Letters for Creatives #14: Self-publishing through KDP - Interview With an Artist vol. 2

Interview with Charles Edward York

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Hello, I am Celeste. Each week I write about marketing, creativity and writing. The first interview with a writer for Interview with an artist series can be found here.

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• Case study of Rupi Kaur and how she created her poetry career

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• Where you should release your poetry book online (not only Amazon)

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Charles Edward York trained for many years as an artist and for 5 and a half years as a tenor before wholly committing to writing and poetry. He has travelled the globe, including parts of South East Asia, Europe and the U.S. He has published 14 poetry collections on Amazon and Lulu Publishing. We talked about his process in publishing his poetry collections through Kindle Direct Publishing.

Celeste: You have published 14 books on Amazon. How did it start?

Charles: I started the day after I was fired by a corrupt boss at a college library. I made a decision that I was going to dare to do great. It turned out became the title of my second book of poetry, Dare To Do Great.

I have been writing poetry since I was 17 but I did not publish anything until I published my first book Deep Blue Love in 2005. Mostly what I wrote about in the beginning was love and relationship poems with a few poems addressing social justice issues.

Celeste: Can you talk me through your process of self-publishing a book on Amazon?

Charles: Basically it starts off with a couple of poems. Once I get going on a streak, I begin to assemble them in a file on my laptop. Once I get close to 40 or 50 poems, I begin to think about putting them in a manuscript. After having about 60 or 70 poems, I will begin to think in terms of a title for this collection and that is where the book idea is born.

Once I have a book manuscript I begin to think of a title usually towards the end. once I finish the manuscript, I upload it to Kindle Direct Publishing, which is a free self-publishing service.

From there I fill in all the information for the new book. I design the book cover on the KDP website using pre-formatted designs for a front cover and also upload an image that I selected from something that I found online.

I then go through the entire design process. This usually takes about 30 minutes to an hour, depending on how many corrections I have made. I double-check my work. Once I am through with the design process and uploading the manuscript, I select certain words as search terms to help guide people to the book itself. I also pick the price.

After that things are pretty much done. I post the books online within 72 hours. Most of the time it is far shorter than that since I have very few errors if any.

Celeste: How do you decide on a book title?

Charles: A book title comes to me almost like the idea for a poem. Each time the title idea is different. It all depends on what particular message or theme I want to get across. Sometimes certain poems help me with the title.

Celeste: That makes sense. How do you work on ISBN for the book?

Charles: The ISBN is automatically assigned unless I pay for one and I have never paid for an ISBN number.

Celeste: That is great. How do you decide on the size of the book and number of pages or poems in the book?

Charles: Usually the number of pages comes about at the end after I finish the manuscript. I do not ever prematurely decide on a number of pages. The size of the book is usually going to be 6 inches by 9 inches format in paperback.

Celeste: Do you promote your books on social media or do anything such as a giveaway? A lot of people do different things such as a giveaway or reading some poems on Instagram live.

Charles: The first thing I do to promote my books is posting examples of volume poems on Facebook and Instagram. I do those on Facebook on my own page as well as pages I have created for a specific book and two poetry forum I administrate. I very rarely do Instagram live or Facebook live because I have found it most people do not listen to those.

Celeste: Do you post your poem on Facebook at the same time when you post on Instagram?

Charles: Yes. I usually post on Instagram first and then Facebook.

Celeste: Is self-publishing the best way to publish their debut book for a newbie? Would you recommend finding the right press instead?

Charles: I will be honest. It takes forever to try to get a regular publisher to publish a volume of poetry. Most of the time. you have to be an established author of poetry through publications like magazines and journals.

I have found the best route is to go self-published because not only can you get your book out on the market faster but you can also keep the majority of the royalties.

Celeste: I heard that Amazon takes some percentage you earn from the book. Is it a lot?

Charles: As far as I know I don’t think that is true but each book that is sold has a printing cost attached to it. So Kindle Direct Publishing under Amazon does that as well as Lulu Publishing

Celeste: Do you publish every book with Kindle Direct Publishing? Have you tried Lulu publishing?

Charles: I used to publish with Lulu Publishing in the beginning but now I primarily use Kindle Direct Publishing.

Celeste: What advice would you give to someone who wants to self-publish their poetry book? What would you say to your past self who was looking to self-publishing on Amazon?

Charles: Never pay to get your book published. If someone asks you for hundreds of dollars just to get a book published, run away as fast as you can. I made the mistake of paying Lulu Publishing $1000 in the hopes that they would promote my book and they did nothing.

Celeste: Oh I am sorry about that.

Charles: It was an expensive lesson and the sorry part about it is it my mom contributed almost all the money. It is the main reason why I publish through Kindle Direct Publishing now.

Celeste: Do you think people can treat self-publishing as something they can do on the side, apart from their day job?

Charles: I wouldn’t make self-publishing a career unless you have a literary agent which is very savvy about the business and can see getting your work to a regular publisher eventually.

But even then I would still be cautious because you want to control most of the royalties and regular publishers will get a huge chunk and leave you with very little.

I would say to work a steady part-time or full-time job that doesn’t involve a lot of physical or mental work. So you have a clear mind and a lot of rest to do your writing and publishing.

I started off writing with the intent of making myself a published author. But then I realize that very little money came. Without a lot of advertising and promotion, you are just not gonna sell a lot of books unless you are well known already.

Celeste: Are you working in a day job now? I am curious to know what kind of job does not require much physical or mental work.

Charles: The kind of work I described usually has to do with light office work or working in a place like a bookstore library. My last job was working as a library assistant clerk at a college library. I am currently not working any regular job. My wife is the only one who is working as a teacher and interventionist at a children’s relief nursery here in town.

Celeste: Can you talk about your favourite among your published books?

Charles: That is kind of hard to say. That is like if you have ever had kids and you try to pick your favourite, you end up on the losing end. So I have to say that among the books I published there is no particular favourite. It is even harder to pick my favourite poem among my 1100 - 1200 poems.

I am proud of my latest one which is called Among Angels. It is going to be the title poem of my next book which will be my 15th volume of poetry.

Celeste: Where can people buy your books?

Charles: They can buy them either on Lulu Publishing or Kindle Direct Publishing. I also recommend to google my name Charles Edward York. They will be able to find my books that way as well.

Celeste: Congratulations on the new poetry collection. Thank you for doing this interview with me. Charles is very generous to share his experience in terms of self-publishing.

Charles kindly sent me a book template for Kindle Direct Publishing. It has the page setup of 6 inches by 9 inches, a typical size for a self-published book. Please feel free to download the template. You can change the font, font size and design in the way you want.

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