A friend who was signed by the same publisher as I was, K.R. Paul, recently wrote a blog on the complete process of going through contract termination, and the options of moving forward: traditionally and self-publishing.
Below is an excerpt from the blog that covers self-publishing.
I’m following the steps outlined AND putting Shadow Tier 2nd Edition and Shadow Sanction 2nd Edition back online for KDP and paperback and having book #3 edited to publish in 2024.
Self-Publishing
Congratulations on picking the hardest option! Just kidding, marketing yourself to publishers and facing rejection is equally rough. The self-publishing route arguably has more steps because you will want to do a lot of administrative business actions before self-publishing. While these steps aren’t 100% necessary, I highly recommend you do them as several will grant you additional legitimacy when selling your own works.
Start saving now: self-publishing is inherently expensive as the entire financial burden falls on the author. Where your publisher can be on the hook for cover art, editing, and marketing, the self-published author will pay for this all out of their own pockets. The good side, however, is that all profits are yours! At the end of this section, I’ll give a breakdown of my costs so far and what I felt was a need versus a want.
Limited Liability Corporation (LLC): An LLC allows you to operate as a business, even if you don’t have a brick-and-mortar storefront. This is your point of access to business checking and credit card accounts. It will also mean your business can apply for loans and grants that you, an individual, may not be able to access. I also used mine as a layer of protection from nosey followers. My LLC is registered to a Post Office box which keeps me from having my home address publicly available. Finally, I used my LLC name as my “imprint name” when registering my ISBNs.
PO Box: Get a small one, ignore the first two pieces of scam mail that say your business has to put up big expensive posters. Check it when you think there is mail inbound and otherwise ignore it
Cool name: All businesses need a name. Pick one that is cool, interesting, and unique. Please, please, please Google your names first to make sure you would be the top hit for that name. Don’t pick the LLC equivalent of “John Smith!” Also, check social media to ensure you would be unique on most social media platforms. Nothing sucks more than finding out there are seven other “Athena Strategies LLC” in the USA and you’ll never get that Instagram handle!
Lock down the name: email addresses, website domains, social media, etc. Get the name before you register the LLC so no one snipes it out from under you!
Logo: once you have the LLC filed and approved, get a logo that relates to your new business.
ISBNs: Your work will likely have had an ISBN associated with its first publishing. Unfortunately, you are going to want to get new ISBNs to help readers differentiate your work from the one your publisher printed. Even more unfortunately, you need one per format (paperback, hardcover, or e-book) and they aren’t cheap. One ISBN on Bowker (the US source for ISBNs) is currently $125 each. So if you, like me, need four (two novels with two formats each) you can either buy four for $500 or bite the bullet, accept you publish more and buy the ten-pack for $295.
Who doesn’t need ISBNs: if you intend to publish exclusively on Amazon through KDP, they will supply you with free ISBNs. No need to sink hundreds of dollars into an ISBN you can get for free
Who needs ISBNs: if you intend to publish anywhere other than Amazon, you will need an ISBN for your work. Example: If you want to sell books on consignment at our local bookstore and want them printed through IngramSpark then you need that ISBN.
Rights Reversion Memo: If you have been let go, like KR Paul and I were, this is quite possibly the most important part of the process. You must, MUST be able to show that you own your copyright and have the right to republish your works. If you do not have the right reversion memo available you will wait nearly two weeks if not more. It will be 24 to 72 hours until KDP checks your work and gets back to you (assuming you don’t have minor cover and content issues to correct). KDP will, in the course of their checks, realize our works have previously been published and ask you to prove that you, in fact, have the legal right to publish your works. It is the true double-edged sword: I am glad they do their due diligence to check that no one steals my original works and uses them, but it is highly inconvenient to have to dance back and forth with KDP, my publisher, and then the waiting game with my inbox.
Timing: Ideally you want all of your parts and pieces input and the book to be “In Review” 24 to 72 hours before your publisher takes down their version of the book. I had planned to have these up on New Year’s Eve knowing that my publisher would have their version down on New Year’s Day (yes a planned two day gap). I did not factor in the timeline for the rights reversion memo which led to a week long wait for the paperback version of Pantheon and Pantheon 2: Areas & Athena to be live on Amazon and almost two weeks for them to appear on Kindle Unlimited and as purchasable e-books. (That one was on me, I missed that there were two separate emails requesting a rights reversion memo… not one for each book, but one for each format, but looping in each book… yeah, I don’t get it either.)
Media: As with those following the traditional publishing track, you need to be prepared for marketing. Fortunately, as your book has been previously published, you should have some social media presence and marketing materials. I highly recommend that if you have altered any of your cover art, create new media for publishing day. Additionally, if you have a mailing list, let them know the new editions are coming! And if you don’t have a mailing list you need one ASAP.
The Self Publishing Cost Breakdown
Yes. Starting a business is expensive. I broke down my expenses into three categories.
Necessary to conduct business: the Post Office box, LLC filing fees, the lowest tier of paid website on WordPress, and the four pack of ISBNs. I suppose one could argue that the ISBNs aren’t “necessary” for business but since I intend to sell the books at local bookstores, I deemed them a “need” not a “want.”
Administrative: Canva and the Fivver charges are administrative costs. Canva is a paid subscription which allows me to create my own marketing images, saving me having to either make shitty ones in PowerPoint (it was hella funny though) or paying a sketchy “digital marketing expert” to make them. The Fivver logo was so I could create branded merchandise for which I owned the copyright.
Author expenses: This category is a blurred line between author and publisher costs. This covers convention applications, my author website, and merchandise to sell at conventions. Since I didn’t have much Author KR Paul merchandise to start, it all got lumped in the same account. Now that KRP Publishing is my main publisher, the finances will be clear in 2024.