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How can i publish my own book?

Posted: 30 Jun 2011, 01:43
by Andrepitt77
How can i publish my own book? If anyone have idea about it then please reply me soon.

Posted: 07 Jul 2011, 20:37
by NJMedic
Depends on where you want to make your books available. A friend of mine just published a book through Amazon (Devin Kerins - "AIM HIGH" - had to hook him up with a plug :lol: ). But the way it was explained to me, Amazon doesn't charge you anything to set up a Kindle download, but they take something like a 30% cut of what you charge per book. They also have a link to a company that will create that into an actuall book you can order through Amazon.

If you want to make it available through actual book stores, you're best bet to seek out an agent first.

Hope this helps.

Posted: 18 Jul 2011, 08:59
by Gwydion
As stated above, publishing an eBook with Amazon is the easiest first step in getting published. I'm getting several eBooks ready for Amazon myself. What percentage of the cover price you make depends on the pricing points (but it starts at 70:30 for the author).

Amazon gives you free tools to convert your eBook into kindle format (best if it is in HTML format, but MS Word also works). Images are a bit tricky, but no problem if your books do not have them.

Showing positive sales on the kindle platform is also a good way of getting agents or publishers interested if you want to publish a paper version of your book. Also, Amazon have a 'publish on demand' service that might be worth looking at.

Posted: 02 Aug 2011, 00:44
by Maud Fitch
Check out websites like Publishers Marketplace which provides web pages for writers and agents to promote themselves.

Re: How can i publish my own book?

Posted: 04 Aug 2011, 17:09
by JasonMatthews
Andrepitt77 wrote:How can i publish my own book? If anyone have idea about it then please reply me soon.
It's pretty easy but you want it formatted correctly for both ebooks and paperbacks. Fortunately everything can be for free. Upload to Amazon, Barnes&Noble, Smashwords and your own websites. Paperbacks can be made for free with CreateSpace, which is owned by Amazon.

This guide will help: How to Make, Market and Sell Ebooks All for Free. It's available at major retailers as a paperback, ebook and directly from the website as a pdf.

Re: How can i publish my own book?

Posted: 07 Oct 2011, 01:06
by thebookwithoutastory
here's when the magic of internet giants like google and yahoo is helpful? Quick search for "self-publishing online" and you should find what you're looking for :-)

Re: How can i publish my own book?

Posted: 26 Apr 2014, 16:55
by readerromance2003
I have heard that Outskirts Press is a good self-publishing company. Another thing you can do is type in self-publishing companies in the web browser and research the companies that come up.

Re: How can i publish my own book?

Posted: 03 May 2014, 17:40
by RobertM
The market has changed. The tools have changed.

This is an often-asked topic, so I will bullet-list this one with what I believe is not-bad advice:

1) eBooks: Publish exclusively with Amazon, otherwise you can't take advantage of all the promotions they offer for Kindle books. If they see your book on another site in digital format, they will disallow your book from promos. You don't want that.

2) Formatting: If you go Kindle Book, download their free Previewer and install it on your computer. This way you can side-by-side your Word doc manuscript with the Preview version you opened. You see the formatting error in the Previewer...then you can fix it right there in the Word doc. You go page by page with your Kindle preview and your Word doc. When you fix all the errors, you save the Word doc again in Web Page (filtered) and run the previewer again. At the end you can fix all the problems. Upload the book file that the previewer saves for you, NOT the actual HTML file or any images you have won't show up. For some reason, Kindle is having problems linking to the separate file that contain the links to the images. You'll figure it out once you use the previewer a couple of times.

3) Paperback/Hardcover: If you can swing it, always go for Lightning Source. They're the distributor for Ingram, and they are the only place where you can obtain and provide copies at LESS than the trade rate. The 'trade rate' is defined as '50-55% off the cover price embedded into the barcode'. Don't get cute and try to set your retail at higher than what is normally seen for your type/size book, just to increase the bottom line. Wholesalers, jobbers at Amazon, bookstore managers are hip to that trick. If you use Lightning Source, you will need some ISBN's from Bowkers and barcodes from the same source. You also need a company name, even if it's just YOUR name, and a responsible tax number. Anything released via LSI and priced fairly is rapidly listed by most Amazon jobbers. ('Also available from THESE selllers...') Example of how much a copy of your book would cost from LSI (Lightning Source): Less than three dollars a copy for a 200-page 6x9 paperback with B/W interior and glossy color covers. Maybe you set the retail at ten dollars, the wholesale rate at five. You would make about 2.40USD per sale. CreateSpace, Lulu, none of them can come close to that structure.

4) Lulu: Avoid them like the plague. A lot of their books are simply subbed out to Lightning Source at a profit.

Re: How can i publish my own book?

Posted: 03 May 2014, 20:36
by KumaOkaasan
First, I'm glad to hear you want to write and publish a book. It's a very rewarding experience. My best advice would be to Google it and see all the options available to you (make sure you're looking at reputable blogs/sites and check information you're given against other sources). The various options and all the details are FAR too numerous to list here. I would first decide if you want to go traditional (i.e. through an agent or a major publishing house) or self-published (via print on demand services or ebook distributors) and then go from there, because while there are many similarities between the two, the two approaches are very different. Good luck!

Re: How can i publish my own book?

Posted: 05 May 2014, 06:26
by Carla Hurst-Chandler
@ Robert...thanks so much for the Lightning Source tip. And I completely agree with your Lulu assessment...Blurb is much the same.

Re: How can i publish my own book?

Posted: 13 May 2014, 09:36
by chiliabowl1998
Amazon is a great option, plus they will help get your book out there.