How to self-publish an e-book
Thursday, July 29th, 2010
by David Carnoy
Tips
- It’s gotta be good: The same rule applies to self-published e-books as it does to print books. You have to start with a good product if you have any hope of selling it.
- Create an arresting cover: When it comes to e-books, everything starts with the cover image. Creating an eye-catching, professional-looking cover that also looks good small (it has to stand out as a thumbnail image, since it’s being sold online) is easier said than done, but it can really make a difference in terms of sales. If you can, try to get input from a real graphic designer who has some experience creating book covers. From a production standpoint, an e-book cover is easier to create than a cover for a print book (you just need a JPEG with decent resolution), but it shouldn’t look out of place among traditionally published e-books. I can’t tell you how many bad self-published covers are out there.
- Price your e-book cheaply: You should sell your e-book for less than $4.99. Most successful e-book authors are finding the greatest success in the $0.99-to-$2.99 range (it’s important to note that Amazon’s 70 percent royalty for authors only applies to Kindle books priced between $2.99 and $9.99; otherwise, the rate kicks down to 35 percent). When I self-published on the Kindle, I priced my book at $3.99 and it worked very well. However, since then, many more self-published books have flooded the market at lower prices.
- Avoid any outfits that don’t let you set the price: This is one of the cardinal rules of self-publishing an e-book. You must be able to control the pricing of your e-book. If you want to sell it for $0.99, then you should be able to sell it for $0.99.
- Marketing is all about creating awareness for your e-book: I don’t have any secret marketing tips to offer, but what I can say is that you can’t sell a book if no one knows it exists. Most of book marketing is simply about creating awareness and you need to do that however you can, whether it’s through social media or blogging or passing out fliers on a street corner. (I made a business card for my book, which I pass out if someone seems interested in hearing more about it.)
E-book publishing options
Here are the three big questions to bear in mind with e-book creation: first, what is the easiest and most cost-efficient way to produce an e-book? Second, where will it be distributed? And third, how much of a cut do you get? With those in mind, let’s take a look at some of the more high-profile options available currently. I’m limiting it to these options because I want to keep this as simple as possible.
Amazon Digital Text Platform (DTP)
This is Amazon’s e-book publishing platform and if you think you’re going to sell a lot of e-books, you should figure out a way to upload your file (book) directly to DTP and avoid using any sort of middleman or e-book “aggregator” that takes a cut of the profits. If you’re a true DIY person, you can create your own cover and format your e-book from a Word file using free software tools such as Mobipocket eBook Creator or Calibre. Mobipocket Creator allows you to create an e-book with a table of contents and convert it into Amazon’s proprietary e-book format, AZW (MOBI, the file output by the program, is the same as AZW). You can start with a Word file, which then gets converted to HTML, then MOBI. (Check out the Mobipocket eBook…..
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via How to self-publish an e-book | Fully Equipped – CNET Reviews.
