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| Catherine Lee |
This week we interview Catherine Lee, self-published author of
Dark Heart, a race-against-time thriller, and an exploration of cellular memory - can transplanted organs bring with them the memories of the donor?
Marilyn: Thanks for joining us, Catherine. Why did you decide to take the self-publishing route with your debut novel?
Catherine: I sent Dark Heart to an agent because I wanted to try traditional publishing. A rejection letter is a rite of passage and I wanted mine. It took five months before I finally got my rejection letter. The way I saw it, I could stick with that process and wait years to see my book in print, or I could do it myself in days. I wanted this book out in the world so I could move onto the next one. For me it was no contest.
Marilyn: How long did it take you to get Dark Heart to market?
Catherine: Self-publishing means you control everything yourself, so once you’ve had your manuscript professionally edited, you need to have your file in a format Amazon (or wherever you’re uploading it) will accept. It’s not hard: there are plenty who’ve done it and posted instructions on their blog. There are also programs that do it for you e.g.
Scrivener (highly recommended). Next, get your cover design. To maintain a professional look, find a graphic artist and go through the design process.
Once you have those two things ready, the actual process of putting your finished product up for sale only takes a day or so.
Marilyn: What about cost?
Catherine: By far the biggest investment is editing. For Dark Heart, I had a professional manuscript assessment done. This, together with feedback from fellow writers, suggested my manuscript was in good shape structurally. I finished with a copy edit by a professional. The other upfront cost is cover design. Mine uses a stock photo, which the designer changed slightly using blurring and angles, with text over the top. It’s simple, but effective, and was cheap. Depending on the design, you can pay from $25 up into the hundreds. Apparently romance covers are the easiest and cheapest to produce.
Here’s the breakdown of costs for
Dark Heart:
- Manuscript assessment $500
- Copy edit $550
- Cover design $45
- Print version cover design $45
- Proof copy $30
I’ll be using the same editor for both structural and copy edits for my next book,
Dark Past, and expect editing costs to be around $1500. From what I’ve read, anywhere between $1000 and $2000 is what you should expect to pay for good, professional editing services.
Marilyn: Thanks, Catherine. But before you go, can you finish off these sentences?
I love to love...Getting caught up in the world I’ve imagined for my characters.
I love to laugh...With friends. They’re essential to well-being, and I’m glad I have a great bunch of friends.
I love to learn...Things I never thought I needed to know. For instance, from
Ninety Percent of Everything by Rose George, I’ve just learned that more than 2 ships are lost at sea every week, yet we don’t hear about it. I find that amazing.
Do you have any questions for Catherine? Ask away!
In Part Two of this interview, Catherine talks about marketing your self-published novel. Stay tuned.
Dark Heart is available via
Amazon.
Could you live with the heart of a killer?Fraser Grant was a kidnapper, a vile, murdering sociopath. Now he’s dead. Murdered in his own home, the women of Sydney can breathe easy again. All but one. His final victim is still missing — chained up, running out of time, and awaiting a captor who will never return.
Detective Sergeant Charlie Cooper is desperate to find the missing woman alive. On the verge of quitting Homicide after a decade chasing the brutal killer, this is his last chance to atone for all the victims he failed.
After a life-saving heart transplant, Eva Matthews just wants things to get back to normal. But when she learns she has the heart of the serial killer, will nothing stop the nightmares that plague her?
Dark Heart is a detective story, a race against time to save a life. But it’s also an exploration of cellular memory, the intriguing medical phenomenon of patients receiving more than just an organ from their donor. The terrifying serial killer may be dead, but that is just the beginning…
