With the rise of digital technology, mainstream publishers became deluged with manuscripts. Today, more and more emerging writers are taking to self-publishing as a way of getting their work out there. Below is one writer’s journey into publishing with the UK Arts Council funded site Youwrite on. It’s a happy story.
Self-publishing with Youwriteon by guest blogger: Louise Forster
After 11 years I’ve finally cracked it, I’m published. Okay, not in the usual sense with an agent and publisher, but as a self-published writer. I’ll cut to the chase and give you the facts.
I published with YouWriteOn, a UK Arts funded site that anyone can join. Basically it works on a bartering system. You read someone’s work and, at random, someone reads yours. You receive reviews from cold readers who don’t know you. The down side is, sometimes you’ll get a reader who’s not familiar with your genre. Then you need to shrug and say to yourself, what the heck. Of course there are times when a reviewer will say, ‘I wouldn’t normally choose this genre and I almost deleted your piece, but I’m glad I didn’t because I really enjoyed it.’ Check them out at www.youwriteon.com. If the above doesn’t appeal to you, they also offer publishing without peer review at: www.FeedARead.com
Nearly 2 years ago I paid £58.99 (A$89.77). With this fee I’m published, and printed by Lightning Source, who have Print on Demand (POD) facilities all over the world, including Melbourne (important for me, as I’m in Australia). My book is beautifully presented in paperback, glossy cover, good quality paper and lovely, easy-to-read font. Recently I paid £34.94 for 6 of my books in hard copy; that comes to about A$5.50 per book, and that includes postage!
My book is available on as many online stores you can think of and some you wouldn’t know existed, like www.flipkart.com in India — I’m waiting for an Indian director to read FINDING VERONICA and love her so much he wants to turn it into a Bollywood movie! (Bring it on.)
INFO BELOW TAKEN FROM THE FeedARead SITE:
• It’s free to set-up your book for sale through FeedARead.com
• You set your own book price and royalty
• Full bookseller distribution service. You can also choose to make your book available via the major online outlets, including Amazon, and for major bookshops to order. The fees for this are as follows:
BOOKSELLER DISTRIBUTION SERVICE
UK Authors: £88
US Authors: $79
Australian Authors: $140
European Authors: E100
All other authors: £88 UK.
FeedARead’s distribution service places your book into the world’s most comprehensive distribution channel. With over 30,000 wholesalers, retailers and booksellers in over 100 countries your book will gain the maximum exposure possible in the market today. This includes your book being available to order through all of the following: Amazon and Barnes & Noble (US); Amazon, WHSmith and Waterstones (UK); Amazon Europe; and TheNile.com (Australia).
My book is also available on Kindle through Amazon. On 18 December I joined Amazon’s new program for Kindle users called Prime. It was a little scary, but looking into it, I discovered that subscribers to Prime pay $78.99 annually. This enables them to borrow 12 books per year from the Prime Kindle list. Why would readers want to go this library route when it actually costs more per book? It saves the reader from making PayPal transactions every time they want a new book. Amazon currently sets aside $500,000/month for distribution to authors. After the 90-day trial period, my book continues with Prime for another 90 days, and so on unless I inform them that I don’t want to continue. Every 90 days, I am given 5 days for promotion, during which your books are available for free, and I can choose the dates — which is most useful if you want to coordinate it with your local book launch and local PR. I had one on the 18th another on the 21st of December. (Normally, the ebook sells for $2.99; I receive 70% of this. )
Your share of the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL) Fund is calculated based on a share of the total number of qualified borrows of all participating KDP titles. For example, if the monthly fund amount is $500,000 and the total qualified borrows of all participating KDP titles is 100,000 in December and if your book was borrowed 1,500 times, you will earn 1.5% of $500,000 (1,500/100,000 = 1.5%); that is, $7,500 in December.
https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/KDPSelect
The sudden rise in sales happened AFTER I joined the KOLL. I believe that, had I not joined Prime, FINDING VERONICA would have been lost among the millions of books available. However to be fair, I have to say that I also began tweeting a few weeks ago as part of my PR program. Whether the suddden rise in my sales was due to twitter or to joining the KOLL, it’s simply too soon to know.
Whatever it is, it seems to be working!
Danielle de Valera 
Thanks Danielle, for inviting me to blog.
The process of of putting it together reminded me of what I’d managed to do…so far 🙂 There’s still so much to think about, especially the marketing.
Meanwhile the second book in the Finding series, is waiting for me to get to work on it.
You’re the first emerging writer I know who’s taken on this digiPOD journey. I applaud your courage. I feel like you’re carving a way through this scary forest that the rest of us will be able to learn from and follow in the future. On behalf of all those coming along behind, thanks! I’m fascinated to see how it all turns out – at least you’re doing all the right things and using social media to promote the book – good for you! Danielle.
This is interesting. I know more mainstream writers are slowly switching over to self-publishing. Either because they are moving with the times or because they are so big they don’t need the middle man anymore, regardless I see self-publishing growing to a pretty respectable size but I don’t know if it will ever overthrow the industry – which isn’t on point.
It does warm my heart to hear of people accomplishing their goals and being successful through self-publishing.
And thank you for listing your sales/stats. This makes it easier for others to gauge the waters before jumping in. Not too many people are willing to share that information, understandably so, but it helps the rest of us out when a few do.
Frank, thanks on Louise’s behalf for liking her blog (above).
We have more news on Amazon, however, and it’s not good.
Please have a look at a blog on Smashwords entitled: Amazon shows predatory spots with kdp, and pass the info on to ANYONE you know who might be thinking of self-publishig. As the song says, “It’s a jungle out there.”
blog.smashwords.com/2011/12/amazon-shows-predatory-spots-with-kdp.html
Thanks, Danielle
Danielle, this is late, but Googling YouWriteOn took me back here. Louise seems to be confused about Amazon’s programs. Prime is for readers. In order to offer your books to Prime readers, you have to sign up for KDP Select, which means your book can’t be listed anywhere else during the 90 day period. And even though being borrowed 1,500 times sounds good, that happens almost exclusively for well-known writers. The average unknown is unlikely to make more than a few dollars, if that.