Self-publishing by the Gutter

[Norman D Gutter]

Okay, time for me to begin my own self-publishing journey thread. At the time I write this initial post I have four items self-published, with a couple of others soon to be ready. I'll list them in future posts. For this first post I'll just put in the link to my Amazon author page, and say something about my self-publishing start and where I am now. Here's the link:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B005HJ4SNO

In early January 2011 I was frustrated beyond description at the difficulty of breaking in to traditional/legacy publishing. I had been submitting since 2003, and had a little success with magazine articles and poems, but none with books. I received some good rejections—"Your writing is strong; I can't sell it"—that kind of thing, but no offers. It seemed the goal posts kept moving, in terms of marketing expected and platform and brand and minimum numbers of followers on several social networking platforms before agents or editors would even talk with you.

In early January a published novelist whose blog I follow, Randy Ingermansson, posted something about how self-publishing had come to make sense for lots of writers. I followed some links in his posts, and read everything I could about the pros and cons of self-publishing. I debated myself publicly on my blog, An Arrow Through the Air.

I finally decided I had spent enough time chasing the legacy publishing dream. While not totally abandoning that dream, I couldn't see any downside of self-publishing. So I took the plunge.

Being at best a Luddite and at worst a technophobe, it took me a while to get something uploaded. In my next post, hopefully later tonight, I'll talk about that. Then in some other posts I'll talk about my next three works, and what I've got coming.

Best Regards,
NDG

[Rob Lopez]

Looking forward to it.

[Medievalist]

If I had your surname, Mr. Gutter, I'd name my publishing enterprise/press something like Gutter Publishing.

It's a triple pun, and well, I'd be totally smug if I had that surname.

[Norman D Gutter]

Is Norman D. Gutter a good pen name? I've thought I should use that, since it is more easily remembered than my real name, plus the fact that there are a couple of other authors who have the same name (different middle initial). But my wife doesn't want me to, and other friends have counseled against it.

[merrihiatt]

I'll be following your journey. Good luck!

[Norman D Gutter]

So it was in January 2011, about a week in, that I made the decision to self-publish. The only thing I had ready to go was my first novel, Doctor Luke's Assistant. But it's 154,000 words long, I had no clue for a cover, and was about to learn how to format and upload an e-book. I had an historical-political book I was working on, but had a couple of more months of writing and editing to do. I really didn't want to wait that long to get something up for sale.

So I looked around my stuff for something to self-publish, something short to learn the process. I had some poetry, but everyone says poetry doesn't do as well on a free flowing text platform. Then I thought of my short story, "Mom's Letter." I wrote it several years ago for a contest, which it didn't win, and then submitted it to about 15 magazines, all rejected. I figured anything at all I might earn self-publishing it beat nothing. And at only 1850 or so words I decided it was perfect piece to learn the process.

I started with Kindle, and despite my general fear of this kind of use of computers, I was able to get it uploaded there and e-self-published on Feb 15, 2011. I mentioned on my blog the need to get a cover made, and a high school friend volunteered. Later my son also wanted to make a cover for it. I used my friend's for the Kindle edition and my son's for the Smashword edition. Here they are.

Well, my Luddite ways are preventing me from inserting the images. I guess I'll have to settle for links for now, and try to insert the images another time.

Kindle

Smashwords

I left my sales information at the office, so I won't be posting anything about sales until Monday at the earliest. I've had a few; not too many, as you would expect for a short short story.

[Norman D Gutter]

Having e-self-published my first item, a lowly short story, I had a decision to make on my second item. Would it be the long, completed novel, or something else? I decided I wanted to read through that novel once more, given that I think I've grown in my writing since I finished it. So I went back to my non-fiction work-in-progress.

This is an historical-political books, based on an abandoned newspaper column I had hoped to self-syndicate. When it became clear that the newspaper industry was tanking, I decided to lengthen the columns into full chapters, and add more of them. I had some research to do to finish, but not too much.

I finished the book around the first of May, including all editing and proof-reading. My son did a cover for me. The title is Documenting America: Lessons from the United States' Historical Documents. I think he did a great job on the cover. Here's the links:

Kindle/Amazon

Smashwords, which I didn't mess with till a couple of months after Kindle

Later in the year I found time to format the print book and upload it to CreateSpace. That process actually went a little easier than I expected, though I ran afoul of some PDF convention for tables of contents, and had to keep re-doing the PDF file. Had a little difficulty working with the paper size too. Here's the CreateSpace link.

CreateSpace

As with the short story I described yesterday, my sales numbers are on my computer at the office, and I'll have to add them Monday. They aren't anything to brag about.

[Norman D Gutter]

The next step I took in self-publishing was to add the two works to Smashwords, and the book to CreateSpace.

At that point I didn't think my novel was quite ready. Or maybe I still wasn't sure I was ready to tackle something that big. So I wrote another short story, creating a series with the first one. "Too Old To Play" again deals with teenage grief. I got that up on Amazon in late January, and to SmashWords just last month. My son again did the cover for me, trying to develop a common theme for the two stories. Here are the links.

Kindle

Smashwords

That gave me three works listed. I felt that I was ready for my novel, which I'll cover in the next post.

[Norman D Gutter]

Finally, in March 2012 I was ready to tackle my big book to format for Kindle. At 155,000 words I figured it would be a daunting task. Plus, since my previous formats and uploads were fairly well spaced out, I had the learning curve to climb all over again. The manuscript Word file was pretty clean, so not many changes. I created an interactive Table of Contents, which went smoothly.

For a cover, I contracted with a woman in our church who does design work. We went back and forth a couple of times with it. Life issues got in her way, and so far she's never been able to get back and finish it. I didn't want to delay publication until her life circumstances allowed her time to finish, so I went ahead and published with the unfinished cover. Don't know how this could affect sales. Here's the link.

Next post I'll give some sales data.

Kindle

I haven't yet done anything about adding it to Smashwords, or doing the print edition through CreateSpace, though both of those are planned for the near future.

[Norman D Gutter]

Okay, time to reveal my sales, such as they are. I track these on a spreadsheet, and aggregate the total regardless of the source of the sale (print or e-, USA or other). Here is my graph (I hope the past works), through 30 April 2012.




Okay, it came in! Sorry for the poor quality. I copied it from an Excel spreadsheet into Paint and saved as a PNG file.

So far I've sold a total of 56 of all of my books. Documenting America is my biggest seller with 34 sales. All the others have not caught fire—not that Documenting America has caught fire, but at least it's selling a few. At least my average sales per month is creeping up.

I haven't done a whole lot to promote these, other than my own blog posts and trading a few blog posts with other writers. Plus a few notices on Facebook. I'm working on getting some more works up before I get into any heavy promotion.

[Norman D Gutter]

I'm at the point in my self-publishing career where I have to sell every copy personally. Or at least it seems that way. Rather than doing a lot of promotion, I'm currently working on the theory that you need to get a fair number of titles up before you start much promotion. I have four up now, two other book-length works are close to being ready to publish, and two short stories I think I can publish in short order thereafter. That will give me eight, at which time I'll consider what to do about promotion.

I've swapped a couple of blog interviews with other writers, and each of those resulted in a couple of sales.

Here's how my sales break down, all e-books except as noted otherwise. Let's see how the table formats.

.....................................2011 2012 Total
"Mom's Letter"...................9.........7.....16
Documenting America........19........6......25
Documenting America (print).7.......3......10
"Too Old To Play"...............na.......3........3
Doctor Luke's Assistant.......na.......1........1

Total................................35......20... ...55

I mistated in my last post when I said it was 56 sales. It was only 54 at the time. I sold a copy of Documenting America on Friday to a fellow writer I met at a writing conference. Like I said: one book at a time personally sold.

NDG

[Norman D Gutter]

As the title of the post says, this is a slow time for me. I have two sales in the month of May, one of Documenting America and one of "Mom's Letter". But then, I've done no promotion. All my available writing time has gone to my two works-in-progress, both of which are quite close to being ready to add to my published works. My next novel is out with a small publisher now. While he sounded favorable, it turns out it's not really his kind of book. My non-fiction w-i-p is just over 33,000 words, on the way to about 40,000, I think. It will consume most of my writing time for two weeks to finish, then a month to edit and publish.

So, that's the news from the Gutter for the first half of May.

NDG

[merrihiatt]

Thanks for the update. Good luck with your works in progress.

[Scott Seldon]

You are doing quite well. Better than me, but you've been at it longer. My first book went up January 31 this year.

[Norman D Gutter]

Here's the May report. I sold 6 books. Oh joy.

Let's see if I can add the figure.

Well, the image came in huge. I just don't understand AW's system for adding images. You can see it at my blog:
http://davidatodd.com/2012/06/01/the-may-report-2/

[Norman D Gutter]

I learned yesterday that one of my cousins bought my two short stories and he and his wife read them. I believe they are the first family members to buy any of my titles and read them. Even the family members I gave books to haven't read them.

My encouragement meter is now up to 12 (out of 100).

NDG

[Norman D Gutter]

My Bible-era novel, Doctor Luke's Assistant, is now on a free promotion at Amazon Kindle. I decided to do all five days in a row, today through Sunday June 17.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007OP9ZN2

So far 53 downloads in the US and 2 in the UK.

[Fins Left]

Norman, I just went to your author page. You sound like a lovely person, but your author picture looks like a booking photo. Is there anyway you could get a friendlier picture up there. You don't have to smile if you don't want to, maybe a picture of you at your computer slaving away?

[Norman D Gutter]

Hi Fins. Being technologically challenged, I had a difficult time finding where to make a change in photo. I have done so now. Thanks for the suggestions. Don't know if the new one is better. My mouth is shaped in a natural frown, so when I think I'm smiling it's in a neutral position.

[Fins Left]

That's at least a little friendlier. If you have a natural frown, throw on one of those heavy men's sweaters and grab a pipe and do a sherlock holmes writer sort of shot :-)

I posted your book onto my facebook. Most of my facebook friends are through the church and very much into Bible study. I got a (Facebook) like on the post almost immediately.

[Wesley Kang]

Thanks for sharing Norman. Best of luck to you.

[Norman D Gutter]

Now in day three of the five-day free promotion of Doctor Luke's Assistant. Approximately 1200 downloads at the time of this writing, all but 36 in the USA. It reached as high as 5th on the Kindle eBooks>Fiction>Religious Fiction>Historical free list, and about 316 on the Kindle overall free list. Starting to sink already.

[merrihiatt]

Norman, you can end your promo early, if you'd like. It can sometimes help to offer the book about 30 days from the first free promo. All you have to do is go to the promo set-up page and click cancel. It will end the promo and credit you any days you haven't used. You will need to do it before 12:00pm or it will cancel out on the following day and you'll lose an entire day.

[Fins Left]

Congrats. That's pretty good. I know the one 'friend' of mine is very much into the historical Bible. If he reads it, he will be commenting all over his facebook profile about the book. (this is a guy that learned latin for the fun of it)

[Norman D Gutter]

Last day of the free promo. Early on Doctor Luke's Assistant got as high as 5th in its genre free list, and 316 on the fiction free list. It slipped lower for a few days, to 10th in genre and 610 overall. Tonight it's going crazy with new downloads, and has climbed to 8th in genre and 469 in fiction overall. Maybe Sunday is prime time for people taking advantage of free downloads.

It has about 3,230 free downloads as of now, with just under six hours to go in the promo. Unfortunately I don't have any sales of anything else.