From Vanity Press to Self-Publishing by Susan Van Kirk

 

I’ve always believed experience is a great teacher, which is an unusual pronouncement from someone who has spent her life learning from and teaching about books. When I first began writing books, it was 2009, and I knew absolutely nothing about the publishing business. I self-published my first book, a memoir, through an expensive vanity press. Not a lot of choices.

Three publishers, an agent, and fourteen years later, I’ve learned steadily about the business side of book-writing, and self-publishing has become light-years easier. Lately, I’ve begun to pull my books back from publishers and republish them myself. It’s a business decision, but also a thoughtful choice because eventually my children will end up dealing with all this.

A Death at Tippitt Pond is the most recent book whose rights I’ve had reverted by the publisher so I could self-publish a new edition. It began as the first book in a mystery series exploring the fictional Tippitt family through many generations corresponding to interesting historical periods. The main character, Beth Russell, is a researcher and genealogist. After this first book, my writing went off in different directions, and eventually I decided to leave this Sweet Iron mystery a standalone.

These are some of the key steps I followed as I republished this novel. Collaboration, which I love, is a huge part of this process.

First, I bought ISBN numbers from Bowker online. 10 ISBN numbers cost $295. I like using these because if I simply use Amazon ASIN numbers, they’re only good on Amazon. ISBN numbers are universal labels that track sales, no matter where they occur.

I gave the book a good proofread and fixed an error one of my former students had pointed out. While the plot is set in the present, the murder that pushes the story happened in 1971. This allowed me to use some of the songs and wild and crazy clothing from that period of excess. Unfortunately, I mentioned a 45-rpm record by Billy Joel, “Only the Good Die Young,” and a former student let me know I was ahead of myself. Joel’s song came out in 1977. So here was an opportunity to fix that mistake.

I have a fantastic cover artist, Karen Phillips, of Phillips Covers. A writer herself with her first novel, A

Deadly Combo, just out, Karen has done multiple covers for me, and I’ve always loved her work. I sent her a summary of the book, and we spoke on the phone about ideas. Then she designed several covers, I picked the one I liked, had her tweak it a little, and it was done. She also designed the logo for my self-publishing company where I “do business as” Prairie Lights Publishing. The State of Illinois wanted its sales taxes from me—what a shock— so I had to create a business entity to pay them.

Tarra Thomas, of Indie Publishing Services, is my formatter, and Tarra figured out how many pages this book would be. Then Karen designed the spine so it would be the right size for the thickness of the book. I love Tarra’s formatting just as much as Karen’s covers. She always uses interesting glyphs at the ends of chapters. If she has a question, she checks with me. I have yet to catch an error I can blame on her. Darn! Both professionals make my books look wonderful. Then it’s uploaded on Amazon and ready to go in about 72 hours.

My first book took many weeks of back-and-forth and lots of money upfront. Now, self-publishing is so much easier, faster, and far less expensive.

What a change from 2009.