스픮 says ¨Nunia kia pitu uzu enputinumja ¨Kina 5 na kliniwa ¨ahipu au na 7¨ ¨Lehto uo m delayu ¨ 190¨ ¨Jumia mAhwa kapo k조 hako ¨starsu nora ¨ Gosk Ola ¨ ¨K onu放ajuna wo ku almonds kumalka ¨Pw animals kutimomik☆ ¨Uzik!" And then somehow, somewhere, some general decided, you know what, you're not doing it the way it's supposed to be done. We have, I don't know, I'm not sure there was a fail cool just around there in Gabon, West Africa, Nigeria had the same, people were trying to audit the elections as well, yes. It's just, is it an African thing? Can we just not have one term, please take your one term kindly and go home. If you have achieved what you said you're going to achieve, the plan was yours, the manifesto was yours, we did not force you to write it for us, but if you are unable, please leave it for the next person. Is it not possible? You know these countries, every country is ruled by their laws. Ya, like Kenya we have our own laws, you kinda the same, those countries. So we have our own constitution and our constitution is very clear. We run for two times, we can, two times. So and we have not yet amended our constitution. So Uganda they have the president age limit, Kenya we have the term limit. So other countries also like Zimbabwe the same, you know. South Africa maybe they have the limit. So it depends. So we'll never talk, but in generally Africa we have been ruled by politics. In Africa we are dragging power. Any president you will be good outside, but who kingia power, now you see things, you know. Power is sweet, let me tell you. If today you'll be welcome to state house, you feel to wear hair, you'll never want to get out from there. So power is sweet, so when the power is sweet, everybody wants to rule forever. Like Museven is, akuna kitu ajawana for the last 35 years. He has traveled everywhere, you have seen everything, but because the power is sweet, you want to stay to be there. So Africa want to at least in the coming future want to end this curse of like when you have the president, you know even the president now he enjoys the power and he's doing all this well to please the people so that he can run for the second time. The same same person who wants to end also this power will do so. So Africa I don't think that you'll have one term president. It's very hard. Do you think as you've also answered this particular question for one term and that one term again as he said depends on whichever constitution that is run by the said country. Do you think Africa is ready for a female president? Although there are specific ones, like I think 203. But Kenya are we ready for like Tanzania, we have Sulu. But do you imagine Kenya is ready for a female president? Do you imagine Uganda for the four, six and five percent?  Because you want to be the first female president where you are at right now. Do you imagine the climate is ready for a female president? I believe we are ready for a female president. We didn't know Tanzania did not know they were ready for a female president. But she got in and she is doing well. So I think given a chance, given the opportunity, we are ready for that. But she got in because of our situation, not she was elected. Yes, but it worked out well for them. Do you think we are ready for it? Yes, we are. There is no time but we can say after 10 years we'll be ready. There will be no time so we are ready. I don't think so. If the roles were reversed, if the opposition was run by Neshma Mataferua and then Baba maybe was coming in second, do you think it would have? No, in Africa we have culture. We still believe in our culture. That a man is in the head. So you cannot be led by a female? Yes, it's in Africa, not even in Kenya. But this is politics. Yes, you know, western country doesn't have culture. When you are born in western country you are a female, you are a man. So you are equal. But in Africa we used to believe that man is in the head. So that's why you impeached the governor for Meru? No, you see this thing of the governor of Meru and this thing is MCS by the way. We elect MCS because maybe of situations. Maybe you are Sahasla. We elect him but when MCS reaches the parliament he doesn't know what he does. He doesn't know anything. I don't want to use my MCS as an example but I can give you a very good example. My MCS few days ago tried to impeach a CC CC for Baringo because of beards. So you ask yourself the kind of person you elect. So it's very funny, it sounds funny. How will you... This is my mode of tracing and my beard is a part of my tracing. So will you tell me how to shave it? So like wasting eight hours sitting down debating on my beards in my CG countersuit or whichever because I'm taking alcohol. So even you MC you are taking alcohol. It depends with the time. If you go and hide yourself and take and I take mine at pro daylight it's food, we are all taking it. But it depends. It depends on the situation. So you are debating if this man is taking alcohol. So this is our lifestyle situation. So we want to tell our MCS you have only three roles to legislate, represent, you represent the people and offer sight. But now imagine an MC maybe he was from class 80 people were compender, they elected him. Now offer sight in a CC CC finance somebody who is having a lot of CPOs then now a standardate person will tell you know your beards. So we want to tell our MCS even the MCS of Meru. We don't think Kawira did anything wrong. We want to change this constitution and we make this. If you want to impeach even a governor the people we give power now back to the people. The people will go for public participation they gather their nini then now the people will demand for the impeachment. Not the MCS because this MCS they have been used and if you hear the money they have been given even why if you want to impeach a governor why should you go for a meetings with oppositions with opposition leaders to the governor. So we want to tell our MCS you just take what the people send you to do just offer sight in the government and the problem also with my MCS what they did I don't know it's a big problem how will you impeach somebody direct you know impeachment is a process it's not something it's a process like you're cooking ugali so people direct went to the bunker put a motion and impeach somebody if you want to impeach a governor or a CC you call him first you have a talk you just ask him is this real now after that you will explain you will defend yourself then now you go for a fort if you go for a fort yes or no to impeach him or if you are not for that you now go to the bunker then you fort like are we going to a committee way or a full house way because the impeachment failed now they are calling for the CC to answer questions which questions will lay hands and try to impeach me without due process it's a big problem in our assemblies how do you feel about the impeachment of the governor and although according to the ground there had been very heavy allegations that she was practicing the partisan I don't know about the politics of Mero very well just like we said it should give time to our president to see results I believe Governor Kawira Mungaza should be given time to deliver to show her people she can deliver and work one per time they are pushing her too hard it's only one year down the line before they elected her they were saying good things about her I believe she had an organization that used to help people in Mero you are constantly pushing her towards the edge or you want to impeach her about nepotism I'm not in support of nepotism but if she's the allegations are true I think it's something that should be changed nationally people should be given jobs because of their merit and if they are family and they merit and they are good to go but secondly this thing of this thing of Kawira Mungaza Kawira is being fight by strong forces very big forces do you think this is a means to an end and she is a woman as she said men usually mean the women and now a woman has one weakness you know a woman she is a man she is a woman so she doesn't have that boldness to defend himself she is a man she is about to come down and pass the question now the problem with Kawira now she is not that she has that heart of so when you are rasa she can cry but a man can say why are you doing this to me even he can fight you back but because she is a woman and the forces in Atokambali they are fighting her but I am praying for her to help people of Meru but I want to appeal to MCS please sometimes don't be used because I'll use you today tomorrow I'll come and crucify you because if you are cheap I used you you will be also cheap I kill you so it will be easy for me to kill you because I used you to kid me and if they win to overthrow that woman now the beauty one because she is a reverend and we have qualifications to be a governor so you will not even make to be the governor so now what is happening in Meru they will even for the deputy governor if the case wins if the MCS won if they will win the case now then this one will handle like the governor then the court will not allow so if the court will not allow then now we go for the speaker for 60 days then Meru will go for an election and that's wasting too much time too much time money right now we don't have even the acting IBC the working IBC I think there's a loophole some in the constitution because even in Nairobi county there's a time we did not have a governor when my uncle just kind of left there's a time he's his deputy he didn't have a deputy the next one yes that one there's a time he left office so there's just a a very big loophole according to this devolution plan the story of Nairobi was a game you remember when they went then Songo was impeached then Songo it happens that they went to the court they say I appointed some days back if you still remember Songo said I once appointed nobody knew so from nowhere Songo wanted to go to Mombasa no that's politics okay we're going to talk about at least one thing in the newspaper today guys gosh we've had such an interesting conversation I've not even touched on this first of all it's the end of an era the 844 system is finally coming to an end why are you feeling about that we are all 844 clearly clearly clearly see now the thing is I'm not very exposed to people who have children who are going through the CBC program so I'm not really I just know it's a lot of effort it's very involving the parents, the teachers, the students there's a lot of assessment based versus exams there's more I want to believe learning and experiencing versus cramming exams but the fees at the expense but also quite fuzzy about it but how do you feel about an era coming to an end I'm happy about it really very happy why I didn't like 844 I feel like it took so much from students it needed you to cram to have sleepless night me when I was in class I wasn't beaten in high school at least when I went there there was no caning it was illegal but still there was that you have to cram you have to do 12 subjects that most of them you don't even know if they're going to be useful in the later life but having experience at the university because there is learning then there is engaging you're able to practice what you're learning so I believe from an early age if that is instilled it's a good thing students being able to engage with their teachers their parents they are not scared of their teacher they don't hate school I have nephews and nieces and they are always excited to go to school very excited when they come home we are doing homework together it's also a bonding time for kids and their parents so I'm happy it's over I used to say I don't like it I wish it could go and I'm happy it's done should have gone sooner let me praise it like this for you anakama it's heavy on the learning experience versus the exams there was a joke flying around when it was just coming into effect that ever since we came ever since wato na peleka kukuku wa teacher na chao po tulendo pika chao po I've never had teachers going on strikes is that something that maybe we're simulating into each other We are singers, we are actors, we are comedians Now, we have been doing this for so many years We waste 20 years in school And you are a good comedian You can be a good comedian, make comedy, make money But when you see now, we have very rich comedians But somebody will tell you, I did a patch of love science But now is a comedian, I don't know how patch of love science comes out with comedy So we want to, because now we don't have jobs in Kenya Like some few days ago, I don't know which industry here Call for a job interview for, to go to, it was, I don't know, Thailand or which country outside They want 1,000, but people who are telling for the job interview was more than 5,000 So you see we have that scar of job But this EPC will at least show your talent career And it will nurture somebody So at the end of the year, first you know what you are going to do You know if you are a singer, when you go to the university, you want to choose first You have that pick list Can I go for this? Your parents will tell you go for this But now this EPC, you will finish school knowing that I am doing this one And I think that's the best from the EPC Alright, so now away from the EPC, there is definitely something over here on our front page It says, first of all Nani is coming to visit the British king I wouldn't want to joke Like he waited 75 years to come Imagine getting employed at 75 Nani you are saying that you are late in life One of you are not late Your time is coming But now the highlight is what is intriguing me So this is according to the people daily Right group wants to visit the king Charles to say sorry For atrocities Jamani atajafika British king and queen are set to arrive in the country tomorrow The first visit to Commonwealth country since coronation As human rights groups demand an apology for colonial Error rights abuses First of all, why do you think he is coming? What is he coming to do? Is he coming to see his property? None of you are going to be in Shamba Let's say Kamulu So then in September you are going to be in Shamba So you are going to be in Shamba But why is he actually coming? Maybe he is coming to see his ancestral land He was here saying so Maybe he is coming to see his ancestral land He is coming to see his ancestral land I am not sure The pretain wants to stay in Africa You know now in the western countries they are fighting America want to be super power China, Russia So now the pretain also colonized most parts of this Africa So they want all those to be that relevant And still be friends with Africa Africa we have a lot of minerals We have a lot of everything So they have their own interest Even when you see these fights in Africa Sudan, they are being sponsored by those western countries And now if you want to win If you want to win something, you let them fight Then you come in When you come in you gain your own interest That's why you find out some people They are giving us food, relives Not for free They know what they are doing So they are trying to do us to ask this Then now they win what they want But what I can say about the nene Of coming is not new I think even they have been in Kenya since And we do agree Let him come We want the positive side of him But we want also to be given our rights Yeah, those people But want it to be at an expense We have to demand our rights Colonialism is still happening We are in a colony They are still colonizing us We are still economically colonized Even if you are not politically colonized Actually I'm really glad you brought that up Because now this is a conversation we had I think two, three Mondays ago So we had a Haitian professor come And this was just slightly after the news That we are deploying as a country A thousand troops into Haiti And first guys Remember the hashtag is hands of Haiti Hands of Haiti But why are we sending them After the superpower involved This is the United States Retracted their own troops And they went through the UN The UN is the one funding these particular troops To go into Haiti But why would we do that Because Haiti is Like they got independence 200 years ago That's how many centuries Buwan and we're just 60 something years old So that's one of the most powerful Countries in Africa That is Kenya versus the oldest According to independence We are fighting each other For no reason Or someone is puppet streaming us somewhere Yes, we are being used as puppets But But But We are being used Okay, in Kenya we are We usually use the rule of law As now before they go out Bakabungi yungilele Now they give a go If they are going ahead But The president knows why And number two If our soldiers are fighting Let them fight Let them show the world that they are But we don't Wait I'm not in for them Let me just give you the facts Haiti is what's going on over there It's not really civil war It's more of gangs, organized crime Haiti, if you see it How do you know Haiti? Maybe we are good in dealing with camps Let me finish Let me paint for you a picture Haiti the only reason the world knows it Because a couple of years ago And by a couple I mean a couple of decades ago Was a very devastating earthquake And it was a whole thing But even right now as we are speaking It's very dilapidated We cannot compare Nairobi As a city to one of the places in Haiti But yet for some reason Their weapons are so advanced The armory that they are using To fight each other as organized criminals Is surpassing even our own So where are they getting them from? Since they are being funded from somewhere else So why are we being used to fight People with advanced weapons How to actually being used But I don't think it's good For these soldiers to go there On my field it's not good We have a lot of problems We have Baringo problems and Pocots We have this of Lamu Haiti is a sovereign country Let them deal with their own issues If they have their own issues Let them deal with the UN United Nations And it's not good for us Maybe the president is new Maybe he's doing things with that Maybe for our favor But I feel sorry for it We don't want those favors We will not crucify our young children Because of favors They are people's fathers And what's wrong with our police? Do you think our police will do We change wama 2 muko Otena kufagi I don't believe in them So the government also If there is people supposed to be there It's the Kenya defense forces not the police It's the panic in the special unit It's not the law It's depending How many units are police Police is a police The training is different When you are recruiting police You are not recruiting GAsho and whichever You are recruiting police Policies are police But a police is a police Training is different I feel like I'm going to disagree You can disagree but a police are police Even when you look at them they are physique And they are different training Have you met with that unit No, see now I don't know Then they are police But it's fine It is okay Can we say something on that They are going there Yet in our country things are not good I had a meeting With people from Lamu And things are bad there People are being killed in Blood daylight So I wonder Why they would go there Yet things are not okay here in our country It doesn't show a good picture For us If it's for a person again It's not the right move My amusement as a person Is that we are sending the largest number Here the other countries were sending 50s and things But we are sending Wao Anyway I said My opinions Any other expressed here I did not reflect those of the station We're just having friendly bant And I can see my time is about to run out I don't even know what to touch on here Actually Now on security Let's finish with this 60,000 security officers Deployed to provide security During the exams According to Interior Permanent Secretary Clearly we need our police In those Arred kina Lamu We also need them in Haiti So how many police do we actually have Tkonawengi More than enough we can even No 60 Not for 80 Maybe for this country you have said We have enough for us We have enough for us We have enough for us Yeah we have enough for us But there is this issue of Baringo Do you see what news they attack Jeshu kama na primary school Did you see them lying on the floor So this thing now Is a very serious issue And the government should come clean on this That one is a political Political thing We are doing politics with the people At the same time maybe the people are doing Tread with the people You cannot tell me that we have been stealing cows Since 1970s To now We are using those people to steal They are stealing cows They are killing people If now you want cows you just go for the cow Leave alone innocent people You are killing young children You are killing policemen because of cows You just go for the cows And the government should come clean You cannot send soldiers now And this But why is still this people Killing people and the policemen So you see there is somebody who is sleeping In work My concern is why they are so well armed Yeah you cannot tell me That Who is taking it to them Who is taking it to them So this thing is a political one And a very big problem And it is a threat also Those people Now they have come to an extent Now they don't even respect the government They kill people, they kill policemen And they take the cows Now we are losing three things at once So the government should come clean And deal with these people Let them take them like a terrorist If somebody is stealing you Is not different like that terrorist So the government should come clean with this one Deal with these people ruthlessly We are in conclusion Would you like to say before we close this up I would like to say If you are youth out there Take up your role We have the power, the power is in us If you are to change the Country If you are to change the future of our country It's up to us If Youth of past years did not take control If they were not involved in politics You would not be where we are today The likes of tomboyer Of whom we refer as our forefathers Yet he was so young He was a youth Dying at the age of 38 we wouldn't be here So we take up our role Let's fight for our freedom as youth Fight for our rights Fight for good things in our country For changes to happen We need to stand up strong We need to stand up together in one voice Let's not small money Convince you not to do the right thing We have it in us And wherever you are in whatever space you are You have it in you And be the best My mentor always tells me in whatever space you are In whether you're scared Whether you feel you can't do it Be the best Look if you feel you have ideas What concerns The power is always in starting When you start you gain that power And you gain the power to continue Consistency Consistency And it's all in your mind If you're fighting with mental health You've got this You have this And nothing is impossible You can get out of it And you can be the best version of yourself And you can make out something out of yourself Look at us You're doing it You can also do it wherever you are You are if you're in Mount Kenyo University Amelian Let's look for new blood Young people Vibrant people People who make a change People who don't just eloquently Say the problems Of the comrades People who bring solutions And people who act on those solutions Let's give a chance to capable leaders Let's look at the capability of leaders Not just what they tell us Let's judge people according to what they have done And according to what they are doing Let's judge each other with actions And wherever you are Vote for me And come next year Comrades power I'm with the comrades And I ask for help I think I ask for help I ask for help The term is almost ending There's no money Comrades don't say Up until now Let's look into that Issues regarding nudes Please involve us They affect us directly We are the ones suffering Let's inspire generations to come Let's make changes Let's get involved in politics and policies So that our future generations Our kids will enjoy I ask for help I ask for help I ask for help We don't forget this one We don't forget this The one thing that keeps coming but never reaches Tomorrow So you have to do it now Then you wait for the best Or you wait for the best So you want to say ma ma pema So you start now then you wait for the best Thank you so very much guys It has been an honour to have conversation with you Alright guys We are about to Take a little break We are about to come at you With a very interesting conversation But they don't know why he hasn't asked us But it's fine He's asking you on our socials At Y-5-4-4 Facebook Y-5-4-4 channel on X for Mali Twitter And Instagram as well as TikTok YouTube and all of those wonderful things Including but not limited threads My name is Valentine Have a good one But don't have it too soon Stay here


Hello and welcome back to my channel. If you're new here, my name is Jackie. I am the author of the upcoming book Powerless, which like exists in a real physical form now, and it is coming out in one month on the 13th of June. So I thought this was a good time to run through the process I followed to self-publish this book, as well as how much it cost. I do feel a bit uncomfortable about going on video with all of this because I did spend a lot more money than what most indie authors spend. I also took a lot more time than what most indie authors take, so I will start this with the caveat that this was my experience, there is no need for you to take as long as I did, there is no need for you to spend as much as I did, and I'll go through each step and outline what I think was worth it and what I wouldn't spend on next time. This is probably going to be a very long video, so if you prefer to read this sort of content, I do have a blog post where I go into all of the same information I'm covering here, and I'll pop a link to that in the description below. The blog post is, unsurprisingly, on my website where you can get the first three chapters of Powerless for free, so if you are interested in young adult sci-fi fantasy, if you think superheroes clashing with the Russian mafia sounds cool, go check it out. Now the first step to self-publishing a book is obviously to write the book. I am not going to go into that process in this video because I covered it in my videos back in Nana Raimo 2019, so if you want to see the writing process in real time, feel free to go back there. I also have videos where I try different plotting methods to outline this book, and later in 2020 I have a few on how I was revising it before I sent it to beta readers. So I wrote Powerless at the end of 2019, I spent October outlining it with a few different methods. November and December, I wrote it. The first draft was I think 68,000 words or 64,000 words? I think 68. And then I let it sit for a few months because I knew I wouldn't be able to revise it until I had fresh eyes looking at it. I think I picked it up again in about April 2020 when I read through it was pleasantly surprised to discover that I liked it and decided to revise it before sending it out to beta readers. Now, at this stage in the process I had three beta readers who looked at it. There was one who was a fellow writer and author-tuber, there was one who was an author and professional editor, and there was another who was not a writer, but she was a PhD candidate in neuroscience and because there was a bit of like fake science in the book, I thought it would be good to get someone who could give feedback as a reader but who could also cross-check some of the science-y stuff. The beta readers all came back to me after about two or three weeks. They all left comments throughout the book itself so I merged all three versions of the books so I could see the comments together. They also sent me some separate feedback either in an email or a separate document about the things they liked, the things they thought could have been stronger and so on. The feedback at this stage was really good so I was quite lucky to be in the position where I didn't need to significantly overhaul the book. It was more adding to what was already there. I found the beta reader process to be very helpful. It gave me a lot of confidence to move forward with this book. It gave me confidence to move forward with querying it so I would highly recommend it. If you don't know anyone who can beta read, I still think it's very important to get feedback even before you start working with an editor on things like copy edits and proofreading. So an alternative for this step is getting a manuscript critique. Now I actually did manuscript critiques as well as beta readers and there were a couple of reasons for this. The first critique I got was actually at the same time as my beta reads and the reason I did this was because I was considering working with this editor on the book and the critique was a good way to try her services because I hadn't worked with her before. So this was around mid 2020 same time as the beta reads and this was the first part of the process that had a real cost, which I will just check. So my first critique was about $900 Australian. It was actually priced in US dollars however in this video I'm going to give all everything I spent in Australian dollars just because I'm Australian, that's the currency I work in. I also did have expenses in a number of different currencies so some of it was in pounds, euros, US dollars, Australian dollars. So giving the currency I paid for each of the things that I paid for, I don't think is that helpful because it doesn't give you the overall figure. So everything has been converted to Australian dollars for the purposes of this video. If you'd like to convert that you can go to xe.com at the time of filming. One US dollar is worth about a dollar 50 Australians so when you convert it to what US dollars I think you get like 60 cents? I don't I don't know, I'm not a maths person, I'm a writer. Do the conversion. When I get to the grand total I will tell you what the conversion is to US dollars because I do know that off the top of my head. Anyway the first critique was a 50 page critique. It took two weeks I think and cost about $900 Australian. I decided not to go ahead with the editor after this just because I didn't think her feedback was great and I also didn't like her communication that style that much. The next critique I had actually wasn't until almost a year later so it was April 2021 and this was with a friend of mine who coincidentally happened to be doing a certification to become a book coach and one of the assignments she had to do was a critique or an editorial letter of an 80,000 word manuscript and at this point after my revisions Powelless was up to 78,000 words so it was a perfect fit. So this critique was very lucky it was free. It took three weeks and she wrote me a 24 page editorial letter which had a lot of great feedback. She was really complimentary about the stuff I'd done well and had some great suggestions about things I could improve which I then incorporated into my revisions. At this point there's a big break between me doing anything related to publishing the book because my original plan was to be traditionally published and April 2021 is when I first started querying. So I queried from like April 2021 until the end of the year didn't have any interest which was a little bit sad and then and then at the beginning of 2022 I decided to start entering competitions for unpublished manuscripts because I thought maybe that would be a way to get the attention of a traditional publisher or agent. So there's a big gap in anything relating to producing Powelless. However one of the competitions I entered had an option where you could get a critique for an extra fee. So that was a critique for the first 50 pages which I decided to take on. It was a five page critique I got it to what it would have been late 2022. I'm going to say like maybe September, October-ish and the cost for that which included the competition entry fee was $188 Australian. Then towards the end of 2022 is when I decided to self-publish basically in August one of the competitions I actually won and as I mentioned in an earlier video that sort of gave me the validation I was looking for from traditional publishing because what I wanted most from traditional publishing was the feedback that this was good enough that this was good enough to go to print and I won that competition I was shortlisted in another one. I was accepted into a competitive writing workshop using an extract from Powelless so I started getting all of this feedback without getting the traditional publishing acceptance. So late 2022 was when I began to seriously think about self-publishing again and the first step I took was reaching out to a company called New York Book Editors to get my book edited. The reason I reached out to New York Book Editors was because I'd been familiar with this company for a few years. I'd come across them in my grammar factory days when I had my own publishing company and I knew they only hired editors with traditional publishing backgrounds so this was sort of like okay I can pay for that affirmation. I can get an editor from a traditional publishing house or one who has worked at a traditional publishing house to tell me whether or not this is good enough. That's basically what I was looking for so I reached out and sent through a sample of the book and the way it works is they review your pages and tell you which service they think you need. So when I reached out I said the comprehensive edit I need everything. I have no idea how decent this book is and they read my pages and got back to me saying that they thought like an editorial letter or manuscript critique would be the best option so I got yet another manuscript critique. It took seven weeks and what I got was an 11 page critique letter as well as the full book with some comments throughout and this one was actually really expensive. It was $4,710 Australian which was just a lot of money especially for what I got and that's not to say that the editor didn't do a good job like he did have good feedback. He did give me that confidence boost I was looking for. Afterwards we could have like a recap call and he spent two hours on the phone with me as I went through like all of the comments he left that I had questions on so he's very generous with his time. Ultimately I felt like the feedback and this was consistent through all of the critiques. I felt like the feedback I got through manuscript critiques was feedback that I was getting from beta readers and since I'm lucky enough to have people who are both willing to beta read and good at giving feedback in my life the manuscript critique process was an unnecessary expense for me and it ended up being like an unnecessary expense that added up to what almost $6,000 so it was a significant chunk of what I spent on publishing. Do I regret it? I don't because that last one like I did get the validation I was hoping for. I did have an editor with a traditional publishing background who said yes this is good enough to print if you don't get any bites from agents or editors. I think you should self publish. I think it's a great story. You can take or leave my feedback it's already in good shape. That validation was really nice however I don't think I'd need it for a future book because now that I have this feedback I've sort of got powerless as a yardstick for what is acceptable to go to print and what isn't and I feel like I can judge my own work a bit better now that I know what the standard is. So in future I would not do the manuscript critique stage I will save $6,000 and I would just focus on beta readers instead. What I might do differently with beta readers is have multiple rounds so I'll have one at an earlier draft and then after I do revisions I might have another round with a couple of different readers to get feedback on how everything's coming together once I've done the revisions. So this brings us to November 2022 at which point I had decided I was going to self publish powerless and I needed to start looking at services to actually create the book now that the content was good. These services include editing, cover design, internal layout design. So for editing there are a number of different types of edits you can get and it's important to understand what those are so you know what you're paying for and so no one's disappointed. The way I always described it when I was at grammar factory was to imagine like an inverted triangle where at the top of the pyramid you're looking at the broader aspects of a book and as you get down you get more and more detailed. So at the top level you have things like developmental edits and structural edits. These are things that look at the overall structure of a book. For a fiction book this might be character development, plot, world building and so on. All of the macro things that you need to get right. Then when you get down to the bottom you're looking at the nitty gritty details so punctuation, typos, grammatical errors, spelling errors and so on. So in my case because I'd done the beta reading process revisions and manuscript critiques I'd already dealt with all of that macro stuff so I was mainly looking for support with the language when it came to my editing and not because I don't know grammar or I'm not a good writer. I mean I hope I'm a good writer. You can all tell me when you've read the book but because it is impossible to review your own work you get too close to it and you stop seeing things that are there. Having a qualified professional look through things can really help. So the first round of edits was copy editing slash line editing. In many publishing houses these are two different steps and they're sort of in the middle of the pyramid so line editing tends to look like paragraph structure, sentence structure and so on whereas copy editing is getting more into spelling, grammar, punctuation, that sort of stuff. My editor combines them both in her copy editing service which is very lucky for me and that first round of edits took two weeks and I had over four and a half thousand changes recommended in the word document. A lot of these were very small like I switched from Australian English which I write in to US English for publishing so the dashes I was using was wrong so every time I had a dash in the book it needed to be updated and the spacing around it had to be removed. So a lot of little nitpicky things like that that I wouldn't have found. For the copy edit my editor charged $1500 and I think it was worth every penny and I would recommend every self-publishing author to do this stage. Once the edits were done I then sent the content to my internal layout designer. This is the person who does the pages of the book. Sometimes it can be the same person who does the cover however they are very different skill sets so I'd usually recommend finding someone who specializes in cover design for the cover and then someone who specializes in page layout and typesetting for the pages. I found my internal layout designer on Reezy and she charged $900 for three versions of the book so that was the paperback which is this one here, the hardcover and the e-book. She was great to work with. I really just wanted a book that looked professional that when people opened it it looked like a real book and she just went above and beyond like she suggested this DNA ornamentation for the chapter titles which looks amazing. For scene break she found a little molecule icon because Hannah's a scientist there are strong science themes in the book and she even found different fonts to differentiate between the flashback scenes and the present day scenes in the book so I was really really happy with that process. When it comes to cost it was an extra $900. It is something that I would pay again though just because even though this is something that a lot of self-publishing authors tend to learn to do themselves I felt that my time was better spent writing other books than it was learning how to be an internal layout designer. Maybe if I didn't have a job as well so I work four days a week in a corporate job maybe then I would have tried to do it myself but between revising powerless and preparing for the launch writing powerless to writing two other books or brainstorming and starting to write them I didn't really have the attention left to learn this other skill and I felt it was better to leave it with professional and if I did it myself I would have always worried that I'd gotten something wrong and that there would be something really jarring that I missed that all of my readers would pick up on so this was just one less thing for me to worry about. After this I went back to my editor for the proofread. Now the proofread is the final final final grammar language punctuation formatting check. You can do it before you do the internal layout design however I wanted to do it once everything was set out just in case there were any issues when the content was imported from word into in design which is the program many internal layout designers used to design books and because I was using the same editor for copy editing and proofreading I wanted the book to look different to her so it was like she was looking at it with fresh eyes. Now normally I would recommend different editor for each stage of the editing process however the editor I worked with is someone I've worked with in the past she was one of the editors on my team at grammar factory and I just I knew I just knew she did really good work she had excellent attention to detail she happened to be available at perfect times when it came to my own publishing process so I was very happy for her to do both steps and I believe the proofread was another 800 or 900 dollars 800 dollars then we get to cover design now normally I would want to do cover design earlier in the process like as soon as the content is done you start working on the cover and the reason for that is because you can't market your book without a cover now there are debates when it comes to how early you should be marketing your book especially as an indie author and in hindsight maybe I didn't need everything as early as I thought I did and it might have been better to wait until like the last month before the launch and just do everything then however it is good to have that for planning and even things like designing your website like I only have the one book on my website so I don't really have my own brand as an author yet so I knew the website was going to look like the cover and until I knew what the cover looked like I couldn't have a website where people could start signing up and joining my email list so ideally I would have started the cover in December and finished it by February what ended up happening was there was a designer in my previous job who before I left had said he'd love to help me with my future projects I reached out to him and he said he wanted to help with this this was good because like he did create this awesome design with the hand with the gun and the beaker and I am very happy with how the book looks however the process did take much longer than expected and that was for two main reasons one was he had a lot of personal stuff going on he had a death in the family he lost a job he got a new job so those things probably added about two months to the process just where he would go offline and I couldn't reach him understandably but also a little bit frustrating when it comes to my own timelines the other thing though is that he isn't an experienced book cover designer and that became very clear when we started working together so he had this great concept but it was really hard to find topography that would go with it and I still wonder like what might have been suggested if I had a designer who was used to working in this format another thing was he designed the cover in rgb instead of cmyk now rgb is the color spectrum he used for designing things for digital whereas cmyk is what you do for print and he said like oh well you're going to do lots of digital marketing that's why I did it that way but I sort of went well it's a print product like we should design for the product and the marketing supports the product not the other way around and that meant when I got the first copies of the book the colors were a lot more muted and muddier than they are on the screen and it was hard to communicate that because he's not that experienced in print design and also when I take photos of the book it looks a lot brighter than it does in real life so he's based in Hungary I'm in Australia I ended up having to send books from here to there so he could see what they looked like and that was then a two-week process so a lot of little things like that that meant the book took more time than it needed to and then once he finally got it we decided to make some tweaks to the brightness and the title but that was like between when I got my books and when he was able to look at it again that was a month so there were a lot of frustrating things like that that I don't think would have happened if I'd been working with someone who was more experienced in this medium having said that he did not charge me anything for my cover very very generously he said he would do it for free so I didn't end up paying for this very important part of the process I do have some context for how much covers do cost though because I did used to work in non-fiction publishing the going rate for a good custom cover was about a thousand dollars Australian in my case I originally wanted to have an illustrated cover so the pricing is a little bit different to one that uses stock images the quotes I got ranged from three thousand dollars US to ten thousand dollars so in Australian dollars I'm guessing it's about four and a half grand to fifteen thousand dollars so that is a significant area where I saved when it comes to this book after that I had my internal layout files ready I had my cover files ready and it was time to distribute it so distribution is how your book gets from you to everywhere you can buy it so that might be traditional bookstores for most indie authors it's websites like amazon and the online version of bookstores like the Barnes and Noble website rather than the Barnes and Noble bricks and mortar store there are a couple of ways to go about getting your book out there one is to create accounts with each of the retailers where you want it to be listed and then upload your files to them another approach is to use a distributor in my case I did both so for the ebook I uploaded it directly to amazon because amazon is the biggest website out there when it comes to selling books by uploading it directly to amazon my hope was that I could better track how the book was performing and that has been the case so far I mean with amazon I can already see the pre-orders coming in whereas with my distributor I can't the distributor I used for everywhere else is called IngramSpark and they are basically a central point where you upload your files both print and ebook and then they feed it out to all of the retailers so if you happen to buy a paperback or hardcover version of my book from anywhere it's actually coming from IngramSpark who is then sending it out to those retailers if you order an ebook from anywhere that isn't amazon same thing it's coming from IngramSpark this is easy because it means I need to upload it only once but I know from past experience the reporting isn't great it's also really hard to know what the timings are at each of the retailers because you're not working with them directly so for amazon if I make a change to the book's listing or the files those updates will be visible on the platform sometimes instantaneously but usually within a couple of days when I make the same updates to IngramSpark it could take a couple of months before it's available on the different websites so that can be a little bit frustrating but I think having the ebook on amazon and IngramSpark for everywhere else is a good balance between the amount of work involved and the amount of pay off because amazon is the biggest site out there when it comes to how much it cost I think it was 49 dollars US for each version of the book on IngramSpark the ebook and paperback could happen in one listing so 100 dollars US for everything so let's say like a hundred and 60 ish dollars Australian for the listings since I uploaded my book since I've uploaded my book they've actually started offering listings for free so it means there is no fee to upload your files I'm assuming they'll just take a larger cut of the sale price once the book is available but I'm not quite sure what the difference will be yet and then the final step is marketing now I'm not going to get too much into that in this video because obviously my book hasn't launched yet I haven't finished spending money there once the book does launch I might change my strategy and spend more in certain areas than I was planning and less in others depending on how things go but at a very high level the things that I'm doing are content marketing so self-generated content like this like Instagram posts like my email newsletter influencer reach out so reach out to a bunch of book fluences to see if they'd be willing to feature powerless in their content review websites so that sites like netgalley where you can make your book available for reviewers to read and review as well as sites like publishers weekly and Kirkus reviews that publish reviews of books and then advertising so advertising on amazon bookbub instagram Goodreads when it comes to the cost for all of these activities I'm expecting to spend about ten thousand dollars Australian which is a lot and that's for a couple of reasons one is that I still would like to be traditionally published in the future and I know that there's a chance any agent I weary might look at the sales history of powerless so if I can get that to be higher than it would have been otherwise that'll work in my favor the other thing is that powerless is the beginning of my author career so any investment I make now will hopefully lead to more readers now who will read other things in future but this is all up in the air at the moment I don't know how any of it will go so we need to wait and see and then there's one final area that I spent money on which isn't technically like related to publishing powerless but they are expenses related to powerless so I think it's best to include them for the sake of transparency which was writing competitions or book competitions so I mentioned earlier that when I wasn't having much luck with querying I entered powerless in a bunch of competitions for unpublished books and that was in the hope of getting the attention of a traditional agent or publisher now that didn't happen but I did win a competition I was shortlisted in another so it was good to do from a confidence boosting perspective when it comes to the cost of these I haven't actually broken it down in the blog post so I might put it on the screen but I spent two thousand eight hundred Australian dollars altogether that is for competition entry fees but it's also for the killer Nashville conference now the killer Nashville Claymore award in the YA category is the one that I won and I happened to find out that I was a finalist like right when I had quit my job in Switzerland and the conference was the day after I was due to finish my job so it just felt like it was a sign I also felt like going to this conference would be just a nice transition from my really stressful time in crypto to more consciously and actively being a writer so that two thousand eight hundred it includes all the competition entry fees as well as like flights from Switzerland to Nashville accommodation in Nashville and the cost of the conference so the grand total of everything I spent on powerless was twenty one thousand Australian dollars and that works out to about fourteen thousand dollars US it is a lot of money compared to what a lot of indie authors spend and there are definitely things I wouldn't spend on next time so like I said I wouldn't do the manuscript critiques next time which will save me about six grandish and I also wouldn't do the competitions and conferences next time I think if I was going to another country anyway then I might put a conference in there but I wouldn't fly like to Nashville again just to fly to Nashville so that would actually save me almost nine thousand dollars which brings the total down significantly so we'd go from what twenty one thousand down to twelve thousand having said that I also did get a free cover so that is something I would need to consider when it comes to my next book and if I wanted an illustrated cover based on the quotes I got that's probably going to be a few grand now did I need to spend this much definitely not as an indie author there are many things I could have done to make this cheaper I could have learned to do my internal layout maybe I could have done one less round of editing I could have gotten like a template cover instead of something that was custom designed and all of these would have saved a lot however like I said earlier I didn't want to learn these new skills myself I wanted to spend my free time learning how to write and writing other books and hopefully even better books so for that reason it was worth it for me to spend as much as I did the other thing to keep in mind is that I do have a corporate job so it's not like I went into debt to publish this book if I was writing full-time and didn't have that income then I probably would have tried to cut a lot more from this process I would not have given myself such a big marketing budget I probably would have tried to learn to do the internal layout myself but I do have an income that can help offset this I also have savings that can help offset this so one of my plans for years now has been to take time off to just travel and write in fact that was my plan for 2020 and then we had a pandemic so no travel no writing so I had money saved take six months off in 2020 and I've been working for the past three years since then so I've continued building up those savings since then so that meant I had this money set aside that could go towards the book if you don't have this money set aside and you are an indie author I do not recommend spending this much money I think starting your career as an author or starting any type of business where the goal is to make a profit and to sustainably fund yourself I think if you're starting in a place of debt that makes things so much harder because you've got so much more ground to cover you need to sell so many more books in order to just break even now that is the case for me with powerless but again I do have another income so this was more about in some cases getting validation and literally paying for that validation and in other cases trying to give my book the best shot it could and I could put more money into that to help make that happen whether it works or not remains to be seen but fingers crossed anyway I hope you enjoyed this video like I said there is a blog post version so if you want to get even more detail if you want to see more of the financial breakdown head over to jacklenpretty.com where you can also get the first three chapters of powerless which will be out on the 13th of June which is very very exciting anyway sign up for the first three chapters if you like them please pre-order the book it's $2.99 on amazon so very affordable and I will see you next time bye