Indie Publishing Secret #24 When Do I Get Paid?

Indie Publishing Secret #24- Payment


Last week we talked about how much we earn as authors, now it's time to discuss when we get paid.

Publishers pay quarterly. That means you will get a check every three months when your book sells.

If you indie-publish you will be at the mercy of the places you sell your books. For example, Createspace pays monthly after the books sells. That means that books you sell in February will show up in your bank account at the end of April and only if your total is more than $20.00.

By the way, it is important that you let them pay you electronically. Checks require higher totals sold and take a lot more time.

You will get paid for your ebook with Amazon 60 days following the end of the calendar month when the applicable sale occured. That means that if you sold a book in January, you would get paid in April for that book if your total is more than $10.00.

Barnes and Noble pays the same way Amazon does.

Smashwords pays quarterly and you receive the check 40 days after that period ends. If you sell books in Jan/Feb/and March, you will be paid at the end of April and March may not be included. Confusing, huh! Your total must be more than $10.00.

You may put your book in consignment stores. You will be paid if they sell.

My distributor pays monthly, but there is a lag time of 3 months from when the book was invoiced. That means that at the end of each month a new books go out, they send me an invoice. Three months later I get paid on that invoice. 

It's tricky.

That is why you need to have a back-up of money to tide you over. If you print 1000 and all thousand go out that first month, you still have to wait almost 4 months to get paid.

You will need more money to print more books and you can't rely on that income. Be prepared to pay for several printings before you get paid.

You could, of course, put it all out there and print more than 1000 at a time. You will save per book, but they may take time to move or never move. Not to discourage you, but first time authors usually don't move 2,000 books. With that said, my book has already moved 2500 in less than 4 months. It is possible.

You have to determine the amount of risk you are comfortable with. Also, with debut indie authors, the curve tends to go up slowly at first then explodes around the year to two year mark. That's a long time to wait to be paid.

Indie Publishing Secret #15-Uploading Your Interior Text

In Secret #8 I talked about how to set your book up with Createspace. Remember, there are other services. I just chose Createspace. You can use who you'd like.


Time to upload your interior text. Yay!


Before you do, some things to consider

1. Do you want a blank page before your title page?
2. Do you want your LCCN printed on your title page? (last weeks post)
3. Do you want reviews printed on the first page? (In next weeks post)
4. Do you want your blog/website information on your author page?
5. Do you want to put a teaser about your next book on the last page?

Not sure?


Look at a bunch of paperback books and decide how you want those first few pages and last few pages to look in your book and design them to look that way.


You are in charge, but there are definite "norms" out there. What patterns do you see? What kind of books break those patterns? You want your book to look professionally done, make sure you do your research.


After you have it designed how you want it to be, upload it on Createspace's site. After it's approved, you'll be able to send away for a proof copy. There's nothing like holding your first book in your hand. When mine arrived I was at work. My daughter called me screaming in the phone. I was so afraid she'd been hurt or in an accident or something. After telling her to calm down, I realized she was telling me my proof had arrived. I asked her if she'd opened the box. Silence...
I laughed and said, "How does it look?"
She answered,"Awesome" And then screamed again.
So much fun!


I suggest you get that proof and look it over with a fine-toothed- comb before sending your interior file to all the ebook services. There is something about a hard copy that lets you SEE mistakes more easily.


Fix any mistakes you and your editor/friends find and then upload your final version. If you were lucky and had no errors-good for you. Start soliciting reviews and get your ebook onto smashwords.


Happy proofing!

Indie Publishing Secret #12- Revisiting the Cover

Indie Secret #12-Your Cover....
Go check out Why Not? Because I Said So TODAY! 

And write a review of Watched in the comment section of my blog to be entered to win a $10 Amazon gift card. Yahoo!


I've had a lot of emails asking about Createspace's cover designer. I thought I'd go into a bit more detail.

1. Not all templates allow you to upload your own photo. If it doesn't give you the option to upload your own-then you can't use that one with your own design/picture. It will only the allow the background you see on the template. Only a few are like this.
2. One template is made for you to put your professionally done cover in. When you click on it, it lets you know it is that one
3. When you choose a template, you can use your picture or choose one from their gallery if you'd like.
4. You can not change the placement of the title, author name, author picture, and back blurb because it is a template. However, you can unclick "visible" for several of these and not have to worry about them. For example, I put my picture on the last page of my book instead of the back cover by unclicking the "visible" box. You could unclick the visible for the back blurb-but I don't suggest that. You want that.
5. If your picture doesn't work just right-you can edit it with free software like Picasa or use Photoshop or some other editing software to make it work. Just edit and reload until you get it right. 
6. The most important thing about your cover picture is that you remember the picture has to be high resolution. If it isn't it will send you a message telling you it may be blurry when they print your cover. Make sure you heed that warning-even if you love how it looks on the screen.
7. The spine does not show until you submit your cover. You submit by pushing the submit button at the bottom of the screen. This does NOT lock you into that cover. It only creates the entire cover for you. It takes a few minutes-but you could change it however many times you want. Just re-submit when you think you have it how you want it. 
8. Keep in mind as you look at the picture without the spine, that the ISBN is on the back of the book. So, check out it's placement to kinda know where everything is on the page. If it's too hard to understand that concept, simply press submit and get the whole view. No harm, no foul. You can do that as many times as you like.
9. Also, remember, you need to add your price on the back of the book somewhere. I used Photoshop. You can do it for free in Picasa or use a different edititing program. You can't, however, use Word. If you do, you end up with a Word document and you can't upload those for your cover.

I hope that helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.


Happy Covering!! And get to reviewing my book, Watched, so you can win the $10 Amazon gift card. Just put your review in the comments of either of my blogs to enter.

Secrets to Indie Publishing Revealed #9-Choosing an ISBN

Secret #9

How's it going with your cover? What have you discovered? What about formatting your file? Did that go well?

It's time to choose your ISBN.

Go to Createspace and sign in.

Click on your book title and look for the "set up" tab. Click on ISBN.

You have four choices-each with pros and cons

1. Free. If you only intend to sell through Createspace channels, you may want to choose this. It will list Createspace as the publisher.YOu can not take this ISBN with you to another printer/distributor. If you want your books in stores, do not choose this option. Createspace says it will be available for stores to purchase because it will be in the Ingram catalogue, but bookstores do not order POD books (Createspace is a POD distributor/printer) Bookstores insist on the ability to return your book at any time up to 99 years from purchase. POD is a final sale-no returns.
2. 10 buck option- If you only intend to sell through Createspace channels, you many want to choose this. Why the $10 fee? It give you the ability to "imprint" the book as the publisher. You can use your name or make up a publishing company like "Sunshine Publishing" to be the publisher. This keeps Createspace off your book info. (all the info about taking it with you from option #1 holds true with this option)
3. Custom-If you want to take your book and get it onto bookstore shelves as well as Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and others-you may want to choose this option. Sure, $99 seems like a lot of money for your own ISBN when you can get one for free, but remember, If you choose option 1 or 2, you have no control over where your book goes. You can not take it to another distributor. (Createspace is a printer and distributor) using their ISBN. This option lets you take it where ever you want to have it printed or distributed.
4. Custom Universal-this allows you to buy your ISBN somewhere else and put it on your book. If you intend to write several books and self-publish them, this is what you will want to do. You can go to Bowker.com and buy "packs" of ISBN's for less than $99 a pop. If you buy ten, it's around $500. Most authors who self-publish go this route. You can take your book to any printer and/or distributor you choose.

Now, remember, even if you use option #3 or #4, Createspace does not imprint the price into the barcode they create. Most bookstores require this. If you only intend to sell through online channels, don't worry about this.

Go to a barcode generator online and pay a few bucks to have one made that includes the price if you are selling it outside Createspace distribution.

Take some time to decide which route to go. Once you choose an ISBN, you are stuck with it for that book. You can re-publish with a different ISBN, but that means you start all over and it can be a headache. I had to do this and it is no fun.

Happy ISBNing!

Indie Publishing Secrets Revealed #8-The Text to your Book.

This is a long post-but full of great info.

How is the editing going on your book? Have you either hired an editor or had multiple "people in the know" go over your work with a fine-toothed-comb? I cannot stress the importance of this! Do not skip this step.

Let's talk about formatting your print book.

You have a cover now, or at least the ability to create one, if you read my last post. Remember, you need a cover whether you are creating an ebook or print book. While you're in Createspace, go ahead and upload your interior file (the text in your book) to Createspace.
There are several ways to do this. First of all, make a second copy of your interior. Name it createspace interior file. Do not use your original to play around with.

I'm going to start from the beginning on Createspace.
Sign in. You will now be in your member dashboard. Click on "add a new title".  It will ask you to name your book. Type it in. I put in Watched. Do not use all caps.

Now you can put in a description of your book. (You can wait on this if you want) Think back blurb or the summary you read on the inside jacket of a book. This is what people will read on Amazon and the other sites you choose to send it to. It is what makes a person want to read your book. It sells it for you. You can change this a hundred times if you want to. I used the back blurb of my book. See it here.(scroll to "editorial review")

You can put a subtitle on your book if you want or just leave it blank. I used "Murder was just the beginning". Check out the link to see how they use it on your book page.

You can list a volume number if you like. I chose #1 because it was the first of a series.

Save and Continue

Now we are at the interior file (the text of your book) Whew!!

You can choose the paper color-white or cream. If you choose cream, you limit your choice of book size. I suggest white. But do what you like.

Trim size is your next decision. This is the size of your finished book. Choose a size the printer you are going to use, uses. If you are going to stick with Createspace, you can choose any of the sized they list. I chose 5.06 x 7.81 because I liked some books I had that were that size, but my local printer did not print a book that size, so I switched to 5 X 8, a size they do print. Not sure which to choose? Measure some books at your house and see what sizes you like or check with your local printers to see what sizes they print.

Save and Continue

Do not pick an ISBN yet! Click next at the top of the screen.

On the next page at the bottom you will see a link to file formatting. Click on that. It takes you to a disscussion board for file formatting.  You could read for hours about the pitfalls and problems associated with formatting. Look for a little bit, but then return to the previous page.

Now click on interior templates at the bottom of the page. Find the size book you chose and click on the Formatted template for that size book. Download it. Look over the file. It gives you an idea of how your book should look. Now delete that.

Now download the basic template. It will be blank. Paste your entire manscript into this template. Simply open your document and while holding down the control key, press A. This selects your whole manuscript. Then, while holding the control key, press C. This copies it.

Now go back to the basic template and right click on the mouse and choose paste. Your manuscript is now formatted for the book size you chose.

You may find some problems with the formatting. This is normal. Your page numbers may be off a bit or your chapters a bit off. Maybe your book has a lot more pages now. You can fix the problems for free by using the discussion boards. (We went there earlier. The link is on the page where you chose your book size.)

Go to the boards and ask away. Be patient. While you are waiting for an answer, search for the answer by scrolling through the interior formatting discussions.  If this drives you crazy, then hire createspace to do it for you. I don't think it's worth it. The cheapest option is $299. Maybe you have a friend who knows how to fix it. Don't get in a hurry.

Save this file in the mean time. I'll add a few tips about it on later posts.

You may be a lucky one who's manuscript pasted perfectly. Good for you. It took me a few weeks to get it all right.

Play around with it a little. You can always delete it if you mess it up. Just go back and re-paste into the basic template. No big deal. Play with it. Enjoy the journey.

Happy formatting!

Indie Publishing Secrets Revealed. Step 4-Choosing a Print Publishing Service

First off, let me say that I've had a lot of requests for a deeper look into steps #1-3. I am working on a few posts to address those things and will post them soon. I will start posting regularly on Tues for this thread on Indie Publishing. See ya on Tuesdays.

Step #4
Carefully consider the revisions your editor suggests and make those changes, highlighting them and letting your editor make sure your changes are done well.

While doing this, research what print publishing service you'd like to use. I suggest using a free service like, Createspace or Lulu. I used Createspace and will tailor my comments to make using it even easier. I researched Lulu, signed up and looked around, clicking every button to see what they had to offer, comparing it to Createspace and I felt Createspace was the better choice for me. Do the same. Take the time to explore a bit.

• Look at the ability to get a portable ISBN-the numbers attached to the bar codes on everything you buy-that way you aren't locked into using the service as your distributor later.
• Does the service have a cover-creator that "makes" your cover to your specifications?
• Does the service have live help?
• Does it distribute to Barnes and Noble.com and Amazon.com?

I will cover why these things are important in subsequent posts.
While Createspace is all about PRINT books, I will also be covering EBOOKS.

Happy researching and revising. See ya on Tues.