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One thing that excites me the most about self-pub­lish­ing my book, GOLIATH FALLEN, is design­ing the cov­er. They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cov­er. But, when I con­sid­er how my book will appear next to heavy­weights like To Sleep On A Sea of Stars, The Mar­t­ian, Dark Mat­ter, or lit­er­al­ly any fan­ta­sy nov­el, I would pre­fer not to take my chances. I need a cov­er wor­thy of the six years of hard work I’ve put into writ­ing this book. Design­ing a book cov­er is by no means an easy task, so I pre­fer to hand it off to a professional.

My current book cover

As I men­tioned in my pre­vi­ous post, I’ve been shar­ing my draft on sites like Wattpad to get my book in front of beta read­ers and do some infor­mal mar­ket­ing. I used a cov­er I put togeth­er in Can­va with art designed by the incred­i­bly tal­ent­ed @naked.monkey and some basic let­ter­ing. This cov­er went through a few iter­a­tions using the same art but with dif­fer­ent col­or grad­ing to test what worked bet­ter to attract read­ers. Here’s the lat­est ver­sion, which received very pos­i­tive feed­back on Wattpad and led to almost dou­ble the num­ber of month­ly reads:

When I saw @naked.monkey’s Astronot piece, I fell in love at first sight. The art cap­tured the mood of my sto­ry to per­fec­tion: dev­as­ta­tion, iso­la­tion, urgency. I did­n’t hes­i­tate a sec­ond in reach­ing out to him to ask for per­mis­sion to use it for my book cov­er. He was kind enough to license it to me for non-prof­it pur­pos­es for a small fee. I added the let­ter­ing myself, which is quite basic giv­en that I’m not a pro­fes­sion­al design­er. Goliath Fall­en could become a best­seller, but this cov­er will always have a spe­cial place in my heart. How­ev­er, the time for an update is here. To pub­lish on Ama­zon KDP (or any oth­er dig­i­tal store), I need art that I can use com­mer­cial­ly for both ebook and paper­back ver­sions. The lat­ter is trick­i­er since it includes the entire jack­et: front, back, spine, and interior.

Finding a wicked book cover artist

I start­ed my hunt for a cov­er design­er on Reedsy. If I thought pick­ing a show or movie to watch on Net­flix was over­whelm­ing and time-inten­sive, find­ing the right free­lancer on sites like these is an almost insur­mount­able task. I’ve nev­er com­mis­sioned work on a free­lance plat­form before, and it proved to be a scary endeav­or. I spent hours brows­ing through the count­less pro­files that showed up in my search results until I even­tu­al­ly stum­bled upon Ale­jan­dro Coluc­ci. I almost fell from my chair when I saw his port­fo­lio. His illus­tra­tions are sim­ply mind-bog­gling. They’re hand-drawn and full of strik­ing, emo­tion­al detail. This one, in par­tic­u­lar, caught my attention:

Like, are you kid­ding me? That’s Ger­ald of Riv­ia. It took me a while to real­ize Ale­jan­dro had also designed the first cov­er for The Witch­er series. I was ecsta­t­ic to find him on Reedsy and open to new clients. Not only is he tal­ent­ed beyond descrip­tion, but he was also super nice, hum­ble, and easy­go­ing when I reached out to him. He answered all of my ques­tions and even con­sid­ered my sketch­es. (Some clients try to hijack cre­ative con­trol from the artist, which is a big no-no.)

As I expect­ed, Ale­jan­dro’s quote was in the upper end of my bud­get­ed range, but it’ll be worth every pen­ny if my book cov­er ends up look­ing any­thing like what he’s pro­duced pre­vi­ous­ly. After fill­ing his inbox with ques­tions and receiv­ing sat­is­fy­ing answers and peace of mind, I seized the oppor­tu­ni­ty to work with him. I no longer need to look any fur­ther. I pro­vid­ed him with a detailed brief doc­u­ment, ref­er­ence images, and descrip­tions, and I’m now on pins and nee­dles wait­ing to see how it will turn out.

So, there you have it—our first item from the list is now crossed off. I have to admit, it has been as much work and as exhaust­ing as I expect­ed it to be. But, I know it will all be worth it in the end.

Stay tuned for a cov­er reveal!

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Get a pre­view of my sci-fi thriller, Goliath Fall­en, by join­ing my exclu­sive mail­ing list for access to sales and give­aways. And don’t wor­ry, I dis­like spam as much as you do so don’t expect any from me. You can unsub­scribe at any time.

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As I con­clud­ed in my last post, I’ve decid­ed to self-pub­lish GOLIATH FALLEN. Bless my soul, Hugh Howey. With that deci­sion now behind me, the next step is to do some bud­get­ing for my book to see whether this is even fea­si­ble. I must reit­er­ate that I’m a non-native Eng­lish speak­er writ­ing a nov­el in Eng­lish, which will only make things hard­er on my wallet.

Figuring out my needs

After some research and reflec­tion, this is what I believe I will need to bud­get for to get my book ready for publishing:

• Copy and sub­stan­tial edit­ing — I’m pret­ty self-aware of my Eng­lish pro­fi­cien­cy. While I’m con­fi­dent I can write a book that makes sense, some phras­ing might read awk­ward­ly. I try my best to make dia­logue feel as nat­ur­al as pos­si­ble, but it’s impos­si­ble for me to write it from the per­spec­tive of a native speak­er. I’ve found Gram­marly and ProWritin­gAid to be price­less, essen­tial tools to check my gram­mar and strength­en my writ­ing, but they can only take you so far. With this in mind, I’ll need to hire a pro to pol­ish the rough edges.
• A badass cov­er — I’ve been pub­lish­ing my draft on Wattpad to gain ini­tial impres­sions and get my name in front of a com­mu­ni­ty of read­ers and writ­ers like myself. On the plat­form, I used a cov­er I designed in Can­va with art from the incred­i­bly tal­ent­ed @naked.monkey, who was nice enough to license it to me for non-prof­it pur­pos­es for a small fee. (Always com­pen­sate and cred­it oth­er peo­ple’s hard work.) As much as I love that cov­er, I’ll have to com­mis­sion a new one for ebook and print dis­tri­b­u­tion due to com­mer­cial license limitations.
• A badass blurb (aka the “book descrip­tion”) — Writ­ing com­pelling, effec­tive book descrip­tions is a tal­ent that few writ­ers have. Those who are good at it actu­al­ly build entire careers writ­ing descrip­tions for oth­ers. Per­son­al­ly, I am ter­ri­ble at writ­ing blurbs, which isn’t a great skill to lack when the appeal of a book weighs on the blurb as much as the cov­er (if not even more).

Okay, that sums up what I need to bud­get for pri­or to pub­lish­ing. Post-pub­lish expens­es (ARCs, pro­mos, etc.) are a top­ic for a lat­er day.

Adding up the numbers

It took me a few days to fig­ure out how much these expens­es would cost. Here’s what I’m budgeting:

Edit­ing is very expen­sive, espe­cial­ly for a 92,000-word book like GOLIATH FALLEN. Depend­ing on where you look, a good edi­tor can be even more expen­sive than you thought pos­si­ble. I’m stay­ing opti­mistic and bud­get­ing $2,750 for the task of copy edit­ing. If I can get a full edit­ing com­bo (devel­op­men­tal edit­ing, 2‑pass copy edit­ing, and proof­read­ing), I’d have to bud­get clos­er to the $5,000 range. Luck­i­ly, I’ve been able to run my nov­el through sev­er­al cri­tique part­ners who have helped me with most of the devel­op­men­tal aspects. Who knows, maybe I can find an edi­tor who has mer­cy on my soul.

As for the cov­er, I’ll plan to go all out as that’s one of the first things the read­er will notice while brows­ing Ama­zon. They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cov­er, but many lit­er­al­ly do. I want it to look pro­fes­sion­al, so I’ll plan to bud­get accord­ing­ly. I’m aim­ing to pay a design­er between $350 on the low end up to a whop­ping $800 (and some­thing tells me I’ll end up find­ing out this high end is actu­al­ly the low end).

So, there you have it! That’s my very opti­mistic bud­get so far. I’ll start reach­ing out for some quotes and come back with an updat­ed table once I have more pre­cise estimates.

Get Two Books for Free

Get a pre­view of my sci-fi thriller, Goliath Fall­en, by join­ing my exclu­sive mail­ing list for access to sales and give­aways. And don’t wor­ry, I dis­like spam as much as you do so don’t expect any from me. You can unsub­scribe at any time.

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As GOLIATH FALLEN goes through the last stages of edit­ing, the time for an impor­tant deci­sion has come: either self-pub­lish­ing my nov­el or go the tra­di­tion­al route. It’s a deci­sion every author will have to make soon­er or lat­er, and it’s not an easy one at that—especially for a debut nov­el. The stakes are high. Once self-pub­lished, my book will be out there for­ev­er. If it ends up sink­ing in the sea of self-pub­lished erot­ic fic­tion that Ama­zon has become, there’s lit­tle chance that a tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­er will pick it up. But, if I go tra­di­tion­al, it will be months of query­ing agents, and I might lose cre­ative con­trol once it’s sold.

Goliath Fall­en rep­re­sents six years of hard work, so it’s not a deci­sion I take lightly.

Doing the research

Before mak­ing a choice, I turned to Google for val­i­da­tion like the respon­si­ble adult I am. Most advice I found came to a sim­i­lar con­clu­sion: if you have a plat­form and a sol­id mar­ket­ing game, there’s a far greater chance your book will do well if you self-pub­lish. Oth­er­wise, going tra­di­tion­al might make more sense.

How­ev­er, sign­ing up with a tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­er might not be what one expects. It turns out that unless it’s one of the Big 5, there’s a chance your pub­lish­er will only mar­ket your book in a lim­it­ed way (if they mar­ket it at all). In those cas­es, mar­ket­ing is still up to the author. Some agents might not even bat an eye at your query unless you already have an estab­lished plat­form you can lean on.

On the oth­er hand, there’s the bud­get. Tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­ers cov­er all pro­duc­tion costs, includ­ing edit­ing, for­mat­ting, cov­er design, and dis­tri­b­u­tion. If self-pub­lish­ing, all those costs would come out of your own pock­et. And trust me, it gets expen­sive, espe­cial­ly for a 92,500-word tome such as Goliath Fall­en. That would make a strong case for going traditional.

In my case, there are some extra fac­tors to con­sid­er. As a non-native Eng­lish speak­er, I would­n’t risk query­ing agents before a pro­fes­sion­al edi­tor revis­es my man­u­script. So, I would have to cov­er the enor­mous expense that edit­ing rep­re­sents anyway.

Making a decision

The more I inves­ti­gate, the more com­plex the deci­sion becomes. So, before I go insane, I’ve decid­ed to take a dif­fer­ent angle: pick the one I find the most exciting.

I know for a fact that I suck at mar­ket­ing. On the oth­er hand, I also know that I suck even more at query­ing agents—I find the expe­ri­ence sim­ply daunting.

It’s a mat­ter of try­ing what I suck less at, I guess.

I find learn­ing about the self-pub­lish­ing process (mar­ket­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion, pric­ing, for­mat­ting, build­ing a team, etc.) very intrigu­ing. I feel exhaust­ed just think­ing about it, but it still seems like an appeal­ing expe­ri­ence. Even if my book crash­es and burns, I built all that myself, and that sounds quite rewarding.

With that said, I’ve cho­sen to self-pub­lish Goliath Fallen. 

I’ll have to ramp up my sav­ings to cov­er the expens­es, but it will all be worth it.

So, onto the next step: fig­ure out the budget! 

Stay tuned for updates as I go through this jour­ney from some­body who knows noth­ing about pub­lish­ing to (fin­gers crossed) land­ing on a best­seller list.

Get Two Books for Free

Get a pre­view of my sci-fi thriller, Goliath Fall­en, by join­ing my exclu­sive mail­ing list for access to sales and give­aways. And don’t wor­ry, I dis­like spam as much as you do so don’t expect any from me. You can unsub­scribe at any time.

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