I tried four different times and started four different blog posts and nothing sounded right.
I came up with something Saturday night that was actually pretty unhinged and not like me at all. My gut told me not to publish it, and at the last minute, listened to my intuition (writing this on Sunday night at 9pm). Don’t need you all to think I’m losing my mind.
For now, if you’re publishing this summer and need some help, I have a few tutorials that will point you in the right direction:
That’s all I got, but it feels safer than what I was going to publish. I’ve felt good, just maybe trying to find some balance with living life now that I’m feeling better and where writing fits into all that with how the publishing industry is. I certainly don’t want to say anything I’ll regret.
Anyway, have a good week, and hopefully I can come up with something better next time.
I’ve heard from more than one person that they are kind of intimidated by IS, usually because they’ve heard horror stories of other people using it, or more accurately, trying to use it. Honestly, yeah, the platform can be a bit glitchy, but it’s nothing so scary that I would stop putting my books on it. I realized Faking Forever isn’t up on IngramSpark, though I did publish it last summer, I think, so I can use that title as a tutorial. I’ll screenshot my process and hopefully it will take some of the mystery out of the platform.
There are a couple of things I want to tell you before we get started, and these really aren’t anything I would expect a new author to know.
The first is ISBNs. You need one of your own to publish on IngramSpark IF you are also going to publish separately on KDP, and you should publish direct whenever you can. Amazon won’t take an ISBN issued by IngramSpark, and the same is true vice versa. If you’re in the States and buy from Bowker, you can use the same ISBN both places.
Second. Now, some people have said that you CAN’T use the same ISBN both places because either one place or the other will tell you the ISBN is already in use and you can’t use it. I get around this by publishing to KDP first using an ISBN I buy from Bowker, and then I wait for a couple of months for that ISBN to “click in.” Then when I publish on IngramSpark, they’ll skip Amazon because my book is already listed there. I don’t know where I heard this from, but I have done it this way for over 10 books and I have never gotten an error from either platform saying my ISBN is in use. You’ll have to decide if you want to wait those couple of months. Paperback sales aren’t a big deal to me so I don’t mind having my paperbacks only on Amazon for a while if it’s going to make the process smoother. Long story short: your paperback book should only have one ISBN attached to it.
In the first point, I said go direct whenever you can, and you should do that for a few reasons. The first is that Amazon doesn’t play well with others, so if you use IngramSpark to distribute to Amazon, Amazon can (and will) mark your book out of stock, which is a pain to fix. I would rather be writing my next book than policing my buy-page. Another is an author was complaining because she let IngramSpark distribute to Amazon, and she lost her buy-button, which means she’s not the primary choice for the sale. That’s bad because it looks like you’re not the seller. You can’t stop third-party sellers from buying your book and reselling it, but you always want to be the primary seller. The last point is you don’t want to pay IngramSpark to distribute and then pay Amazon for selling it. There is very little by way of royalties as it is, so just cut out the middleman and publish to KDP directly.
One last thing–your cover will be different than the one you use to upload to KDP. IngramSpark uses a different weight of paper which makes the spines thinner. If you use something like Canva, this is easy–just duplicate your KDP cover, download the IngramSpark template, and adjust spine text size and re-center your title and author name on the front cover. I go over this in my full paperback wrap tutorial. Those will need to be adjusted because due to the thinner spine, your front cover is “bigger” if that makes sense. If you’re using a cover designer, they should already know this, and if they don’t… [insert grimacing emoji here].
Draft2Digital uses IngramSpark’s POD to print. I helped a friend not long ago and one tip I learned is that D2D doesn’t like the barcode box on the back of a paperback cover, and you can, in fact, skip putting the white box on all three platforms. They’ll add the barcode for you, or use a barcode generator like Dave Chesson’s and add it yourself. But that was a handy tip we learned, and if you don’t want to supply your own barcode, leave the white box off completely and let them add it for you… unless you want Barnes and Noble to carry your book. Then you have to embed the price into your barcode. If you do that, you can’t change the price of your book unless you change the barcode too. IngramSpark wants the price on your cover to match what you’re selling your book for. If you want/need to increase the price, keep that in mind. I have stopped putting the price on my books and let both KDP and IngramSpark supply my barcodes. Much easier that way, but I don’t care about Barnes and Noble stocking my book, either. That’s a choice you’re going to have to make.
Here is the cover to Faking Forever that I’m going to be using:
And if you’re curious, this is how it looks with the IS template on top of it:
You’ll notice that the template has a barcode already included, but I never use it. It’s too big of a pain to cut it out and add it to the cover. I build over it and call it a day.
Once you have your formatted interior file, your cover sorted, and you know what you’re going to do with your ISBN and where and when you’re going to publish your book, you’re ready to upload to IngramSpark.
The first thing you have to do is create an account if you don’t have one. Go to www.ingramspark.com and click create account. It’s been a very long time since I’ve done that, but it’s more than just being able to upload your book. You have to have your banking information ready so you can have your royalties deposited and any fees deducted. If I remember correctly, they may ask you for a tax ID number or an EIN but I don’t have an LLC and just used my SSN. I’m in the States, so I don’t know how it works in other countries. I’m not going to give business advice, so beyond showing you how to upload your book, all the other choices that you have to make you’ll need to research on your own.
Once you’ve created an account, your home screen should look like this:
Click on Titles on the left hand side in the menu.
Then click on Add Title.
Some people use IngramSpark to distribute their ebooks and their print books. I wouldn’t use them for ebooks–if you’re going wide, Draft2Digital is probably the better choice, and as always, with print and ebooks, go direct whenever you can. You’ll always earn more royalties. Click whichever one you want, but for this blog post I clicked on Print Book Only.
Are all your files ready? You’ll need your interior and your cover that was adjusted/made using the IngramSpark template. But you’ll also need your ISBN, your blurb, and your categories and keywords. If you’re ready, Click Yes, all my files are ready.
They really wanna make sure you have what you need, so click the boxes that confirm you have your paperback cover wrap and your formatted interior file.
Then click on what you want to do. I do want to print, distribute, and sell my book. Click it to highlight it and then press Continue.
This is where you start filling out your book’s information. Put in your title, the language, which for me is always English, add your ISBN number or take the free one. Click that you own your copyright, and that you’re not trying to publish public domain work. When you click that you own your copyright, a warning box pops up:
They started adding this box a couple of years ago, and if you click Yes, that your book includes names of famous people or brands, IngramSpark won’t let you publish. I don’t know why they implemented this because we all know it’s okay to say your characters ate lunch at Dairy Queen, or that your male character’s favorite brand of shoes is Nike. It’s pretty much understood that as long as you’re not saying anything derogatory about a brand, it’s fine to mention them. My characters, for whatever reason, love Apple products, and they’re always using their iPhones. So, I’m not saying to lie, but I am saying that if you check the box that you do mention McDonald’s or that your characters go shopping at Walmart, IngramSpark will tell you to amend your book and resubmit. I’ll let you make the choice. I don’t remember what Faking Forever has in it. My characters live in a fake Minnesota city and I think for the most part everything I mentioned brand-wise was made up. But, you do you, and I’ll do me, and for the sake of this blogpost, I’m going to click No and keep going.
The last question in this section is about AI, and I never use it. I do my own covers using stock that’s not AI generated, and I write my own books. If you use AI in any way, you’ll have to fill out what they ask. I’m not even going to bother to click on Yes and find out what they want. I’ll never us AI and don’t care.
In this next section, you fill out your author name. I don’t have any other contributors, like maybe if you were a children’s author and needed to list an illustrator.
You’ll also see here that my imprint, Coffee & Kisses Press popped up. That’s because when you buy ISBNs from Bowker, you’re able to create an imprint for yourself. Back when I first started publishing, I created my imprint, and my ex-fiancé and my son designed the logo for it. I’ve been publishing under Coffee & Kisses Press for years and years but I don’t have any plans to publish anyone else at this time. I help a lot of people but never for money or a share of their royalties. Jane Friedman has a good article about creating your own imprint if you’re interested in the pros and cons. https://janefriedman.com/why-self-publishing-authors-should-consider-establishing-their-own-imprint/ Also when you create your own imprint, your imprint will be the publisher on Amazon and other product pages. Here is the information on Amazon for Faking Forever:
My ranking is bad. I guess I better up my marketing game.
This is my product information for Rescue Me on Walmart.com.
You can read and research all day about imprints, but I’ll stop there and continue on.
Subjects are your categories. Mine are usually Contemporary Romance and Billionaire, but they have a Rockstar category too, which I used when I published my last trilogy. Click on Find Subjects and search for your category/genre. I recommend using the search bar and typing in what you want. If you only scroll, sometimes you can miss what you’re looking for.
Click and highlight what you want and click Add Subjects.
Select Audience is next, and if you’re writing genre fiction for adults, that’s Trade/Adult General.
The next field is where your blurb goes. I usually just copy and paste it from my Amazon product page.
The keywords are similar to the seven fields on KDP you fill out when you publish on Amazon. The ones I fill out on KDP are a little different because I add KU/ Kindle Unlimited to some of the fields for discoverability, and you don’t need that for paperbacks on IngramSpark. When you’re done, scroll down and click Continue.
The next section is Print Information. You should already know the trim size of your book since you have your formatted interior file and your cover. If you’ve already published on KDP, all this information should match what you put on that platform. Things like trim size and color of the pages are attached to your ISBN, so make the same selections you did on KDP.
Colored pages are only for things like cookbooks or children’s books. There’s a higher cost to printing color, and I was even seeing some talk the other day that IngramSpark is going to start charging you more if your book has black pages. Beautifully formatted books are having a moment, but all that ink… even if you’re printing in black and white it’s going to cost you money. I don’t get too crazy with my interiors. I’m just not excited about paperbacks in general, so the last thing I really care about is black pages that have white text. As I’ve said, that’s your personal choice, but everything costs so be prepared to up your price to have even the slightest royalty per book.
This is part of what can trip up some authors who upload their books. I chose black and white pages, and cream because I also print my fiction books on cream paper. I don’t know if Amazon gives you a choice to print on Groundwood, but if you can’t over there, you can’t here because remember, the color of your pages is attached to the ISBN and you can’t change unless you unpublish.
I chose paperback here, but do you see the Perfect Bound option? Even if it’s the only option there, you still have to click on it and turn it green. Some authors get tripped up by that, so be sure to click on it.
I always choose a matte cover. I’ve seen glossy covers that peel and I don’t like them. Covers can be changed and upon a quick Google search I’m confident to say that if you want to change from glossy to matte or vice versa, you can as the type of cover isn’t attached to the ISBN.
I don’t know what Duplex Enabled means, and since there’s not an asterisk by it, I’ll skip it. Number of pages–you can look at your interior file (you should already know this because either you or your cover designer needed this information) or I snag mine off my Amazon product page.
Print pricing is next, and there’s a lot to say on topic, but on the same token, nothing at all. What you choose for pricing, discounts, and if you’re going to allow returns is going to be a personal choice based on what you want for your business and how much you want to make per copy per sale.
I don’t offer paperbacks to make money, and I don’t even print through IngramSpark to be in bookstores. Honestly, I have no idea why I print through IngramSpark. Faking Forever is $12.99, and I do a 35-40% discount and I don’t allow returns. That’s what I do, but you’ll have to research for yourself. I choose a 35% in the countries I can because that’s what Robin Cutler (who created the indie side of IngramSpark many years ago) recommended, and I never stopped. Here are my fields filled out. You can see I dropped Australia’s price as low as I could. Actually, I could have made one cent if I chose to sell my book for $15.99 instead of $16.99. Book prices there are crazy, and I’m happy for the .55 if it means someone there can afford to buy my book.
Go ahead and click that you agree on all the little asterisks and then go down to Printing Options. For those options, I only click on the Enable Look Inside feature. I figure since a reader can read 10% of your book on Amazon, I might as well give readers the same opportunity elsewhere. You can do large print, but KDP blocked my attempts as duplicate content so the only way I would do Large Print now is if I printed only to sell off my website. I would like to, some day, but I won’t be doing it any time soon. The right-to-left content is self-explanatory, so skip that, too.
The last on this page is the Print Release Date. If you waited, this could have been a few months ago, so if you don’t remember, grab the date off your product page on Amazon.
When you’re done filling all that out, click Continue. It’s hidden here by the Support icon.
This is where you upload your files. You can either Drag and Drop, or Upload. This is also where the glitches happen, and we can see if IngramSpark is going to give me a hard time today. I don’t have a preference either way, drag and drop vs. uploading, and I’ve done it both ways.
It looks like today they decided to be glitch-free, and you can see the dates and times of the uploads. I know from experience that if it doesn’t show dates and times, your files haven’t uploaded properly. You can try logging out and logging back in (save and exit first), clearing your cookies/cache, trying a different browser (Chrome vs. Safari, for example) or using an incognito window. I’ve tried all of those when IngramSpark has been a bear to work with and usually one of those will push the process along. I almost wish IngramSpark would have given me a hard time so you could see what it’s like, but then again, I shouldn’t be asking for trouble.
The email upload link at the bottom is for a cover designer or your formatter if they have your files. You don’t want to give them access to your whole account since you put your banking information into your profile, so use the email link if you had help putting your book together. Click Continue (that’s hidden under the Support icon).
The next page verifies your information. This can actually take a few minutes, so don’t panic if it makes you wait.
Click Continue.
Confirm your book’s information and click the little square in the upper right.
Then you want to click on Complete Submission. This will also make you wait for a couple of seconds.
I haven’t submitted to IngramSpark for a bit, so this congratulations screen is new to me. Once you’ve submitted your book, they’ll email you as to whether you need to fix anything or if the eproof they send you can be approved. Because I always publish on KDP first and put my books through a rigorous proofing-the-proof process, I don’t order a physical proof through IngramSpark. Once the eproof (PDF) comes, I might scroll through it just to check out the cover, but honestly, I just approve it and move on.
There aren’t many times I submit a book where I don’t have to fix the cover in some way. Sometimes I don’t make the text on the spine small enough, or I don’t move the title and author name over, or whatever. If I’m dealing with a gradient, sometimes I don’t have it moved over enough so that’s flush with the spine. They’ll tell you in the email they send you what needs to be fixed, and then you just do what they say and resubmit the file. I’ll probably look over the eproof when I get it just to be sure I didn’t screw up somehow because I was distracted writing this blog post while I was filling everything out and submitting.
But that’s really all you need to do to publish with IngramSpark. The ISBN stuff is a hassle, and waiting for a couple of months after you publish to KDP first is annoying, but I use my ISBN both places and have never had an issue so I’m not going to fix what isn’t broken.
I hope this post was helpful and waylaid some of the fear. Like anything once you do it, the easier it becomes.
I wrote out this post long enough in advance that IngramSpark approved my files and they sent me an email saying I can approve the proof. This took about three days.
On Threads, someone was saying they were waiting weeks, but what can happen is you don’t get an email and your title needs to be fixed somehow. I’ll show you where you go to see the actual status of your book if you don’t get an email after a week of waiting.
Once you get your email, click Approve EProof.
IngramSpark will make you log in, so do that.
They’ll direct you to this screen:
Click on the title of your book.
Scroll down until you see the green bar that says Download Proof for your ISBN.
I save it using the title so I can find it later if I want it.
Open it up, and you’ll see they sent you the entire book. This certainly doesn’t take the place of looking at a paperback copy of a KDP proof, and if you do want to order a paperback proof, you should. I never do, and before I published this book to KDP, I think I ordered a proof about four times. IngramSpark’s printing isn’t that much different, and if it passed the IngramSpark submission process, then I know it will be okay.
You can also see here that they did add the barcode for me, and they placed it where KDP puts theirs.
I scrolled through, and I notice I could have updated my Also By in the back of my book. I think fixing that and resubmitting will be too much hassle, and I’ll let it slide.
Once you know you’re happy with the proof, scroll down the page more.
This where you approve or your title. If you decide to make changes, click the appropriate selection. I clicked the first because my book is okay to distribute. Scroll down more and click Continue.
They’ll ask you if you want to promote your book. There’s a fee there, and I think the last I clicked it was $250.00. Apparently they’ll promote your book in the bookseller’s catalogue, and I did this for All of Nothing and didn’t see any ROI. But like all business decisions, it’s up to you. I’m going to click No.
When you click No, you’ll be sent this this screen:
But in my experience, processing doesn’t take long–at least, not on the dashboard part of it. It can take a few days for your book to start popping up in the marketplaces. Since (again) I don’t care about that stuff, I don’t look, so don’t quote me on how long it takes.
If you click on Titles on the left, you can see that Faking Forever is already available.
Titles and Titles Pending is also where you can look to find out your book’s status if you’re waiting for an email after you’ve submitted your book. A while back I resubmitted covers for my duet, and I messed up Addicted to Her. I didn’t get an email saying that I needed to fix anything, but I didn’t get an email saying that my book was ready for approval, either. If you’ve been waiting for email after submission and it didn’t land in your spam, always go to your dashboard and check on the title in question. That will give you the most up-to-date information. If your cover needs tweaking, it will tell you there. There are always ways around waiting–information is usually available if you know where to look.
Part of the reason I don’t order an author copy first is because I never see the option. I have no idea where to click to find a proof before publication. I must miss it every time, but for the life of me, I never see it. But, like I said, I’ve already seen a KDP proof a million times, so I’m okay not ordering one from IngramSpark. If you really want to see the quality, you can order an author copy for yourself, but I’m hearing IS has the same problems as KDP. Their printers are overworked and underpaid, and covers can be messed up, or your cover may be right, but there’s a completely different book inside. Some boxes have a mix of books–one erotica author, I think on Threads, said she got a box full of Bibles. All can I really think when it comes to this kind of thing is that the indie publishing industry is bursting, and POD–machines and workers–can’t keep up. So, if you’re ordering stock for an event, do it months and months in advance, not only to give the printers time to print and shippers time to ship, but also to give yourself enough time to reorder if your shipment’s damaged in any way. I know you have to be super organized to plan that far ahead, but it will save you a lot of headaches in the long run, I promise you that.
Since I was able to walk you through the approval process too, I think that concludes the IngramSpark tutorial. I hope it was helpful, and as always, there are no affiliate links in this post.
Happy Monday! I don’t share many pics of myself, but this one was taken at the hotel in Minneapolis while we were decompressing after a day of shopping at the Mall of America. I literally have bedhead, haha. I hope the Thanksgiving weekend treated all of you to good food, fun family times, and some quiet relaxation for yourselves before the frenzied weeks of Christmas kick in.
Despite how busy my November has been, I’ve been able to get a few things done. My Lost & Found trilogy has been reedited and the covers have been updated (that was a lot of work and I’m glad it’s over). I haven’t taken the time to run ads to it yet, so I don’t have any data to share as to how the covers made a difference in sales. People actually have to know of a novel’s existence before they can buy it and right now the only way I do that is with ads. I can share now more on social media because I’m proud of the covers and before I didn’t really want anyone to see them. It’s difficult to market a book you’re not proud of and at least now I know the covers are the best they can be.
Ad cost over the next four weeks during the holiday season won’t be that great, and I won’t start any new ads until after the holidays. Everyone is going to be running ads to their products. I’ll keep the ads I have now going (keeping an eye on the cost-per-click), but I’ve heard CPC goes up around this time of year, and I don’t need to contribute to that.
I was a little curious as to how my rockstars were doing read-through wise, so I did some math to calculate. I’m not going to say how much they’ve made since their release (and with the numbers I share, please don’t try. So much varies with KU and sales, not to mention countries). I struggle between wanting to help fledging authors feel better about lower sales and showing my readers all that I have talked about and implemented over the years really did help me find readers and level up without flashing numbers. When you write a nonfiction blog it’s important you know what you’re doing, or at least if you’re going to experiment you’re honest that you’re experimenting and willing to share the results, but you can’t say “do this” without proof it works. No one would listen to me if I did that, and my blog would be worthless and meaningless. I’m not one of those smarmy marketing gurus that lands in your inbox, and I’m not trying to sell anything, but I do give advice and it is nice without taking screenshots of my KDP sales dashboard to be able to prove that my advice has a little weight behind it.
So, I took a few minutes to look up my stats. Twisted Alibis, in total, has sold 252 books. That’s with KENP page reads turned into full “books,” ebooks, and print sales. Twisted Lullabies has sold a total of 147 books, and that is with all the formats. Twisted Lies has sold 119 books, and that includes all the formats. I did the math and if you divide Twisted Lullabies’ sales (147) by Twisted Alibis’ sales (252) you get 58.3%. That means 58.3% of readers who read book one of my trilogy went on to read book two. I did more math and calculated that 80.9% of readers who read book two went on to read book three (119 divided by 147), and I was really really happy with those numbers. Especially since I’ve been told book two’s characters were hard to connect with and it wasn’t a classic, “boy meets girl, they fall in love, they break up, get back together, and get married” kind of romance. It’s not, really, but I believe there is room for all different types of tropes and stories and characters. I’m glad book two, despite the negative feedback, is enough for people to go on to book three, and I really hope book three nails the ending and gives my readers the closure they deserve after investing time to read 300,000 of my words. If you want to read more about read-through, how to calculate it, and why it’s important, you can read an article here by Mallory Cooper for Kindlepreneur.
What’s next for me? Right now I’m pleasure-reading/editing book two of my duet. I fell into a weird cadence overusing “while” “before” “after” and “when.” I don’t know why, and I don’t know how, unless I read a book while writing those that did the same thing. I don’t particularly like it, and there was one paragraph where I used five “whens” and it sounded like crap. I love the stories, though, so I’m pleasure-reading as much as I am fixing the sentences. It’s not a huge, anxiety-inducing priority to edit these books as my trilogy was, so I’m taking my time and still doing other non-writing things while I’m doing that. Mostly that has to do with the trip I was on for my daughter’s birthday, Thanksgiving I cooked for, and this week, tree-trimming and celebrating my birthday. I also want to spend more time on social media promoting my Christmas novel (I have five weeks to push it until no one cares), and I’ll do that while casually finishing reading book two and replacing all those files once it’s done. It’s not a big deal, and editing those books gives me a chance to update my Also By pages–I’ve written a lot more books since publishing my duet.
Otherwise I don’t have much else. I was going to take December off, but you all know me and I couldn’t take time off my books without feeling listless and, let’s face it, sad. I wouldn’t have much else to do, but I am going to read while I get my series ready because I want to start my research and plan/plot what I’m going to write next. I can’t write what I want if I don’t read and make notes of tropes and reader expectations (skipping from billionaire to rockstars to mafia), and honestly, some of these I picked up on TikTok and I want to know if they deserve all the hype. But, one thing at a time, and I want to delve into my series first, see how much work they need. I haven’t read them in a long time, and now that I’m aware of my writing tics and my new favorite garbage words, I can edit them with a fresh eye and publish them knowing I did the best I could. I need to take a deep breath and go slowly. We’re looking at a half a million words and that won’t be easy, even if they are, by my guess, 75% ready to be published. I’ve been talking about these for so long, many of you probably think they’re a myth and they aren’t really written at all. They are very real, and it will be a relief to get them polished and on preorder. I’ve held them back long enough.
Oh, and I did manage change out my Lost & Found trilogy files on IngramSpark, and I put my rockstars on there, too. I don’t use expanded distribution on KDP, preferring to use Ingram on the off chance I’m asked to do a signing and they want to order their own stock rather than me bringing in author copies. I always thought it was tacky anyway, asking bookstores to sell Amazon copies when Amazon is a bookstore’s biggest competitor. Have a little class and use Ingram for their distribution. I do both. Amazon doesn’t play well with others, so I publish there first, wait for the books and ISBN to “settle” for a few months (three or four), and then when Ingram publishes, they skip Amazon because my books are already there. It’s a system that has worked for me for 20 books, and if it’s not broken, I’m not going to try to fix it or do something else. I only messed up one of the six covers I submitted, and that by far is my best record yet. I must be getting used to how picky they are. Also, I recouped my Alli membership fee. One of the benefits of being a member is free IS file replacement. You can upload new titles for free, but if you make changes to existing books (I think it’s more than 60 days after publication) you still have to pay the fee for file replacement. That’s $25 for the interior and $25 for the cover ($50 for both). Being that I replaced both for all three books, my membership paid for itself and then some. Membership is $119 dollars and replacing all my files in my billionaire trilogy would have cost me $150. That alone was worth it, but I like being a member for peace of mind. You never know when you’re going to need an advocate to reach out to Amazon on your behalf. Anyway, so I was glad to get that done, and now my rockstar paperbacks are available everywhere. I don’t sell many, like I said, it’s mostly in case I’m ever invited to a book signing and they want to order their own copies. I do a 40% wholesale discount and don’t allow returns. I’ve heard some horror stories about dealing with IS, but I have never had an issue with getting hit with a huge return bill. There’s a first time for everything, so read up on what is best practice and make decisions for yourself and what’s good for your book business.
That’s all I have for this week. I hope you all have a fantastic one!
I haven’t been doing much except re-editing my Lost & Found trilogy and redoing the covers. I said in a previous blogpost that book one didn’t have the problems books two and three had, but I was mistaken. I went back and edited it more thoroughly which took time, and then I read all three of them again just to make sure I didn’t edit in any typos. My proofs come today, but I’m not reading them–okay I might spot-check them, but that’s all–I’ll page through them to look for formatting errors and make sure the back matter is how I want it, and then I need to move on. They are going to be as good as they’re going to be and I’ll have to be happy with that. I’m pleased with cover changes, and I hope that it will bump up sales. I haven’t been pushing them because I didn’t like the covers, but now I can promote them with confidence. I’ve said I don’t have imposter syndrome, but maybe I do. I’ve never been fully confident thinking my books are any good to read, but my trilogy is good, and I remembered that editing them. It’s a good story arch, and I want people to read them.
Just because I like the story, I’m reading my duet over again. Not with the express desire to edit them, though I am making changes and editing out the “when” sentence structure if I come across it. I also like “because” and with a quick sentence rewrite, I can usually edit it out. These aren’t bad–I hadn’t fallen into a writing tic while I was writing these, and I’m reading more for pleasure than to edit them. After those are done, I have a lot of admin stuff to do, and I’ll spend most, if not all of my free time in in the second half of November and all of December getting them done:
*Changing from the MailerLite Classic to the updated and newer version of MailerLite. We need to do that by February and I’ve heard stories ranging from it’s super simple to horror stories of lost email addresses. There’s a tutorial somewhere, so I need to watch it. Luckily, I don’t have anything complicated there, just one landing page and one welcome email that is sent to everyone regardless of how the sign up. It should be cut and dried, if not, dare I say, easy, but we’ll see. I’m going to set aside a whole day for it because I don’t want to stress myself out. This is a good time to redo my welcome email anyway, make it prettier, but I think I’ll have to redo the integration I have set up with Bookfunnel. I have 771 subscribers right now. I’m not running an FB ad to my freebie at the moment, so the past few subscribers I’ve managed to gain have been through the back matter of my books only. I’ll send an email letting my subscribers know that my Christmas novel is live, then I won’t send one out until I’ve moved my account over. That’s the top item on my to-do list for now.
*Publish my rockstar trilogy to IngramSpark. I always let a couple of months go by between publishing on KDP and publishing on IngramSpark. I’ve heard it’s good to let them settle, and it’s what I’ve always done. I’ve never had an issue publishing to IS after KDP, so I’ll keep doing it that way. The interiors are the same, but I’ll have to tweak the covers. IS uses different paper and the spines are thinner, which means I usually have to adjust the font to avoid it lapping over to the front or back covers. I can’t do that until my trilogy is done and published with new covers. I want to put the Lost & Found covers back there pushing readers who like trilogies to buy my other one. This is a back matter page of Safe & Sound telling readers I have my rockstars available:
I made the graphic in Canva. One of the best things you can do is use your back matter wisely! I do the same things with all three of my standalones–if you like this standalone, I have another available, and you can find it here.
*Make hardcovers for the rest of my books. I offer hardcovers of my Cedar Hill Duet and Rescue Me. That was all the further I got with my hardcovers, but now that my books will be 100% finished, I can make hardcovers of the rest. I’ve never sold a hardcover (only a handful of Large Print I can’t offer anymore because KDP blocks them as duplicate content) but I like how the buy-page shows more than one buying option and it shows readers that I’ve invested in my book to make other versions available.
*Try to enjoy the downtime and the holidays. That list will take me more than a few days, and while I’m not writing, I’m going to try to enjoy the holidays. I have a tooth that’s going to need to come out soon (I have PTSD from a root canal gone bad and I will never subject myself to another one) but I’m going out of town from November 15-18th and I would like to have it done after I come back. There’s no good time to have an extraction, and my November is busier than it’s ever been, but having an achy tooth in my mouth ups my anxiety, and I would like it out the sooner the better.
*Plan my next books. I’m thinking of another duet, but bigger ones, 150k per book or so. I want to incorporate the underground king concept I blogged about here, with the kidnapping/psychic element that’s been knocking around in my head. To write these as well as I want, I’m going to need to read some dark mafia books. I want these dark too, but not in the sex kind of way, well, not only the sex kind of way. Drugs, crime. Violence. The vibe I was looking for when I wrote All of Nothing. I don’t have a plot yet, and I still have to put my series up, but it’s never to late to plan.
*Try to enjoy walking more. I have a lot of negative feelings associated with going for walks, and I’m trying to sever those ties. When my ex-fiancé and I would talk, I would go outside for privacy. As our relationship deteriorated, I didn’t go outside just for privacy, I would go outside because we were fighting and I needed to walk off the nervous energy (and the fear but let’s not get into that). Walking now brings back a lot of those memories and feelings. We’ve been split up for a long time, and I’m used to him not being in my life anymore. Our five years together were more tumultuous than happy and splitting up was better for both of us. Still, those feelings are still there, and I need to push them aside to enjoy walking again. I also walked to get air at the beginning of the pandemic to try to quell my anxiety. I wasn’t anxious because of COVID though I know many were. I was anxious because unbeknownst to me at the time, I picked up a box of Snuggle dryer sheets, and they were wreaking havoc on my girlie parts (more specifically, they gave me bacterial vaginosis). Three years later, I’m still having issues my gynecologist doesn’t seem to understand, and now walking brings back those feelings too–of sucking air into my lungs, trying to calm down because while those dryer sheets were screwing up my body, they were also screwing up my mind. I’m still dealing with the side effects of that unfortunate purchase, but at least I know the cause of my health issues. There’s nothing keeping me from going for a walk and enjoying what that time outdoors used to mean to me–plotting my next book, listening to music, listening to publishing podcasts, and enjoying the health benefits that come with moving your body. I’m already doing better for myself recognizing those ties, I just need to do better with making time to do something about it.
I should probably make this a different blog post, especially since I don’t know if I’ll have time to post anything next week, but I wanted to chat about some of the new features KDP has been rolling out.
The first one is KDP will allow you to schedule when your paperback goes live. This isn’t the golden ticket people think it is though. While it’s nice you can schedule a release date, that doesn’t mean it’s on preorder. The only way you can schedule a preorder of a paperback is to publish it through IngramSpark, and I really discourage you from using IS to fulfill Amazon orders. You’ll end up with a bunch of problems, that, unfortunately, will be difficult to fix with the way I’ve heard IS’s customer service is since the pandemic and Robin Cutler’s exit. I’ve also heard that you need to have your files available before you choose a date (this was in an FB group and I have no idea if it’s true or if placeholder files can be used), but that actually makes sense, because the only nice thing I can see about pre-scheduling is that you can order author copies before your book goes live, and they won’t have the ugly stripe over the front. Paperbacks aren’t a big consideration when it comes to my books–most of my sales come from KU. I like to offer paperbacks, and Vellum makes it easy to format them and make them pretty. Lots of people were excited about this new development, but they still need the 72 hours to review your book and you can’t order author copies until your book has passed that review. As far as I can see, nothing much has changed there, except you can schedule and check it off your launch list.
The other thing KDP is playing with now is opening up audiobook creation using AI. So far, it’s by invitation only and in the beta stages. Beta in KDP language can take years (look a how long the new reports were in beta and how long the old reports hung around) and how long it will take to open to all of us (or at all) will be something to keep an eye on.
Of course this caused an uproar in the writing and author communities. Some are really against AI anything, and some totally embrace whatever AI has to offer. I like to be in the middle–there are good and bad aspects of it, and I think if you totally brush it aside because of the bad, you can miss out on the good. I don’t like using AI art for covers, and it’s becoming prevalent with romance authors because hot men who haven’t been used to death are becoming harder and harder to find–especially for authors on a budget who can’t afford to look beyond DepositPhotos. The only problem is, I can spot these a mile a way and all the covers that use AI to generate a man standing in a suit with a blurry background behind him are starting to look the same. No matter how long or how hard I have to dig, I will always buy stock. I believe in paying the photographer and I believe in paying the model. I don’t think creating an audiobook is entirely in the same category as using art. AI in this regard, I believe, is just technology moving forward. There is already text-to-voice options on devices, and using AI in this way is just opening up accessibility for readers who want to listen to the books they consume and for authors who can’t afford to pay a narrator. I don’t like gatekeeping and telling someone they shouldn’t create an audiobook because they can’t afford it is in its own way. There could be drawbacks to using text-to-voice, and we won’t know what those are until authors start reporting back. There needs to be way to correct the voice if it pronounces something incorrectly. The voice has to sound natural, but those voices are getting better day by day. On the author side, you have to take the time to listen and edit if that option is available. You can’t just upload your book, let AI spit out an audio version and put it up. There was one woman on Twitter who was using AI to translate her books into German, but she wasn’t using someone who knew German to double-check the translation. That’s irresponsible and scary. God only knows what it was coming up with. The last thing I want is to be a laughingstock in Germany. Good luck to her, I guess.
When it becomes available, I’ll give it a try. Apple already has given its authors a chance to create audiobooks with AI, (and people were excited about that, so I don’t know why KDP is getting flack) so it will be interesting to see how this goes. Just because I try it doesn’t mean I’ll publish with it. I might not like the voice choices, or because I write dual first person POV, I may not be able to publish using a female voice for the female POV and a male voice for the male POV. I’m definitely not going to shun something before I can even experiment with it. Ethics aside, you have to think of what you want for your business. I don’t listen to audiobooks–my mind drifts too much for me to concentrate–but I’m hearing now that listening to an audiobook is experience. It’s doubtful something that KDP offers will compete, but it’s nice to have to the option.
That’s about all I have for this week. I’ll be out of town November 15-18th. We’re driving down to the Twin Cities and we’ll be going to Mall of America, looking at a few museums, and going to the zoo if the weather permits us to be outside. I may take a pass at blogging or just put up a quick post I’ll write Sunday. Things won’t be calming down much after that either–we have The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes to watch that following Tuesday, then Thanksgiving. We’ll be at the end of the month after that, and I have my birthday to celebrate. We’re going to Napoleon and out for a fancy dinner so I’m really looking forward to that. All in all a very busy month and I think I’m going to sleep all of December.
For my last piece of news, A Heartache for Christmas is available right now–it went live today! The reviews have been coming in through Booksprout, and readers are really touched by the story (and I am really really in love with the cover!). You can find it here:https://www.amazon.com/Heartache-Christmas-VM-Rheault-ebook/dp/B0CM2BLRPF/
There has been a lot going on in the past couple of weeks, and now that I’m done with my trilogy (!) I can poke my head out of my writing cave and weigh in! Most of it’s been happening over at Amazon, but when aren’t they making huge waves over little changes that leave all of us authors rolling around on the floor in a temper tantrum?
The first big thing was they raised the price of Kindle Unlimited. It used to be $9.99 a month and they raised it to $11.99 USD. I’m not sure why that gave every author I know a heart attack. Two dollars is nothing, especially since in the email they sent all their subscribers, they said their catalogue has grown to over four million titles.
Since the launch of Kindle Unlimited in 2014, we have grown our eBook catalog from 600,000 titles to over 4 million titles today, introduced digital magazine subscriptions, and improved selection quality across genres. Kindle Unlimited members have unparalleled access to read as much as they want from a rich catalog of eBooks, audiobooks, magazines and comics. We continue to invest in making Kindle Unlimited even more valuable for members.
Taken from my Amazon Email
Guys, readers aren’t going to care. As a reader who uses KU, I don’t care. Have you priced ebooks lately? Anyone? These days your KU subscription fee will pay for two, mmmaaaayyybbbbeeee three ebooks, if they’re priced low enough. Everyone’s prices are rising, and KU for a reader is still a great deal. If you’ve been considering pulling your books out of Kindle Select because of this small price change, I would tell you to take a step back and breathe. You all are going to make a major business decision over two dollars a month? (And I’m especially staring at the people who are paying Musk $11.00/month to tweet.) I hope not. But if you are going to go wide, publish with Kobo directly and enroll your books in Kobo Plus. They don’t require the exclusivity Kindle Select does, and if you’re considering signing up as a reader to save money, understand that their catalogue isn’t nearly as large.
Evaluate for yourself if keeping your books enrolled in Kindle Select is the right thing for you and your business. Don’t blindly follow what people are doing on Twitter and in your author groups. A lot of the reaction is due to the fact that AMAZON made this change. Authors love to hate Amazon, always accusing them of undercutting and cheating us. They added value and upped their prices–like any company does. Like Canva is going to do with all their new toys. I’m waiting for the email to come from them too. It’s what happens.
Another nasty surprise we woke up to is Kindle Direct Publishing raising their printing costs. This caused a lot of anger and resentment too, but someone I trust analyzed how much that means for indie authors, and the fact is, KDP upped printing costs by .15 a paperback. You need to take a look at your business and decide if freaking out over .15 is a wise business decision. I don’t sell many paperbacks. It’s not where my focus is. I market to KU subscribers. Any time I run an FB ad or mention my book on Twitter or anywhere else, I say it’s available in Kindle Unlimited. That is where my readers are. That might not be true for everyone. Authors who write poetry, kids books, and middle grade focus on paperbacks, and if you’re buying author copies in bulk, you can always print through IngramSpark. I think again, people are angry because this is Amazon, but you have to take a look at the industry as a whole. For some reason, I follow a lot of agents, and when they are telling querying writers to adhere to a certain word count because printing is expensive and it’s easier for them to sell shorter books, then it’s an industry problem, not an Amazon problem. Amazon is part of the publishing business, and the publishing industry is global. We are caught in the middle of the pandemic aftermath, and it seems a lot of people forget that. Are you upset about fifteen cents? I’ll give you the quarter I found between my couch cushions.
IngramSpark is dropping their publishing and revision fees this month. That was actually a very nice surprise, and I will be taking advantage of it as I haven’t put my trilogy on IS yet. (I abhor busywork and adjusting the KDP cover template to the IS template is a boring pain the butt.)
I wondered how they were going to recoup that loss, and they too, are going to be charging more. I can’t remember where I got this screenshot, but I shared with my friend Sami-Jo when we were talking about IS dropping their fees:
So while the free title set up and the free revisions are a good thing, they are going to make up that loss, and it will fall to us. I’ve never paid a fee; I’ve belonged to a group like IBPA or ALLi who includes codes as member benefits, or just waited until they had a promotion and used their promo days (a good time was always in December for their NaNoWriMo promo.) Amazon isn’t doing anything everyone else isn’t doing, so please breathe and conduct your book business accordingly.
So much talk about AI I’m going to scream. I’m never going to use AI to write my books.I’ve played with Chat-GPTand while it’s fun to chat with Al and bounce ideas off him from time to time, the last thing I’m going to do is give him a prompt and copy and paste it into a book that has my name on it that i’m going to sell. If other authors want to do that, that’s their choice, name, and reputation. My books come from my heart, and I pour a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and wine into my fiction. (Not so much the wine anymore. I’ve stopped drinking hoping to drop a few pounds this summer.) I enjoy writing. I love creating characters and putting them through a lot of crap before giving them their HEAs. Why would I outsource that? I get not everyone feels the same, and that’s fine, but I have started to include a disclosure on the copyright page of my books, and I did it with my newest release Faking Forever, which was out last week.
My copyright page is absurdly long because I give credit to everyone living and dead who in any way shape or form helped me with my books. Just kidding, but I add all the contributors for my stock images and chapter headers with DepositPhotos plus I give credit to my son and ex-fiancé for helping me with the imprint logo. And maybe one day I’ll update that too so I don’t have his name in my books anymore. Anyway, maybe no one reads copyright pages, but I like knowing that I’ve added it. I’m not going to write my books using it, but I can look at both sides and understand that there can be a place for it. Authors are going to have to do what they’ve always had to do: write good books and find a readership. I don’t think AI is going to disrupt this any more than COVID did when everyone was staying home and writing and publishing books because they didn’t have anything better to do. Publish good books, publish consistently, buy promos and invest in an ad platform. Start a newsletter and reach out to your readers. Let them get to know you as a person, and they’ll respond and connect with that.
Probably more went on, but this is going to be it for me this week, as far as commentary goes, anyway. While I “take a break” I’m going to re-edit The Years Between Us and reformat it using one of the newer styles that came with a Vellum upgrade. Depending on how I feel after that I would like to tackle my small town series and give them a facelift (especially covers because not being able to run Amazon ads is especially annoying), but I also want to stay on track with my rockstar trilogy to have that ready to rapid release by the end of August. There is always something to do!
It might be surprising to hear that your book’s back cover doesn’t have to be ugly. In fact, you can put as much time into the back that you do the front, and while your back cover may not get the love your front cover does, when a reader flips your paperback over, it’s a nice surprise to reveal a pretty back cover that they could potentially love just as much as the front.
Some authors may not put forth much effort or thought into their back cover as they are focused on ebook sales, and that’s something I think about too, since my books are in KU. No one cares about the back cover of a paperback they aren’t going to buy, and more than likely, if you’re in KU and catering to whale readers (let’s say, romance), unless you really knock their socks off, may not even remember your name once they’re done skimming, reading your book. I mean, that’s fine–I get page reads whether a reader devours and savors every word or they skim for the sex. But you know when a reader shells out POD prices for a paperback that they love you and your books, so why not reward them with something extra special? I don’t mean tucking a 20 between the pages, though that could be something fun to do at some point.
Here are some tips on how to make your book cover shine:
Don’t choose a solid color (and if you do, expect to add some embellishment or it will look plain [see below]). This is difficult if the image you choose for your front is vertical and not horizontal. This is what was tripping me up when I was doing my most recent trilogy. For the first round of model picks, they were all vertical and didn’t share a similar background that would make a pretty wrap. It’s especially disheartening when you’re doing more than one book and you need to keep their covers similar. Most, if not all, of my covers use a horizontal image so the back cover is taken care of. I would recommend finding a horizontal photo that can be used for the back, spine, and front. If that’s not possible, or you have your heart set on a stock photo that’s vertical, you can use up all that blank space with your blurb, your author photo and bio, maybe an author logo, and the book’s title. My book, All of Nothing, used a vertical photo for the front cover, but I was lucky and turned it black and white and was able to use a black color for the back.
The blurb sucks (don’t read it LOL) and I would move the placement of my author bio to the right of the picture, but my blurb fills the space because I spaced it out. Now I usually add the title of the book to the back as well, but this book is four years old and revamping the back cover isn’t on the my list of priorities at the moment (especially since the paperback is with IngramSpark and I would have to pay $29 dollars to replace the file), though looking at how plain it is, I suppose it could be.
If you add an author picture, add your bio. There’s no point in having your author photo on the back of your book if you don’t want to add a couple lines of bio to it. It will just be a floating head if you don’t. It’s not hard to say, Vania Rheault loves winter and lives with her two cats in Minnesota. When she’s not writing, she’s sleeping, and you can find her at vaniamargene.com. So many people agonize over what to put, but just think of two or three things that everyone knows about you. It doesn’t have to be interesting or insightful. If you balk at that, skip the photo. I also have an author photo and a longer bio in the backs of all my books. I remember when I was creating the back cover of All of Nothing I knew I needed to take up space, and one of my other standalones I wrote around that same time (Wherever he Goes) was easier to put together, though it had a vertical photo for its front cover too.)
You can tell I was working on my photo manipulation skills here, fading out the bottom for the title on the front and using the bottom of the photo for the blurb on the back. This is the original photo:
courtesy of depositphotos.com
I still love everything about this book and consider it one of my biggest achievements though it sells like crap. Meaning, I haven’t sold a copy since July of this year. Which is more recent than I expected, to be honest.
Have fun with how your blurb looks! This might not be too big of a deal in person if you’re focused on digital sales, but if you ever do a book signing or a convention, the first thing a potential reader is going to do is flip your book over to read the blurb. If your blurb is a big block of text, no one is going to want to read that. As Bryan Cohen likes to say, confused shoppers don’t buy. Don’t intimidate them. Space out your blurb like the ones above, and keep your blurb down to 200 words or less. If you want tips on how to write one, look here. https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-write-a-back-cover-blurb-that-sells (This is actually good advice for your book’s product page on Amazon, too. Make the most of the blurb formatter KDP has so generously updated when you publish your book.) I don’t have any examples from my own books for this–dual POV takes up a lot of room if you want both sides for the blurb–some authors give both, some stick with the male, some stick with the female. I am trying something else out for my new trilogy that I’ll be publishing in January–columns for the POVs instead of long paragraphs. This is how my blurb for dual POV looks for Rescue Me, the book I just released:
For their names, I used the same font as the title, and really, it’s a pretty plain back cover, all things considered. And these are the columns I’m going to try for the trilogy:
I’m especially proud of the ombre coloring of the text, and I’m excited to get these proofs. These are the prettiest book covers I’ve done in a long time, and though they may not be 100% billionaire, I’m hoping they convey the genre well enough they garner good sales. I won’t know until I release them, but I searched for “hotter” guys than what I put on my duet, so I hope it makes a difference.
Tell readers how to find you. I have always referred to the bottom left-hand corner of a book’s back cover as the crap corner. It looks weird blank, and over the years I have changed what I put there. I used to have my social media icons there, now I mostly stick to my website. It still looks bare, but it’s better that nothing. At one point I created a logo to put there for my new pen name, but the cover looks clearer without it (in my opinion) and I always use the same font as the front cover.
The back of your book doesn’t have to be dull–and maybe it shouldn’t be. If you ever hope to go to an author signing or convention, or simply want to give your book away, it’s fun to have the back cover look just as pretty as the front. It tells your reader that you care about the final product of your book. If you want more ideas on back covers, here are a couple of articles I found on the subject.
A couple more tips before I wrap up: You don’t need to make your font huge. It’s tempting since you have all that space back there, but you don’t need the astronauts in space to be able to read it. Your back cover really will look funny once you hold your book in your hands, so add what you can to the back and keep your font size to a minimum. The font size for the columns on Give & Take is 10.6 in Playfair Display and you don’t need anything bigger than that. Then two, if you publish through IngramSpark, they force you to match the price on the back with your list price, so you can’t suddenly decide to raise or lower your price without having to change the cover as well. I found that to be a huge PITA, so I stopped adding my prices to the back. If I were just publishing through KDP, maybe I would still since it looks professional to have the price back there (but I never buy the barcodes so I don’t have the price embedded into it anyway) but it’s not a big loss for the hassle it saves me.
Book covers from my friends that I like. All images taken from Amazon.com and these are not affiliate links.
I wish I had more to write about this week, but the problem is, I just haven’t been into listening to podcasts or reading the non-fiction books that have accumulated in my TBR pile. If it’s not happening on Twitter then I probably don’t know much about it which is sad, but the state of my life at the moment.
King’s Crossing I’m knee deep editing my King’s Crossing series and it’s slow going because all the “takes” and “makes” I thought I managed to get rid of before I formatted them and ordered the proofs. Well, I didn’t do as good as job as I thought. I probably got tired, and I can’t blame myself because holy God, there are a lot. If I didn’t have that to worry about, I think these books would actually sound pretty good. No typos, at least, still getting rid of some repetitive words, but after editing the first two books of my trilogy, I can definitely tell these are the first books I wrote writing in first person. I fell into a bad rhythm and editing it out, even after several passes, has been a lot of work. Still, seeing them in book form has been very helpful, and I’m confident after this final pass, they will be good enough to publish. I’m only on book two, and there are a lot of sentences I marked that I have to rewrite, but the story is good. The consistency (so far) is solid, and I’m very happy with that. I’m also happy with the logo I created using a DepositPhotos vector I found:
Made with a vector from DepositPhotos in Canva
The “Book One” changes obviously, but after several failed attempts to create a logo with an X myself, I was so happy to have stumbled upon an X with a crown already made. I seriously love it!
Booksprout I went ahead and put Rescue Me on Booksprout. I did it over Labor Day weekend, which probably wasn’t the best time, but so far I’ve given away 24 out of the 25 copies they make available. The paperback is already on Amazon, no sales, of course, but that’s okay. I’ll put the ebook up on October 1 like I planned and hope there will be a few reviews when I do. I’ll offer a few copies to my newsletter, though last month I had 7 people unsubscribe. I don’t know yet if they are good subscribers or not. From what I’ve heard, the open rate is decent (40%) but I ran a giveaway and only one person entered. After hosting giveaways on here with little participation, that’s actually not surprising, but it’s too bad because it’s a really great prize! What I need to do is think about running my ad on Facebook again for my reader magnet and see if I can’t get some more subscribers, and also look into Bookfunnel promos since I’m already paying for that. If you want a copy of Rescue Me, a one-night stand, steamy billionaire romance with an HEA, then grab a copy. It’s offered through Bookfunnel and I limited it to the first 20 people who download. You don’t have to give me your email. https://dl.bookfunnel.com/z92k8x1a92. Here’s the blurb. I got a little help from S. J. Cairns, and I think it sounds pretty good:
Sam When my wife passed away, I buried my life with her. For two years, I lived like I was already dead. Until one night, when I meet Lily. Lying in her arms, I’m reminded of what hope feels like. But sometimes what could have been is stronger than what could be, and I have a difficult time letting my wife’s memory go. As I get to know Lily, I realize it isn’t only my past standing in our way, and what I’ll have to do to stop hers from destroying her future may very well destroy mine instead.
Lily Billionaire Samuel Sharpe is beaten down and weary, and when we meet in a hotel bar, there’s no way I can say no when he asks me upstairs. After a violent divorce, I’m struggling to find a fresh start, and a one night stand with the man who would turn out to be my boss isn’t part of the plan. My ex-husband broke me, and until I met Sam, I didn’t think anyone could put me back together again. I should have known my past wouldn’t leave me alone, and I can’t ask Sam to rescue me. Compared to his wife’s memory, I’m not worth saving.
Hardbacks With some persuading, I created hardcover versions for the two books in my duet. It didn’t take that long, and with some help from JP Garland, I was able to position the elements on the cover correctly, as the template is a bit different. I’ll write about it in full when I get my proof copies so I can post a picture. I placed the order today and it said they won’t come until the beginning of October, but I won’t forget.
IngramSpark I approved my duet paperbacks on IngramSpark this morning. It took a little back and forth on the second book with the cover as they kept saying my spine was wrapping onto the front, but when I adjusted it, it still wasn’t correct. I overcorrected then they said my spine was too narrow, but that seemed to knock me out of a loop and when I moved my elements back to where they were before, the cover was accepted. I don’t use the Expanded Distribution option on KDP as I feel IngramSpark is more professional if I want to have my books in bookstores or if one day I ever drudge up the courage to ask the indie bookstore in downtown Fargo to carry my books. I’m always amused when authors bring in their author copies from Amazon, like they don’t understand that Amazon is every bookstore’s competitor and booksellers really don’t want the KDP POD stamp in the backs of the books they’re selling. It’s just proof to me that indies need to keep an eye on their own business and do things the professional way so they look like they know what they’re doing. Publishing is a business, after all, and booksellers don’t have to waste time with an indie who isn’t professional. There are plenty of authors who are.
That really is about all. Since my mind is a one-way track, I’ll be focusing on proofing the proofs of my series. I won’t be able to think about anything else until that’s done, but with as quickly as it’s going, I should be able to have them finished by the middle of October. Entering in the fixes takes longer than reading the proofs because for some reason, seeing a sentence that needs to be rewritten…i can’t wrap my mind around writing it in a different way. It’s just roadblock I need to overcome because of course there’s a different way to rewrite a sentence. There’s a million different ways to rewrite a sentence. After that’s completed, I will put all my attention on my trilogy because I want to get those out in January, and I have to still finalize covers and write my blurbs. With all that going on, I’m itching to get back to writing, but depending on how all the above goes, I may not be writing new material until next year. It’s just how my mind works. I’ve decided to go with it instead of fighting it. Besides, I like getting one project done and moving to the next. I feel more productive than having three or four things going on at once.
I hope you all have a good week! There’s not much of 2022 left. Do you have any goals you want to reach before then?
I write a lot about covers but the fact is, formatting your paperback book’s interior is probably the most frustrating part of publishing your book. While there are tools out there to help, even super awesome tools such as Vellum that will format your book almost perfectly with just a few clicks, there are things that can trip you up.
I ordered a paperback the other day and it was double spaced. I usually look at the interior of a paperback on Amazon before I buy because I have said many times on this blog that I don’t read books that aren’t formatted properly, but this was a friend’s book and I purchased it out of faith. Like some readers who won’t buy books if the cover is bad, I don’t like buying books that are double spaced or not fully justified. They look bad and poor formatting pulls me out a story before I even start reading.
Here are my top two reasons to format properly:
Professionalism Indies lament constantly about how difficult it is to get into bookstores and libraries. Part of the problem is their books don’t look professional. This goes beyond a bad cover. When a manager for an indie bookstore flips through your book, it needs to look like a book inside. Librarians also will be reluctant to spend their funds on books that do not look professional. Barnes and Noble won’t stock your book if it won’t fit in with the other books on their shelves. Your book takes up space–they want products that will sell. Not to mention, the product they stock reflects their reputation.
Cost KDP and IngramSpark charges you for paper. You either eat that cost as a publisher or your make your readers eat it by charging for extra paper. When your book is double spaced and/or your gutters and margins are too wide or even if your indents are deeper than they need to be (.50 as opposed to .25) it all wastes space. Draft2Digital tweeted a calculator not that long ago, and we can run the numbers. Say you have a book with a 6×9 trim size, it’s 350 pages double spaced and wide margins. You price your book at $15.99 USD. This is what you get:
Your author copies will cost you $5.61 and you make $1.59 per book. But what if you formatted it with single spaces and narrowed the margins? Say you can decrease your pages by 30. This is what you get:
Your author copy price goes down to $5.23 and your royalty goes up to $1.97. If you wanted to price your book cheaper to give your readers a break, you could price your book at $14.99 and this is what happens:
Your royalty goes down to $1.52, but you’re saving your reader a dollar because you aren’t charging them for paper. I don’t know how many pages you would save single-spacing a manuscript, but saving paper will always be cost effective and kinder to trees. Plus, shipping cost goes down because your books aren’t so unnecessarily heavy.
I admit, I don’t do fancy formatting. I use Vellum and it’s fast and easy, but I’m also using version 2.6.7 when they’re on 3.3. They’re always adding bells whistles, but honestly, I just don’t care. There is something to be said for a fancy paperback though, and I do get tempted to play when I see books like Sienna Frost’s Obsidian. Here are some pictures of her paperback interior that I stole from this tweet. (With her permission. The ebook is on sale for .99 from today until August 28th, 2022.)
You don’t have to go all out like Sienna did, if that’s not your thing. I put my time elsewhere, but maybe one day I’ll create collector’s editions of some of my books. For now, I use plain vectors from DepositPhotos as chapter header images, like the wine and beer glasses from Rescue Me as they met in a bar. Beer for his chapters and wine for hers.
The IBPA lists the publishing standards that are needed for a book to be considered professionally published. You can download the list, but sometimes it’s easier to pull a book off your shelf and just look at it. Look a what the copyright page consists of, what that publisher and author used in the front and back matter. In all the excitement of putting out our books, sometimes we forget what a real book looks like and it helps to have the real thing as an example. The guidelines are a big help, though, a checklist of sorts, and you can find them here. https://www.ibpa-online.org/page/standards-checklist-download
It’s all fine and good to have a list and know what you’re supposed to do, but having the means and the tools is something else entirely. I was lucky and my ex-fiancé bought me a MacBook Air and Vellum. I knew I would be formatting a lot of books, and between my own books and the books I’ve formatted for friends, I’ve saved a lot of money, despite how much a Mac can cost.
Since this blog is all about how to do things professionally but on a shoestring budget, here are some free or cheap ways to format your books:
Word Word is crude tool for formatting these days, but there are ways to make it work for you. KDP offers templates that you can use–simply delete their sample content and copy and paste your own into it. This is how I used to format my books before I had Vellum. Download the template with the placeholder text–all the margins, gutters, and front and back matter are in place. You do have to have a little knowledge of Word as I doubt you’ll have the same number of chapters as the template, but it’s better than starting from scratch. My friend Joe Garland has tutorials on YouTube that can help you, and Dave Chesson from Kindlepreneur also just blogged about formatting in Word. He offers templates as well, so you could give them a try.
Atticus Dave Chesson’s baby, Atticus, is a low cost answer to Vellum, available for both PC and Macs. I’ve heard reports it’s glitchy, but their customer service is very helpful. You can check it out here. At 147.00 and a 30 day money back guarantee, there’s not a lot of risk trying it out. https://www.atticus.io/
Reedsy Reedsy offers a free formatting tool. I tried it once a while ago, and there’s a small learning curve. Sometimes people just have a knack for learning new things and some people don’t. I don’t remember liking it all that much, but that doesn’t mean you won’t. Free to use and the files are eligible to be uploaded anywhere.
Network Unfortunately, sometimes you just have to network. In some of my groups on Facebook there have been times an author has displayed frustration to the point of tears and there is always a kind soul who will help out. I’ve done covers for people when their ads aren’t working because of their covers, and I’ve edited and formatted for people too. The only problem with asking for a favor is that the file isn’t yours and any changes you make will make you feel guilty for asking. If you can find a way to format yourself, having control can be priceless. Anne Wheeler does book formatting using Vellum. She said I could post with her permission. Reach out to her if you have a book that needs simple formatting without a super short turnaround time. Carol Beth Anderson also does formatting using Vellum for $50.00/book. You can contact her as well. Nicole Scarano offers book formatting using Vellum. Unlike me, she updates hers and offers premium formatting. Join her Facebook group if you’re interested in learning more. (These women are friends of mine, but i haven’t used their services. My recommendation is not an endorsement and they are not affiliate links.)
The fact is, booksellers won’t take your book for their stock if it’s not formatted properly, libraries won’t want your book in their stacks, and readers won’t want to read. It’s not that difficult to properly format your interiors. It’s not being snobby to want the books you buy to look like books, because if an author doesn’t care about doing it properly, I shouldn’t care about reading it. I’m not going to make allowances and exceptions for an author who should know better, and neither do booksellers. There’s a tweet I responded to by my friend Anne I mentioned above, about the stigma self-publishing still faces, and there doesn’t have to be. (Though I know for a fact her books are beautiful!)
This blog post was updated on June 4th, 2025 to reflect Canva’s recent glow-up and I used a new cover as I didn’t end up using the cover I demonstrated with in the previous post.
Quick note: I use Canva Pro, and some of the features I talk about are not available in their free plan. Before Canva added those features, I taught myself a few things in GIMP, a free version of Photoshop. (Find it here: https://www.gimp.org/downloads/) It will be up to you to learn the things you don’t know. And as always, there are no affiliate links in this post.
Because of the changes KDP made to their template generator and the updates Canva added to their software, the blog post I wrote a few years ago now on how to use Canva to create a full wrap paperback cover is basically obsolete. The good news is KDP took away the need to do any math, and I think that will make a lot of people happy. Oh, and the CMYK vs. RGB issue if you want to publish on IngramSpark is gone as well, since Canva (on the Pro Plan) added the option to download your PDF in either.
While there are some things that still pertain to doing your cover in Canva such as making sure your stock photos are 300 dpi so your cover isn’t pixelated, there is a lot that has changed, too, so let’s dive in.
Before you start, you’ll want to make sure you have a formatted manuscript. This includes all your front matter and back matter, your dedication page, acknowledgments, about the author, etc. If you do it yourself with Word, Vellum or Atticus, InDesign or other, you can make changes whenever you want (and you probably will). KDP gives you a 10 page grace, so don’t go crazy. If you hire out, you’ll need the total number of pages of the formatted manuscript that you’ll upload into KDP or IngramSpark and the trim size you’ve chosen for your book.
Once you have that, you can download the cover template that will show you the bleed areas to stay away from when creating your cover. Go to https://kdp.amazon.com/cover-calculator and enter in all the information they want.
1. Paperback or hardback That’s your choice, and the the instructions on how to do the cover are the same. I’ve made hardcover editions and after a while took them down. They didn’t sell and it didn’t seem worth it to keep them on my product page. Going forward, I won’t offer hardcovers–to me, they aren’t worth the time or expense of the ISBN number.
2. Because you’re not creating a coffee table book or a cook book that requires colored pages (those projects are beyond the scope of this blog post) choose a black and white interior.
3. Cream pages for fiction, white for non-fiction is usually the norm. Your page color is attached to your ISBN number, so you can’t change your mind after you publish.
4. Page turn direction is left to right.
5. I choose inches.
6. Choose your trim size. Trim size is also attached to your ISBN so you can’t change the size of your book unless you republish. If you have a very long book, you may want to go with 6×9 due to printing costs in KDP, especially since not long ago they said they needed to increase their prices. Look at what other authors in your genre are doing. Amazon makes it easy to find the product information of any paperback book. I used to go with 5×8, but under my new pen name I’m going with 5.5×8.5 for all my books. You’ll need to tell your interior formatter which size you’re going with as well.
7. Enter the page count. This determines the thickness of your spine. (Press Enter if the yellow button doesn’t light up.)
8. Click Calculate Dimensions.
With the new way KDP offers you the template, all you need for the canvas size in Canva are the numbers for the full cover. The width is 12.045 and the height is 8.75. Before, you used to have to do the math (adding the front and back covers and spine and bleed) to figure out this number, but not anymore.
Click download template on the lower left. It will come in a ZIP file. Open the file and save the PNG under a name you’ll remember so you can find it to upload it into Canva.
The template will have all the information you entered into the template creator and will remind you of the canvas size: 12.045 (width) x 8.75 (height).
In Canva, on the home page, you’ll want click Create and choose Custom Size:
There, you’ll enter in the numbers that the KDP template gave you:
Click Create New Design.
When you do that, you will have the exact sized canvas you need to fit the template you downloaded.
Upload the PNG of the template and add it to the canvas.
Adjust it like you would any picture or element you use in Canva.
And really, it’s that easy. No more math. No more guessing the canvas size. This is the template for a standalone I’m releasing later this year. I’m using a 5.5×8.5 trim size, the pages of the book are 318 and I print on cream paper.
In my other blog post, I took you through the steps on how to use the template, and I can do that here. I’ll use the cover for my September 2025 release, Loss and Damages.
The stock photo I used is very zoomed in and cropped. I added the original stock photo so you can see that you can manipulate a stock photo to twist it to suit your needs.
Original:
This image is zoomed in so I only get the brick wall.
Using the transparency, you can see the bleed lines I’ll need to stay away from when adding text. It’s why I build on top of the template, but you can always guess, and then using transparency, put the template on top of your finished cover and see if you stayed away. That’s a lot of adjusting if you’re not used to making covers, especially text sizing on the spine, but you’ll do what works for you.
Next I darken the image and add the guy. I pay for Pro, so I’m not sure what features are available in the free plan but I think the background remover is worth the price alone. DepositPhotos, where I buy all my stock, also has added a background remover, and if you have a “busy” photo, sometimes it makes a difference if you use both.
I removed his background and played with the brightness and contrast until I like how he looks against the new background. I also used Magic Edit to change the little part of his white shirt to black because it interfered with the placement of the title. Whatever your views of AI are, assisted or generative, it will be up to you if you want to use those tools or not. If you don’t want to use Magic Edit, you can use GIMP and the Clone tool to cover up anything you don’t want showing. Canva is limited, even using their tools, and I still use GIMP on some book covers as well. Especially on people’s heads because the background remover doesn’t always remove the background mixed in with pieces of hair.
I like how he looks now, but I need something that would make the title font and my author name pop and cover up the sliver of brick wall between his legs. So I found a black gradient element and put it at the bottom.
Now I have space for the title and my author name. Canva Pro offers a lot of font options, too, and while I try to buy my own just for my own peace of mind, sometimes I do use theirs, but I always give attribution on my copyright page at the front of my books.
This is why I build on top of the template. So I can see where to place the text so it’s a safe distance from the bleed marks.
The font I’m using is Brown Carolina Sans for LOSS and DAMAGES and Candara Beauty Script Regular for the AND in the middle. When I rebranded for this pen name I decided on Cinzel Decorative for my author name. (Editing tip: If the font isn’t looking the way you want, check the kerning under the advanced formatting tab.)
I would also use the transparency option on the gradient so you can see where your name is in relation to the bleed line. You can see I adjusted his size and the black gradient covers up where his legs are cut off.
When you add a gradient or you’re not using the same stock photo for the back and front, you want to be aware of the line between the spine and front cover. If you don’t line up your elements exactly right, they can bleed over or leave a gap between the spine and front cover.
How it looks so far:
When you’re doing the spine text, you can zoom in to see the bleed lines clearly.
Print on Demand is iffy at best, and I’m cutting it close with AND. I’ll make that a bit smaller to give the printers some wiggle room. There’s always someone online complaining their spine text isn’t centered, but I’ve given up worrying about it. It’s nothing you can control. Just give the printer enough space to mess up so your text doesn’t bleed onto the back or front cover.
Add your name and imprint to the spine if you want and then do the blurb or whatever else you’re going to put on the back cover. I’ve only added my author photo with my bio one time. You can skip putting the barcode white box on the back. KDP will add it for you if you leave that space blank.
Keeping the transparency low on the background lets you see that the text for the blurb isn’t too close to the edges.
You’ll want to tweak it, but when you change the transparency to zero you can see how it will look when all the pieces are in place.
In the bottom left of the back cover, I call that the crap corner. I’ve always had a hard time figuring out what to put there because there’s not a lot of room for anything, and with the barcode in place, the corner just looks empty. I’ve started putting my author website there for lack of anything better and I think it works okay. Like I said, I leave the barcode box blank. Both KDP and IngramSpark will add it if you don’t buy or make your own barcode. Dave Chesson of Kindlepreneur has a free barcode creator if you want to create your own barcode. You can find it here. Barcode Creator. (Okay, I lied. I added it so you can see what it looks like. Search elements for square. You can adjust the size and color. Use transparency to fit it over the yellow box on the template.)
One of the updates that surprised me was when Canva added the choice (for Pro Plan) to download in RBG or CMYK. IngramSpark prefers the CMYK and KDP, I don’t think, cares. I’ve always uploaded an RBG because that’s all Canva has offered in the past. Flatten your PDF.
This takes some of the worry off using IngramSpark because I hated seeing their error messages even though I knew what I was doing was okay. My covers always came out fine (POD mistakes aside) so I never worried about it either way, but it’s nice to have the choice.
You can use this cover for IngramSpark, too, but make the text on the spine smaller. Their spines are narrower because of the kind of paper they use. IngramSpark also has a cover template generator, and if you want to make sure you’re in the bleed lines, you can download it and lay it on top your cover. Using your transparency, you can adjust the font and then delete it when you’re done. (I linked to the Lightning Source template generator because the one from IngramSpark was taking too long to be emailed. They are the same template though. It just seems that Lightning Spark’s is more dependable.)
As you can see, I would want to adjust the title on the spine because it’s narrower than KDP’s template. I haven’t found there to be any other difference.
Adjust the text on the entire cover so it’s still centered, and you’re done with covers for both templates and platforms. Labeling them helps me not to mix them up.
Here’s what the finished product looks like. The cover looks a hazy, but that’s because I took a picture in a sunlit room and I don’t think it needs adjusting in real life. I can move the black gradient to the left though, closer to the spine, but otherwise, I think it’s pretty good.
I think I covered everything there is to know with the updates. If you have a cover from a designer and you need to resize it, entering the numbers and generating your own template into Canva is easy. (Get their permission first.) Another update Canva Pro added is you’re able to upload PDFs, not just PNGs, JPGs, and JPEGs. Sometimes I do that to make the ebook cover. I blogged about how to do that, and you can read it here. https://vaniamargene.com/2024/09/09/how-to-turn-your-books-cover-full-wrap-pdf-into-an-ebook-cover/
Atticus is a new interior formatting software created by Dave Chesson and his team at Kindlepreneur. Atticus is available for all computers, not only for Mac like Vellum is. You can find Atticus here. If you have a Mac and want to play with Vellum, you can try it for free. They’ll charge you only if you want to generate files. Find Vellum here. If you don’t have the cash for either, but still want to do it yourself, KDP also supplies interior templates with bleeds and gutters and front matter in place. Download the template with sample content. Delete theirs and copy and past your own into the template. You can find info about the interior templates here. (That is actually how I formatted my books before I bought Vellum.)
Developing your eye takes time and practice. Looking at Canva templates and the top 100 in your genre on Amazon can teach you a lot. You can look up Canva Templates here. I also look at premade covers for inspiration.
I’m writing a quick Thursday author update because on Monday I’m posting updated instructions on how to do a full wrap for a paperback in Canva. Both Canva and KDP made changes that have made my post from last year basically obsolete, and anyone who reads it now will be like, what? because the site where you can download your cover template has changed. So, you gotta stay with the times. (But no video as of yet. I know I promised, but making a video is nerve-wracking and I’m not excited to jump into it.)
I emailed Jeff Bezos’s email address this morning about my large print book. I submitted Captivated by Her in a large print edition, but KDP blocked it as duplicate content. I was a little pissy since I was able to publish two other large print books without an issue. So I wrote to his email address asking if large print was going to be blocked as duplicate content (which doesn’t make any sense to me anyway because it is) then why give us the option? There’s even a little box when you’re publishing asking if it’s large print. You can check it, and I assumed that publishing a regular print book along with a large print was a no-brainer. I guess not. In the email, I didn’t even ask them to unblock my book. I don’t care about that so much because I can publish them through IngramSpark (which is a hassle, but you do what you gotta do). I know on Amazon that can be hit and miss with availability, but it’s better than not publishing at all. I just wanted an explanation, and if they really don’t want us to publish large print, take the option away and force us to use IngramSpark. I hate seeing my blocked book on my dashboard, and I don’t want to do anything that will cause KDP to close my publishing account. I’ve always been on the up and up with them, and treat my books as a business. I just get mad when things don’t go how they should go. Anyway, I don’t expect a response. I’m sure Large Print books are not on their list of priorities, but at least i can say I tried.
I’m 30k into a new first book in a trilogy. I’ve got loose plots for all three books, and I’m having fun writing it. I was going to write the remaining four books in a different series I started last year, but the characters in this book wouldn’t leave me alone, so they’ll get slotted into my publishing schedule in 2024, and then I’ll have the other series to release in 2025. It’s a bit crazy that I’m that far ahead, but I don’t have to be.
The books I’ll publish between now (Captivated came out June 1st) and the beginning of 2024. I’ll release them 2 months apart.
I could release as quickly as I want, but there’s no point in turning on the faucet in a gush if there’s no one around to appreciate the water. I’ll slowly release while I gather email subscribers and hopefully readers. My launch (though I haven’t reached the 30 day cliff on Amazon yet) hasn’t done anything but with one book and it being half of a duet, I kept my expectations low. My plea to my newsletter subscribers who downloaded it as an ARC for a review went unanswered, and it doesn’t even have one to make the product page look nice. Maybe I should have gone with Booksprout after all. Oh well. We’ll see where I am next year at this time, though I don’t know if I’ll be doing much better. It takes so long now to build a readership, I may not be looking at any kind of momentum until 2024. But that’s par for the course in these times. I just have to work harder on building my list and learning how to take advantage of promos on Bookfunnel. Earning a reader’s trust takes time and lots of consistency. I’ll get there, I just hope I don’t burn out before I do.
My Facebook ad for my newsletter sign up is going well, and I have 218 subscribers. I’ll need to shut my ad off in a couple of days though since I’ll have reached a 100 dollar ad spend, and I don’t want to spend any more than that. I’m already paying for Bookfunnel, so I should explore that more. And I think I’ll turn off my FB ad for Captivated as well. I’m getting a few clicks but they are really expensive (26 cent a click), and my sales dashboard is a big goose egg for that book. I knew this was going to be an uphill battle, but I want to save a little money to push the book when the second comes out. Pacing in a book is important, but it’s also important when you’re blowing your budget. My Amazon ads are also dead in the water, probably because I’m not bidding high enough for them to be shown to anyone. For right now, I’m using Bryan Cohen’s method of a thirty cent click bid, and that is not enough for a romance genre, especially one as popular as billionaire. After I shut my Facebook ads off I can create a few more on Amazon with a higher bid and see if that helps. In the words of almost every professional marketer out there: Test, test, test!
That’s about all I have for today. I’m happy to be writing again, and I’ll be busy with this trilogy until the end of the year.
Vania Margene Rheault 