Things to Know When Self Publishing Your eBook

There’s a massive turnaround in terms of the publishing industry as technology and modernization paved way especially the rise of the internet. This means small-scale authors, seasoned and even independent prolific writers no longer have to waste a lot of time and effort in submitting their manuscripts and book proposals to the different publishing houses in their hope of acceptance, or even lose thousands of dollars in sales and marketing and again to wait for many more years for readers to give attention to their books once distributed to the different bookstores and shops.

While it is true that there is such an unexplained joy of smelling and feeling a new paperback books and flipping through the pages, by the standard of today’s society, nobody wants to go around carrying bulks of books when you have the option to save them all-fuss-free in your own computer, tablet and even your mobile phone; saving a lot of space and is very convenient as it is readily available anytime of the day.  Hence the dramatic demands of eBooks and the rise of self-publishing and eBook publishing industry.

Question is– can one succeed in self-publishing books and eBooks? The answer is YES!

If you are just a beginner and about to dip your toes to self-publishing your books and eBook, here are some of the information you ought to know in order to come prepared:

1. You Have The Total Control. Self-publishing industry is a huge growth market. Many authors achieved the multitude of success when they decided to do it solo, taking the roles of both authors and publishers.  Unlike before, you don’t need to have a contract between you and the publishing house and be at their mercy through their terms and conditions. No need for middlemen to distribute and market your books and manuscripts which takes a huge chunk of your earnings. When you self-publish, you are your own boss!

Having the control of how your eBook is published is such a great advantage as you have the full control of how the formatting will be, what platforms to utilize, when will you release the eBooks, how much will be the price, how to secure it from eBook piracy, what strategies you will do to market it and increase your sales and how to reach a wider audience.

Just be aware though that self-publishing books and eBooks has a competitive market so you have to be prepared for the ups and downs of it that you will experience along the way.

2. It Takes Time To Learn. Self-publishing is now accepted as a mainstream part of publishing and although there are a lot of DIY tips and free applications or software readily available for self-publishing authors in the World Wide Web, it doesn’t mean that it is as easy as it sounds.

Self-publishing meant business and as a self-publishing eBook author, you really have to learn if not all at least some aspects needed in order to attain success. Like any other things to learn, you have to begin from the scratch.

This means:

a. Learning how to prepare your eBook manuscript

• Selecting the formatting style to create it beautifully, which also includes editing, fixing, uploading and updating the file as much as you like once published
• What application or software will you use for formatting?

b. Who will edit and proofread it?

• Will you hire a professional editor and proofreader or will you do it yourself?

c. By self-publishing your eBook, you have to understand the different platforms to directly publish it. Will it be?

• Kindle Direct Publishing
• Kobo Writing Life
• Nookpress
• iTunes Connect and iTunes Producer for iBooks

 d. Consider the pricing. These are the factors to consider like:

• Exchange rate calculation as per country
• Royalties
• Values to the customers

 e. You also have to understand the market to distribute and promote your eBook:

• Understanding the utilization of SEO terms like keywords and metadata for leverage
• How to optimize the different social media platforms
• What strategies to use in order to spread the word around?
• Will you hire a professional to handle the work for you or do it yourself?

You don’t really need to be a pro by having all the technological skills and advanced knowledge in order to make it work. You just need to at least know the basics. What’s reassuring is that the internet has a vast pool of information for these factors to be studied by you as you go along the whole process of self-publishing.

All it takes is a little time and effort to learn and from then, there is nothing standing in your way!

3. Get To Know The Tools. Now, this is the most important factor you have to know as a self-publishing eBook author especially if this is your first time as this plays a crucial part in the success of your book distribution worldwide.

Overall, there are three known self-publishing services that are mostly utilized by seasoned writers and even indie eBook self-publishers because of reliability and effectiveness.

They are the following:

• Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)– If this is the first time for you to self-publish a book or an Ebook, this is highly-recommended because it is fast, easy to learn and offers free services for authors and publishers giving them the full control to publish their books worldwide using Kindle and Kindle reading apps.
• Kobo Writing Life-Kobo is an easy to handle publishing platform. Kobo utilizes a standard ePub formatting that allows you to publish anywhere. Plus, you take home 70% of the retail price you set, no need to have aggregators and you can cut out the middlemen as you can do the work yourself.
• Nookpress. Another direct publishing site affiliated to Barnes & Noble which enables seasoned writers or even independent author to publish their eBooks and manuscripts as seamless as possible. •
• iTunes Connect and iTunes Producer for iBooks. This is a great platform to self-publish your books and eBooks and to sell and distribute it anywhere on the web through iBooks Store.

Apart from the platforms, you should know as well that there are two principal distributors who can help you distribute your self-published manuscript or eBooks to ensure that they are readily available worldwide through most of the major online book retailers.

• Draft2Digital- Draft2Digital is an eBook distributor that lets you write, format and distribute your book to your preferred digital stores and they get 10% of the retail price (whatever price that you will enlist). They distribute to Apple, Barnes and Noble, Kobo and Scribd.
• Smashwords. This is a platform that offers cool and useful tools and services to self-publishing authors and independent writers. It is a publisher and distributor of eBooks with wider distribution channels compared to Draft2Digital.

It is highly-suggested that you set up your account to the different platforms and navigate in order for you to identify which suits your self-publishing needs. This way, you will have a firsthand experience as to what platform to use to write, format and publish your book and eventually sell and distribute it worldwide, making it readily available to your audience.

There is an exciting transition of readers turning digital which opens a floodgate of opportunities to generate income to independent authors and writers once utilized properly.

Fact is, everybody has a story to tell but it is much better if it reaches out to the readers and impacts the community rather than to have it on the shelves, dusty and all. Thanks to self publishing industry and it makes multinational global business right in front of your working desk so possible!