I seem to come up against two conflicting responses about self publishing.
On the one hand I hear avoid vanity sites and I should never pay someone up front for work on my book. But on this website there is loads of info about S/P sites, which cost money, which I have to pay for before my book is worked on.
What is the difference?
I have been sent quotes for the cost of working with 2 of the SPS advertised on here. Both amounted to well over £1000. Is it worth using an SPS?
Jeremy, my husband always wanted to go some dry-stone walling, but he was stuck in a computer office. He left that to go to agricultural college, and did some walling there, but not enough to satisfy!
There could be a niche market for your memoir, especially if it's illustrated - line drawings or b/w photos. Country Living and Landscape Magazine (and I much prefer the latter) have articles on your sort of work - rural crafts are definitely in favour - so you could try pitching an article there.
Keep writing - but don't end up writing the book your group members want it to be: be true to yourself. I think you've got a lot to say that they won't understand.
Lorraine
A very thorough reply, thank you very much Lorraine.
At this moment I am taking my book, one chapter at a time to my local writers group. They read through my work and edit it for me. They always come up with better ways of writing something, correcting my grammar, and generally giving me good and bad feedback. Most of the group are published writers and the aim of the group is to help their members get published.
They all seem to self publish. I will continue to take their advice. But at the same time I will submit to agents, just to see if there is any response. As a memoir it may be in the end only a few people buy it, so I cannot justify spending masses of money on it anyway.
My time is of course worth money, but at the age of 64ish my work as a professional dry stone waller is probably coming to an end. After 40 years of shifting tons of stone a day my body is slowly falling apart. Then I will have plenty of time to do bookish things.
Jeremy, you can self-publish your book without using any of these sites - but you have to have it properly edited and proof-read, and you need a cover, both of which cost money.
The difference is that you can decide how much to spend: editing isn't cheap, but you can do some of it yourself if you know what to look for: common typos, like teh for the, (which aren't underlined in Word), and of course all the ones that are highlighted in Word, even if they're false corrections. (Never trust their grammar!)
Have you formatted your chapters so that the space between heading and first line is the same for all? Are all your indents the same? Do you have scene breaks, and are they all the same? How's your punctuation? Which font have you used?
Have you started consecutive chapters with the same word (which I'm told is a no-no for a professional)? Have you made sure that a man who parks his car at the front of the house doesn't get into it at the side? Does Fred turn into Harry halfway through? There's a lot that you can do for yourself in this line.
You can buy a cover for whatever you want to spend on it - there are stock covers, for instance, which will cost you as little as a fiver, if you don't mind seeing it on another book too. If you're good with computers you can make your own (though don't use copyrighted images, or pictures of specific buildings without permission).
kdp will tell you how to format your book for Kindle. Creatspace tell you how to do the same for a paperback. Smashwords and so forth will also give you instructions. I'm no techie and I did both - though not without complications when I had to remove a drop capital for the kindle version.
I'm an editor so didn't have to pay those costs, but it came in at much less than £1k.
Any publicity is all down to me, and some of that will cost money. An SPS probably won't cover publicity costs.
The things I haven't factored in here are my time, which was considerable, and the hair-tearing, which was occasional.
If you use a package provided by an SPS, it's vital to find out what they cover: editing, formatting, artwork? Will your book appear in their publicity? Scrutinise what they offer, and then work out if you could do it yourself. If not, it may well be worth it.
Vanity sites will charge whatever they think they can get out of you, and that can be upwards of £2k. The only reason they expect you to pay this is because they don't think it will sell and so they won't bear the costs. They could be wrong, but be careful of what their take will be if your book does well. Their reason for existing is to line their own pockets with your hopes and dreams.
I've been looking at one recently for someone else, where they state that manuscripts sent to them must be edited - so they're not paying anyone to do that for you. What are they doing for that £2k?
For both of these options, it's vital that you go over the proof with a magnifying glass twice. You may miss one or two things, being only human, but you've got to try to catch them all.
So with SPS and Vanity publishers, you may still have to do a lot of the work. Read any contract very very carefully, and don't sign anything you don't understand. If you ask for clarification, keep any emails - you really have to have a paper trail.
Finally, don't let hope override common sense! If it looks off, walk away.
Hope this helps!
Lorraine