Before I share my realization, I just would like to explain a few things. I'm publishing my book through a publishing company, but the way they work is different than what most people think of when they imagine publishing a book.
MOST people, when they think of publishing, think of what's known as traditional publishing. In other words, the big giants of publishing like Random House, or Scholastic (these are just the two I can think of off the top of my head). These are full on companies, with executives and business goals and investors and all the trimmings. They tend to tie authors up in legal tangles and contracts, and give you few rights as an author. The publisher can even change your book's title, if they deem it necessary.
This is not the route I've chosen to go. First, though, there is another aspect you should consider as an aspiring author. This route is called self-publishing. Self-publishing is essentially the complete opposite of traditional publishing. The author keeps all their rights, have complete control over what happens with their book, and are responsible for doing everything. This is a more appealing route from a monetary perspective, because you keep all the profits. Downside: everything is your responsibility. Marketing, editing, cover design, print layout, setting deadlines, arranging signings.... the list seems endless. To an aspiring author, it can be. There are resources for self-publishing authors, and a website I recommend is 'thecreativepenn.com', created and run by Joanna Penn, who is a successful self-published author. Her podcasts are excellent advice on everything from writing to marketing to taking care of yourself as an author.
But that's not what I do either. I'm publishing with a company called Friesenpress, a branch of Friesens, which my school uses to create our yearbooks. Anyway, Friesenpress is a blend of traditional and self publishing, which means that you pay them and they will help you to publish your book, but also give you the tools you need to navigate the world of publishing. I got to choose my cover, my title and have control over the editing, while not having to do the work of actually creating the cover and organizing the layout. In other words, I got to make the decisions while other people did the boring stuff. It did cost me over $2000 dollars.
Let me explain this cost for a moment. I paid this up front, in order to publish. Many people, or at least me, think that publishing with a traditional publisher is free. It's not. First of all, those publishers don't even accept books unless they come through an agent, which can cost a lot of money. So can editing, as your book needs to have minimal mistakes before an agent will even consider it. There's a lot of rejection, as there are stories upon stories of great authors (*cough cough* JK Rowling *cough*) being rejected over and over and over before finally getting accepted and being a lightning strike. Publishing companies will take the same cost that I paid, but they'll take it off your sales after the book is published.
SO, now that we've got a few things cleared up, things that I am very sick of explaining, I can get to my news.
The price is set for my book, and as I write this the Friesenpress designers (whoever they may be. I still don't know) are preparing the print-ready files for my book. In other words, it is 87% finished, which means that there is only 13% left to go before my book comes out. I can say with 87% confidence that my book will be published and available by the end of the month. Hardcover would be largely online, and paperback would hopefully be in stores. There's also an ebook, which would be available in the Play store and on Amazon.
That's my news. It might not seem like much, or very important, but I've been writing this book since October of Grade 11 and have edited it what feels like eight thousand times. I'm sick of it.
Time to finish editing the sequel and start the entire thing over again!
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