Finagling Finance
When you're self-publishing, you have to wear two hats. You can't publish it until you write it. Too often we forget that this is two separate, but dependent, activities.
The writing part is cheap. You don't need much to write. You can write with a pen and pile of paper, but the follow-on steps needed to get it transcribed into a more useful form can be expensive in terms of time and money.
A low end computer and some free software works until you want to spend more. Once you have the basic tools, you're set unless the machine breaks. You don't even need an internet connection to write. Having one can be a hinderance.
It's what happens after having written that things begin to come with price tags.
First, you need a place to call your own on the internet. Think of it as the virtual home you can always go back to. A place where you can invite your friends, if you need to.
It doesn't need to be complicated. It should probably be cheap, although not free. Free services come with hidden prices and rules you don't control. Personally, I buy hosting services from one of the many web providers and use free blogging software to manage the content. It's pretty cheap on an annual basis when I pay for a year at a time.
To make it work, you'll need an address. If at all possible, use the name you'll be writing under. Avoid the temptation to use the book you're writing as the foundation of your address. I made that mistake but didn't realize the problem until I wrote the second book. It only got worse when I hopped niches and I realized I needed an umbrella address to cover all the different works. By then a cyber-squatter in Australia had camped on my name. It took me five years to get it back.
You want it to be the anchor for your social presence. It's what should show up if somebody searches for your name and maybe the keyword author. It's where a fan can get a contract address to send you fan mail. It's where you can tell them what you're working on, maybe what you're reading.
Your website becomes your face in the world.
Second, you'll need an email list service. These come and go. The cheapest ones don't offer much beyond a place for people to sign up and for you to send messages. They all come with some kind of sign-up widget that you can put on your website so fans who find you can sign up.
In the beginning, that's enough.
Eventually you'll want to have an automated on-boarding process to welcome new subscribers. Welcoming them each individually gets old fast, and you need them to feel welcome. Even a series of automated messages can make a big difference in the quality of the list. Since you're paying for it, you should get as much value out of it as you can.
How deep in the weeds you get with this really depends on you, how much you're willing to spend, and how much you're willing to do.
The Caveat: The only direct link you'll have with your audience depends on the email addresses you collect.
Should bad come to worst, your list lets you tell your audience what's going on and how they can support you.
Those fixed expenses – registering your address, web hosting, email service – might cost $10-15 a month. They're the foundation I believe every serious writer needs as soon as they start thinking they want to share their writing outside of a close circle of friends. Once you start thinking of a wider audience, you're dealing with the public – with publishing. For that, you will need to cover these expenses on a monthly basis.
Once you move out of hobbyist and into side-hustle, you'll want to incur a few other expenses.
Register a business with your state. It seems like overkill but doing it early saves a lot of hassle and gives you the information you need to take to the bank.
That's the next thing. Open a business account with a local bank. You need the state registration number for that. Work with your local banker. They're quite happy to help you, even as a beginning entrepreneur.
Use that account for all your writing business. You may need to put some money into it to cover minimum balances and give you a cushion until revenue starts coming in. Give that account information to the various sites you sell on so they can deposit your revenue.
Don't make the mistake I did and use your household account. I spent years trying to untangle business money from personal money before I realized how much easier it was to just have two accounts. Yeah, it costs a little in cash, but pays big dividends in peace-of-mind and hassle when it comes to taxes.
Actual publication costs cash and no small amount of time.
Editing should be your biggest cash expense. The three main types of editor self-publishers deal with are development, copy or line, and proofreaders.
Development editors look at your story. They'll focus on the basic building blocks of the story – plot, character, setting – and suggest ways to make your story better.
Copy or line editors look at the text. They'll figure out if the words on the page say what you think they say. What looks perfectly logical to the writer isn't always perfect or logical.
Proofreaders will find most of the typos and homophones. They'll straighten out the words so they're the correct word spelled correctly.
I use a copy editor, exclusively. My earliest writing is sloppy and bloated. I like to think I got better. Typos escape into publication even today. You can never prove there are none. You can only prove there's at least one – by finding it, usually after the book appears in the store. My readers are encouraged to point them out when they find them.
Would a development editor and proofreader help? Probably, but I'm happy with the quality I'm delivering now. Adding additional time and money to my production cycle would be expensive.
You do you. It's your name on the cover, so do what you believe in. It'll make it easier to accept when it doesn't work.
Covers will be the next big expense. I've written about this before. New authors should buy pre-mades until the writing revenue can support something better. Surgeons don't operate on family. Authors shouldn't design their own covers.
It's a bias I have, but it comes from a) doing them myself in the beginning and b) not listening when people suggested I shouldn't. Nothing teaches a lesson better than bitter experience.
That's it. That's what I believe you should spend money on.
Editing is the biggest bite to chew. You can do things like pass it around to a few friends, but they're not going to be as good as a professional editor. For a first book, it might be good enough.
Unless you've the the knowledge, aptitude, and skills specifically for cover design, pre-mades will almost always be better than what you'd do yourself.
Before you look down at “good enough,” remember that your first book will always be your weakest. Making it perfect means you'll never publish it. Never learn. There'll always be one more thing. And one more.
Put it out. Get closure. Think about it. Learn from it.
Make the next one better.