Building your Self-Publishing Team

Setting your book up for self-publishing success

Violet and George's Colourful Day

When you start your self-publishing journey, it’s important to know that self-publishing doesn’t mean you have to do everything alone. If you want to- great! - but, different perspectives will help you to gain insight and learn along the way. It’s also important to know where to ask for help and where to learn new skills and challenge yourself, especially if you are looking for a way to cut down on self-publishing costs. In this post I am going to go through how to get yourself set up with your publishing “team” which includes, people, products and software as a service (SAAS).

Things to consider when building your publishing team roster:

• Vanity Publishers

• Writing Software

• Illustrators (if you are writing children’s books)

• Proof-readers & Beta Reader Team

Vanity Publishing

First things first, let’s talk about Vanity Publishers. Vanity Publishers are usually an offshoot of a traditional publisher that charge a fee to help you self-publish your book. If you don’t want to shop your book around to publishers and wait to see if it gets picked up but you want that full professional publishing experience, a Vanity Publishers is a great option. They cover things like proofreading, editing, illustration, cover design, assigning an ISBN and getting your book published on platforms like Amazon KDP, Ingram Spark and available to all major book retailers. You can also opt for marketing packages and get a personal dedicated team working on getting your book ready to publish and out into the world! It is truly a wonderful option if you have the funds to go that route but it is a pricy upfront cost. When I was doing my research, I saw packages that ranged anywhere from $1500.00 - $100,000.  That is a VERY wide range and the package offerings were just as varied. I will not go into all of that here but I was curious about this route so I set up a call with one of the Vanity Publishing companies to see what it was all about.

The man I talked to was very informative and while he was trying to make a sale, I learned a few key important pieces of information from talking to a professional in the field. As someone who publishes books for a living and works alongside a team of illustrators, proof-readers, editors and marketers he knew what the important things were to consider.

1. Know your audience

2. Build your author brand

3. Build a team you trust

4. Sometimes terrible books take off and amazing books flop

The first thing he touched on was knowing your audience. I was writing a children’s book and when writing a children’s book, you are writing for the children but targeting your marketing to parents, teachers and library’s. Children aren’t buying your book, they are enjoying the end product but you have to know what parents school and libraries are looking for in order to sell your book. That means whatever age group you choose to write for, make sure the theme is age appropriate. For example, I chose to write a book targeted to children ages 1-5 and the first book I wrote was about bedtime routine. The main characters were siblings and I wrote the book in rhyming limerick pattern to make for a fun reading and listening format, which also offering a thematic purpose for the story.  If I was writing a book for teens, or adults, both who you are writing to and marketing to are the same group. Either way you need to make sure you identify early who your audience is and how you can position it later on. This is often a challenge for writers, as writer love to wrote, not sell. But it’s important to the success for your book if you are self-publishing without a marketing team behind you.

The second thing he touched on was building your brand as an author. Building your personal brand as an author is an important part of the marketing process, as well as knowing your audience. Being a steady reliable author who stays in a specific lane and is predictable and creates content for one genre, or supports a specific cause, helps you to build a strong audience and following. When I started on this journey I wanted to create a series of books for kids so I created two reliable characters, a specific writing style and predictable end to the books.

The third thing I learned from speaking with him is in the traditional and vanity publishing world there is a large support team working to get that book finished and on the shelf. You have a project manager, an editor, proof-reader, illustrator and marketing team in place working together to guide that book from first draft to completion. This bit of information helped me understand what I would need to be my own project manager and take my book from draft to completion.

The fourth thing I learned was that even when you have an entire professional team behind you and you have an amazing book, sometime they just don’t take off. He told me he had seen some amazing books flop and some books he thought wouldn’t get any attention, take off. This told me two things, one, marketing is important, and two, temper your expectations.  

While I ultimately decided to self-publish on my own and build my own team, I found this a very helpful exercise to gut check myself and set up a formal plan for my path to publishing. If you are curious and want to explore this route, here is a list of Canadian Vanity Publishers to check out.

Writing Software

While not a person per-se, writing software can be a great resource as part of your publishing journey to keep thing organized. With my children’s books I didn’t find it as helpful, but in writing my novel it was absolutely necessary.

In writing my children’s books, Microsoft word was completely capable in handling my 300-400 word stories and I could easily are drafts with my proofreaders and beta readers in this format. For my novel, dealing with plot outlines, character development, and a 70,000 word manuscript, I needed something to keep my work organized and to easily be able to hop between chapters to make changes or reference things as I was writing.

The writing software I chose was called Scrivener, and I love it. It has useful outlines for different type of writing projects allows me to organize my notes, research, and documents for easy reference. From my initial research it seemed like the best option on the market for me, but if you are interested in looking at other software options check out this blog post at Kindlepreneur where he outlines a number of Scriverner alternatives.

Illustration

One thing that was important to me when creating these books was that the visual element brought my ideas to life in the best way possible. Just as casting in a movie is important to bring the characters to life, Illustrations are one of the most important parts of a children’s book. This are what help the reader to learn a lesson or show the feeling you want to invoke. When choosing the right illustrator for your book you must look for a illustrator who has three important qualities. The first quality is creative fit, the artist you choose must have a style that reflects the image you are looking for. You cannot just pick an artist and ask them to create your vision, you have to already be happy with the style of art they are naturally inclined to produce, otherwise you will become exhausted with the back and forth and never be satisfied with the product. Just as you are a writer and have your own writing style, an artist has theirs. I upped my original budget when choosing an illustrator for this reason and I am so happy with how the illustrations turned out.

The second quality is someone that is communicative and willing to work together. I used a gig site called Fivver to find my illustrator. It is reputable site that allows individual freelancers to find clients through a third-party site and vice versa. I felt comfortable going this route because I knew if anything went wrong, or the illustrator ghosted I would be able to get my money back. It also allowed me to see previous projects of theirs and their reviews and ratings from other writer they had worked with. This made me feel confident in my choice along with the fact that my initial conversation with her was pleasant and she replied quickly.

The third quality is to ensure the illustrator you use doesn’t use AI. The first reason for this is the obvious- you don’t want to pay someone for something they didn’t do. The second is the authenticity of the original product and the copyright issues.

For picture books, the illustrations really do make or break a book so make sure you take your time doing research and picking the best illustrator for your story.

Proofreaders and Beta Readers

The last part of your publishing team that you need to get together before publishing are your proofreaders and your beta readers. If you have friends or family who are in the industry, or in marketing and communications, these are probably great people to start with to ask for proofreading notes. Choose readers who are objective and ready to look through your work with a detailed eye, and aren’t afraid to offend you!

For your beta reader group, choose people in your target audience. For my children’s books, this meant I sent it to moms of young children and kindergarten teachers that I knew, to get feedback during all stages of the creation process. Getting feedback on the writing and illustration is important for picture books. This stage helped me fine tune the writing and illustrations before going through the publishing process.

My ultimate beta reader was my daughter, and when I could keep the attention of my 15-month-old and she asked for me to read it over and over, I knew I was good to go!

In my next post I will discuss publishing through Amazon KDP and print on demand, vs other publishing and print avenues.  

Violet and George’s Bedtime adventure and Violet and George’s Colourful Day are on sale now until Monday! Get your copies for Christmas now.