Update: Self Publishing Community! … To help self publishers better interact, we’ve added some great new elements to our site. You can now join our self publishing community page, set-up your own profile, and just like Facebook you can contact other members, and add photos and video.
The community section also lets members have their own book blog section on our site and list their books in ourAuthors Book Directory. Finally we’ve added a discussion forum so self publishers can discuss and get help with any and all issues related to self-publishing. Help us get our self publishing community going: Sign-up, post a profile and post in the self publishing forums!
Before getting into the nitty-gritties of things, it’s important to remember a crucial aspect of the online book publishing business: the pace of things and of everything still to come. An increasing number of online self-publishing outfits are now providing built in packages for publishing eBooks in addition to their print publication deals. As a result, it makes it difficult to evaluate where everything stands so take these passages that follow with a certain grain of salt, and always keep yourself up-to-date on current trends.
This post is divided into two principal sections: A list of pre-publication suggestions and detailing the current options available. Please know that this is by no means an exhaustive list.
Pre-Publication Suggestions
Quality. What goes for traditional print publication so it goes for eBooks—the quality and standard has to be good—if you want to sell.
Great Cover Design. For eBooks in particular, it’s all about the presentation and in order to get a reader’s interest peaked, your cover needs to a , b) be eye catching and c) be professionally designed. The best thing about eBook covers are that they’re easier to produce than traditional covers: JPEGs with decent resolutions make for passable covers, but to truly compete with print books, your cover needs to meet the standard.
Don’t be Greedy. Pricing is one of the most important aspects of your eBook—try to keep the price somewhere between $0.99 and $2.99—the most success found with writers. Anything below $4.99 works for an eBook. You also have to take into account what your ebook distributer is going to take for royalties when pricing your book. Amazon, who promise 70% royalties, only applies this to Kindle books priced between $2.99 and $9.99. For everything else, the rate is knocked down to 35%.Ignore book publishers that don’t allow independent price setting. If you want to set your book for $0.99 then you should be allowed to set it at $0.99. Any self-publishing outfit that doesn’t allow for this, should be avoided.
Pimp your books through social media. Marketing books is almost entirely about creating awareness and hype about the book—identifying that it exists is a great place to start—from passing out fliers, blogging, tweeting or using other social media tools.
Writers often complain about the pitfalls of writing a novel, but if you follow the steps below, you will realize that it really isn’t as difficult as it’s been made out to be.
1. Planning You would be surprised how easy a little planning and forward thinking can make writing a novel. A plan will not only help organize your thoughts and story, but will also help you in finishing your novel quicker. The more quickly you write, the easier it will come to you and if you know where you’re going, it will also provide a failsafe to ensure you don’t get stuck. 2. Developing the Right Skills The more you write, the easier it will become. Practice makes perfect, right? By writing a little every day, you endeavor to improve your writing by making each new piece better than the last.
If you’re a self published author, and you haven’t heard about smashwords.com, them its time you did. Smashwords provides an excellent opportunity to distribute their books in multiple ebook formats. Interested readers can then buy and download your book from Smashwords in whatever format is compatible with their digital reader (like the kindle). Smashwords also distribute your ebook to platforms like Apple’s iBook Store and BARNES & NOBLE . They do all this for only a small cut of what you make on the sale of each book, so it’s really a win/win situation for both the author and Smashwords.
Unfortunately, because of the multiple formats that Smashword converts your ebook into, the source file you upload to Smashwords has to very basic in its formatting. In this video, we’ll review the basics of formatting your manuscript for publishing to Smashwords, alone with tips on the cover and a complete walk through of the upload process.
One under the radar way to get your book out there is through book reviews, which for a newly published author can be a hard thing to figure out where to start. This is why I’ve outlined 10 steps in helping you get there.
Start early, picking out the people you’re going to send your book in for review, in all three mediums: print, broadcasting and the Internet. Before contacting them, ensure that their information is current and still relevant. Also make sure your request is personal—address them by name. To get you started, you can sign-up at Reviewthebook.com
Write your letter or email in a way that is both professional and that focuses on the benefits to the reviewer’s readers; also make sure that a copy of the book cover is included. Alternatively, several book trade reviewers have specific requirements for review requests which you will need to follow.
EBook readers like the Apple iPad and Amazon Kindle are changing the way books are published and moving the model from a traditional one to something more attainable and maintainable for new and established authors. By giving the control back to the authors, instead of having to pass through the barrage of agents, publishers and editors, authors can create just what they envisioned for the reader.
To publish your work in the ipad, all that’s needed is a Mac and a word processor—with a little patience, you can convert any file into the .epub format and upload it for sale and reading—directly onto the Apple iBookstore.
The steps below show you just how simple it is and can be for you. But remember: the downloadable books will only be available to users who already own an iPhone or iPad. You will also need an Intel Mac running OS X 10.5 or a later version, enough hard disk space and a high speed internet connection.
Before getting into the nitty-gritties of things, it’s important to remember a crucial aspect of the online book publishing business: the pace of things and of everything still to come. An increasing number of online self-publishing outfits are now providing built in packages for publishing eBooks in addition to their print publication deals. As a result, it makes it difficult to evaluate where everything stands so take these passages that follow with a certain grain of salt, and always keep yourself up-to-date on current trends.
Writers often complain about the pitfalls of writing a novel, but if you follow the steps below, you will realize that it really isn’t as difficult as it’s been made out to be.
One under the radar way to get your book out there is through book reviews, which for a newly published author can be a hard thing to figure out where to start. This is why I’ve outlined 10 steps in helping you get there.
EBook readers like the Apple iPad and Amazon Kindle are changing the way books are published and moving the model from a traditional one to something more attainable and maintainable for new and established authors. By giving the control back to the authors, instead of having to pass through the barrage of agents, publishers and editors, authors can create just what they envisioned for the reader.