Punk Publishing

Table of Contents

About the Authors

Dedication

Unacknowledgements

About this book

Intro One! Two! Three!

The punk revolution

So when do I become a Kindle millionaire?

The Publishing Con, or how traditional publishing turned writers into serfs

What about small press publishing?

How Amazon freed authors from serfdom

Doing it yourself and the long haul

But I just want to publish one book.

How Andy found his touchstone:

When David met Andy:

Never mind the bollocks Or how traditional publishing became vanity publishing

But surely it’s the self-publishers who are vanity publishing?

How the corporate vanity publishers get your money

Who are the respectable publishers who now run vanity imprints?

How can I spot the vanity publishers?

15 Stupid Reasons Why Self-Publishing is Wrong

1. No one buys anything on the internet

2. No one buys ebooks. They prefer real books

3. If you self-publish, you’ll only sell to your family and Facebook friends

4. There aren’t enough people in the world to buy the books of everyone who wants to be a writer

5. If your writing was any good, you’d be published by a proper publisher. So there.

6. You’ll still make more money getting a publishing deal over self-publishing

7. Self-publishing is career suicide!

8. Self-publishing is only a means to getting a ‘proper’ publishing deal

9. It’s better to wait for a real publishing deal, rather than rush to print with self-published crap

10. But publishing a book does not make you a ‘published’ author. It just doesn’t!

11. But if we let anyone publish a book, culture will collapse and the entire human race will be dumbed down and we’ll all be eaten by rabid zombie dogs!

12. E-reader sales are down. People are going back to real books

13. Ebook sales have plateaued

14. You’ll never win an award

15. You should write for art and not for commerce

Three chords can bring down The Man

What punk means to Andy

What punk means to David

Wannabes and the tidal wave of crap

Let’s talk about disintermediation

How punk changed the music business

Digital killed the vinyl star

How Kodak lost the photography industry

How YouTube democratised the film industry

Did Amazon take over publishing?

How to form a band publishing house

Word-Processor

...and our Word template

Ebook creator

Cover Design

Your publishing accounts

Smashwords

Draft2Digital

Backing up

The Band

The Tracks

Recording How to Format in Word

How to use our Punk Publisher Word template

A word on Styles

Colour

The three chords: Normal, First and Heading

The first paragraph

Save As and start writing...

David’s formatting pep talk

A word on fonts

A little problem with text breaks

Images in your book

No tabs

Two spaces or one?

Double or ‘Single’ quotes

Ellipsis

Dashes

Hyphens

House Style

But don’t publish and be damned just yet…

Going Digital ebooks

Paperbacks versus ebooks

Which comes first: paperback or ebook?

Images: the paperback page and the ebook page

How to prepare your Word file for ebook

Ebook structure: track lists are different on live albums

Judging your book by its cover

… But you can DIY too

A book cover is a button

Ebook Covers versus Paperbacks

Design with GIMP or Photoshop Elements

The really easy way to generate your first book cover

Download a Createspace template file

Creating a book cover

Your template layer

Finished Cover

Create your ebook cover

Sleeve Notes categories and keywords

Metadata

Publisher

What are categories?

What are keywords?

An online bookstore is not a bookstore

Kill Those Trees! Paperbacks through POD

Print on Demand

Stop the press

Paperback Writer

The trim size

Pages

Page count

Odd and Even Pages

Matter

The Front Matter

Reader comments pages (optional)

About the Author page

Also By the author page (optional)

Title + Publisher page

Copyright Notice page

Dedication page (optional)

Acknowledgements (optional)

Contents page (optional)

Author/Introductory Note page (optional)

What Matters: The actual novel

Headers, footers, odd and even

The Back Matter

The thank you page (optional)

A glossary or index (optional)

More Also By pages (optional)

A Coming Soon page (optional)

Photos

ISBN numbers

The Createspace Dashboard

Uploading your interior file

Uploading your paperback cover

File Review

Proof

Author copies

The Createspace Forum

Createspace: top ten questions

Other print options

ISBN

Comparisons

So which printer to choose?

Will my Createspace book end up in bookstores?

Another reason not to choose Expanded Distribution with Createspace

Summary

The Easy 3-Chord Guide to Making An Ebook

Why can’t Word create an ebook file for me?

Just how hard is it to format an ebook?

How to make an ebook in three chords

Now check your ebook

Wait, is that all there is to it?

Using Calibre

Now check your ebook

Another way to use Calibre

Or try it with Draft2Digital

Some other easy options for ebook formatting

Scrivener

Jutoh

Sigil

Vellum

Kindle Create

Ebook Publishing Getting a gig

KDP – Kindle Direct Publishing

But first, do you want to go with KDP Select?

Create a New Book

Page 1: Kindle eBook Details

Page 2: Kindle eBook Content

Page 3: Kindle eBook Pricing

Ebook Aggregators (Draft2Digital and Smashwords)

Draft2Digital

Smashwords

Royalties

So, three chords…

Outro

Bonus Tracks

Library Deposit Copy

Copyright

Tax: one for you, nineteen for me

US tax for non-US authors

Expenses: keep those receipts

Why you shouldn’t give up the day job

Winning the lottery

Our Website

Further reading

Acknowledgements

Appendix 1: DIY Word template

Normal and First Paragraphs

The first paragraph

Chapters and subchapters

Everything Else

Advanced Users: Notes and Contents

Interim pages

Hide the page number with a box

Running headers

Appendix 2: Seek-and-Destroy, Search-and-Replace

White space

Quotes

Dashes

Appendix 3: Using HTML to make ebooks

Appendix 4: Create your own cover template

A little bit more about the authors

Copyright Notice

About the Authors

Andy Conway is a screenwriter and the author of the Touchstone historical fantasy series. He runs a publishing empire from a loft in Birmingham and grew up wishing he had been old enough to see the Sex Pistols. His first gig was Skids at Digbeth Civic Hall in 1979. Read more at andyconway.net

David Wake used to hang out with the punks at Strobe Records in Liverpool and his first punk gig was Stiff Little Fingers. He’s written near-future SF novels and the Derring-Do Club steampunk adventure series. He played rhythm guitar and wrote songs in The Void, who were once world famous in Formby. Read more at davidwake.com

And read even more at newstreetauthors.com and punkpublishers.com

Dedication

To every writer,

who can now be new, street and an author.

And their readers,

who won’t know what’s about to hit ’em.

Unacknowledgements

No thanks to all those agents and editors, all those publishers, whose job it was to discover talent and who preferred their cosy, rose-tinted, white wine-slewed world of gatekeeping.

Our hearts go out to all those brilliant writers crushed by traditional publishing and excluded from the reading public simply because they were born before the indie revolution.

You don’t have to be in that group. No-one has to.

Long live the revolution!

About this book

A no-holds-barred romp through the world of indie publishing, delivered in three easy chords...

Self-publishing authors have taken over the book world. The revolution is happening and more writers today earn a living by self-publishing than through traditional publishing.

Punk Publishing not only takes you through the new digital landscape, it’s also a DIY guide for any writer planning to go indie.

Andy and David – who’ve published over 40 books – show you the easy way to turn your writing into an ebook, how to make paperbacks, how to design your own book covers and set up global distribution at the touch of a button. All for free!

With each lesson delivered in three simple ‘chords’, this explosive book tells you the most simple, cheap and direct way to become a publisher, with a DIY punk ethic at its heart.

INTRO

One! Two! Three!

If you’re an ‘unpublished’ writer it is not only easy, affordable and respectable to publish your own work; it is the very best route that you can take in the digital age to make a name for yourself.

It is the equivalent of dragging your little rock band around the pubs and clubs until you’re established enough to have girls screaming at the back door to steal clutches of your hair as a souvenir.

HAYLEY SHERMAN, DITCH THE PUBLISHER [2012]

The punk revolution

In January 1977, a little-known punk fanzine called Sideburns published the now famous Three chords – Now form a band image you see on the previous page.

What has this got to do with self-publishing?

Well, we’re going to teach you how to be a Punk Publisher, so we’re going to use that three-chord concept throughout by breaking each stage into three simple rules.

Above all, as with punk music, we want to present the most simple and direct way of becoming a publisher. And we’ll be using the DIY punk ethic every step of the way.

This guide is suitable for writers who are planning to go indie, whether that’s with a series of novels, or equally, the one-off writer who just has that one book they want to get out there.

You’re hopefully the kind of person who doesn’t need justification from anyone else. You’re sure about what you produce, the strengths and the limits of your talent, and you want to know a quick and easy way to publish your writing.

You don’t need anything but this book, and the gumption to do it.

So when do I become a Kindle millionaire?

If you’ve read some bullshit article in a magazine about how you can become a millionaire from self-publishing, then this book is probably not for you.

Yes, it’s possible to become a millionaire from self-publishing, and maybe you’re the one who’ll strike oil, the stars will align and you’ll be writing your second book on your yacht, but to be honest, it’s unlikely.

And if you’re all about ‘making a million’ you’re probably not the kind of person who will put in the hard work you need to put in to make a living out of writing.

In Andy Conway’s foul-mouthed football fan novel, The Striker’s Fear of the Open Goal, he put in a comic scene where the hero, a frustrated writer who has always been poor and unpublished, is told about the new dawn of self-publishing:

–You should do that ebook thing everyone’s talking about.

–What’s that?

–Amazon opened their ebook store so anyone can publish. Over a year ago, I think. Loads of writers have been putting out their work and making a living off it.

–A living?

–Uh huh.

–Did you say a living? From writing?

–I know. World’s gone crazy.

–Are you sure about this?

–You need to get online and take a look. Tons of mid-list authors making a living by putting up their books and selling them direct to the reader. No agents, no publishers.

–Because it would be a very cruel joke if you’re shitting me.

ANDY CONWAY. THE STRIKER’S FEAR OF THE OPEN GOAL.

The Publishing Con, or how traditional publishing turned writers into serfs

You see, we believe that this is what it’s really all about. Self-publishing gives writers the opportunity to make a living from their writing. Maybe not a fortune, but a living (or a second living, or even just beer money). And that is a revolution, because it’s something the traditional publishing industry has failed to do.

What are you talking about? you ask. Writers make mega-bucks off big money publishing contracts and sleep on mattresses stuffed with banknotes.

It’s a common misconception that authors who have the privilege of ‘being published’, not only make a living, but are stinking rich.

And ‘being published’ is the only way.

This is the Publishing Con.

But on creative writing courses around the world, lecturers (who are always authors who don’t earn a living wage from their publishers) are told the importance of ‘managing student expectations’. They have to tell those eager students that they will probably never make a living as a published author; that most first novel advances are south of $5,000; and that they should never, ever, ever give up the day job.

There’s no career structure either since the traditional publishers disposed of their ‘midlist’. Here authors could make a reasonable amount while building their readership, mastering their craft and gradually climbing the ladder of success. No longer. If the first book doesn’t sell well (i.e. anything other than setting the world on fire), forget it.

With less product arriving, and lower sales, bookshops have diversified away from actual books. They’ve kept the best-sellers, of course, so it’s the mid-list authors that have been hit once more. It’s become, like so many things, a huge lottery win of incredible success or… nothing: Hollywood actors paid millions versus desperate actors working as temps; Britain’s Got X-Factor Voice manufactured success versus musicians who gig with their mates; Dan JK EL James Pattersham versus people who wallpaper their houses with rejection letters.

That’s the harsh reality of the publishing world.

Publishing is, in fact, an industry that offers good rates of pay for everyone connected with the production of books – except the author (and, let’s be honest, those unpaid interns).

This is the scandal of publishing.

This is the Publishing Con.

In America, the Authors Guild, an organisation notorious for representing the interests of publishers rather than writers, and whose members are almost entirely traditionally published, recently announced: the majority of authors would be living below the Federal Poverty Level if they relied solely on income from their writing.

A recent article in the Irish Times went where most of the British and US press have failed to go and spelt it out in plain words:

In 2014-15 the British and Irish publishing industry turnover was £4.6 billion, up from £3 billion in 2013. Against this apparent boom the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society warns that authors’ incomes have collapsed. The median income of established professional authors is £11,000, down 29 per cent since 2005. But the typical median income of all writers is less than £4,000 and declining yearly. Output of books is rising steadily: 185,000 releases this year in the UK and Ireland. The writer’s share of this benison is about 2.8 per cent – that’s 28 cents on a €10 book.

The disparity between a seemingly buoyant industry and third-world income-streams for those generating the product is deeply puzzling, concerning, appalling, actually.

FIONA O’CONNOR, THE IRISH TIMES. [21-JUL-2015]

Fat-cat publishers raking in super-profits. Serf authors shelf-stacking in Tesco on the minimum wage. And the gap getting wider and wider every day.

That’s pretty damning.

That’s the Publishing Con.

What about small press publishing?

There is small press publishing, of course. David was involved with Beccon Publications, who produced a thousand hardback copies of The Drabble Project (1988). He knows there were a thousand, because he personally hand-numbered them and had the hand cramp to prove it. But that ended up with boxes of books in the publisher’s hall, on his stairs, the landing and everywhere.

A little while later, David met a well-known SF author, who had just been published by a big publisher. They’d printed 750 copies, it had sold out, so the big publisher decided to leave it at that.

What!?

How can, David thought, three blokes who met in a pub rival the likes of the big publishers? They shouldn’t have even been in the same league division. It was like forming a school band, doing a gig in a church hall and then discovering, years later, that you’d made more money than a famous rock band’s massive Wembley stadium show.

You see, The Drabble Project sold out. It was a niche book hawked around conventions and needed a few years to do so, but it out-competed the big boys. It was a risk, though. Beccon Publications might still be tripping over boxes stacked in the hall if it hadn’t sold a single copy.

When you look at it closely, small press publishing is really self-publishing by an individual who was somehow believed when they said, Actually, I’m a publisher, so they were accepted as a junior gatekeeper.

But now authors no longer need to grovel to the big boys or the small presses.

It’s all changed.

Both the means of production (the manufacture of the books) and the means of distribution (selling to readers) have been democratised.

The revolution has happened.

And in the case of manufacture, the revolution has happened in a way that could never have been foreseen. Books have gone digital. Ebooks mean that a book can be distributed for nothing and in the blink of an eye.

Even if you prefer to publish real dead tree paperback books rather than ebooks, you still don’t have to order and pay for the stock in advance, thanks to the miracle of Print On Demand (see Chapter 10, Kill Those Trees! Paperbacks through POD).

How Amazon freed authors from serfdom

It all changed on the day that those unlikely revolutionaries at Amazon opened the Kindle Direct Publishing store to everyone and placed their books on an equal footing with the publishing corporations.

At a stroke, it democratised publishing and allowed any writer, anywhere in the world, to compete on equal terms with the corporate media giants like the Big Five.

That’s the Hachette Book Group (a subsidiary of Time Warner), HarperCollins (a subsidiary of NewsCorp), Macmillan Publishers (a subsidiary of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group), Penguin Random House (a subsidiary of Pearson and Bertelsmann), and Simon & Schuster (a subsidiary of CBS Corporation).

Amazon also created a gigantic upsurge in books for voracious readers who were being ill-served by the publishing corporations, who saw it as their job to restrict the flow of books to readers so they could charge a premium.

Amazon’s philosophy was the opposite: more writers writing more books for more readers at lower prices with better financial terms for the content creators.

That’s the writers, in case you’d forgotten.

So, if you buy a book published by one of the Big Five publishing corporations in the world, the author is supposed to receive about 17% of the money you paid.

And to have been published, they’ll have an agent, who’ll take 10-15% of that.

If you buy a book by a self-publishing author, Amazon will keep 30% of the price for itself and