Publishing in paperback

Publishing a book as an e-book is very satisfying but is a book really a book if it isn't a book? I set about learning what used to be known as vanity press publishing but is now called simply self-publishing.

The simplest, best alternative is CreateSpace which is owned by Amazon. You can't beat the deal. The whole process is free and when you are done, they list the book on Amazon for you. If you pay a little more, they submit it to Ingram, one of the world's largest book distributors, and now scores of people (and bookstores) are selling my books.

The only catch? It is called POD or Print On Demand. Which means nobody can put them on their shelves because they are only printed when ordered. No big deal right now. Maybe tomorrow.

Anyway, CreateSpace walks you through the process, complete with proper Word formatting guidelines. The only tricky part was the cover. Here are the covers that Bruce created. They are awesome!



 

But they have to be high-resolution, wraparound and you have to use amazing mathematics to figure out where the spine is going. Off by even a hundredth of a inch and the cover looks askew. Both the book and cover have to posted as PDFs but really, in the grand scheme of things, that was the simplest. I use a PDF-printer called BullZip and it works great.

For Rome's Revolution, it took us three full passes through the proofing procedure until we got it right. But then it was done. And I sold some! It is pretty cool.