Author's Note: On Banished Talent

Heyo! I just finished a final personal edit of the Banished Talent and so it is now as complete as I can manage on my own. I’ve even gone and made a rough ebook version. I could, in theory, throw the ebook up on Amazon and start selling the book right this moment. However, there are at a minimum two and up to four steps that need done before I would consider doing that.

The two steps I will do before putting the ebook up for sale on any site, are registering the copyright and buying an ISBN number. They cost ~$55 and ~$125 USD. Now, I have the copyright for the story. You get that the moment you start writing a story in some physical medium. However, to protect it besides the equivalent of yelling at people to stop stealing it, it needs to be registered. And while it would be US specific, $55 isn’t much for a bit of legal safety.

As for the ISBN? I do not need one to sell the book on Amazon. However, if I wanted to sell it anywhere else, I would need it. Hell, if I at some point wanted to do a physical printing, I would need a new ISBN for that version. To be honest, buying a single ISBN (in the US) if you plan to have more than a single version of a single book, you want to buy at least the 10 ISBN bundle because a ten pack only costs ~$295. I will note that you can get a “free” ISBN if you use a platform which provides one, but then they limit the ISBN to their platform and I don’t want to be chained to Amazon or what have you.

The third potential step is getting a professional cover done. Mind you, I do like the cover I made, but if I’m going to try and sell the book, a cover is the first thing people see. I’m not going to pay less than $100, but depending on the artist it could end up costing as much as ~$500. Also, this requires me to find an artist. Either a more general artist or one specialized in doing things like book covers.

Now, you might see a pattern in cost. Yes, number four is likely going to be the most expensive. Number four would happen first and involve getting the book edited by a professional. I’ve seen a variety of prices for this, but given BT weighs in at around 53k-54k words I’ll pin the starting price around $1k. If I only wanted it proofread, then we could knock off some of that and reduce it only ~$600. All rough estimates, of course and could go up a good bit.

So, with all that in mind, the starting cost of publishing BT will end up ~$200. I can afford that. Though buying a single ISBN number is kind of foolish when I will have other books in the future. Which is why the next step would be $1k where I commission a nice cover and pick up a 10 pack of ISBN numbers. Oh, and while the second step is already outside of my price range atm, the last step would be 2k+ on the low end.

This is what Kickstarter is for. Now, as a US resident, Kickstarter has both a 5% fee and a payment processing fee of 3%+0.30 or for pledges under $10 a discounted fee of 5%+0.08. Of course, two $5 pledges still end up with a higher fee than a single $10 pledge, but it is cheaper than if the two $5 pledges were at the regular rate.

Oh, and of course you always have to count in things like tax. Sure, the purchases made to fund things can offset that, but it only goes so far.

Anyway, because you should always assume you need more than expected, if I was to do a Kickstarter, it would start at $300. I still wouldn’t make any money off of that, but it would set me up to publish the book, which might give me a small stream of additional income in the future. Of course, on top of that starting amount I would have goals for a new cover and then pie in the sky of a proper edit being done.

So, I’ve laid this all out for you all. What are your thoughts on this?