How to self-publish your own work
A lot of people have asked me to tell them how to go about getting self-published. I don't purport to be an expert by any stretch of the imagination but what I can tell you is the process I went through with my own books.
To start off with, I use Smashwords to format my book into a number of ebook formats. (http://www.smashwords.com) Doesn't cost anything to publish with them and they will then also sell your work through Apple, Sony, Diesel, Barnes and Noble and a couple of other markets. To get into those premium markets, you do have to have cover art. Now there are plenty of ways to do it for free if you want but I pay a professional to do mine because I believe you get what you pay for and can thoroughly recommend Ray Bull of Bull Art. He charges between $500 and $700 to design both an ebook cover (just front page) and a print cover (front, back and spine). http://www.bullart.com.au
Don't get me wrong though. Plenty of people do their own covers using Photoshop and programs like it and some of them even turn out great but writing is my forte, not designing. There are other companies online who design covers and probably do so cheaper than Ray. Google search 'designing book covers' to come up with some other options).
Smashwords has tips for formatting, which you can download for free here - http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52 Basically, they don't want any weird formatting that will look silly on an ereader. Takes a little bit to get your head around but it's simple once you get it down pat (and now I just write with that format always so it's easier to do in the future).
Click on the publish link on Smashwords and follow the instructions.
Set the price you want for the book. I went middle of the road. There are plenty of books cheaper and plenty that are more expensive. Select how much of your book to view for free. I chose 20% so that people get a good feel for the story but you can choose more or less depending on personal preference.
Select the category, add tags (these are basically the book's descriptions and are used for people to search – so for mine, I used:
romance
erotica
love
murder
wealth
adult
sex
betrayal
conspiracy
chicklit
lies
secrets
lust
power
blackmail
wealthy
paris
sydney
dubai
contemporary fiction
venice
adult romance
conspiracy thriller
australian author
power and love
and a number of others.
Tick all the ebook formats – that makes it more widely available. Add your cover art and the word document of the book and upload. They will check it to make sure it is all okay but once it is, it's live for sale. Takes about a week to go to Apple and the likes.
They will ask you to add an ISBN – I always use their free version. You can buy your own, which allows you to sell it anywhere, but I find it easier to just use theirs for the moment.
For examples of setting up a Smashwords page, check out mine. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/232206
Smashwords generally pay into your Paypal account and much better for Australian and foreign authors than Amazon, who still use old-fashioned cheques for anyone outside of the US, UK or Europe.
To publish as an ebook on Amazon, go to https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin
Sign up – or if you have an Amazon account, just sign in – and then follow the links for adding a new title. You can use most of the stuff you've already used on Smashword. First up, they'll ask you if you want to be part of the Kindle Direct Select program, which means for 90 days, you only sell on Amazon exclusively. As I was already on Smashwords I did not sign up for this, and frankly, I've found few authors online who thought it was a good choice to make - but am happy to be proved wrong by anyone who has found it to be a great success.
Not too hard to follow all the prompts there.
Once your book is live on Amazon, you will need to set up an author page. https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/profile which is used to determine all the info that will show on your profile. http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B009BDA8IG
Final step I used is to create an account on Createspace, who are the Print on Demand publishing arm of Amazon. http://www.createspace.com There are other options, like Lulu and Lightning Source but I still find Createspace to be the cheapest option around, even shipping to Australia.
Create an account, add new title and follow the steps for setting it up. You will have to now change the format of your book to be more in line with a real chapter book – but they give you the format and I just copied and pasted each chapter into their format. Worked fine for me.
You won't be able to use your Smashwords ISBN here (or on Kindle but you don't need an ISBN on Kindle – they assign some other identifier). But Createspace also have free ISBN's available to use and again, that's all I did.
Where this gets a little more complicated is that instead of just a front cover for your book, like for ebook, you now need a proper book cover with back cover, spine and front cover. Plus you have to get all the dimensions right, which is, again, why I happily paid a professional to do it for me.
Or you can use Createspace's free version to create your own but I just didn't like any of the covers I tried to create. They also offer a number of paid options – which you can choose to use or you can do the work yourself and not pay a cent.
Once it is all uploaded, it takes about 24 hours for them to approve the files and make sure all the formatting it correct. They'll let you know if there are any issues. You then select your distribution channels (I paid the $25 for the extended distribution).
You can do this step before the Amazon Kindle and then they have a quick easy step for doing Kindle afterwards but no idea if it really is quicker or not as I did the ebook first.
Once you've set up Createspace, it goes up for sale on Amazon. People order the book and pay Amazon – then you get a cut of the action. My book is available for $13 on Amazon and I get about $3.04 for each copy sold. But you can also order author copies through Createspace (for around $4 a copy plus shipping) and then sell them yourself through your website, or in a local bookstore or even at the market. I know people who do this and sell the books for $20 each – making around $13 per book instead of $3.04.
Now you're a published author and all you have to do is market yourself. Which means setting up a website, a twitter account, a Goodreads account, a Google+ account and then doing all the hard yards of promoting the book. Feel free to check out any of my links below for ideas on how to promote yourself online.
Makes writing it seem easy!!!
Hope you have found this page useful in your quest for self-publishing. Don't forget that the more professional you make your work upfront, the more chance of success you have in the long run, which means don't forget things like professional editing.
http://www.rileybanks.net
http://www.vampireorigins.net
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/aussieicon
http://amazon.com/author/rileybanks
https://www.twitter.com/rebeccabyfield
https://www.twitter.com/vampireorigins
https://www.twitter.com/rileybanksbooks
https://www.facebook.com/AuthorRileyBanks
http://www.facebook.com/VampireOrigins
http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/13011420-riley-banks
https://www.createspace.com/3991940
To start off with, I use Smashwords to format my book into a number of ebook formats. (http://www.smashwords.com) Doesn't cost anything to publish with them and they will then also sell your work through Apple, Sony, Diesel, Barnes and Noble and a couple of other markets. To get into those premium markets, you do have to have cover art. Now there are plenty of ways to do it for free if you want but I pay a professional to do mine because I believe you get what you pay for and can thoroughly recommend Ray Bull of Bull Art. He charges between $500 and $700 to design both an ebook cover (just front page) and a print cover (front, back and spine). http://www.bullart.com.au
Don't get me wrong though. Plenty of people do their own covers using Photoshop and programs like it and some of them even turn out great but writing is my forte, not designing. There are other companies online who design covers and probably do so cheaper than Ray. Google search 'designing book covers' to come up with some other options).
Smashwords has tips for formatting, which you can download for free here - http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52 Basically, they don't want any weird formatting that will look silly on an ereader. Takes a little bit to get your head around but it's simple once you get it down pat (and now I just write with that format always so it's easier to do in the future).
Click on the publish link on Smashwords and follow the instructions.
Set the price you want for the book. I went middle of the road. There are plenty of books cheaper and plenty that are more expensive. Select how much of your book to view for free. I chose 20% so that people get a good feel for the story but you can choose more or less depending on personal preference.
Select the category, add tags (these are basically the book's descriptions and are used for people to search – so for mine, I used:
romance
erotica
love
murder
wealth
adult
sex
betrayal
conspiracy
chicklit
lies
secrets
lust
power
blackmail
wealthy
paris
sydney
dubai
contemporary fiction
venice
adult romance
conspiracy thriller
australian author
power and love
and a number of others.
Tick all the ebook formats – that makes it more widely available. Add your cover art and the word document of the book and upload. They will check it to make sure it is all okay but once it is, it's live for sale. Takes about a week to go to Apple and the likes.
They will ask you to add an ISBN – I always use their free version. You can buy your own, which allows you to sell it anywhere, but I find it easier to just use theirs for the moment.
For examples of setting up a Smashwords page, check out mine. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/232206
Smashwords generally pay into your Paypal account and much better for Australian and foreign authors than Amazon, who still use old-fashioned cheques for anyone outside of the US, UK or Europe.
To publish as an ebook on Amazon, go to https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin
Sign up – or if you have an Amazon account, just sign in – and then follow the links for adding a new title. You can use most of the stuff you've already used on Smashword. First up, they'll ask you if you want to be part of the Kindle Direct Select program, which means for 90 days, you only sell on Amazon exclusively. As I was already on Smashwords I did not sign up for this, and frankly, I've found few authors online who thought it was a good choice to make - but am happy to be proved wrong by anyone who has found it to be a great success.
Not too hard to follow all the prompts there.
Once your book is live on Amazon, you will need to set up an author page. https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/profile which is used to determine all the info that will show on your profile. http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B009BDA8IG
Final step I used is to create an account on Createspace, who are the Print on Demand publishing arm of Amazon. http://www.createspace.com There are other options, like Lulu and Lightning Source but I still find Createspace to be the cheapest option around, even shipping to Australia.
Create an account, add new title and follow the steps for setting it up. You will have to now change the format of your book to be more in line with a real chapter book – but they give you the format and I just copied and pasted each chapter into their format. Worked fine for me.
You won't be able to use your Smashwords ISBN here (or on Kindle but you don't need an ISBN on Kindle – they assign some other identifier). But Createspace also have free ISBN's available to use and again, that's all I did.
Where this gets a little more complicated is that instead of just a front cover for your book, like for ebook, you now need a proper book cover with back cover, spine and front cover. Plus you have to get all the dimensions right, which is, again, why I happily paid a professional to do it for me.
Or you can use Createspace's free version to create your own but I just didn't like any of the covers I tried to create. They also offer a number of paid options – which you can choose to use or you can do the work yourself and not pay a cent.
Once it is all uploaded, it takes about 24 hours for them to approve the files and make sure all the formatting it correct. They'll let you know if there are any issues. You then select your distribution channels (I paid the $25 for the extended distribution).
You can do this step before the Amazon Kindle and then they have a quick easy step for doing Kindle afterwards but no idea if it really is quicker or not as I did the ebook first.
Once you've set up Createspace, it goes up for sale on Amazon. People order the book and pay Amazon – then you get a cut of the action. My book is available for $13 on Amazon and I get about $3.04 for each copy sold. But you can also order author copies through Createspace (for around $4 a copy plus shipping) and then sell them yourself through your website, or in a local bookstore or even at the market. I know people who do this and sell the books for $20 each – making around $13 per book instead of $3.04.
Now you're a published author and all you have to do is market yourself. Which means setting up a website, a twitter account, a Goodreads account, a Google+ account and then doing all the hard yards of promoting the book. Feel free to check out any of my links below for ideas on how to promote yourself online.
Makes writing it seem easy!!!
Hope you have found this page useful in your quest for self-publishing. Don't forget that the more professional you make your work upfront, the more chance of success you have in the long run, which means don't forget things like professional editing.
http://www.rileybanks.net
http://www.vampireorigins.net
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/aussieicon
http://amazon.com/author/rileybanks
https://www.twitter.com/rebeccabyfield
https://www.twitter.com/vampireorigins
https://www.twitter.com/rileybanksbooks
https://www.facebook.com/AuthorRileyBanks
http://www.facebook.com/VampireOrigins
http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/13011420-riley-banks
https://www.createspace.com/3991940
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