Considerations
If you’ve been following along at home, you know my goal is to publish two books in 2023.
Since I won’t be going through an agent to a major publisher (detailed elsewhere on this blog), it looks like I’ll be figuring out some or a lot of this on my own. Other options include going through an independent publisher or self-publishing.
I did the self-publishing route previously, albeit in a very limited fashion with publishing on Amazon. When I first published Sunset, it was limited to Kindle-only at that time. Some of the subsequent programs, like Kindle Unlimited and publish-on-demand, didn’t exist yet. I did all the formatting myself, entering everything into Amazon’s site, and not much marketing on my part. When the print-on-demand option became avaialble, I formatted the books for that option as well as creating the spine and back cover. Interestingly enough, you don’t need a back cover for an ebook.
For two of the books I used pictures I’d taken. The cover for Sunset was taken from the parking lot of the mobile home park where my grandparents used to live. It’s of a New Mexico sunset, of all things, and I cropped it so it seemed appropriate. For Sundown I found a stock photo of a nighttime forest and the sky above, which I thought looked good for a cover. I don’t remember where I found it, but hey, it was free. The final cover for Sunburst was taken when I was in New Mexcio for the Bataan Memorial Death March, which is a full marathon through the high desert. The race begins and ends at the small town installation of White Sands Missile Range, and runners can camp out the night before. The picture is of sunlight filtering through the spires of the Organ Mountains.
I bring all this up because designing covers was one of the things I had to do on my own at the time. I’m sure professionals would have made my book covers look a lot better. Things like that are considerations for publishing books this year. Do I pay someone to create a cover? Probably a good idea. Do I pay for a copy editor and proofreading? Again, probably a good idea. Do I pay someone to format the interiors of the books? That would be worth the money, for sure.
If I go with an independent publisher, some of this would likely be included in the package if it’s a hybrid deal. With self-publishing, they’d all be on me and my pocketbook. Which way to go?