Setting up The Writing Business Bank Account

Before I could even pay my first bill to the publisher, I had to set up a business account.

So first thing was off to Google to find free business checking. I went with Capital One (Spark), and later chose to setup Wave accounting that is also free.

Now the series of dominos begins.

I had to connect my checking account to the business account. For that to happen, you give then your bank account information and they make two "micro" deposits (meaning under 10 cents) to it over the next two days. You then log back into your business account, and tell them what the deposits were. Then you can authorize a funds transfer to that account (for example, your business seed money) which typically takes 2-3 days to clear.

In the meantime, they have ordered a debit card for you that is on its way and should show up within a week or so.

They did offer to accept a check deposit via my phone, but I declined to do that. I happen to also have a Capital One savings account, so I was able to transfer enough money to order paper checks.

Once all that has happened you are good to go. Go forth and spend your seed money. Next for me is the business license.

The Costs of Hybrid Publishing

It's a little early to be talking about publishing costs, but I'm laying out budgeting now, so here is a preliminary take on it.

Hybrid Publishing is not cheap. You are choosing to share the publishing costs with the publisher in order to get easier access to the publishing process, and to use the power of their distribution network. There are places that they can get your book that are extraordinarily difficult for a self-published author to achieve. Also, they will design a quality layout and cover which is a very good thing as many self-published books have a certain look about them.

There are three cost factors to book publishing (four, if you count an audiobook). 
The editing, design, and distribution of your book. 
The printing costs of your book. 
The publicity, marketing for your book.
The less and less optional audiobook.

Estimated costs in dollars
5900 (not an estimate) - Proofreading, design, distribution (and more). Copy-editng is an additional cost that is running around 70/hour (https://shewritespress.com/editorial-services/). This is steep, and I have my own copy-editor, so I don't have experience using the publisher's copy-editors. The 5900 is split into two payments.

1000-2000 - Offset printing costs for 500-1000 books.

5000, or 10,000, or 15,000 - Publicity, can go much higher. This is a per book cost
5000 is if you just want publicity for one book and don't see yourself writing more in the future.
10,000 is the middle road that many authors intending to write more than one book take.
15,000 is the put me on every radio and TV show you can find.

2200 - Audio costs for a finished 100,000 word book. Price is based on 200/hour for 11 hours. Generally you can estimate 150 words per minute for outloud reading. Or you can work out a royalty sharing arrangement with your reader.

So 13,000 to 20,000 and up. The audiobook can be done later to spread costs out.

Now before you faint, or go running off to peruse Amazon's self-publishing guidelines, keep in mind that this is an investment. If your book is well-written, and has an audience there there is a good chance you can make some or all of your investment back. Obviously, there is no guarantee at all, but there are those who have done so. 

I had resolved to contact 200 agents in pursuit of a traditional publishing deal. I think I had gotten as far as 25 agents, when my family's estate closed, and it turned out there was a little bit of money left for the kids. After considering it for a little while, I realized that there's nothing my mother would treasure more than to be able to brag about there being an author in the family - even if she had no interest in actually reading the book.

So I decided to stop pounding my head against the traditional publishing wall.
Which also means that I will be getting a higher percentage of the book sales.

There are other ways to raise the money to fund hybrid-publishing, such as crowd-funding. Brooke Warner of She Writes Press goes into the options in her book Greenlight Your Book. 
https://www.amazon.com/Green-Light-Your-Book-Writers-Publishing/dp/1631528025/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521270828&sr=1-1&keywords=greenlight+your+book

There are other smaller costs. I had to start a sole proprietorship business, which means buying a business license from my city. I also have to buy some software, so I can communicate with my publisher. My tax accountant will be charging me more. There will also be untold amounts of postage costs as I fully intend to send my book to every single dog agility trial or herding trial raffle as advertising. I might be able to talk the publicists into this, but I don't know yet.

I have signed with Spark Press who is closely associated with She Writes Press (both operations are managed by Brooke), but has  more of a genre focus (sci-fi, mystery, thriller, ...), where SWP has more memoir and literary fiction. My book is alternative reality / science fiction and I would feel less lost at Spark. Spark is smaller with 10 writers per season, where SWP has 40 writers per season and there are two seasons per year. (Spring and Fall I believe.)

They Said Yes!

Back on Jan 14, 2018, I submitted a book publishing proposal to She Writes Press. "Proposal" is the wrong term. A proposal is what a non-fiction writer sends to a publisher before the book is actually written. Fiction writers don't have such luxury. They have to have completed the book and then submit the first 20 pages double spaced. Plus, they asked for a summary and a bio. I instead had a "pitch" that I had been sending to agents, so I sent that instead. They told me expect to wait 4-6 weeks and I did my level best to stop worrying about it which I was partially successful, except for the week counting every so often. Well today I heard back and they said Yes! An unconditional yes which completely shocked me. 

They have three tiers.
  Level I - Looks great, let's do this
  Level 2 - It needs some copy editing
  Level 3 - Your story needs work

I had hired my friend Diane to copy edit the first 50 pages, but even with that, I was still expecting Level 2 or 3. No. They said it was ready to go. OMG. Really?

Trouble is that we have to copy-edit pages 50 to the end, so the real work is still in front on us, but I am on Cloud 9+. They wrote up a nice assessment (in a much better style than I could manage myself) that said how intrigued with the story they were and looked forward to hearing more.

The other big thing is that I need to start a business for my writing. Ulp. I have no idea how to do that, so I'm going to be nagging family members on how to do this. She Writes Press co-founder Brooke Warner's book Green Light Your Book discusses this, so I have to spend more quality time with it, and with an 80 page PDF that they send to the Tier 1 and 2 folks.

Once again, I feel like a kid in adult shoes.