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    Nuts & Bolts of Self-Publishing: How to Self-Publish Ebooks and Paperbacks
    Nuts & Bolts of Self-Publishing: How to Self-Publish Ebooks and Paperbacks
    Nuts & Bolts of Self-Publishing: How to Self-Publish Ebooks and Paperbacks
    Ebook158 pages2 hours

    Nuts & Bolts of Self-Publishing: How to Self-Publish Ebooks and Paperbacks

    By Chris Longmuir

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    About this ebook

    Nuts & Bolts of Self-Publishing

    If you only buy one book on self-publishing, this is the one for you.

    Self-publishing is not difficult once you have the roadmap and know what is expected and what you have to do to produce a professionally designed book. This comprehensive guide to self-publishing will provide you with that roadmap. It covers all aspects of self-publishing and will help you avoid some of the pitfalls you might encounter.

    Included in this guide you will find step-by-step instructions on what you need to do before you self-publish, how to create accounts, how to format your manuscript for ebook and paperback publication, how to add a TOC, how to acquire an ISBN and register your book, how to upload and submit your book for publication, and what you need to do after publication.

    Alongside the step-by-step instructions, you will find information about costing and pricing your book, author services, and outsourcing, as well a lot more.

    Chris Longmuir is an award-winning novelist. Her previous crime novels have won the Pitlochry Award and the Dundee International Book Prize.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChris Longmuir
    Release dateFeb 14, 2017
    ISBN9781370886975
    Nuts & Bolts of Self-Publishing: How to Self-Publish Ebooks and Paperbacks
    Author

    Chris Longmuir

    Chris is an award-winning novelist and has published three novels in her Dundee Crime Series. Night Watcher, the first book in the series, won the Scottish Association of Writers’ Pitlochry Award, and the sequel, Dead Wood, won the Dundee International Book Prize, as well as the Pitlochry Award. Missing Believed Dead is the third book in the series.Chris also publishes a historical crime series, The Kirsty Campbell Mysteries, set during and just after the Great War. This series features Kirsty Campbell, one of Britain’s first policewomen. There are currently three books in this series; The Death Game, Devil’s Porridge, and Death of a Doxy.As well as the above, she has published two non-fiction books. ‘Crime Fiction and the Indie Contribution’ which is an examination of crime fiction as well as an evaluation of independently published books in this genre. And ‘Nuts & Bolts of Self-Publishing’, an in-depth look at self-publishing with step-by-step instructions on how to publish ebooks and paperbacks.Her crime novels are set in Dundee, Scotland, and have been described as scary, atmospheric, page turners. Chris also writes historical sagas, short stories, and historical articles which have been published in America and Britain. However, A Salt Splashed Cradle is the only historical saga currently published. Writing is like an addiction to me, Chris says, I go into withdrawals without it. She is currently working on a new Kirsty Campbell novel.Chris is a member of the Society of Authors, the Crime Writers Association and the Scottish Association of Writers. She designed her own website and confesses to being a techno-geek who builds computers in her spare time.

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      Book preview

      Nuts & Bolts of Self-Publishing - Chris Longmuir

      Nuts & Bolts of Self-Publishing

      How to self-publish ebooks and paperbacks

      Chris Longmuir

      Copyright © Chris Longmuir, 2017

      www.chrislongmuir.co.uk

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

      Cover design by Cathy Helms www.avalongraphics.org

      CONTENTS

      Introduction

      Chapter One: Is Self-Publishing for You?

      Chapter Two: What is an Indie?

      Chapter Three: Publishing Options

      Reasons why authors choose to publish independently

      Chapter Four: Self-Publishing

      Chapter Five: Ebooks and eReaders

      History of ebooks and eReaders

      Ebooks versus print books

      The indie ebook

      Chapter Six: Ebooks or Paperbacks

      Chapter Seven: Designing Your Book

      Chapter Eight: Publishing an Ebook

      Ebook royalties

      Selling your ebook

      Chapter Nine: Formatting a Document for Kindle

      Chapter Ten: Preparing Your Ebook for Upload

      Adding a TOC (Table of Contents)

      Creating an account in KDP

      Uploading books

      Chapter Eleven: Pricing an Ebook

      Chapter Twelve: Cost of Publishing an Ebook

      Chapter Thirteen: Publishing a Paperback

      Self-publishing services

      Author services and outsourcing

      Chapter Fourteen: The ISBN and Distribution

      Adding the ISBN to your book

      Chapter Fifteen: Publishing a KDP Print Book

      Chapter Sixteen: Publishing to IngramSpark

      Chapter Seventeen: KDP and IngramSpark Combined

      Chapter Eighteen: Financial Considerations

      Chapter Nineteen: After Publication

      National Library and Legal Depository

      Author pages

      PLR and ALCS

      Reports

      Business aspects

      Promotion and marketing

      Metadata

      Professional associations

      Chapter Twenty: My Own Experience

      Chapter Twenty-One: The Final Word

      Appendix One: Formatting with Earlier Word Versions

      Appendix Two: References and Resources

      Appendix Three: About Chris Longmuir

      Chris Longmuir’s Books

      Introduction

      Author’s Note

      This book has been written using British UK spelling except where it refers to computer terminology. For example, dialog when referring to dialog boxes and program when referring to computer programs.

      Introduction

      The definition of publishing is the selection, preparation and marketing of printed matter. This has led to the rise of modern-day publishers who do not write the books they publish, instead, they acquire books written by various authors, subject these books to a manufacturing process and supply them to bookstores and retailers. In a nutshell, it could be said that publishers, in the main, do not create the works they turn into books, they copy the work supplied by the authors they contract and change it into something that can be bought and read. A common belief is that there have always been publishers who produce books which we can buy in our favourite bookstore. But this is not the case.

      Prior to the fifteenth century and the invention of the printing press, which enabled printed copy to be mass produced, books were prepared by professional copyists on vellum or parchment. Paper became more commonplace after this period and the guilds, which handled the sale of most objects, were involved in the production and sale of books.

      In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, printers were the people who produced books and performed the roles of editor, publisher and bookseller. The first printer-publisher to produce works in Britain was William Caxton who printed more than ninety books during his lifetime.

      Gradually, from the seventeenth century onwards, a new breed of publisher started to emerge, although the publication business was still a mixture of producers and suppliers. It was the nineteenth century which saw the rise of the modern publishers, and the twentieth century when publishers developed into a mammoth book industry which came to dominate publishing.

      Over the past century, the belief developed that the only acceptable way to publish a book was by gaining a contract from a well-known publisher. Self-publishing came to be frowned on and references were often made to vanity publishing. This was probably due to the dominance of the market by publishers known as traditional or legacy publishers. Self-publishing was sidelined in order to perpetuate the myth that the only way to publish was by one of these companies.

      But self-publishing is not a new thing, nor has it always been associated with vanity. You only have to look at previous self-publishing authors in order to scotch that myth. So, let’s do a bit of name-dropping and have a look at who, in the past, has self-published.

      William Blake, the famed English poet and painter self-published some of his best-known works. Jane Austen paid Thomas Egerton to publish Sense and Sensibility. Hogarth Press was established by Virginia Woolf and her husband for the purpose of publishing her books. Many other authors, whose names are easily recognized, include; Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lord Byron, Alexander Dumas, Thomas Hardy, Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King, Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Allan Poe, Beatrix Potter, George Bernard Shaw, and John Grisham, and these are only a few.

      Self-publishing is currently going through a time of change and although there are still some who subscribe to the myths, these are gradually being exposed. After all, publishing only became a business following the rise of companies prepared to invest in authors in order to profit from their work. When an author decides to self-publish it changes that dynamic.

      Encouraged by the rise of electronic publishing and the ease of publishing books to this market, self-publishing has been resurrected, and many authors, whether they are experienced or not, have seized this opportunity to make their books available. This book deals with the phenomena of self-publishing as it is today.

      As the book progresses it will take you through the stages of self-publishing, from the initial decision to the actual process of publication with step-by-step guides. It will examine the advantages and disadvantages and help you avoid some of the pitfalls along the way.

      Self-publishing is not difficult once you have the roadmap and know what is expected and what you are doing. I wish you well on your journey to self-publication.

      Chapter One

      Is Self-Publishing for You?

      The holy grail for most writers is finding a publisher, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

      However, except for a fortunate few, the search for a publisher can take years, and when you are lucky enough to find one, if indeed you do, it can take between one to two years for the publishing process before you see your book on sale.

      There are some self-published writers who have nothing good to say about traditional publishing in the same way that there are traditionally published writers who despise the self-publishing route. But publishing is changing and there is room for all kinds of publishing models, and only you can decide which model to pursue. My task in this book is to provide you with information about the self-publishing route should you decide this is the best option for you.

      I have been self-publishing books since 2011, initially ebooks and then paperbacks. When I started out I had a lot of enthusiasm and very little experience and I had to learn the hard way, by trial and error. I read a lot and researched a lot, building up my expertise as I went along, and now I find that my advice is often sought by those authors setting out on the path to self-publication.

      This book is based on my Nuts and Bolts of Self-Publishing workshop and I hope that by sharing my knowledge and experience with you I will help you to avoid some of the problems you might encounter. Self-publishing your own books can be hard work as well as an immensely satisfying experience but if you can think about it as the business part of authorship you won’t go wrong.

      I find the term self-published can be a bit of a catch-all, meaning different things to different people. However, even though self-publishing was often the norm before the rise of modern publishers, during the last century the derogatory term of ‘vanity’ became attached to it. An author who aspired to publication but could not attract a publisher and resorted to publishing a book themselves was deemed to be ‘vain’. This was a misnomer because as soon as they attracted a publisher they were no longer ‘vain’. And who would dare suggest vanity in the same breath as some of the self-publishers I mentioned in the introduction. I could mention a lot more but in the interests of getting down to the nuts and bolts of self-publishing, I won’t.

      Before we start it is important to understand that there are different types of self-publishers, just as there are different types of traditional publishers.

      In recent years the rise of indie authors and publishers has become an acceptable part of the publishing world. These are the authors and small publishers who have embraced the self-publishing ethos through the publication of electronic books and print on demand paperbacks. They operate professionally and produce quality books.

      When the indie label is adopted by writers who operate less professionally this can create confusion and in some cases devalue the books indie publishers and authors are producing. So, this might be the place to examine the role of the indie.

      Chapter Two

      What is an Indie?

      The indie

      Indie is short for independent. Indie authors are writers who are bypassing traditional publishers and are publishing their books independently. They are responsible for everything from the initial writing through to the sale of the finished product.

      The indie author, by default, also becomes an indie publisher, although the indie label also applies to small independent publishers with one or more authors. The books produced by the indie author or publisher are not part of mainstream publishing by major companies whose names are household words. You know the ones I mean, Penguin, Harper Collins, Macmillan, and the others.

      The name ‘indie’ was not coined by self-publishing authors, it has earlier connections with the music industry and with films. But it has the same meaning, something that is independently produced. I am not aware of when it started to be used for books and literature which were previously referred to as self-published, but the name seems appropriate.

      I have looked at various definitions of indie, and it always comes back to something produced by an independent artist, studio, producer, writer, company, or group, which is not affiliated with a larger or more commercial organization. In the case of literature, it is a book published outside of mainstream publishing.

      In an article, at CNN.com (Cable News Network), journalist Catherine Andrews wrote: "The term ‘indie’ traditionally refers to independent art – music, film, literature or anything that fits under the broad banner of culture – created outside of the mainstream and without corporate financing."

      So, indie authors are writers who self-publish their books. Those authors who tackle the task in a professional way often produce books which are

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