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Book Cover Design With Award-Winning Illustrator Alejandro Colucci

This entry is part [part not set] of 8 in the series Pub­lish­ing Goliath Fallen

This post is a fol­low-up to a pri­or post in my series about self-pub­lish­ing my debut nov­el, GOLIATH FALLEN, where I detailed the process of find­ing an artist to design the book’s cov­er. The process was both excit­ing and stress­ful as the cov­er is pos­si­bly the most crit­i­cal ele­ment of a book out­side of the descrip­tion. My nov­el must vis­i­bly shine over oth­ers pub­lished by big hous­es with hefty bud­gets and stun­ning, pro­fes­sion­al­ly designed covers.

To fur­ther fuel my anx­i­ety, this was my first expe­ri­ence work­ing with a free­lancer in any capac­i­ty. I did­n’t know the cost of such a ser­vice. Nei­ther how the process worked, or what would hap­pen if I ulti­mate­ly did­n’t like the design. Writ­ing this book has been a long and ardu­ous jour­ney, and I was intent to not screw it up this far in. The stakes (and my blood pres­sure) had nev­er been higher.

I spent untold hours brows­ing through free­lanc­ing sites until I final­ly stum­bled upon Ale­jan­dro Coluc­ci on Reedsy, an online plat­form that con­nects authors and pub­lish­ing free­lancers. It took my dumb self a while to real­ize I had found a leg­end in the world of book cov­er design. Sum­ma­riz­ing his impres­sive tra­jec­to­ry is not an easy task, so I’ll bor­row his bio from his web­site (and tweak it slightly). 

Ale­jan­dro Coluc­ci is an award-win­ning artist based in Lon­don, Unit­ed King­dom. He has illus­trat­ed hun­dreds of fan­ta­sy, crime, hor­ror, his­tor­i­cal fic­tion, and sci­ence fic­tion pub­li­ca­tions across the globe com­mis­sioned by major pub­lish­ers main­ly through­out Europe and the USA. Best-sell­ing authors includ­ing Anne Rice, Robin Hobb, Isaac Asi­mov, Mario Puzo, H.G. Wells, Ursu­la K. Le Guin, Andrzej Sap­kows­ki, William Gib­son, Steven Erik­son, Robert Louis Steven­son, and J.G. Bal­lard, to name a few, show­case Ale­jan­dro’s illus­tra­tions in their books. He’s also known for design­ing the orig­i­nal cov­ers of The Witch­er series.

With such a track record, you might guess that the quote for his design ser­vices was very much at the top end of my bud­get. And you’d be cor­rect. How­ev­er, after wit­ness­ing Ale­jan­dro’s stun­ning art, I was deter­mined to work with him. In the end, I signed him up, con­fi­dent my new cov­er would come out spec­tac­u­lar­ly and win over the eyes of prospec­tive read­ers. This post recounts my expe­ri­ence work­ing with this award-win­ning illustrator.

The project and preliminary discussions

Before I could work with Ale­jan­dro, Reedsy asked me for my book’s basic info: title, sub­ti­tle, genre, and char­ac­ters. I also attached the orig­i­nal, first-con­cept cov­er of GOLIATH FALLEN as a ref­er­ence in the brief. Once the project start­ed, the site allowed me to mes­sage Ale­jan­dro direct­ly in order to dis­cuss more specifics.

I had a vision for this cov­er from the get-go, which I detailed as much as pos­si­ble in order to give him bet­ter guid­ance. To be clear, this was­n’t under any cir­cum­stances an attempt to seize cre­ative con­trol from him; it would be ludi­crous to hire a stel­lar artist only to have them do it my way. I sim­ply want­ed to pro­vide an over­ar­ch­ing direc­tion to fol­low. We talked about my vision, but I also made it super clear to take many of my ideas with a big grain of salt.

Goliath Fal­l­en’s orig­i­nal, first-con­cept cov­er with art by @naked.monkey

My first idea was to design some­thing along the lines of my orig­i­nal cov­er. In my hum­ble opin­ion, it does a good job cap­tur­ing the mood of my sto­ry: iso­la­tion, destruc­tion, and chaos. How­ev­er, giv­en that I had a pro­fes­sion­al now, I was open to tak­ing the design in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent direc­tion. At this stage, design­ing some­thing sim­i­lar to the orig­i­nal cov­er would be a fruit­less endeav­or. I want­ed to see what was pos­si­ble to real­ly have GOLIATH FALLEN stand out on the shelves.

My sec­ond idea for the design was moti­vat­ed by feed­back from my beta read­ers. They often com­ment­ed that their favorite char­ac­ter from my book was Izzy Clarke, a tena­cious 12-year-old girl who dwells with her father in the wreck­age of the star­ship Goliath. At the begin­ning of the sec­ond act, Izzy con­fronts a howler, a vicious alien crea­ture resem­bling a tailed rep­til­ian bull. In imag­in­ing that scene, I always pic­tured some­thing akin to the “Fear­less Girl” and “Charg­ing Bull” sculp­tures near New York’s Wall Street. For the cov­er, I thought it would be a great visu­al to have Izzy and the howler stand­ing off in a sim­i­lar fash­ion with the post-apoc­a­lyp­tic inte­ri­or of the Goliath in the background.

Fear­less Girl and Charg­ing Bull sculp­tures near New York’s Wall Street

When I pre­sent­ed both ideas to Ale­jan­dro, he advised that we go with the sec­ond one since it’ll allow us to show­case the char­ac­ters more effec­tive­ly. At this stage, we were just start­ing pre­lim­i­nary dis­cus­sions before Ale­jan­dro got to work on the cov­er a month lat­er (at my request).

Sketching the general direction of the book cover design

Once we set­tled on a gen­er­al direc­tion, I decid­ed to devel­op a very rough sketch to ensure Ale­jan­dro and I had a com­plete mutu­al agree­ment on the path we were tak­ing with the design. I found it impor­tant to set this cre­ative direc­tion upfront because Alejandro’s design would­n’t com­prise a com­po­si­tion of stock assets or images but a dig­i­tal col­lage mix­ing pho­tos, tex­tures, and dig­i­tal paint­ing. All this to say that if changes were required once the art­work was done, he would have to redo the entire thing (or at least a good por­tion of it).

My rough, very bloat­ed cov­er sketch

In ret­ro­spect, I end­ed up com­plete­ly over­do­ing the sketch. I added the ele­ments that I con­sid­ered to be cen­tral to the sto­ry: the main char­ac­ters, the crea­tures, and the set­ting. In the fore­ground, we have Izzy con­fronting not one but two howlers (like the actu­al scene in the book). There’s fire and rub­ble on the sides and behind the sil­hou­ettes of lurk­ers, which are zom­bie-like crea­tures. Final­ly, in the back­ground, we have a clas­sic float­ing-heads arrange­ment fea­tur­ing the three main char­ac­ters: Izzy, her father, Nate, and sci­en­tist Lucas Sund­berg all in space­suits for some reason.

While Ale­jan­dro will ulti­mate­ly be the cre­ative direc­tor, these char­ac­ters, crea­tures, set­ting, and oth­er sto­ry ele­ments are described in a cer­tain way in the book that the final cov­er design will have to fol­low. For this rea­son, in addi­tion to the sketch, I wrote a brief con­tain­ing descrip­tions and ref­er­ence images. I uploaded every­thing to Reedsy and sent it over to him for com­ment. All along, I felt like maybe I was get­ting too much in the way of his cre­ative process. I didn’t want to sti­fle him. How­ev­er, once he replied, I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised by how recep­tive he was.

Refining the book cover design

A pro­fes­sion­al artist with tons of expe­ri­ence doesn’t only pro­vide you with a high-qual­i­ty book cov­er. They can also chis­el your vision into some­thing that can tru­ly suc­ceed in the mar­ket. Ale­jan­dro has designed stun­ning cov­ers for dozens of suc­cess­ful books. Nat­u­ral­ly, he knows this indus­try far bet­ter than I do. His ver­dict on my sketch was that it was too busy and looked like a cliché movie poster. He is very polite and pro­fes­sion­al, so he did­n’t exact­ly use those words, but, in essence, that was his feed­back. And, hon­est­ly, I could­n’t agree more.

Amongst a dozen oth­er things, I had for­got­ten to leave space for the book title. And also, the sub­ti­tle, and my own name as the author. It would appear to me (and any­one half awake) that these are cru­cial ele­ments in a book cov­er. With my sketch, if we added any let­ter­ing at the top, it would have cov­ered the back­ground char­ac­ters entire­ly. What was I thinking?

Ale­jan­dro end­ed up sug­gest­ing a more sim­pli­fied com­po­si­tion with only Izzy fac­ing the howler. The scene itself is pret­ty pow­er­ful already and far more intrigu­ing than a bunch of float­ing heads. This would also be eas­i­er on the viewer’s eyes and leave plen­ty of room to play with lettering.

The book cover design reveal (and iterations)

Once we visu­al­ly com­mit­ted to the direc­tion, it was time for Ale­jan­dro to start the hard work of illus­trat­ing the book cov­er design. At this stage, my anx­i­ety was cer­tain­ly get­ting the best of me. I was con­fi­dent in Ale­jan­dro and his incred­i­ble skills, but I’d been work­ing on this book for six long years, and this was a big moment. On top of all that, Ale­jan­dro would have the cov­er ready in just one week. One week! My gosh… stop­ping to catch a breath is not an option in the self-pub­lish­ing world.

First iteration

As expect­ed, the fol­low­ing week flew by. Before I knew it, I had Ale­jan­dro back in my inbox with the first iter­a­tion of my book’s cov­er design. I had just wok­en up (Ale­jan­dro is sev­en hours ahead of me), and Reedsy’s noti­fi­ca­tion shot my heart rate up to a thou­sand. I couldn’t bring myself to open the attached image until lat­er in the day since I need­ed time to men­tal­ly pre­pare myself for this moment. But, at last, when I gath­ered the courage, I was final­ly able to fath­om the true mag­ni­tude of Alejandro’s talent.

Goliath Fal­l­en’s book cov­er (first version)

I sim­ply can­not describe what I felt when I first saw this book cov­er design (which doesn’t speak too well of me as a writer but bear with me here). It was as if Ale­jan­dro had reached into my brain and pulled Izzy out of it and put her on the page. Also, he was absolute­ly right; hav­ing only the scene of Izzy fac­ing the crea­ture makes the visu­al come alive. It’s a more sound, well-bal­anced, and provoca­tive design.

After get­ting over the ini­tial shock, I did the same thing I always do with a com­plet­ed man­u­script: I put the cov­er away for a bit with the inten­tion to revis­it it lat­er with a cool­er head. That way, I would see it with a fresh perspective.

The next day, I gave the cov­er a clos­er inspec­tion. I noticed a few minor details that need­ed some work, like the title font being a bit too thin and Izzy miss­ing her char­ac­ter­is­tic back­pack. But, what wor­ried me the most was the crea­ture design; it wasn’t accu­rate to how they’re described in the book. Howlers are sim­i­lar to the scream­ing bear from Anni­hi­la­tion but more mus­cu­lar and thin­ner for faster move­ment. My anx­i­ety kicked back in just at the thought of Ale­jan­dro hav­ing to redraw the crea­ture. I felt like that annoy­ing cus­tomer (and no one wants to be that guy).

Any­way, if I was going to ask Ale­jan­dro to rework the cov­er, I would do my best to com­mu­ni­cate the changes to avoid giv­ing him more work than nec­es­sary. In the end, it’s a col­lab­o­ra­tion. The eas­i­er I make his job, the bet­ter the final prod­uct will be and the more it will align clos­er to my vision. And so, I took the lib­er­ty to anno­tate his cover.

Goliath Fal­l­en’s book cov­er (first ver­sion, annotated)

In my response to Ale­jan­dro, I detailed the request­ed changes to the crea­ture as thor­ough­ly as I could. Feel­ing like the most annoy­ing per­son in the world, I uploaded every­thing and hit send.

He answered the next day, leav­ing me once again speech­less with how recep­tive he was. We dis­cussed the crea­ture design and the request­ed changes a bit more, and he asked for a few addi­tion­al days to com­plete the new design. That lev­el of qual­i­ty was worth wait­ing for. He could have tak­en the whole month for all I cared.

Second iteration

About a week went by before Ale­jan­dro returned an updat­ed design. For me, it felt like two days at most—he works fast, and I couldn’t even bear it. Again, I need­ed to take a few hours before view­ing the new design. If I was stoked with the first ver­sion, this new one had me twice as pumped.

Goliath Fal­l­en’s book cov­er (sec­ond version)

From my per­spec­tive, the addi­tion of the fire in this new design ben­e­fit­ed the over­all com­po­si­tion by revving up the sense of urgency. It also helped bet­ter ori­ent the viewer’s atten­tion. With the low­er por­tion now more strik­ing, Izzy becomes the pri­ma­ry focus. We then have the title and, last­ly, the crea­ture. Izzy’s back­pack is also in there, which is the rea­son she’s fac­ing that crea­ture in the first place. In the nov­el, she goes out on a sup­ply run where she found it and gets ambushed by howlers.

As for the let­ter­ing, the book title now looks more robust, and the sub­ti­tle font com­ple­ments the visu­al theme bet­ter. The over­all design looks more “sci-fi”. Before we start­ed the project, Ale­jan­dro point­ed out that although his spe­cial­ty was fan­ta­sy cov­ers, he would try his best to design a sci-fi one. How­ev­er, one of the main rea­sons I picked him for this job is that my book is full of crea­tures and oth­er “fan­tas­ti­cal” sci-fi ele­ments, so I need­ed some­one with expe­ri­ence ren­der­ing such onto a canvas.

At last, we have the howler in the back­ground, now com­plete­ly redesigned. I had request­ed Ale­jan­dro to leave the long tail, make the eyes brighter, and change the body from some­thing resem­bling an insect to a more bull-like crea­ture. How­ev­er, while I was as stoked for this book cov­er design as ever, some­thing still did­n’t feel right. The howler’s face was per­fect, but its pos­ture and body type still did­n’t resem­ble my idea of a howler. For starters, they’re not as bulky. They’re huge and heavy but also sneaky, prowl­ing in the dark­ness around their vic­tims. The rest of the cov­er was per­fect, but the crea­ture still need­ed work.

I real­ized I would have to request that Ale­jan­dro make addi­tion­al changes, and the dread start­ed to con­sume my soul. In any case, my inten­tion was to reach out to him, and if redo­ing the howler was too much work, then I would at least have this incred­i­ble cov­er that I could eas­i­ly use. Like the last time, I anno­tat­ed the cov­er design instead of just bom­bard­ing him with a list of changes. After all, that approach had worked well before.

Goliath Fal­l­en’s book cov­er (sec­ond ver­sion, annotated)

Once again, I felt like I was seiz­ing cre­ative con­trol, but there wasn’t real­ly a way around it as my howlers have a very spe­cif­ic look. I had to make my vision clear. I also thought that a prowl­ing lion pose would make the crea­ture appear more men­ac­ing. If I had to pick an icon­ic scene from my book, this would be it! I want­ed the cov­er to accu­rate­ly bring it to life.

And so, while Ale­jan­dro expressed that redraw­ing the crea­ture was a great deal of work, he was com­mit­ted to full cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion. At this point, it felt more like he was chal­leng­ing him­self to nail down the howler design. With­out fur­ther com­ment, he reced­ed back into his stu­dio to redo the cov­er. This man seri­ous­ly is a god­send. For my first time work­ing with a free­lancer, this has been an exceed­ing­ly sat­is­fy­ing expe­ri­ence. I was con­fi­dent in Alejandro’s skills and that the next iter­a­tion would be perfect.

Third (and final) iteration

Alejandro’s next deliv­ery was my def­i­n­i­tion of per­fec­tion. I hon­est­ly have no words to this day to describe how impressed I am with this cov­er. All I can say is that a big smile drew on my sil­ly face when I first laid eyes on it. Take a look for your­self at Goliath Fallen’s third and final cover:

Goliath Fal­l­en’s new book cover

One word comes to mind when I see this ver­sion of the howler: men­ac­ing. The long tail, the scaled skin, the heavy but nim­ble-look­ing body, the ter­ri­fy­ing four-eyed face with blood drip­ping down a mouth full of fangs—this is exact­ly what howlers look like. How the heck will Izzy be able to get out of this? That’s pre­cise­ly the ques­tion I want to evoke in the read­ers’ minds. 

Just look­ing at this cov­er, I com­plete­ly for­got about how much it cost. I was extreme­ly sat­is­fied, and, more­over, I was glad to know that Ale­jan­dro was as well. I’ll just quote him here:

This is one of my favourite sci fi book cov­ers I made this year, by the way.

I felt ter­ri­ble about mak­ing him redo the cov­er so many times, but this com­ment reas­sured me. We were a team, and we both need­ed to be sat­is­fied with the end prod­uct. That’s an impor­tant take­away I got from all of this (aside from a kick­ass cov­er I can’t wait to use everywhere).

Final thoughts

Design­ing the book cov­er for my debut nov­el, GOLIATH FALLEN, has been one of the most excit­ing expe­ri­ences I’ve had to date. Just imag­in­ing my book sit­ting there on shelves with this incred­i­ble cov­er sends chills down my spine. I was incred­i­bly lucky to get to work with some­body as tal­ent­ed, pro­fes­sion­al, and com­mit­ted as Ale­jan­dro Coluc­ci. I can’t thank him enough for all his hard work and end­less patience. Hope­ful­ly, this hum­ble piece serves as a spe­cial, very well-deserved “thank you.”

As a final note, if you’re look­ing for an incred­i­ble design­er to bring your fan­ta­sy or sci-fi book cov­er to life, don’t hes­i­tate to reach Ale­jan­dro over on Reedsy or on his web­site. Let my new, blaz­ing-hot cov­er be a tes­ti­mo­ny to his end­less tal­ent. If any­thing, Ale­jan­dro has left the bar impos­si­bly high, and I can’t imag­ine myself work­ing with any­body else for future writ­ing projects.

I hope you enjoyed read­ing through the process of work­ing with a free­lancer to design my book cov­er. For me, find­ing the right design­er to work with was imper­a­tive, and I’d be curi­ous to know if any oth­er authors out there found that to be true as well. Let me know in the com­ments below. I’d also love to hear your thoughts on the new book cov­er design too. And, as always, if you have any spe­cif­ic ques­tions, please feel free to reach out.

Before we part, I’ll leave you with a ren­der­ing of how Goliath Fallen’s paper­back will appear in its full form. I’m gid­dy with excite­ment over it, and I just can’t not share it!

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publishing writing blog

Budgeting for my self-published book (update)

This entry is part [part not set] of 8 in the series Pub­lish­ing Goliath Fallen

Wel­come to anoth­er entry in my series on self-pub­lish­ing my debut nov­el, GOLIATH FALLEN! If you haven’t been fol­low­ing along, I pre­vi­ous­ly doc­u­ment­ed my ini­tial efforts to assem­ble the crew that will take my book from a mod­est draft to a best­seller list. This team includes the cov­er artist, book edi­tor, and book descrip­tion writer.

Truth be told, it’s turned out amaz­ing so far. I’ve got­ten to know these incred­i­bly tal­ent­ed indi­vid­u­als who I would­n’t have oth­er­wise met if I had tak­en the more tra­di­tion­al route. How­ev­er, it’s also been an insane amount of work (almost as much as writ­ing the book itself). I’ve read quite a bit about how tax­ing the self-pub­lish­ing process is, and I’m here to tell you it’s all true. The deep­er I dive into this process, the more it feels like writ­ing my nov­el is tru­ly only half the battle.

Up to this point, the hard­est part of self-pub­lish­ing was fig­ur­ing out exact­ly what I need­ed from my team and appro­pri­ate­ly deter­min­ing and allo­cat­ing the bud­get for my self-pub­lished book. Not only was this tough, but it was also crit­i­cal as my bud­get deter­mines whether I’ll spend all my resources (mon­ey and time in this case) effec­tive­ly or not.

At last, with my crew com­plete and now hard at work, it’s time to fol­low up on my pre­vi­ous post on budgeting.

Mon­ey on my mind, but not in my wallet

Revisiting the initial budget

While my first bud­get was quite con­ser­v­a­tive, I used price ranges for some ser­vices (like book edit­ing) to keep things some­what real­is­tic. After all, when you keep expec­ta­tions low, it’s like mon­ey in your pock­et when things work out in your favor. I’m look­ing to self-pub­lish a nov­el indis­tin­guish­able in qual­i­ty from one that’s tra­di­tion­al­ly pub­lished, and I can expect that to cost a pret­ty pen­ny. In devel­op­ing this bud­get, I feel like I’ll be burn­ing through the equiv­a­lent of an advance a pub­lish­er would give me…except the pub­lish­er is me.

Any­way, there’s no time to lick my wounds. With­out fur­ther ado, here was my ini­tial budget:

Ser­vice
Cost
Copy edit­ing
$2,750 – $5,500
Cov­er design
$350 – $800
Book descrip­tion writing
$350
Total
$3,900 – $6,300

I real­ize that bud­get­ing for my self-pub­lished book in the range of $3,900 – $6,300 may appear odd. It’s a very, very wide range, which might seem like cheat­ing. But, real­is­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, there’s no way in hell I can afford to pay $6,300 to self-pub­lish my book.

If that’s the price tag I would have to set­tle for, I would rather get myself stuck for a few years in the tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­ing cycle until some­body picks up my nov­el. Let me also clar­i­fy that while I have already decid­ed to self-pub­lish, this is a jour­ney, and noth­ing is set in stone. I might even get to the end of it and choose to not pub­lish my nov­el at all. If any­thing, that might be the biggest plot twist of this whole process (and per­haps an even more com­pelling one than the plot twist in my nov­el itself).

The revised budget

Thank­ful­ly, after some con­ster­na­tion over my ini­tial esti­mates, I’m glad to report that assem­bling my pub­lish­ing crew went a lot bet­ter than I expect­ed bud­get-wise. It only required patient and care­ful analy­sis of each option until I deter­mined the best one for the job.

The book cov­er design still went over my ini­tial esti­mate, but my mind was set on Ale­jan­dro Coluc­ci, and the more bud­get-friend­ly alter­na­tives sim­ply did­n’t seize my atten­tion the way his impres­sive art did. Speak­ing of which, I’d like to pro­vide a lit­tle dis­claimer before mov­ing on: Ale­jan­dro’s rate was­n’t pub­licly avail­able, which makes com­plete sense giv­en how the price of the cov­er art depends heav­i­ly on the com­plex­i­ty of what’s required. There­fore, out of respect for him and my read­ers, I’ll use an approx­i­ma­tion for the cov­er art design estimate.

Here’s the revised budget:

Ser­vice
Free­lancer
Cost
Copy edit­ing
Philip Athans
$2,750
Cov­er design
Ale­jan­dro Colucci
+$1,000
Book descrip­tion writing
Bryan Cohen
$297
Total
+$4,047

I have to admit, those fig­ures are look­ing a lot bet­ter than I ini­tial­ly thought! The revised bud­get is a tad over the low­er range of my esti­mate, but it’s not bad for what was such a loose range. Of course, $4,000 is still a decent chunk of change, but I’m work­ing with a stel­lar crew who could’ve eas­i­ly cost me a lot more than the upper range of my ini­tial budget.

As always, these fig­ures are still sub­ject to change as sit­u­a­tions out­side of my con­trol may arise (like some­one being unable to work, requir­ing a back­fill), or per­haps I’ll need to add more ser­vices along the way. If there’s one thing I can con­fi­dent­ly pre­dict, it’s that some­thing unpre­dictable is like­ly to hap­pen in this process.

Final thoughts

And that’s it for this update on bud­get­ing for my self-pub­lished book. While my ini­tial bud­get was pret­ty loose on the esti­mates, I’m thank­ful to be on firmer foot­ing now that my self-pub­lish­ing crew has start­ed work­ing. And although I’ll still end up shelling out a good num­ber of Ben­jamins, I’m sure it’ll all be worth it once I’m able to lay eyes on the fin­ished product.

I’m still fig­ur­ing out what my next post will be about—maybe my expe­ri­ence work­ing with these fine folks, which I sim­ply can­not look for­ward to enough over this journey.

Hope­ful­ly, this has been an inter­est­ing inside look into the self-pub­lish­ing process and all of its joys and per­ils. As always, feel free to leave your thoughts in the com­ments below; they’re very much appre­ci­at­ed! Have you ever had to deal with bud­get­ing for a self-pub­lished book? How was the expe­ri­ence for you?

Stay tuned for the next post in the series!

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goliath-fallen publishing writing works blog

How Self-Publishing on a Budget Made Me Write a Better Book

This entry is part [part not set] of 8 in the series Pub­lish­ing Goliath Fallen

I recent­ly real­ized that my post about find­ing an edi­tor for my nov­el, GOLIATH FALLEN, had skipped a cru­cial ele­ment of the jour­ney: the fact that self-pub­lish­ing on a bud­get helped me cut a third of my man­u­script, which, unex­pect­ed­ly, result­ed in a bet­ter book. 

Edi­tors com­mon­ly charge by page or word count. As a result, total edit­ing costs will depend on the length of the man­u­script. With my book clock­ing in at a whop­ping 92,500 words, I’m fac­ing edit­ing costs of $2,700 at a mod­est $0.03 per word. How­ev­er, my nov­el was­n’t always that length. It used to be a mind-bog­gling 150,000+ words. The new­ly reduced length was the result of a four-month rewrite cam­paign after real­iz­ing that hir­ing an edi­tor would have cost me a kid­ney. The cheap­est quote I received based on the orig­i­nal draft was $4,500. And if I want­ed devel­op­men­tal edit­ing, that would’ve run a whop­ping $9,000, which is triple my ini­tial esti­mate and sev­er­al months’ worth of rent where I live (Cos­ta Rica.)

I was between a rock and a hard place, and the only way out was a painful one. After six years of writ­ing and declar­ing my draft com­plete, I had no choice but to dive back in and “make it shorter.”

Pictured: me editing my manuscript during "The Big Rewrite."
Pic­tured: me edit­ing my book dur­ing “The Big Rewrite.”

Finishing the book is only the beginning

“Make it short­er” sounds like a vague, unac­tion­able thing a pub­lish­er would tell you after review­ing the phone book you just wrote. It leaves you with absolute­ly no clue where to start. It’s a frus­trat­ing real­iza­tion to have after you fin­ish writ­ing your book. Real­is­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, how­ev­er, a debut nov­el of such dimen­sions also has an abysmal chance of get­ting pub­lished. I might also seem like I’m self-pub­lish­ing because no agents would take my nov­el. I haven’t seri­ous­ly queried this book yet, so I can’t say that’s the case.

Some fel­low writ­ers might relate to my plight here. I was forced to revis­it the beloved man­u­script I had been writ­ing for years and trim not only a few sen­tences but cut entire scenes, reor­ga­nize or remove chap­ters, or even take out char­ac­ters com­plete­ly. They said self-pub­lish­ing on a bud­get was hard, but this was sim­ply soul-crushing.

Pic­ture me sit­ting at my desk, hands on my head, look­ing down in despair, sweat­ing from this dread­ful real­iza­tion, and try­ing to find a way out of this inescapable abyss. Dra­mat­ic? Yes. Accu­rate? Also yes. I had been writ­ing for so long and was so excit­ed to get this book out. But now, how long would it be before it’s tru­ly ready?

Tough feedback is the best kind of feedback

One day, I shared this real­iza­tion that my book need­ed trim­ming with one of my most trust­ed beta read­ers. As it turns out, she already had the same con­sid­er­a­tion, but it was hard for her to put it into con­cise, action­able feed­back. One point she men­tioned was my overuse of char­ac­ter reac­tions between dia­logue. After some self-intro­spec­tion, I real­ized I do this uncon­scious­ly because I write as if I was watch­ing a movie. This beta read­er hint­ed that I could eas­i­ly remove all that fluff with­out alter­ing the end prod­uct. I re-read the first chap­ters to con­firm her real­iza­tion and found plen­ty of pas­sages like the following:

“Is… is that it?” Casper stut­tered.
Vik­tor could almost hear the rusty cogs of his brain crunch­ing, pro­cess­ing the sit­u­a­tion. A sen­tence left his mouth by its own will: “Go. Wake up the others.”

That pas­sage is way longer than it needs to be. It’s rid­dled with descrip­tions that don’t add enough to jus­ti­fy their exis­tence. Instead, it could be eas­i­ly rewrit­ten to some­thing like:

“Is—is that it?” Casper said.
Vik­tor froze, his mind rac­ing. “Go. Wake up the others.”

This revised pas­sage is clean­er, crisper, and about 20 words few­er. With a few sim­ple changes, it’s easy to see how I could work my way through my man­u­script to trim the edges with­out los­ing integrity.

Around the time my man­u­script was avail­able to beta read­ers, I also received crit­i­cal feed­back from my peers at the NYC Writ­ers Cri­tique Group. Specif­i­cal­ly, one mem­ber said, “I’m 30,000 words in, and not a lot has hap­pened”. I had­n’t under­stood what they meant ini­tial­ly, but they were right nonethe­less. This real­iza­tion was a big pill to swallow—a big pill of hard, cold truth. 

And so, with this fresh per­spec­tive, I sailed off into a long, long jour­ney. I start­ed by read­ing my entire man­u­script yet again. But this time, I read it not as a writer but as a read­er. My fel­low writ­ers know how hard it is to swap your frame of ref­er­ence like that. How do you detach from your cre­ation in order to objec­tive­ly read it like just anoth­er book? For me, it was a three-step process:

  1. Put the book away for a month.
  2. Re-read the entire book, but force myself not to edit a sin­gle word.
  3. Put the book away for anoth­er month.

The sec­ond step is the def­i­n­i­tion of tor­ture. If I had read my book right from the word edi­tor, I don’t think I could’ve resist­ed the temp­ta­tion to edit it. With this in mind, I export­ed it as a PDF so that I could­n’t edit it but could add com­ments in bouts of weakness.

How self-publishing on a budget improved my manuscript

On that last read-through of my book, my fresh eyes did­n’t only catch an exor­bi­tant amount of fluff but they also dis­cov­ered plen­ty of unnec­es­sary descrip­tions, triv­ial dia­logue, and scenes that need­ed to either be trimmed or cut out alto­geth­er. Not even two chap­ters in, I start­ed get­ting “writer’s itch,” or that uncon­trol­lable urge to get down to edit­ing. I cursed that pesky, read-only PDF more times than I could count. But once I was done read­ing, I stuck to the plan and put my book away before a mon­th’s long vaca­tion in order to detox.

When the time came to get back to work, that last edit­ing pass turned into a full rewrite as my hun­dreds of com­ments in the PDF had fore­cast­ed. It took three months to parse through the entire text, and by the end, my man­u­script was an entire­ly dif­fer­ent beast (and 58,000 words lean­er). The pac­ing of the nar­ra­tive ben­e­fit­ed the most from this, result­ing in bet­ter tran­si­tions between dia­logue and action scenes. My proud­est moment was prun­ing the intro­duc­to­ry arc to four chap­ters instead of five, or 8,600 words instead of 18,000. It’s sup­posed to be an intro­duc­to­ry arc, not a novella.

Final thoughts

After star­ing down the bar­rel of thou­sands of dol­lars in poten­tial edit­ing costs, I was forced to take a sec­ond look at my debut nov­el. Armed with crit­i­cal feed­back from read­ers and fel­low writ­ers, I embarked on a four-month-long jour­ney deep into my char­ac­ters, plot­line, and chap­ters. Despite the ini­tial despair and frus­tra­tion, every­thing turned out well in the end. The fact that my lim­it­ed bud­get helped me not only save on the costs of an edi­tor, but I also was able to shave unnec­es­sary fluff from begin­ning to end, result­ing in an over­all clean­er, stream­lined nov­el. I could­n’t help but chuck­le at the irony that self-pub­lish­ing on a bud­get actu­al­ly led me to write a bet­ter book.

If you’re a writer, I hope my per­ils made you feel a lit­tle less alone in the mis­ery that can some­times accom­pa­ny edit­ing your own self-pub­lished book. If you’re just a read­er, well, per­haps you enjoyed a lit­tle bit of schaden­freude after read­ing my experience.

Please feel free to share your own self-edit­ing expe­ri­ences in the com­ments below. Have you ever had a real­iza­tion in the late stages of edit­ing that almost made you quit writ­ing? How did you over­come it?

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The Final Frontier: Finding the Right Book Description Writer

This entry is part [part not set] of 8 in the series Pub­lish­ing Goliath Fallen

Now that I’ve found a great edi­tor for my self-pub­lished nov­el, GOLIATH FALLEN, the next step is to find a book descrip­tion writer. Back when I start­ed out­lin­ing the steps in my self-pub­lish­ing jour­ney, hir­ing a book descrip­tion (aka book blurb) writer did­n’t even slight­ly cross my mind. How­ev­er, this indi­vid­ual, who­ev­er they end up being, is as cru­cial as the edi­tor and cov­er artist. Writ­ing a sol­id blurb is no easy feat, and I have tried it before. How the heck had­n’t I thought of hir­ing an expert on that until now?

Realizing my needs

The book descrip­tion includes just enough about what is going to hap­pen in the book, to make the read­er yearn for answers to all the ques­tions flit­ting through his or her mind…if the author has suc­ceed­ed in writ­ing a cap­ti­vat­ing description.

Excerpt from “How to Write a Book Descrip­tion that Attracts Read­ers” on SelfPublishing.com

It’s the book descrip­tion that’s print­ed on the back cov­er and in the ebook list­ing. And, not to be an alarmist, but it can make or break a book launch. You can have a killer cov­er, but if the descrip­tion sucks, your book will sink down into the abyss of the mil­lions of oth­ers com­pet­ing for the reader’s attention.

Since I had shared Goliath Fall­en with beta read­ers on sites like Wattpad, I had already tried writ­ing my own descrip­tion and real­ized how freak­ing hard it is. Only but a few authors have that gift of sum­ma­riz­ing their intri­cate, fleshed-out plot full of twists and turns and com­plex, mul­ti-dimen­sion­al char­ac­ters into a few para­graphs that can entice a prospec­tive read­er. Writ­ing a good book descrip­tion is an art in itself, and I was deter­mined to find the right pro­fes­sion­al for the job. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Reedsy was­n’t so help­ful this time around. I received a total of only four results when I searched the site for free­lancers spe­cial­iz­ing in “meta­da­ta and blurb opti­miza­tion,” as it’s called. Not great, but they did offer a com­pre­hen­sive arti­cle on writ­ing a book descrip­tion your­self. But, again, I had already tried that and spec­tac­u­lar­ly failed (at least in my opinion).

Finding my book description writer

While I was brows­ing the web for book edi­tor rec­om­men­da­tions (and what to look for in find­ing the right edi­tor), I stum­bled upon “My favorite 21 peo­ple in self-pub­lish­ing,” an arti­cle by Derek Mur­phy from Cre­ativin­die. It’s full of great rec­om­men­da­tions on inspi­ra­tional authors, mar­keters, book edi­tors, cov­er artists, and… book descrip­tion writ­ers! It was there where I dis­cov­ered Bryan Cohen from Best Page For­ward. 

Bryan sure sounds like he can sell stuff, and from what I’ve read, his book descrip­tions deliv­er results. I usu­al­ly approach ser­vices that sound too good to be true with cau­tion, so I ran a quick Google search on him.

After some dig­ging, I stum­bled upon this interview/workshop video on YouTube where Bryan com­ments on the indus­try, the process of writ­ing an effec­tive book descrip­tion, and book mar­ket­ing. From hear­ing him talk, it was clear to me that he knows his stuff very well. I fig­ured it couldn’t hurt to at least reach out to him for more information.

At the time of writ­ing, Bryan’s price tag is $297. This includes one book descrip­tion and an addi­tion­al ten descrip­tions I can use for ads. Com­pared to edit­ing and cov­er design costs, this amount seems rea­son­able for such an impor­tant element.

Making up my mind

I could spend more time look­ing for oth­er book descrip­tion writ­ers, but:

  • I haven’t found any­thing but good com­ments on Bryan, and I know he can do the job well.
  • It’s been a long road get­ting to this point, and I’m eager to final­ly see my book on the shelves.

With that said, I’m plan­ning to book Bryan in the com­ing days and come back to share our results!

With my book descrip­tion writer in place, I’ve final­ly round­ed out my self-pub­lish­ing crew. I’m hop­ing for the best as back­fill­ing any of these roles (the book edi­tor, the cov­er artist, and the book descrip­tion writer) would be painful. Any­ways, I’m off to update my ini­tial, very opti­mistic budget.

Stay tuned for the next entry in this series on self-pub­lish­ing my novel!

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Finding a Book Editor for a (Potential) Bestseller

This entry is part [part not set] of 8 in the series Pub­lish­ing Goliath Fallen

So far in my series on pub­lish­ing GOLIATH FALLEN, I’ve cov­ered my bud­get­ing process and how I plan to get my book cov­er designed. Now, the time has come to find my bat­tle buddy—the book edi­tor. Find­ing an artist for my cov­er was­n’t an easy task; it required me to hone my vision and fig­ure out exact­ly what I need­ed. After fum­bling my way through Reedsy and talk­ing with lots of peo­ple for days on end, I final­ly found a great design­er to move for­ward with. As expect­ed, find­ing an edi­tor did­n’t get one bit eas­i­er. This is the per­son who will dis­sect my draft and help me (hope­ful­ly) craft a best­seller, so it was crit­i­cal I find the right person.

The writer and the book editor, like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
“There is no book so bad… that it does not have some­thing good in it.” — uniron­i­cal­ly, Don Quixote

I have a few things to con­sid­er before set­tling on a book editor:

  • I suf­fer from impos­tor syn­drome — My man­u­script has its flaws, but it has received praise from its beta read­ers. Still, it’s irra­tional­ly hard for me to con­vince myself that it’s good enough in its cur­rent form. 
  • I’m a non-native Eng­lish speak­er writ­ing a sci­ence-fic­tion epic in Eng­lish — My beta read­ers have point­ed out plen­ty of pas­sages that either read awk­ward­ly or just out right don’t make sense. I need to ensure these kinks are ironed out. 
  • I’m writ­ing sci­ence fic­tion — My man­u­script leans a bit heavy into physics, engi­neer­ing, mea­sure­ments, and oth­er sub­jects that are spe­cif­ic to the genre. I want to make sure this lan­guage is acces­si­ble to casu­al readers.
  • I’m a per­fec­tion­ist — It’s cliché for an author, but it’s true. I have a high stan­dard for qual­i­ty, and I refuse to set­tle for less.

These are the chal­lenges I’m look­ing to over­come with the aid of a tal­ent­ed book edi­tor. I need some­one to help me set­tle my inse­cu­ri­ties, tight­en up my writ­ing, and erase the awk­ward­ness. How­ev­er, such a thor­ough, pre­mi­um book edit­ing ser­vice sounds like it will sure­ly drain my bank account (insert cash reg­is­ter sound effects here).

Figuring out my needs (again)

Book edit­ing involves mul­ti­ple phas­es, each with its own spe­cif­ic set of tasks. I turned to Google to fig­ure out what a typ­i­cal edit­ing process entails, which helped me under­stand what I actu­al­ly need from a book edi­tor (to the best of my knowledge):

  • Devel­op­men­tal edit­ing — Dur­ing this phase, the edi­tor reads the entire book address­ing struc­tur­al ele­ments like plot, nar­ra­tive, char­ac­ters, pace, etc. They dis­sect the sto­ry, break it down, and put it back togeth­er into some­thing that actu­al­ly makes sense. Devel­op­men­tal edit­ing is rec­om­mend­ed if you’re not entire­ly sure of your sto­ry or if you haven’t received enough feed­back yet.
  • Copy edit­ing — The edi­tor goes through the book revis­ing sen­tences, vocab­u­lary, syn­tax, and gram­mar to ensure every­thing is styl­is­ti­cal­ly sound. This is the awk­ward­ness eraser.
  • Proof­read­ing — Once every­thing is said and done, the edi­tor reads the whole thing one last time to check that noth­ing has been left out and that it’s ready for publishing.

Whether each of these phas­es is required or not depends on the project. Con­sid­er­ing the list of chal­lenges and needs men­tioned above, GOLIATH FALLEN requires the whole she­bang, which means I can expect to spend around $0.06 per word. Giv­en that Goliath Fall­en is 92,500 words, that would trans­late to $5,500 in edit­ing costs.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, that’s way out of my bud­get. Not los­ing hope, I paid anoth­er vis­it to Reedsy, a free­lanc­ing plat­form for self-pub­lished authors.  I found the tal­ent­ed Ale­jan­dro Coluc­ci there for my book cov­er, and I thought I would try my luck again to find a qual­i­fied book edi­tor as well. Quotes for a nov­el of my length ranged between $600 and $1,200, and, in some cas­es, includ­ed devel­op­men­tal feed­back in the form of inline com­ments. This price was bet­ter than I expect­ed, but I wasn’t real­ly feel­ing it. Also, I real­ized it’s cru­cial to search for an edi­tor who spe­cial­izes in the genre of my book. This is espe­cial­ly true in sci­ence fic­tion, where the edi­tor should be able to com­ment on any incon­sis­ten­cies in world­build­ing and the sci­ence itself. With this in mind, I nar­rowed my search to only sci­ence-fic­tion editors.

Finding my book editor

I found some real­ly good options on Reedsy and oth­er free­lancer plat­forms, but it was Philip Athans who real­ly caught my atten­tion. His track record as an edi­tor and writer is impres­sive, from work­ing with sci-fi heavy­weights like R.A Sal­va­tore as man­ag­ing edi­tor at Wiz­ards of the Coast to writ­ing a best­seller nov­el that’s set in the D&D uni­verse. Need­less to say, a new­bie like me could ben­e­fit from his spe­cif­ic experience.

His edit­ing process sound­ed very col­lab­o­ra­tive and includes devel­op­men­tal edit­ing, copy edit­ing, a Skype call, help with a query let­ter (if required), and oth­er addi­tion­al materials—all for only $0.03 a word. Quite a bar­gain if you ask me!

I’m a strong believ­er that things need to “feel right,” and since I first con­tact­ed Philip, it has indeed felt right. He was very nice, pro­fes­sion­al, and patient, and he took the time to answer all my ques­tions (like with my cov­er artist). I request­ed a sam­ple edit, and it was very thor­ough with all his sug­ges­tions hit­ting on the spot. I took some time to con­sid­er his offer, since, after all, it’s a good chunk of cash. But, in the end, it “felt right,” so I end­ed up hir­ing him. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, his sched­ule was pret­ty jam-packed until the end of 2021, but hey, Goliath Fall­en has been in the works for over six years; it can wait a few more months. And actu­al­ly, the tim­ing will work out bet­ter that way. I’m still wait­ing for feed­back from my cri­tique part­ners at New York City Writer’s Cri­tique Group, and I will need time to incor­po­rate their sug­ges­tions and give my draft one last pass before it’s ready for my editor.

Alright, so that’s one less thing to wor­ry about. Next up, I need to find a stel­lar blurb writer. Stay tuned for updates on the book edit­ing process as it unfolds.

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The Hunt for a Wicked Book Cover

This entry is part [part not set] of 8 in the series Pub­lish­ing Goliath Fallen

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:

Goliath Fallen's current book cover

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:

Alejandro Colucci's mind-numbing art

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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Budgeting for my Self-published Book (First Try)

This entry is part [part not set] of 8 in the series Pub­lish­ing Goliath Fallen

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.

Huell Babineaux
“I got­ta do it, man” — Huell Babineaux, Break­ing Bad

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:

Ser­vice
Rate
Copy edit­ing
$2,750 — $5,500
Cov­er design
$350 — $800
Blurb
$350
Total
$3,900 — $6,300

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.

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Self-publishing my Debut Novel Just for the Thrills

This entry is part [part not set] of 8 in the series Pub­lish­ing Goliath Fallen

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.

Self-publishing my debut novel cover.

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.

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