Thread by @RoanParrish

a thread about the cumulative costs of self-publishing.

while i wait for IN THE MIDDLE OF SOMEWHERE to upload, i thought break down what it really means to self-publish a book if an author chooses to take their rights back or if a publisher closes.

i'm writing here about already-published books, which means they've already been written, edited, and have covers.

even starting from there, self-publishing involves a TON of other fiddly work.

BUCKLE UP THIS ROLLER COASTER IS ROCKY

you need to get editable final FILES of each edition of each book and each cover from your publisher. depending on the situation, this is variably stressful and takes a variable amount of time.

depending, you might have to pay for your covers, maybe $100ish per cover

you need to REFORMAT your book.

this might mean hiring a formatter, which can cost between $80 and $150 depending on complexity of the file/turnaround time.

or you might buy VELLUM, which is wonderful and awesome but also is only available for mac. it costs like $100

REFORMATTING yourself in vellum isn't complicated, but it takes HOURS to look through the formatting in each version & make sure nothing wonky is happening from the publisher files you got. HOURS of flipping through pages as your eyes glaze over. i for one am bad at such labor.

you need to UPDATE all links to books in the file, but you can't HAVE a link to link TO until you upload the book to all the platforms. <_____>

that means uploading w a link to yr website or no link, letting the book go live so you can MAKE a link, & reuploading.

you need ISBN NUMBERS, esp for a paperback and/or outside of just amazon.

you can buy these in blocks of 100 for $575. don't have $575 lying around? 1 ISBN will run you $125.

you could skip the cost and just use an amazon ASIN, but then when amazon burns your book is gone 😮

speaking of paperbacks, if the cover you got from the publisher has the publisher name on the back or their logo on the spine, you need to produce a version without those things.

photoshop costs $31.50 a month and is rather a bear to figure out, if you want to go that route.

when you've produced yr book, you'll upload it to distribution channels, each of which takes a cut of your royalties—amazon takes 30% and if you use draft 2 digital to distro to ALL other outlets, they take a further 10%, so 40% total.

congratulations, you're self-published!

your books will appear pretty quickly via D2D and veeeeery slowly on amazon.

now you'll begin the labours of hercules to get amazon to merge your NEW, self-published version of the book with the OLD version, otherwise you'll LOSE all the ratings/reviews it had.

once your book is live on all platforms, you'll change EVERY SINGLE LINK IN THE WORLD. on your website, in your newsletter, in your email signature, on all social media, etc

now change the back matter in every single other book you self-publish bc now the links are wrong.

yr other books aren't self published? then you'll have to email your contact at every publisher you work with so they can change the link in your ALSO BY list at the back of their published books & then reupload it.

ppl bought your book & read it later? the links are just wrong.

for continuity, you'll now go add this new edition of the book to GOODREADS bc many readers/reviewers get their info this way.

same with bookbub or books+main bites or any other book-tracking sites you use.

register your copyright for the book.

register your ISBN number for the book.

i'm sure i'm forgetting more thingz.

since you can't upload your book until other sites take it down, by the time you've done all this and your self-published book is available for sale again, you will have dropped significantly in any sales rankings, which can affect the algorithms that rec yr book to readers.

that was ONE book. did you take back a trilogy? a trilogy translated into two other languages? did you get back your whole backlist of 20 books? that means you're doing the above for EVERY version of EACH book.

now, i've chosen to self-publish multiple books. i think self-publishing is GREAT. it's a lot of work, but that's my choice.

but for folks who don't have a choice, or for whom self-pubbing becomes the only viable choice, ALL OF THE ABOVE has just been added to their to-do list.

that's [insert mathing]:

money-wise, potentially between $300 and $400 to put out a book after getting your rights back.

time-wise, maybe ... 12-20 hours of direct work and potentially weeks of waiting on other ppl, depending on all the variables.

stress-wise, A LOAD.

you lose money in the time the book's not available.

you lose money if your links are wrong for a time in your other books.

you lose time writing the next book to do this work—or, like, spending time with family or pets or sunlight or whatever.

as i said, i love self-publishing. WHEN I CHOOSE TO DO IT. when i have planned to do it. when my schedule is set up for it.

also, i have no dependents and i write full-time, so even my not-set-up-for-it schedule is FAR more open than folks with other jobs and kids.

i hope this illustrates a bit of why authors get NERVOUS when pubs/imprints close or when we see signs that we might need to take back our work on ethical grounds.

for some folks it's not an issue of "is it worth it" but "CAN I EVEN."

for some of us it's just a big pain.

either way, there is a HUGE cost—monetary, temporal, psychic—to self-publishing a previously published book.

and, as with everything else in publishing, the folks who are the most disadvantaged by these costs are folks who have the least support.

collectively, we have a TON of knowledge in romancelandia, and we can help each other by being generous with our knowledge.

if ANYONE has questions about the process of republishing a book, i'm happy to help if i can! 💗