Why I Wanted to Cry After a Call with My Publisher

Read Book Update #1 first

Last Wednesday I had a call with the independent publisher that is #1 on my list to sign with. (Signing with an Independent Publisher means they are assisting me to self publish my book and I pay them, they don’t pay me.) I asked all of my questions I had written on 3 pages (yep, I sure did!) regarding the contract she sent me a couple weeks prior. It’s a fairly large financial commitment and I wanted to understand what I was agreeing to as well as the order and timing of the process.

Here are a few things I learned:

POD stands for Print on Demand
(a lot of softcover books can be printed one at a time to fill online orders from companies like Barnes & Noble and Amazon)|

Amazon charges a LOT to sell books on their site…
(57% of the retail price they charge on their website stays in their pockets. OUCH!!) That means little to no ROI and zero profit for unknown small-time authors, like me.
(Good thing I am not in this for the money!)

Best season to publish books in order: Spring, Fall, Late Winter
(notice summer is NOT on the list.)

Edits will take at least 3 rounds: developmental editing, line editing, and copy-editing
(more to come about this as I go through them)

Order and timing of the process:
edits (3-6 months),
design (3 months),
print (3 months)

It may take another year before my book is published (Say what?!?!)

I didn’t like hearing that last bullet. I felt like I’ve already been writing for so long and when I heard it could be another full year before my book gets published it was a little disheartening. Truth be told, I had to Tap on that! I had self-judgment of how long it’s taking me to get this book to print because it feels like I’ve been talking about it for years.

(Even though I haven’t talked about THIS book. I actually never even wanted to talk about the topics in this book, let alone write about them and share them with the world!)

But the truth is… writing, professionally editing, and publishing a quality book with deeply raw and personal stories takes time.

The publisher (I will tell you who after I officially sign the contract) said from her experience June, July, and August are not great months to publish a book, and the best time is the spring. What that means for me is I can set my sights and aim for May 2020 as my target date to publish, but if it doesn’t flow and come together with ease, then I will trust the process and will figure out another time to publish. My concern is we have the U.S. Presidential campaign and election (aka circus) in the fall of 2020 so frankly that may not be the best time. I will either publish in May 2020 or another date TBD.

Read book update #3 to find which publishing company I signed a contract with!