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Planning through dependencies: A lesson from self-publishing 2011

I'm in the very last stages before self-publishing my book, Discardia: More Life, Less Stuff, and the remaining steps are often exceedingly clear.

For example:

I will be publishing in the iBookstore, but I can't submit the book to them until I set all their pricing terms.

I can't set all the iBookstore ebook pricing until I have determined the book's price for its physical version (in trade paperback through Amazon/Createspace).

I can't set that price until I know my costs for author copies and my royalty share in the different sales channels through Createspace.

I can't know those costs until I have a solid estimate of the book's page count.

I won't have that page count until I do the layout in the print template with something very close to the final version of the text.

I won't have something very close to the final version of the text until I've transferred almost all the copy edit changes into the master manuscript in Scrivener.

I can't copy those edits over until I receive them from my editor when she has finished her main copy editing pass on the manuscript.

Fortunately, I'm expecting those from her shortly.

To be fair, I also don't want to submit the book to iBookstore until I have the final version with all the copy edits, but I find the dependency between print layout and ebook publication worth noting.

Posted on September 22, 2011 at 10:15 AM in Books, work, writing | Permalink | Comments (0)