Self Publishing
Look at those two words for a moment, self publishing. The important word is self. By yourself, you, alone. When you get into self publishing you are very much on your own. I am going to try to put together a few of the things I have learned in my own self publishing adventures, but the most important lesson I have learned is, that I am very much and completely on my own. Don’t look for help from anybody and don’t expect any sympathy from your spouse, other family members, relatives, friends or even complete strangers, they have already have written you and your dubious venture off. If you have been married long enough, then they accept that this is another one of your many odd quirks and you will get over it eventually. Even good writer friends that I have known for several decades tend to ignore you; they have their own work and cannot be bothered to help you. (It is very true that they also get so many requests for help that they could easily spend all of their time looking at other people’s books). Even a writer’s agent is not that much help, (at least mine has been totally useless and exceptionally unhelpful). A motto I have learned about publishing goes like this. “If you want to make a small fortune in publishing, start out with a big fortune.” So, are you still willing to go on? Here are a few things I have learned:
Write your book, and more importantly do a good edit on it or pay to have someone else look at it and do the edit.
Design a good eye-catching cover with a snappy title for it or pay to have someone else do it for you.
Get an ISBN number for your book, (more money). Copyright it as well. At least use the language of copyright in the front of the book, (just look at other books).
Get some good photos of yourself looking like a reasonably intelligent author-like person; selfies would probably do just fine. You will need them for promotional things later on.
Convert your book to e-book format, (often difficult), and upload it to Amazon. Books written on PC often covert better then books written on a Mac. I had a heck of a time getting a good, clean conversion on my Mac. I did it three different ways before I was only partially satisfied with the results. You will also need to open an authors account with Amazon and figure out a few things like royalties and other contractual stuff. Oh yes, future taxes come in to this as well. You will need to get an EIN, Employers Identification Number, at least it’s free.
Okay, so why bother to publish to Amazon? It is simply the largest book platform in the world, so just start there, it will be much easier to begin with. You can expand into other places if you survive this first experience.
Decide whether or not you want to do your e-book as a KDP select product on Amazon. KDP is Kindles promotional thing and promises to get your book out there for everyone. They also give your book away to special parts of their audience. I tried it for six months and I didn’t see any difference in sales, (what little there were). You may have a different experience. Be advised that you may not sell your book on different platforms or in other places except KDP while enrolled.
You may also want to offer your book as a printed version, (a lot more money). Though there are many POD, (Print On Demand – as few or as many copies as you want), book companies out there charging you a more or less outrageous sum to do your books. Just remember that the more books you have printed, the less it costs per book. For instance, a thousand books might cost $7.00 each, but you would have to store and sell all thousand of them and pay $7,000 for printing. A hundred books might cost $14.00 each but you will only spend $1,400 and it will be much easier to store and sell those 100.
Actually, this isn’t going as well as I hoped it would. So I am going to stop here and go on to another very vexing problem with self publishing, it is called, promoting your book. (Below, my intelligent author-like person selfie.)
