To clarify what I learned from publishing my second book, I need to discuss the errors I made writing my first — Fast-Pitch Love (Clean Reads, 2014).

First, I had too many POVs. It seemed every character – major or minor – had a voice in the story. Eventually, I gave Jace, the protagonist, the only voice.

Second, because it was written over a 9-year period, the early drafts of Fast-Pitch Love suffered from numerous inconsistencies. In one chapter, the home of Jace, the protagonist, is described as a ranch. Later, he’s going up to his room on the second floor. In another chapter, in one inning of a softball game, the same girl is both pitching and playing shortstop. I also had Jace driving a different color car – red in one chapter, white in another.

Third, inconsistencies and inaccuracies undercut the plot. I had games starting at 4:30 or 5 pm. But after some research, I realized most little league games start later than that, so parents can attend after work. I also had Jace’s team batting first in every game, but in reality, they would sometimes be the home team, and bat second. There were also things that were factually wrong. Toward the end of the story, someone administers CPR to a kid. To see how that would be done, I reviewed a contemporary first aid manual. Unfortunately, as I later discovered, CPR was done differently in the late 1990s when the story is set than it is now.

LESSON #1: YOU TEND TO MAKE FEWER MISTAKES WITH YOUR SECOND BOOK.

I can’t say my early drafts of The Bullybuster were error free, but there were fewer inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and POV problems compared to the early drafts of Fast-Pitch Love. One thing that helped: I gave The Bullybuster a contemporary setting rather than one from 20+ years ago.

In July 2018, I submitted a completed draft of the book to Clean Reads, with the expectation that it would be accepted as it was or maybe with a request for some minor revisions. About a month later, I heard back from Stephanie, the company CEO, but her message didn’t say what I hoped.

After reviewing this, I feel like you have WAAAAAY too many characters introduced. You should have no more than two main characters and 2-3 side characters. Would you be open to changing this up?

This puzzled me, because Fast-Pitch Love had way more than 2 or 3 side characters. But I decided to try and meet her request, so I sent back this response:

Sure, I’m open to making changes. I’ll do a rewrite and make a concerted effort to reduce the number of characters. On one or two separate pages, I’ll summarize all the different characters who’ve been jettisoned along with the reasoning behind my choices.

I made good on that promise. In the rewrites I did over the next 5-6 weeks, I “axed” about 20 characters. Some added humor or a touch of realism, but none were essential. The character deletions reduced the book’s word count by about 2,500, which I felt was also a plus since shorter books are preferred in the YA market. In early October, I sent the revised draft to Stephanie along with a list of those 20 or so deleted characters. I was optimistic, but the response was disappointing and apparently final.

After reading this over, I still feel there are too many characters. I can’t really get into it. Going to have to pass on this one. Thanks for submitting.

LESSON #2: JUST BECAUSE A PUBLISHER ACCEPTED YOUR FIRST BOOK, DOESN’T MEAN THEY’LL PUBLISH YOUR SECOND BOOK.

A few weeks after I got the rejection, Stephanie held a video conference with all Clean Reads authors, including me. She went on at length about the financial struggles Clean Reads was going through with severe drops in sales revenues and no apparent way to reverse the trend. She even talked about possibly going out of business in 2019. One thing she said hit home with me: I am not going to publish any new titles for now unless they are part of a series that is in progress. Were Clean Reads’ financial issues the real reason Stephanie turned down The Bullybuster? I can’t be certain, but it makes me wonder.

So with Clean Reads giving me a thumbs down, I went with Kindle Direct Publishing, which is Amazon’s self-publishing arm.

LESSON #3: THERE ARE TRADE-OFFS WITH SELF-PUBLISHING. YOU POTENTIALLY GET MORE MONEY AND MORE PRICE CONTROL, BUT YOU ALSO DO MORE WORK.

Self-published authors can potentially make more money from book sales, since they don’t have to share their revenue with a publisher. (They essentially eliminate the middle man).

Fast-Pitch Love eBook sells for 99 cents, but out of that sum, I only get 14 cents. Clean Reads gets 22 cents, the distributor (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple, etc.) gets the rest (63 cents). I could raise the price, but I would still get the same proportion, a little more than 14 percent.

The Bullybuster eBook also costs 99 cents. Amazon still gets its 63 cents, but with Clean Reads out of the picture, my share per copy jumps to 36 cents. I also have more control over the price of The Bullybuster in both its eBook and paperback formats. I can set the price of the eBook as high as $200 or as low as 99 cents. With the paperback, my range is $9.78 to $250. In contrast, I can only temporarily change the price of Fast-Pitch Love as an eBook, and I have no control over the paperback price of 17.99, which is outrageously high.

One final benefit to self-publishing is the fact that The Bullybuster as a paperback could be put on the market immediately. Fast-Pitch Love had to gross $500 before it could become a paperback, a level it achieved in about a year and a half.

BUT THEN THERE’S THE DOWNSIDE – The foundational work Clean Reads did on Fast-Pitch Love, I had to do myself on The Bullybuster.

First, I had to pick and pay a cover artist. Through a fellow author, I got in touch with an artist who lives in the Philippines. He did a good job, but it cost $205. An equally skilled artist did the cover for Fast-Pitch Love, and I didn’t pay a dime.

Other tasks I had to perform for The Bullybuster included the following:

• Set the royalty rate for both the eBook and paperback formats of the book.
• Decide on the territories (countries) where the book will be on sale.
• Decide whether the book will be on Kindle Select. Putting it there gives the author promotion opportunities (for a price) but limits the book to sale through Amazon.
• Decide whether to participate in the Matchbook program, which allows someone who buys a paperback to buy the same title as an eBook at reduced cost.
• Decide whether to participate in Kindle Lending, which allows someone who buys an eBook to lend it to friends or family for up to 2 weeks.
• Determine the dimensions of the paperback and the type of font. (I went with 5 ½” by 8” but there were other choices both larger and smaller.)

LESSON #4: IT’S BEST NOT TO BE YOUR OWN EDITOR.

Once Clean Reads accepted Fast-Pitch Love, it took over the editing of the book. I had two editors. One was a line/copy editor, who looked for grammatical errors, typos, missing words, and other technical issues. The other was a substantive editor, who examined the book for clarity, continuity, and plausibility problems.

With self-published The Bullybuster, I did all my own editing, and that created some problems. I knew that just looking at the text on a monitor or even printed out, I’d likely miss something. So I had a printed mock-up made. It looked just like the actual book complete with cover. I reviewed it carefully and caught quite a few things. Missing punctuation, especially quotation marks, represented the biggest problem, but there were some minor plot inconsistencies, too. After completing my review, I put The Bullybuster on the market during the first week of January. I bought several author copies and found about 9 or 10 more errors, mostly involving punctuation,

Dismayed, I pulled the book from publication and did another, slower, painstaking edit with a new mock-up. The revised edition returned to the market a few days later with presumably no errors (emphasis on “presumably”). Had I invested some dollars in an editor, these errors and the accompanying stress could have been avoided.

I’m sure there will be some additional lessons learned when I publish my third book, which should happen later this year or early 2023.

Clay Cormany is the author of two YA books. The first, Fast-Pitch Love (Clean Reads, 2014), combines the angst and thrill of teenage romance with softball competition. His second book, The Bullybuster (Kindle Direct Publishing, 2019), examines not only the harm of bullying but also the consequences of revenge.