To all the authors out there, especially anyone who’s ever self-published a work: I really, really need some advice.

Three years ago I started writing a Doctor Who story (from the Classic era, not New Who). It took about a year to finish and ended up being 23 chapters long. A dear friend of mine who has done some editing work (as well as letting me bounce ideas off her) and some illustrations mentioned that we should self-publish it. At the moment we’re not looking into getting millions of copies distributed to bookstores. To start, we’d just like get a few paperback copies printed off to bring with us to a convention next Summer and distribute to a few people. We’ve looked into Lulu Publishing and decided that’s probably the best way to go. I’ve looked into a few other options and they seemed quite pricey in comparison – and we’d like to save as much money as possible.

I’ve never done this before, so I have a few questions that I hope someone could answer and just give some good advice in general.

In US Trade Paperback format, the story would amount to 524 pages long, possibly a few more when the illustrations are added. But I certainly don’t foresee it going over 550 pages.

We’d originally put together a cover design which is a collage/photo manipulation which I designed in Corel Paint Shop Pro. It features a couple of Doctor Who characters against an alien landscape background and a small version of the DW logo at the top. On the back would be a summary/preview of the story. We then discussed the possibility of having an illustrated depiction of the same idea instead so we wouldn’t run into copyright violations. But I’m assuming that as long as we add the obligatory “DW is a trademark of BBC Enterprises” etc., we would be okay? Would it still be okay to use any photos from the show as long as we give credit to the BBC and any other entity/location from which we use images? Or would a hand-drawn illustrated cover be a safer way to go?

As hinted above, our goal is to print it in US Trade Paperback format and I know nothing about how big to make the book spine. I did set up an account at Lulu Publishing and noticed they have a built-in tool for that, so I’m just waiting to have the inner contents finalized, along with the cover design, and that should take care of that.

One question i have is regarding ISBN numbers. I’ve heard they’re not completely necessary, but many articles I’ve read say it’s a very good idea. We’d probably only get 1 because we’re not planning on making it available for e-book format. Though I’m not sure if that might be a good idea, too…? As long as it isn’t too expensive, I know that for print books, one ISBN# costs around US $125.

Last question: I assume it wouldn’t be a big deal to register a copyright? Would such a thing be a good idea? In that way we could be assured that no one could copy/steal anything we’ve written or drawn, right?

Apologies if most of these are just common sense, but I’ve a complete novice at this sort of thing. I made a similar post on Tumblr and hadn’t received any responses. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Please leave me a comment below or you can contact me at: jessfromny @ gmail (dot) com.

Thank you so much in advance.