3 covers at once!

The Tokyo Area Novel ( TAN) is churning along towards the end, but it’s a precarious time for me right now. Still battling bronchitis. Have an appointment to see my Dr in late May. (Medicaid is still better than nothing, though) Also I am watching the toddler 10-16 hours a day 5-6 days a week while my spouse juggles her full time job and four college classes and their associated workload. She’s rushing it like mad because we’re not sure if she’ll have the same financial aid grant next year. It’s hard on her being the primary income provider for a house of three while my mom is away visiting family in Europe. Money stress is really taking a toll on the partner, and even though I get the occasional art commission here and there it’s nowhere near enough for her to rest. Having the baby boy smiling cheers us both up.

He’s doing fine by the way. Climbing and destroying stuff, learning how the world works by dismantling it. Precocious kid for 19 months.

 Still work on the novel gets done.  71,000 words and counting, and at least 4 different cover designs, 3 by me. ( I commissioned one, but decided not to use it, though I did pay the artist for her work. Duh, hint hint.) I’ve also been designing the ebook file (harder than I’d have thought,) and the print book file as well, and found out some interesting numbers. 

Createspace is Amazon’s DIY book publishing website, offering print copies of your books to sell on yourwebsite, through Amazon.com and other retailers, online and off (for an upgrade fee of $25.)

Based on word count and the design of a paperback book, I’d make $0.02 for every book sold at Amazon’s retail price of $4. No, I did not mean to type $2. It’s actually just $0.02. Which means if I was selling solely printed books I’d need to sell 100,000 a month just to pay bills. Obviously no self published noncelebrity author can expect that much out of the gate, but that’s still a significant hurdle to pricing paperbacks affordably. LuLu.com is no better. Just ordering a galley copy for proofreading would cost me $14 with shipping. And that’s no royalties whatsoever. 

I want to make a print copy of the book available, but at this point if I self publish e-books look to be the best way to sell the work and make more than an opinion’s worth on every copy sold.  Thinking about Smashwords iBooks, Amazon, and even my own website. Not sure yet, and to be honest I don’t even have the full 1st draft of TAN finished. 

The other option of course is to overdrive-polish the hell out of my work using a third party (editor) and then pitch it to an agent and see where that goes. I have an agent in mind, but I also know the odds there. 

Thoughts?