A Shipping Schedule (!!!) for Feast
over 4 years ago
– Thu, Aug 29, 2019 at 08:17:12 PM
I think we're finalizing the Feast timeline a little bit more. (Oh the tiny little delays all along the pipeline that add up to weeks and weeks....) This is what I have right now:
- September 15: soft launch for Kickstarter edition hardcover and paperback
- by October 15: e-book ready (hopefully) and sent out to Kickstarter backers
- between Sept 15 & Dec 15, I'll have copies with me for local events, and when I'm visiting various places (Bay Area, possibly Farmington, CT, Montreal, possibly Madison, Los Angeles, Columbus)
- December 15: actual launch
- after Dec 15, more events, mostly TBD, but definitely including Seattle, Bay Area, Orlando, Madison -- any media push will be aimed for after this point.
The main difference is that the Kickstarter edition costs more to print (POD instead of through an offset printer), so it's a higher unit cost for me. But we can't get the offset version faster, and in fact, if you want copies for holiday gifting, I strongly encourage you to get the Kickstarter edition! Don't worry about a few dollars one way or another for me, please. :-)
If you are moved to leave a review on Amazon or elsewhere, that would be very much appreciated; I'm hoping some early reviews from the soft launch will build excitement for the actual launch.
Questions? YAY!
- Mary Anne
Feast finds a (hybrid) publisher / ARCS ordered!
almost 5 years ago
– Wed, Jul 24, 2019 at 03:30:41 PM
So, this was a big and scary step. I've just signed a contract with Mascot Books to publish Feast. Now, I'm still essentially self-publishing it. Mascot is what's called a hybrid publisher, combining editorial, marketing, and printing services for indie authors. I've already done most of the editorial work and I have excellent proofreaders, so I won't be taking advantage of that part.
What I do get out of this is a dramatically lower price point per unit than POD printing, a marketing team that will try to place the book in places like Costco, etc. (fingers crossed), and distribution services.
What will it cost me? Well, all the money from the Kickstarter and then some. Eep. Close to $20,000, to print 2000 hardcover copies, which is yes, very unnerving. I'm betting about $10K on being able to sell those books. I am not really a betting person!
A few hundred of those will go to Kickstarter fulfillment, leaving me with about 1750 copies (I'm being super-vague here, but Heather has the actual numbers, and I did go over them with Kevin before signing off on this) to sell. The cover price on the hardcover is $40. So selling them at full price, I need to sell 45 cookbooks to break even on the printing costs. I think I can do that. (Hopefully, we won't end up with very many sad and dusty books in storage.) Of course, that doesn't take into account the other production costs (layout, cover design, original illustrations, indexing, advertising, book tour, etc.), and there will be sales and discounts for Amazon, etc., so the actual sale price will often be lower. So more realistically, maybe sell a few hundred to break even?
I'll have at least a few hundred shipped to me (paying the shipping cost) for me to sell direct, keeping all the money from those, and Mascot will try to sell the rest, sending me the bulk of the money (I think 85%, if I'm remembering right, which is a big difference from a traditional publisher; I'm taking the main financial risk here, so my potential reward is commensurate). They'll take care of shipping those out, which will make my life infinitely easier.
I know a lot of indie authors are doing this kind of thing these days, but I'm still enough of a traditional publishing person that I find it all kind of unnerving. But for this cookbook, at least, I think this is a pretty good approach.
My only hesitation is that I wish I'd spend a little more time talking to my publishing friends about other printer options; I'm still not sure I really understand that. But Mascot came highly recommended, and so far, our interactions have been very promising. Fingers crossed.
Again, huge thanks to the Kickstarter supporters. I don't think there's any way I would've bet the close to $30K it will take, in the end, to produce this book. So if the Kickstarter hadn't funded, and funded well, I still might have created Feast, but it would have been a much simpler end result, and would likely have reached far fewer people.
Since my main hope with this is to share my love of Sri Lankan food with as many people as possible, I'm particularly grateful for your help.
***
We're uploading official ARCs (advance reader copies for reviewers) today, eep. Will order copies for big review outlets, and for ourselves, and then will have hopefully only minor proofing edits before we're ready to actually go to print. One thing that might change is the back cover -- I admit, I don't love having a photo of me there, but I think that's probably just self-consciousness and I should get over it?
But on the other hand, I'm kind of hoping we get a nice review or two from a big outlet (or maybe a blurb from a famous food person -- do I know any famous food people, or people who know famous food people?), in which case, we'll be editing the back cover to make space for them anyway. So maybe best not to fret about it now...
Kickstarter folks, my plan is that you'll get your SPECIAL ADVANCE COPY as soon as we proof the ARC. This will be a limited edition run just for Kickstarter backers, so you'll get it in August, barring unforeseen complications. Everyone else has to wait to official launch in October, the poor saps. Your edition probably won't have blurbs on the back cover, but I assume you're okay with that. :-) Again, thank you!
Design setbacks and revised release date (hopefully July 1)
almost 5 years ago
– Tue, Jun 11, 2019 at 12:17:01 AM
In the interests of documenting the setbacks as well as the successes, we had a rough time with the cookbook last week. It was honestly pretty upsetting, and mostly my own fault, I think. I had one sleepless night, and a few very awkward conversations that I had to push myself to actually have (I wish I were less conflict-averse).
What happened was that I'd hired someone to do interior layout for the books, but he'd thought I was just hiring a formatter. Once we started working, and the e-mails started going back and forth, there was a lot of my wanting him to do things that he said would be too hard or too time-consuming, beyond the scope of what he did.
I did actually say in our original e-mail exchange that I wanted someone who could do beautiful design, rather than just someone who would run the file through a conversion program like Vellum (which I've done myself), but apparently something got lost in translation.
The short version is that we managed to get books formatted sufficiently that we could, in a bit of a mad rush, get rather ugly ARCs out to the book reviewers that we'd set up a blog tour with for late June. It hurt my soul to send those books out, but hopefully the reviewers will focus on the writing and recipes and not the aesthetics of the book.
What does that mean for now? Well, he and I have parted ways, and I'm out $1500 -- which, once I looked around more thoroughly, I realized really wasn't near enough for professional interior design for three versions of the book. If I'd done more research, I would've known that his bid was much too low, and I might've asked more questions about what exactly he was planning to do.
I am trying to treat all of this as a lesson in publishing, and thinking that if I'd paid $1500 for a course in how-to-publish and what-not-to-do, that would've been not unreasonable. Still. Ouch. I've now contracted with someone else (my cover designer, whose work I love) to do the actual design for the print books, at fair market rates, and have just sent him the files.
So that's going to eat up...well, probably all of the immediate Kickstarter 'profits,' plus maybe a bit more, which is a bit painful. But I can still afford to do a print run for the hardcover, which gives me hope of some profit down the line, if more people actually buy the book.
Probably not a print run for the paperback (just POD), but I wasn't sure I was going to do that anyway, because at least for the Kickstarter, a lot more folks were interested in the hardcover with its lovely color photos. Which kind of surprised me, given the higher cost of the hardcover, but I guess most budget-minded folks get the ebook, and the ones who go for print are more likely to be willing to spend a bit more for a beautiful object.
Anyway, live and learn. Now I go look at Pamudu Tennakoon's lovely pen and ink illustrations, and let her know if I have any revision requests, and then have her upload them to Google Drive to share with my designers.
Oh, and for the ebook, Jed is going to take a stab at the design and layout, which is very kind of him; he says he's thinking of it as good practice for his own burgeoning Constellation Press, rather than just a favor for me. I'll take it either way, gratefully.
If it ends up too time-consuming for him, though, I'll either do it myself -- I think I have the basic skills for what I want -- or hire someone else. Whew.
I've slipped the delivery deadline a bit, as a result of all this -- I had originally hoped to have books by mid-June, but that's clearly not happening. Aiming for July 1 now; we'll see.
Publishing beautiful, professional books is expensive.
And not easy!
Review copies!
almost 5 years ago
– Thu, May 30, 2019 at 03:54:19 PM
I have review copies of Feast available, in both e-book (Kindle / PDF / Nook) and print. If you happen to review, and would like to have a copy sent to you, now is your chance to request one -- just let me know where you review for, and which format you prefer. They are ARCs, so they are full of formatting errors and the like, and the index isn't done yet, but the basic content is good. :-)
Big thanks to Jeremy John Parker for whipping out an ARC on v. short notice. This is definitely not the final back cover -- I'm not sure I want a photo of food at all, and I definitely don't want the photo of me, now that I see it on there, and I don't think we need to repeat the title / author stuff, and I should write some actual back cover copy -- but I basically told him to throw SOMETHING on there so I could order review copies to meet a blog tour deadline, and he did it in record speed. :-)
- Mary Anne
Surveys almost ready / new art!
almost 5 years ago
– Fri, May 17, 2019 at 06:42:32 PM
Feast update! Heather and I have completed the survey for backers, and she's submitted it to BackerKit for review. Once that's approved, we'll send it out to backers and give you a week to let us know what you'd like in terms of reward selection and additional add-on items.
My understanding is that after that, we can also open the store generally to pre-orders, so if you have friends or family who missed the Kickstarter, they'll still have a chance to order my other books, milk toffee, marshmallows, handmade soaps, etc. and so on. This is all new to me, so it may take a little while to sort it all out, but we're getting there!
The paperback cover has been finalized, the formatter is almost done with the e-book formatting, and Pamudu Tennakoon has been sending me beautiful illustrations for the print books (planning to include them in both paperback and hardcover now) -- I adore this one of Sri Lankan stilt fishermen! I really, really love it.
Stilt fishermen
This is thanks to you, Kickstarter backers -- I couldn't have commissioned the artist to make this image without your early support. Thank you!
