| How to Self Publish a Book Oct 10th 2012, 00:00 Self publishing a book is popular for many reasons. Securing a traditional publishing contract may not work for you—they're hard to get, and you give up a lot of rights when you finally do get one. No matter what your reason, self publishing is a great way to make your book available to anybody interested. Through a local printer - Be prepared. Self publishing takes a lot of initiative and drive. Remember that it is your passion for getting the book out to the public that will carry you through the frustrations you will most certainly acquire along the way. That being said, self-publishing can be a exciting and profitable venture.
- List the reasons why you want to be self publish your book, and get an estimate on how much it will cost. Determine whether the reason you're publishing is strong enough to outweigh the cost, and providing that it does, keep going.
- Proof your book. Make sure that it is complete, well-edited, and thoroughly proofread. You might give a manuscript out to a few trusted friends who will give you valuable feedback, and talk with you about facts, or motivations for the characters, or other minutiae about your book. Make changes you deem appropriate, and then call it done!
- Create a good title. If you haven't done so already, create a title that will pull people in. The title of your book can sway people to buy your book—or not. For example, "The Guided Consumption of Bacterium-injected Milk Byproducts and Apidaen Excretions" does not sound nearly as appealing as "The Delight of Gorgonzola Cheese and Honey."
- Get a designer to do a professional cover design. Unless you are an artist and can do it yourself, hire a professional. They will be quick, and will help your book have eye appeal—very important if it's on a shelf at the book store! If you are going through all this, it makes sense to have the very best presentation you can have.
- Get your work copyrighted. This will help should somebody steal your work and claim it as their own. Though submitting your work to the copyright office is the safest and best way, you can claim copyright by stating it explicitly, in a prominent location. For example, in the credits page, or back cover, adding ©2012, Ima Nauther, all rights reserved, you protect your work from plagiarists. Follow up by visiting Copyright.gov and fill out the requisite forms.
- Get an ISBN number. You will need this so that your books can be listed in the Bowker database where bookstores pick up latest books for retailing. You can buy an ISBN direct from ISBN but beware, the sell only in blocks of at least 10, not per unit (www.isbn.org). There are secondary resellers here's a list of them http://www.isbn.org/standards/home/Pubresellers.asp. ISBN sells to them for about $100 per ISBN.
- Find a printer. Shop around and get quotes. Prices will vary depending on the quality of the paper, the binding, and colors. Your price per book will be lower, the more copies you print. Consider about 500-2000 copies.
Through a Website - Publish on line. Online publishers such as Lulu.com will let you publish your book for free in both print and ebook format. Printing is "on demand," and you only pay when you sell a copy.
- Set up an account with the program. You will need this to upload your book and manage all the details involved.
- Digitize your book. If you have written your book longhand, now is the time to move it into digital format. Using a word processing program such as Microsoft Word or Pages, take your time and carefully transcribe your writings. When you're done, it will make editing and revision a much easier job for you. Some self publish websites also provide a service like an online book builder, so you can make a book online by using the book templates and clip-arts of the site.
- Create a good title. No matter how you publish, the title is all-important. It is will pull in your prospective readers, or turn them away. What if ''Harry Potter'' were named, instead, ''Hogwarts'' (before you knew what Hogwart was)?
- Edit your book. Make sure that it is complete, well-edited, and thoroughly proofread. You might give a manuscript out to a few trusted friends who will give you valuable comments, and talk with you about facts, or motivations for the characters, or other minutiae about your book. Make changes you deem appropriate, and then call it done!
- Upload your finished book. After this, you will have to design your cover (unless you prefer a pre-made cover from the company) and choose the price for customers and the type of book (such as bound, hard copy, or paperback). Once you finish the categories listed by the website, choose to finish publishing and your book is printed. You are now a published author!
Self Publishing Overview Self publishing is a broad topic. There are many ways to self publish, though: vanity presses, subsidy publishers, micro publishing, POD (print on demand) printing, also known as short run printing, and true self publishing. Vanity presses should typically be avoided; they market themselves as traditional or subsidy publishers, but charge high fees and do very little or no marketing/distribution for you. They don't make selections for the most part, and take whatever comes their way. Subsidy publishers are not as selective as traditional publishers, but work in a similar manner in that they reject manuscripts often. However, they charge the author for binding and publishing; the upside is that they contribute to marketing and distribution, and publish under their name. Authors tend to have limited control over design and such, and receive royalties. Micro publishing publishers in micro or niche markets, and tend—due to the risk of lack of appeal and low economic scale—to be published electronically. POD, or print on demand printing companies such as Lulu and Blurb, are good for short run books. These are useful for small quantities of books, and for samples or one-off books. The price is normally somewhat high and is not ideal for large runs. Many are based online. Some offer ISBN numbers for an extra price, and some can also be linked to sites like Amazon. Often times, POD printers create side operations that run as subsidy or vanity publishers. Then there is true self publishing, in which the writer meets and deals personally with the marketing, distribution, design and storage, and covers the entire cost. A writer might hire a designer for the cover, or simply do it themselves; as a result of all this, all profits made go straight to the writer. Steps for true self publishing are described in the first two methods. - Get a proof of your book before it goes to print. If you don't like how your book looks, you can make changes before you pay a lot of money for 1,000 flawed copies.
- Make sure that your book is proofread thoroughly. You don't want your book to get bad reviews because of typing errors and/or poor layout. It's worth the money to hire a professional editor to read your book. You don't want people knowing that your book is a self-published book.
- Add a great description to your book. That way, it will attract more customers. Use pithy descriptions to draw their interest.
- Publicity is really the key. There are plenty of wonderful books in the world that sold 351 copies because they weren't properly promoted. There are also many ghastly, poorly written books that sold 43,000 copies because they were properly promoted.
- Research shows that book-buying customers look at three things: The front cover, rear cover and table of contents. Spend the money to make these three places sing. Hire a graphic artist if necessary but think of this as the "kitchen and bath" sections of your book. Money spent in these areas will pay handsome dividends.
- List your books on Amazon.com. Give yourself plenty of time to write the "publisher's comments" and make sure it is precise, grammatically flawless and well written. This is what potential book buyers will use to make a decision about buying your book.
- Send two copies of the book to Amazon.com (following instructions at their site) so that the book can be scanned and made available on the "search inside this book" feature.
- Write thoughtfully worded, intelligent and interesting reviews of similar subject books at amazon.com, and create a signature and/or tagline such as, "Rosemary Thornton, author, The Houses That Sears Built." Such a tagline generates tremendous free publicity to your target market!
- Send free copies to anyone who may have an interest in this topic and ask that they write a review at amazon.com. Books with no reviews at amazon.com have a very, very low sales rank. Since potential buyers can't thumb through your book at amazon.com, they'll rely on other people's reviews.
- Start a website and link it to the Amazon bookstore. Sell your books through your website.
- You can also think of using services that offer POD fulfillment. These will make you pay a fee but eases the work for you. Keep in mind that POD is only for writers who are looking for a hobby, not a money-making career. Printing 1,000 copies of the average book costs about $3,500 to $5,000 or less than $5 per book. The cost to do this through POD would be about three times as much. Amazon (and most book buyers) will pay 50% of your cover price. It's hard to make money selling a $15 book for $10 (assuming a cover price of $19.95).
- Don't over-purchase books, especially when easily avoided and/or when demand is uncertain. Too much extra stock means that you've paid too much and are unlikely to gain much from it.
- Aggressively market your book through press releases, articles blogs, websites, and any other way that you can think of because marketing is the core activity that will ensure that people know and buy the book.
- Get your book into book fairs like BookExpo America and the London Book Fair which will give you access to the traditional publishing industry - several third parties offer this kind of book marketing for a nominal fee.
Edit Warnings - Don't write a book with the same title as another. Give it a unique name and search it before publishing. Having the same name as another book can lead to customers being confused and, on occasions, legal problems.
- Navigate to isbndb.com to check for book title usage. Also, Google your title to ensure it is not already in use.
- For best results, the subject (or shelving category) of your book should be part of the title, or at least the sub-title. This way readers will find it in catalogues and databases whether or not they know name of the author or book.
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