How to format an indie book release, with style and flair
Part 3- Editing, Formatting, and Uploading
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: This is not a prescriptive how-to guide on how to release a self-published book. This is just what I did. That said, do as I say not as I do; take this post (and any future posts) with a grain of salt.
Hey there! It’s me again, lol. Welcome to Part 3/6, where I go over my self-publishing journey and findings about formatting and editing!
If you didn’t know, my name is Briana Garrett, and I write YA sci-fi and fantasy novels about Black women and girls trying to find their way in the world.
In May I self-published my debut, Love Be Damned, a YA romantasy novel about a young Black fashion designer who has to save her younger sister after her sister’s boyfriend is possessed by a mirror demon. This novel is easily the book of my heart. Over the past two years, I tried to get this book traditionally published, only to be metaphorically left chasing my own tail. After all that, I decided to publish the book myself, instead. You can read all about that experience here.
In my last post, I went over the differences between publishing through Amazon’s KDP, IngramSpark, and Barnes & Noble Press. If you’re interested in learning more about that, you can check out my last post. For this entry, I am going to go over some of the most important aspects of indie publishing (I’m using indie and self-published interchangeably): editing, formatting, and (eventually) uploading. These are crucial because a well edited and well formatted book can be the difference between someone reading your book and someone deciding your work isn’t worth the time or effort.
Potentially the most important aspect of this is the-
EDITING:
I’m sure at least some of you have heard of the recent TikTok controversy surrounding the debut author Audra Winter, who allegedly sold over six thousand preorders of her YA book, Age of Scorpius, only to swiftly face backlash when readers discovered that the book was poorly edited. According to readers, her book was littered with typos, run-on sentences, repeated phrases, and other copy mistakes, along with glaring developmental issues that were not properly addressed. Winter’s book was immediately reviewed negatively for this on sites like Goodreads and Amazon, and subsequently removed due to the feedback. While I feel for her and I hope she doesn’t take the feedback personally, I think this incident perfectly encapsulates the importance of proper editing when you decide you would like to self publish your book.
There are two major forms of editing you should be aware of when looking to publish your novel: developmental edits and copy edits.
Copy edits are the edits that most people are likely familiar with- these are the edits and suggestions that people make when they are correcting your spelling and grammar in a sentence, or when they suggest a new word for a sentence that sounds awkward. These are the kinds of edits that your high school English teacher was most likely to do when you would turn in a paper.
Developmental edits are edits that involve larger elements of the story, like the plot and characters. These edits are suggestions that someone is making in order to help make the story better overall. This could involve something like removing a character from your book because they aren’t serving the narrative, or reorganizing chapters in your book to change the order of events in the plot. These are major rewrites that can make your story stronger and more clear to the reader.
Some authors choose to hire a freelance editor in order to review their book for errors or developmental changes that need to be made, and some authors can successfully self-edit without needing much outside input from an editor.
I did a weird third thing.
Because I was pursuing traditional publishing at the time, my agent submitted my novel to editors at major publishing houses during my submission process. Each editor that was interested in my book had their own recommendation of revisions that I should make to Love Be Damned before they agreed to buy it. This left me with 3-5 different editors giving me conflicting opinions on the book, which I then compiled into a list of commonalities that I was willing to revise. Ultimately, this helped me edit my own book when it became clear that my book would not be purchased.
In a way, this helped me save money on a freelance editor, despite being mentally harrowing at the time.
Personally, I did about four rounds of edits on this book once I decided to self-publish it. I did both copy edits and developmental edits throughout the course of several months. I changed some character motivations, I “killed my darlings” by deleting scenes that I really liked, and I tried to comb through the manuscript as closely as I could to make sure there weren’t any typos or mistakes (Spoiler- there are some anyway, lol).
However, I’d say the most crucial element of editing is getting some outside feedback, whether it be trusted beta readers or an editor. You don’t have to pay someone to edit your novel if you have a good group of writer friends who are willing to provide feedback for you, and you are a decent self-editor. Having someone else give you feedback on your work after you complete a major draft can help you see elements that you may have missed originally, which can help you improve the quality of your manuscript overall. Sometimes you’re way too close to your own project to see what may not be working, or to see what may need to change in order to make your book successful.
I’ll also say that you do not have to take the feedback that your beta readers or your editor are giving you, however, if you are receiving a lot of similar feedback from multiple people- you may have a bigger problem down the line if you choose to ignore it.
FORMATTING:
Formatting is the devil’s work, and I regret to say that even though I used Draft2Digital’s free formatting software to format Love Be Damned, I did also have to purchase and download additional formatting software in order to make sure the book looked the way that I wanted it to.
I personally used Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Word to format Love Be Damned into the proper PDF files for print. While the original Draft2Digital file is free to download, there were elements of the book that I wanted to include, like a table of contents and a custom title page, that would not have been included if I had simply used Draft2Digital alone. I used Adobe and Microsoft mostly for the supplemental formatting like adding pages and adjusting my copyright page.
I was already paying for Microsoft, as it is my drafting software of choice, however, paying for Adobe Acrobat definitely felt like a necessary evil, because it made everything much easier to align and adjust than simply converting the file from a word document to a PDF. (This is 100% NOT an endorsement of Adobe Acrobat, by the way.)
There are other formatting platforms out there that are also helpful when trying to put your book into the proper format. I have heard of indie authors using platforms like Vellum and Atticus, but I’m not as familiar with them personally. Both of these services are also available at a charge, although I can’t speak to their ease of use. I may look into them for future books, though, as they may prove to be more cost effective than Adobe in the long run.
Word to the wise- make sure that you have successfully edited out all of the typos and the mistakes before you start to format your book. If you attempt to make edits or changes to your book during the formatting stage, you will likely shift a paragraph or cause a formatting error unintentionally, and cause more mistakes in your manuscript down the line. If you notice a series of mistakes throughout your book when editing, it is better to start over with the base document and fix them before you attempt to format it again. (Ask me how I know…)
I’ll likely speak more about how much I hate formatting in my mistakes section of this breakdown in a few weeks, but for now, just know that there are several options available to format your book if you’re just starting out. Draft2Digital is a free platform where you can export PDF files (for print publishing) and EPUB files (for e-book publishing) at no charge, even without publishing through them.
If you would prefer to pay for your formatting software, there are options like Adobe Acrobat (again, very much NOT an endorsement), Microsoft Word, Vellum, and Atticus. Hopefully you can find the platform that works best for you. Despite my formatting headaches, I am incredibly satisfied with how Love Be Damned turned out, all things considered.
UPLOADING:
This is the final step of the process, and it should be the last thing that you do before you are ready for publication. Please make sure that your book is completed and all of your files are correct before you reach this stage!
If you are publishing an e-book, you will need to upload a JPEG or PDF of your cover image, along with an EPUB file of your completed manuscript to whichever platform you are choosing to upload to. You can secure your EPUB file from a site like Draft2Digital or another formatting program.
If you are publishing a physical book (either hardcover or paperback), you will need to upload a PDF of both your completed cover (with the front, back, and spine) along with a PDF of the completed manuscript. Like the EPUB, you can get a PDF from Draft2Digital for free. (However, please make sure you are selecting the right size for the PDF based on the size of your book, because this can impact your ability to upload.) I recommend finalizing the number of pages in your book before you tell your cover artist the size of the book cover, because this can impact your cover’s spine size.
If you have concerns about sizing your cover or your PDF files, each platform (KDP and IngramSpark) has a formatting guide that you can follow in order to determine the right size cover and the proper file size for your project. They have cover templates to ensure that your cover is the proper size to completely cover the front and back of your book. They each provide digital e-proofs of the book file for you to review as well before the manuscript is officially uploaded. Please review these carefully to avoid having to reupload files later!
Personally, I struggled with uploading my files, specifically because IngramSpark and KDP had different margins for not only my cover, but for my pages as well, which meant that I had to go in and adjust the formatting for my internal files (see the above gif for my reaction when I discovered this) along with the cover files for each platform, which was about as much fun as it sounds.
KDP will allow you to upload as many versions of the book as you would like up until 3-4 days from publication, so they can approve the manuscript and input it to the Amazon platform. After this, if you need to adjust the manuscript for whatever reason, you will have to wait until after publication. This can cause issues if people have already ordered the book with the errors in it, because those will likely still be fulfilled, however, you can correct this with a second edition print of your book at no charge.
IngramSpark, however, is not as forgiving. As I mentioned in the last post, IngramSpark will charge you a $25 fee if you have to make changes to your novel while the book is in production. This can quickly become pricy if you have more than one version of the book that needs to be reuploaded. I said it before, but I’ll say it again, please make sure you have all of your files properly edited and uploaded before you enable global distribution to avoid this!!
Hopefully that shed a little light on the process of putting out a polished manuscript. Personally, editing, formatting, and uploading was one of the hardest parts of this whole process for me, and I know I will have to revisit these steps when I go over some of the mistakes I made in a later post. I like to think that I didn’t mess up too bad, but I also believe that I could improve upon these aspects for my next book.
Anyway, I hope you stick around for the next post, because marketing is the theme we’ll get into on Monday, September 8th (No post for next week due to Labor Day.)! I’m gonna tell you how I got the word out about Love Be Damned before it was published in order to secure a decent amount of preorders, despite originally not having a big audience.
As a reminder, today is the last day to enter my giveaway for a free signed copy of Love Be Damned. All you have to do to win is follow me on Instagram using the link below, and then like the giveaway post, along with leaving a comment tagging two other people who you think may like the book. I will contact the winner tomorrow to get the information to send them their prize! (US only, please.)
Thanks for reading! Feel free to subscribe and join me for the next post next week!