…as I have experienced them in publishing my novel through Gatekeeper Press. Let’s jump right in.
Pro 1:
Achieving a professional look while retaining complete (or as near as I could tell) creative freedom. The fonts, the cover art, and everything were all up to me to choose.
Pro 1.5
That said, I didn’t have to choose everything. If I didn’t give them specifics, GP has people who know what they’re doing who could work off of the basic information about the book.
Con 1:
Going in as a wide-eyed newbie to bookmaking, I learned that there were a lot of things that I never knew I had a preference about until I was sent something, and my gut screamed, NO!
Pro 2:
I was always able to request changes, and they would be made.
Con 2:
Asking for changes to a finished book file (which I ended up doing a couple times) does cost money, on top of the original fees.
Pro 3:
My author manager Takako was very nice about these costs, waiving fees where she could.
Con 3:
Because I was publishing through Gatekeeper Press rather than simply doing everything myself, there were some restrictions: for instance, sometimes I would want a certain font, but they would not have that licensed.
Pro 4:
With regards to the above “restrictions,” these were not insurmountable. For instance, if I offered to pay the licensing fee for a font, they would use that font.
Ultimately I didn’t do this, though I came very close. I was very picky about a handwriting font that went into the book. At the start I told them I didn’t care what font they used but it should look like “a wayward teenage girl,” but ultimately the font they chose just didn’t click with me. So I finally sent a list of fonts I liked and told them if they had none of those, I would pay the licensing fee for one of them. Fortunately, they had one font from that list, and used that.
Con 4:
I had no idea how picky it’s acceptable to be. (I still don’t know. I wonder if some of the people who had to deal with me and my learning curve are exhausted with the lists of changes I can demand now and then.) Ideally, I wanted to try to build these relationships so that if I decide to go this publishing route with the next work, I could happily work with the same people. I’m not entirely sure I succeeded.
Pro 5:
If I could articulate a question I had about the process, I could always ask my author manager at GP. It was okay that I didn’t know everything.
Con 5:
Because I knew nothing, a lot of my questions only came to me after the point at which it would have been ideal to ask it. Even now, I sometimes suddenly realize that there’s some detail that I never thought about and wonder, is it okay this way? Does it need to be changed? If I want to change it, between the fees and the work I’m making other people do, is it really worth it?
Most recently, this happened when I suddenly realized that the cover design isn’t credited to the artist on the copyright page. Of course—I never specified, because I never thought that was optional; and I never checked to see if it was there or not. But at this point, I’ve decided to let it go: the cover artist has seen the “final” version and didn’t mention it either, and there’s a page about her in the book, so the information is there inside the book.
Pro 6:
I really, really like the end result. (At least for the ebook, and the digital interior of the print book. I haven’t actually seen a physical print book yet.) I know I couldn’t have made it look like this on my own in this amount of time. Maybe I could have figured it out eventually, but the amount of stress it would have caused trying to figure out what I wanted it to look like when I didn’t know half these details would have been considerable.
Con 6:
It was frigging expensive. My book probably cost in excess of $2500 (this is an estimation because I haven’t yet been billed for all the changes made, or for the page count).
Don’t get me wrong: this was a choice, and I don’t regret it. I could have made it cheaper, but I didn’t. I had paperback and ebook formatting and distribution, a complete line edit, and probably close to 20 content changes (i.e. changes to the text after file is already complete) from Gatekeeper Press, plus an extra 10% on top of that to expedite the process (back when I thought I could get it out by Christmas). I paid an artist for the cover art.
All of this could have been done more cheaply, but I didn’t because I wanted it to look like a book I would pick up and read without knowing anything about it.
Pro 7:
Once I made the decision to do this, I could make it go fairly quickly. It took two months because of all the changes I kept wanting, which is already quite fast, but if I’d wanted fewer changes or known what I wanted from the start, it would have gone even faster.
Con 7:
Once the book is out, that’s it. You’re on your own. GP has no marketers or publicists, though they do say they can refer you to people they trust.
This is big. You can’t just publish your book and wait for it to sell—especially for someone like me, whose readership is still limited to people I know. It has to get promoted somehow, pushed out to a readership.
Marketing myself could easily cost me as much as it cost to make the book, if not more; but being too cheap in marketing could mean this book never reaches an audience beyond my circle of family and friends. Marketing myself effectively would take skill and experience. I’m still at the start of my learning curve here. Maybe in a year or two I’ll be in a position to talk about marketing as an indie author, but at this moment I’m not.
Honestly, I think it would be foolish to think about making money on this book. Yes, the listed prices are presently a touch higher than the costs of production. But as soon as there are other books published, I plan to drop the costs of this one to the cost of production. Currently, I view it as a foothold to use when marketing the next book.
If you happen to be someone who wants to help me in this, you can absolutely do that! Sharing and recommending my book on social media will help the book reach past my circle into your circle. If you’re someone who read and liked the book, I need (positive) reviews on Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other such sites. Those are extremely valuable, because the presence/absence of reviews and the ratings can be the critical difference when one stray stranger comes across the book and is contemplating whether or not to buy it.
That said, I don’t want anyone to feel like they have to do this. If you write a positive review, please let it be because you liked the book, not because I asked you to.
If the book isn’t your cup of tea but you want to help me anyway, I’m looking to distribute my book by donating it to libraries in my area, and asking friends to do the same (I’ll provide the books). Contact me if you want me to send you a copy to donate to your library. Alternatively, if you can convince your library to purchase a copy, that would be even better! It will be (and may already be) available from Ingram, which distributes to libraries, and NACSCORP, which distributes to universities in the US.
Pro 8:
The reach of this book as distributed through Gatekeeper Press seems much better than I could have achieved on my own. As stated above, it’s available with distributors to universities, libraries and retailers, as well as all the usual sites like Amazon, Kobo, Google, iBooks and Barnes and Noble, which is great!
Con 8:
The reach of the book may have been even better had I gone through traditional venues.
Pro 9:
Having control over every step of this book including how it’s publicized makes me more driven to sell it, to get it to a larger audience. There’s no guarantee it would have succeeded no matter how it was published, and no one knows why this book is worth it better than I do. Traditional publishing would have meant that the book was out of my hands, and perhaps I wouldn’t have felt so strongly about it anymore after the editing and cover art and approach to marketing.
Probably if it had flopped, I would have shrugged and moved completely on to the next book rather than saying to myself, “Okay, that didn’t work. So what do I have to do to get this to people?”
I’m closer to my book now than I was even when I made the decision to go to Gatekeeper Press, and I’m determined to do everything I can to help it find its audience.
Con 9:
But if it had been traditionally published, I would have sold a lot more copies than I can dream of now, even if the book had flopped. I wouldn’t have born the costs of production, so any money lost wouldn’t have been my burden to bear.
Pro 10:
I retain all of the rights, and receive 100% of the royalties. This doesn’t mean much of anything right now, but in the unlikely instance that this book ever becomes middling to big, this will be a big deal. Then again, I’ve never been traditionally published, so maybe there are advantages already that I’m not aware of.
Pro 10.5:
Most of the cons, as you may have noticed, are about the financial burden, of a first-time-only variety, or about the financial burdens that resulted from my inexperience. If I were to go through this process again, I could mitigate some of them.
Ultimately, a lot of the financial stuff comes down to a time vs money question: which would I rather save? If the answer is money, then I have to be careful not to overload myself, because this could easily become overwhelming and crushing both mentally and emotionally. I was aware of this, which is why I chose to pay to have a lot of it done for me this time around.
But having done it once, I feel that there are some things (like formatting the interior for the print copy) that I’m sure I could manage myself without having to pay for it next time. This would also ease the burden of constantly asking for changes.
Having done this once will especially improve the way I approach marketing next time. Now that I have one book published, as long as I keep trying to get it out to a larger readership, maybe in another novel or two I’ll be able to start thinking about earning money on my work.
If I were to do this again….
I’d start focusing on marketing and publicizing the book more than a couple weeks before it comes out. Which means I’d also not bother trying to rush publication. That time could have been valuable if I’d focused on using it to build hype.
I’d go into formatting with a list of fonts I like for absolutely every part, or at least my preferences (like that there should be serifs, even on headers)—or I’d do it myself.
I’ll think about details like chapter headers before I submit the manuscript.
I’d submit an ARC to reviewers. I’d do some sort of event on the date of publication, trying to sell the books in person.
Related to making sure there was less rush, I’d make sure there was less stuff on my plate. Trying to do holidays and make a book all at once was a lot.
It would probably be smart to hire editors twice next time: a developmental edit after I feel like I like the manuscript, and a line edit when I’m ready to publish (because I assume there would be a lot of editing in between).
In summary…
It’s frigging expensive, and frigging scary. At the moment, it’s looking more like a money-draining hobby than a career.
But that’s ok. My goal going in was that if I can reach 100 readers I don’t personally know who genuinely like my book, that’ll be enough for now. That’s nothing if I want to make any of the costs back that I put into the book; at the same time, it feels like a ridiculously lofty goal right now. Lofty, but (I hope) achievable.
These Lies That Live Between Us is now available in ebook form at Amazon (US, UK, Germany, India, Japan, Italy, France and others) Kobo, Google Books and iBooks! Paperback is now available from Barnes and Noble!