitable.

But I analyzed the market and there’s really nothing like it in the field, and it’s about the work I do for side income anyhow. Lots of people are happy to pay me for my knowledge and abilities. I’ve had over four hundred clients since I started the business in 2006. Also, I have enough writing skills to at least write this well and enough spare cash from the business to make an investment, or at least a write off its costs if it fails. In direct costs, its costs are about $2500 so far, mostly to have it professionally edited. I’m not billing the cost of my time, which is theoretically free. I’m hoping it will eventually turn a profit.

I began it last October and kept iterating and reiterating over and over again. In late January, I figured it was done well enough to have an editor make it more readable. I found such a woman locally who, curiously, like me, also taught at the local community college as an adjunct. She looked vaguely familiar, like I had met her in passing at a faculty or union meeting. She probably deserved more than we agreed on as her fee, but I was trying to make the book profitable, so some limited but not overly extensive editing seemed appropriate.

Even after her editing, I still went over it three times more. She can’t verify its technical content, so the onus was on me. I considered getting someone to lay out the book professionally, but opted to do it myself. My friend Tom offered to do cover art, but got too busy with his real job. So I ended up with a stock photo image.

I also ended up on Amazon, or rather its publishing arm KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). I didn’t want to. I wanted to create a store somewhere and sell it from there. I expected that Kindle versions would have to be published via Amazon KDP. But I wanted to offer PDF and ePub versions too. I frankly didn’t want to give Jeff Bezos more money, as he looks close to being the world’s first trillionaire.

But self-publishing is still a pain in the patootie. KDP pioneered this market. You can do it all online. But it’s still a learning experience. The high hurdle to do it the ideal way gave way to my pragmatic nature. I wanted to be done with the book, at least for now, as it was beginning to eat me alive.

Still, it has been a learning experience. There is so much to learn. I feel I’ve learned maybe twenty percent of it. My main approach was to save the marketing for the end and to concentrate on writing and rewriting it endlessly. This engaged my barely controlled OCD because when I put something with my name on it, I want it to be perfect. It also engaged my writing side. Hopefully from this blog you’ve gotten the sense that I can write well and be reasonably engaging. I wanted to bring this to a technical book too. I’ve read a few of these self-published books that were crap: paragraphs pages long with atrocious grammar and run-on sentences. I’m not a technical writer, but I wanted it to be crisp and clear with plenty of illustrations, short paragraphs and pungent sentences and easy to follow.

The book should be reasonably financially successful with time. I know the market and I know there are people who need to know what I know but can’t afford me. So I’m advertising it on my website, and took out some Google search ads. Not sure how well I am doing, but my cost per click is currently 36 cents.

As for the publishing formats, I’m offering both eBook (Kindle) and paper. Publishing it as an eBook revealed a few issues with Amazon’s Word to Kindle parser. Images placed on the side around text didn’t lay out right. I need to fix that, when I can find the energy. Amazon won’t let you charge more than $9.99 for an eBook, so the royalties amount to maybe half of that. I’m going to have to sell a ton of eBooks to make a profit.

I’m also offering a paperback edition. Amazon does publish on demand. Laying it out though brought out a lot of complications. People don’t buy books sized for 8.5 by 11 inch paper. With many illustrations I needed enough width so they could be read, and since most were screenshots, the paper had to be pretty wide. I decided to use the Dummies book at a guide. It uses 7.5 by 9.25 inch paper. Printing it in full color is basically cost prohibitive as it would cost more than $40 for its 339 pages. But a black and white version is profitable. Amazon suggested $14.99 for a price. I made it $19.99.

But so far since May 6 when it was released I’ve sold exactly three copies, all eBooks, so if it’s going to be profitable it’s going to be a long-term challenge. Some good reviews would help and maybe those will come in time. After 30 days I can offer discounts, so I’ll probably do that to see if it stimulates more sales. The nice thing is that it’s pretty easy to update the content, so I’ll probably be doing that when I find mistakes.

If you have any suggestions on how to do better marketing, please leave them in the comments.