How To Publish an E-book If You're Technologically Challenged

Photo credit: Alex Stoddard This post will hopefully be quite informative for my writer friends who haven't self-published something yet, since I recently put "Cruel" into the world and made some mistakes at first. I'm going to be honest here; I was in grave danger of throwing my (new, but still a piece of shit--thanks $250 ASUS brand) computer against my house's brick walls because of that fucking Smashwords Style Guide. It is from the devil. I am convinced of this.
So here you go; the few tidbits of info I can impart to you about what it was like to publish my first work in e-book format--let my mistakes not be your mistakes. I am NOT tech-savvy in the least, so I hope this will be helpful since I'm not speaking in fancy, flowery language about how to accomplish any of this. Just my stupid, technologically-inept methods. SO if I can do it, you can CERTAINLY do it.

And if you haven't yet; check outmy worst kiss video for a good laugh, and  subscribe to my newsletter if you feel so inclined. All right kiddos, here was my process for publishing:
1. Designed a cover on Canva for $1.00. Yes, ONE dollar. Hugh Howey recommended this on his site and rightfully so; these templates have beautiful font, are easy to design, and I'm honestly considering using it for my steampunk fantasy novel since I can't afford to have a cover designed. Check it out (after you read this post).

2. Uploaded to Amazon KDP. I chose NOT to opt into their Kindle Unlimited program because I wanted to put it on Barnes and Noble, iBooks, etc. and when you go with Kindle Unlimited it demands exclusivity for 90 days. Fuck that. Also, I read about this whole KU thing on Chuck Wendig's blog and it sounds pretty sketchy; every author apparently gets a cut of the profits at the end of each month or something, but has NO idea what the amount will be.
-Uploading to Amazon was INCREDIBLY easy. They format it from a doc. document, so writing your book in Microsoft Word is A-OKAY. There were a few discrepancies with the title and my dedication page for a bit, so I had to futz around with the spacing and re-upload it about three times. All in all, not a big deal. I have no fancy fonts though, nor chapters since Cruel is a short story. I assume it would be more time-consuming with a novel.

3. Uploaded it to Barnes and Noble's website. So this is where things got squirrely; their spacing is also bizarre. Same thing with a doc. upload, and they do actually have a "manuscript editor" within their website where you can fix the spacing right through the website, instead of changing the spacing and re-uploading over and over, like I had to do with Amazon. Also, my e-book wasn't showing up for a few days so I contacted their tech support, and once I did that the very helpful woman pulled it up immediately. (Coincidence? I THINK NOT.)

4. Tried to upload to iBooks. Come to find that unless you OWN A MAC, you CAN'T UPLOAD TO iBOOKS FROM YOUR COMPUTER. Fuck you, Apple. I'd love to be able to afford a Mac Air right now, but I'm lucky enough if I can just purchase an actual apple to EAT for lunch. I digress. But there is a solution to this: Smashwords.

5. Uploaded to Smashwords. Smashwords was one of the first places for indie authors to start publishing their e-books, and it offers this really amazing (free) perk: distribution to EVERYWHERE. Everywhere except Amazon, that is. I'm talking Kobo, iBooks, Scribd, B&N, and even this thing called Overdrive that gives your book to online libraries. Yeah, it's awesome. Want to know what's NOT awesome?! The SMASHWORDS STYLE GUIDE FROM HELL.

Since they are distributing your book to so many formats and places, it needs to be specifically formatted to Smashwords' regulations, or they'll spit out your document when you try to upload it. The style guide is a 100-page free e-book that Mark Coker--Smashwords' founder--wrote to "help" you through this. It was horrendously confusing, and as I mentioned earlier, made me seriously consider drinking until I drowned in a pool of my own vomit. But I did it. I DID IT, and Smashwords accepted the document and now it's everywhere (I opted out of Smashwords distributing it to B&N since I already have mine on there; the reason I did this is because Smashwords takes a cut of the profits AS WELL AS B&N, so if you are going through both a distributor (Smashwords) AND a seller (B&N), you lose that much more profit!).
-Of course I found it after the fact, but here is an easier-to-understand guide to designing an e-book for Smashwords.
***I ALSO just realized that my "italicized" words didn't translate over into the Smashwords document. Apparently, there is special code you have to put in around your italicized words in the document (it's like ITAL or something weird) or they lose the formatting in Smashwords. So that sucks, and I need to fix it. I'm also going to check it on Amazon and change if needed.  So keep that in mind for your own work.

6. Requested to become a Goodreads "Author" page and uploaded a sample on there. To do this, you have to create a Goodreads profile page and then send an email to the company stating that you are an author, blah blah. If they accept, they will email you to say that you now have an "author" page where you can upload your work (I had to manually upload Cruel because it was so new and not yet added to their database) and then people can comment on it.

There you go my lovelies; the quick-and-dirty process that I did to publish my short story. I've sold probably around 20 copies (THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO BOUGHT IT), and am absolutely thrilled about even selling that many. People are buying, but more importantly READING my work. I strongly suggest doing this with a short story before embarking on it with your debut novel; I've learned so much and it's taken a lot of the fear away about doing this.

Until next time, keep writing and keep dreaming!
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