Format Your Own Damned Book And Save A Bundle

I recently helped an author format her ebook for publication and realized again that for an author I'm a pretty talented book formatter, and if I wanted to make money in the book publishing racket I'd make more formatting other people's books than I ever would writing my own.

I program computers as my day job so the process of book formatting comes easily to me. It does not come easily to others. There are a lot of details that aren't that hard if you take them one at a time, but which seem overwhelming to someone who wants to learn them all at once. For that reason, I am going to do some blog posts which will eventually be combined into an e-book called Format Your Own Damned Book And Save A Bundle. I had done some posts on this topic before and lost interest in doing them, but I hope to do better this time. I plan to leave the blog posts up after the book is published.

If you self publish you will have many opportunities to spend money on your book. For example (all these are from the Create Space website):

Simple Interior Formatting for a printed book: $249

Custom Interior Formatting for a printed book: $349

Custom Book Cover: $399

Copy editing (proofreading): $160 up to 10,000 words

Line editing: $210 up to 10,000 words

Kindle Conversion: $79

Complex Kindle Conversion: $139

Kirkus Review: $425 - $575

Marketing Copy Essentials: $249

All of these things may be worthwhile for some authors. If an established author decided that he could make more money by self publishing he might be justified in paying for all of this stuff. For him it would be an investment. For the rest of us, it might be like a Gold Rush where the guys that get really rich do it by selling beans to the miners.

I format all my own books, both for e-readers like the Kindle and Nook, and for printed books using Create Space. I design my own covers, using free fonts, public domain art, and free graphics software. I also use a free word processor, Libre Office, and a free ebook editor called Sigil. I don't pay editors and reviewers. I write my own book descriptions.

As a result of this I can publish a book cheaply, and I can teach you to do the same thing.

I have not had great success as an author, but I don't need to. I have a day job that pays the bills. If I had hoped to make a living as an author I believe that I'd be better off working with a traditional publisher. They would take care of promoting and distributing my book, editing, cover design, etc. If they thought my writing was beyond hope they would let me know.

If you're self publishing a book you need to be honest with yourself as to why you're doing it. Self published books don't appear on book tables at Costco, don't get sold in bookstores, don't get big advances, and don't get selected for Oprah's Book Club. If you think your book deserves these things then you need to work with a traditional publisher.

If you're convinced that your book deserves these things but you don't want them then you're crazy.

There are good reasons to self publish a book, and in my opinion these reasons should make you want to do it as cheaply as possible:

1. The book deserves to exist, but is not likely to find a large audience.

I wrote some manuals for the One Laptop Per Child project. They were aimed at teachers and children who didn't have much money to spend on books. In fact, the books could be read for free on the Internet. Printed books were pretty much an afterthought. A few copies were given away as door prizes at an OLPC conference. The books have been downloaded for free hundreds of times, but sales have been negligible.

Make Your Own Sugar Activities!

E-Book Enlightenment

2. The book has a target audience, but it's small and spread out.

I wrote a memoir of my experiences in the Hare Krishna movement shortly after I left it in the late seventies. I only did a first draft, using a manual typewriter. Thirty years later I used a word processor to revise it for publication, adding much new material.

The Life And Times Of Bhakta Jim

The book has received many good reviews on Amazon, mostly from people who had experiences with the Hare Krishna movement themselves. If I had finished the book the week after the Jonestown massacre I would have had a much larger audience, but it would have been a different book. The one I wrote is more of a coming of age story than an expose of the movement.

3. The book doesn't fit into a recognized genre.

I wrote a science fiction novel called Shree Krishna and the Singularity which is technically science fiction but doesn't follow the usual science fiction conventions because the subjects I wanted to write about (consciousness and Indian philosophy) don't fit those conventions that well. It isn't a space opera and it isn't a techno thriller.

Shree Krishna And The Singularity

4. You are a terrible author and you know it, but you still want to be published.

For this last one you might want to consider paying for professional services. If the subject matter of your book has a sizable potential audience (conspiracy theories and books by people running for office would be good examples) then you want the book to look as professional as possible and should spend the money to make it that way.

If you've read this far we can assume that you have a book that you'd like to publish as cheaply as possible. If any part of the process turns out badly you can always pay a professional to do that part better, but you'd like to take a shot at doing everything yourself first.

Let's begin by identifying some (cheap or free) tools of the trade, which we'll do in the next installment.