It’s been just over two years since I published How to Leave a Group Chat, a book which looks at why we communication the way that we do and helps empower us to use our smartphones less, something which we’re discovering is good for us. Book contracts with publishers don’t last forever, so what happens when your contract comes to an end and your publisher will no longer be supporting your book?
Here’s what I did, and what might be helpful for you to consider when the time for your book contract comes to an end too. This advice will also be helpful for anyone who is looking to self publish their book too.
This was stipulated in my contract, and even though I initially thought that my book had a shelf life, I seem to have been proven wrong. The conversation around children using smartphones is finally starting to shift to adults using smartphones, and the impact that our use can have on our little ones. We’re discovering more and more each day about the effect that smartphones and electronic tablets (which are oversized smartphones) can have on all of us. So I’m having the books back, and I am intending to sell all of them.
Having the book files back was agreed in my contract. I have the book files back too, and as I ensured in my contract that I have the rights, I am free to proceed with How to Leave a Group Chat as I see fit.
Woocommerce is a platform, and Wordpress plugin, that allows you to have a shopping site, or to add an online shop to your existing site. I added it to my website a couple of months ago so that if my books disappeared from retail, the transition to selling them would be seamless.
I have detailed in a previous blog the steps that I took to add Woocommerce to my website.
The moment my publisher discontinued my book, it was gone from Amazon as an e-book listing. I requested the files in order to reinstate it.
There are many different websites where you can self-publish a book. I opted to start with Lulu.com, which is actually the first online publisher – it predates Amazon, seems simple to use and has a very comprehensive YouTube channel with instructions. I thought that if it didn’t go well, I could try another, and it was important to me that putting my book back out there I could get into Gardners - most bookshops won’t take a book that’s not on Gardners.
It wasn’t clear to me if I needed a new ISBN number or not. Here’s a video explanation about this from Author Bethany Atazadeh who knows more about this than I do.
If you do not have an ISBN (there are some suggestions e-books don’t need them) I suggest you do some research before deciding whether you’d like to use the free ISBN number, or you’d like to purchase your own from Nielsens in the UK, Bowker in the USA or whoever your local distributor is.
One important thing to consider is that the ISBN number is how sites recognise your book. Here’s a good article about ISBN numbers by writer Ellen Frances.
Luckily the ISBN number stays with the book, so I was easily able to use it to upload my e-book.
Wherever you decide to publish your book next, or whoever with, look at the contract or terms and conditions. Have a thorough read, google whatever you need to and speak to whoever you need to. It might seem straightforward but unless you are a book law expert in your country of publication, there can be surprises or disappointments down the line. I’m not a lawyer, but it’s certainly worth ensuring that you retain ALL of the rights to your own work.
If you haven’t you might need to speak to a lawyer at this point. I do know an author who can’t reissue her own work because the original publisher arranged the contract so that they kept the rights.
Check over your current contract, agreement and even correspondence to ensure everything is in order and that you are good to move onto your next chapter (if you’ll pardon the pun).
When I got the e-book file back, I gave it a quick once-over. For that I downloaded Calibre, a programme for your PC that lets you read and edit e-books.
My e-book was coded with HTML, previously I have worked with e-books that were coded with XML. If you don’t know coding and you want to make amends, you may need to hire a developer. In my case, I only needed to add the ISBN number back in.
For now the paperback copies of How to Leave a Group Chat are still available on Gardners. When I get the digital manuscript back, I intend to put those onto lulu.com as well, because it distributes it to Gardners again.
I hope that was helpful. If you’d like to feature on the All about Digital Marketing blog, please check out the guidelines blog and get in touch. Don’t forget to subscribe.
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