An Adventure In Self-Publishing - POST #9

June 8, 2014

At this point, if you've been following my progress, you already know I've soft-released Bloodridge, Book 1 of the Spies Lie series. I've received a few reviews and some sales, but despite my efforts and those of my publicist, this is slower than I'd hoped. There is some acceleration, and that's good. My total cost for Bloodridge (copyedit, cover design and formatting) was about $3,000 to do it with the best people out there.

DeathByte, Book 2 is at the formatter and I've just finished reviewing every word in the PDF they sent me. It's back for a bit of rework, and then they'll craft the ebook versions. The covers, for the ebook and the paper version, look amazing, just as they did for Bloodridge. I've completed paying for it all, but my own work and that of the formatter isn't yet finished. Total cost (not including publicity): $3,000.

Swiftshadow, Book 3, is the final story I will release this summer. So far, the only thing complete is the ebook cover. Copy editing is now underway. Of the total cost of about $3,000, so far, I've been invoiced nothing, but the payments will become due very soon.

I did it this way, because I'm paying for publicity one time for three books, with publicity bleed-through, so every book benefits from each Tweet and Facebook post. My publicist gets paid by the hour and her job is to elevate the discoverability of me first, and my books second. So doing three at once saves me time and money, and is far more effective. To understand how this works for me, examine Metzger's Law: Basically, one point in a large pool gets very little attention, but as you add points, the amount of attention you draw to them increases geometrically. Three books by one author gets nine times the attention of one book, with each book getting three times its visibility.

I'll have a publication party at the Cima Collina Winery in Carmel Valley in August for the three books, and book signings at local bookstores (not yet confirmed).

Within two weeks, I'll have Bloodridge in hard release, DeathByte in soft-launch, and Swiftshadow paid off and near completion. It's been an expensive trip and I'm not sure if there will be a pay-off for all the hard work