Katie Bachelder

About three months after my decision to self-publish, I’ve finally accomplished what I have wanted to do for so long. As the Crown Falls is now available online at both Amazon and Barnes and Noble in paperback and ebook formats. Find the links below!

What Went Into Getting Ready for Self-Publication

Getting published was perhaps less complex than I’d feared, but it certainly took longer than I’d hoped. Having never done something like this before, I wasn’t sure what the time tables would look like… When I needed to get this done and if it needed to be done before that, etc.

Here’s a breakdown of my timelines and expenses as an unknown debut author.

ISBN

I would highly recommend purchasing your ISBN(s) as early as possible. You will need them in order to have your book added to sites like Goodreads, and considering how long it takes for them to get a book added, it’s best to get this done as early as possible so your book’s information can be available to the potential readers as soon as you’re ready to officially announce the publication.

Bowker is the official ISBN site. From what I understand, to purchase an ISBN from anywhere else means attributing the title of publisher(?) to that companies name. I didn’t go that route, so I can’t say for sure. Bowker is a bit expensive; 1 ISBN costs $125. However, you can get a bulk package of 10 for only twice the cost.

I ended up getting the package with 10 ISBNs and 5 barcodes for the grand sum of $395. Each format of your book needs its own ISBN, and the barcode makes it easier to inventory the physical copies since it can just be scanned.

It’s worth noting that you can get a free ISBN on Amazon KDP (kindle direct publishing), but it means only being able to publishing exclusively on Amazon. Since I wanted to be able to sell on Barnes and Noble as well, the cost was necessary. And anyway, breaking down the cost of the actual ISBNs and barcode used, the total cost for this project was $79.

Copy-Editing

By far the longest and most expensive process, it cost me about $2,500 and took about 4 weeks to be finished. (Cost being about 2¢ per word). This included the original read-through of my editor, using Track Changes and comments. I hired mine off of Reedsy.

Copy-editing is essentially looking for grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors. For mine, it was primarily pointing out repeated words or phrases, pointing out extra or missing commas, and correcting my spelling from the British version to the American one (I’m not talking about color vs colour. I’m talking about travelling (British) vs traveling (American). To this day, the American version still looks weird.)

My editor was also kind enough to make a few suggestions for clarification in regards to character motivations, world-building info, and the like. Small things, but helpful nonetheless. I don’t know if this is typical or not for copy editors to do this.

The second step to the editing process was for me to review all of the comments and suggested edits and decide what to approve. You want an editor that tries to understand your writing style and improves it rather than erase it. My manuscript was peppered with comments like, “Technically incorrect, but leaving for stylistic choice” so I could at least review them all. I had expected this to be a quick part of the process, but it took me at least a week, maybe two.

The last step was for her to go through my polished manuscript, discuss anything that I left or answer questions I might’ve had.

Although it was a big investment for the book, I’m still glad I didn’t skip this step. My grasp of the English language is pretty tight, and I went through copious amounts of editing myself to get the book just so, and even then, I still missed enough that my editor more than earned her paycheck. It just goes to show that, no matter how good of a writer you are (not that I’m saying I’m anything special), an editor is always going to be worth it.

Making the Maps

It was never in doubt whether I would have maps included or not. It was more a question of how much I ought to pay for them. I didn’t know how much a “typical” fantasy map might cost or how much I ought to budget for it. After all, while one might hope that their book becomes an instant success, every dollar put into it could easily be a dollar never regained.

In the end, I found my map artist on Fiverr. It cost me about $350 and took about two weeks to be delivered. Throughout the whole process, my map artist was in conversation with me to make sure I was happy with the final results. It ended with two maps–a larger atlas political map, and a localized topographical map–and a very happy camper (myself). Some adjustments were made to the general outline of my rough sketch, but considering what I gave him to work with at the offset, he nailed the task.

Note: it is a good idea to decide the size of your book’s pages at this point. It will help ensure your map is going to fit properly. It may also be beneficial to get an idea of margin and bleed requirements. The map itself can expand to the edges of the paper, but the text on the map must fall within the margins. I learned this a bit too late in the process; luckily it was still a rather easy fix and my map artist was happy to make the adjustments for me.

The Cover Art

This was just as complicated as finding the right person to do my maps. Maybe more so… After all, book covers are extremely important in order to pull in readers. My biggest fear was that my book would get lost amongst all of the other cheaply-made, cringey-looking books on Amazon. But, again, how much could I dare to spend?

Surprise, surprise, the artists good enough to be hired by the likes of the Big 5 publishers are going to be super pricey. I knew what I wanted my cover to look like. I knew what covers I was inspired by. But I couldn’t justify the cost of a book cover made by the artists responsible for those inspiring covers.

To make matters more complex, a lot of cover artists charge based on the number of subjects you want on your cover, but don’t necessarily define what a “subject” is. If your cover won’t contain a character, does, say, a building count as a subject? At a bit of a loss, I took again to Fiverr and found an artist who could answer my questions and who listened to my ideas and put together the estimated cost from there.

It cost $250 for my cover, and that included two design concepts created based on my suggestions. I picked my favorite (it was a hard choice, let me tell you), and from there my artist finished the detailing of the concept. The cost also included a back and spine design with a 3D mock-up available as well. Two weeks after the order was put in, I had my cover.

Note: Your cover artist will need to know the page dimensions you plan on going with in order to make the appropriately sized cover.

Formatting

I think I contemplated for approximately five seconds whether or not I was qualified to format my own book before tossing out the idea and accepting the fact that this was one more expense I as going to need to cough up money for.

Fortunately, my cover artist was qualified for it, and so I put in another request to work with her. The formatting cost me $350 and got me the interior files for both the ebook and the paperback.

This particular task should be the last thing that is completed. Everything else should be up and ready to go at this time. The sooner you can get the cover done, the sooner you can start generating excitement about the book, but you should be prepared to have the map ready at the beginning of this project because they will need it in order to insert it in its appropriate place.

Note: I could find little information about the extras at the end of the book and when, exactly, they should be added… Whether they count as part of the total word count, or if they are separate. To that latter question, I’m still not entirely sure, but when it comes time to do the formatting, the extras (the character and language references and the acknowledgements for me) should all be finished and attached to the end of your manuscript.

All told, my publication expenses added up to about $3,500. It would take the sale of about 250 paperback books at their current price to get back that money. That is both a lot and barely any at all. For an author with a very small platform,I’d hate to say it, but 250 is a large sum that I’d be ecstatic to reach.

How As the Crown Falls Compares to Other Fantasy Novels

Because I’ve written posts before about the nitty-gritty details of fantasy, I will offer my own specs here for reference:

• Word length*: 129,000
  • *This does not include the acknowledgements or the character/language guides that I have at the back of my book.
• Total number of chapters: 26
  • Avg words per chapter: 5,000
• Total number of scenes: 91
  • Avg words per scene: 1,400
  • Avg scenes per chapter: 3.5

Interestingly enough, my manuscript page count and my book’s actual page count were the exact same, with the manuscript of course being the typical double-spaced, 12pt Times New Roman. My book’s page size was 5.5″x8.5″.

My word count post puts me right in line with the epic fantasy averages (131k) and a little below the New Adult genre averages (138k).

Learn more about the book here, or check out my book on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. And, as always, thank you for sticking with me on this whole writing journey. With luck, this will be the first of many.