How to be an Author Entrepreneur Without Spending a Dime: Self-Publishing Without Spending a Dime, #1

By Prasenjeet Kumar

Are You Making The Same Costly Mistakes That Authors Usually Make?

Then here is a book that helps realise your author-entrepreneur dreams Without Spending A Dime.

From the author of 32 books and sixty translations selling over 50 countries, here comes a DIY manual of practical tips and advice that can take your writing dreams to literally publishing Nirvana.

Distilling his practical, hands-on experience, author Prasenjeet Kumar advises all newbie authors to be wary of all schemes, plans, clubs, and memberships which have perfected the art of fleecing desperate authors.

Instead, he explains how you can, by taking advantage of the vast knowledge already available in public domain, including the author's own website, teach yourself everything that you need for putting out your book in the market, in both paperback and e-Book formats.

There are tips on how to organise, write, edit, proofread, cover design, format, price, publish, and market your books.

All, as promised, Without Spending A Dime!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publish With Prasen
• Release date: Apr 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781513041339

Book preview

HOW TO BE AN AUTHOR ENTREPRENEUR WITHOUT SPENDING A DIME

Prasenjeet Kumar

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

The spellings used in this book are British, which may look strange to my American friends, but NOT to those living in Australia, Canada, India, Ireland and, of course, the United Kingdom. This means that color is written as colour and so on. I hope that is NOT too confusing!

© Prasenjeet Kumar

First Edition April 2015

Second Revised Edition October 2019

* Discusses writing with an outline and without an outline

* Adds a few more suggestions on editing and discusses some popular editing packages

* Updates references to CreateSpace (now defunct)

* Introduces KDP Cover Creator

* Discusses cover designing using Canva and Fiverr

* Explains Draft2digital’s book formatting tool and cover designing tool for both e-Books and paperback.

* Discusses the downsides of the Reader Magnet and free book strategy

* Updates links for promoting free and discounted books

* Introduces Amazon Ads; and many more....

Table of Contents

I: Challenges That Authors Face While Running Their Business

II: A Bit About Me

Chapter 1: How to Write WITHOUT SPENDING A DIME

Chapter 2: How to Edit WITHOUT SPENDING A DIME

Chapter 3: How to Design a Professional Book Cover WITHOUT SPENDING A DIME (or for about five dollars)

Chapter 4: How to Format and Publish Your Book WITHOUT SPENDING A DIME

Chapter 5: How to Market Your Books WITHOUT SPENDING A DIME

Chapter 6: Final Thoughts

Books by Prasenjeet Kumar in the Self-Publishing WITHOUT SPENDING A DIME Series

FICTION by Prasenjeet Kumar

Books by Prasenjeet Kumar in the Quiet Phoenix Series

Books by Prasenjeet Kumar in the Cooking In A Jiffy Series

Books by Arun Kumar and Prasenjeet Kumar

Books by Sonali Kumar and Prasenjeet Kumar

Connect with the Author

About the Author

I: Challenges That Authors Face While Running Their Business

WRITING, AUTHOR BUSINESS, or Author-preneurship, whichever name you’d like to let this profession go by, should be one of the most cost-effective of all professions. Capital investment could be minimal. You just need a laptop and an internet connection, and you are almost ready to go.

Suppose you had taken a fancy to start a pie baking business or an airline instead? The costs could involve renting a restaurant or an office, hiring skilled workers (bakers or pilots), acquiring assets (cooking appliances for pies or aircrafts for an airline), paying for ingredients or fuel, hiring a team of lawyers for legal disputes, etc.

However, this is not to say that there would be NO costs if you were running an Author Business. But first things first.

Why on earth do you want to run an Author Business?

Maybe you were always passionate about writing? Maybe you don’t like your current, constrictive 9-to-5 job? Maybe you have just lost your day job in the present depressing economic conditions and have sworn never ever to work for someone else?

Maybe you tried sending your manuscripts to a few traditional publishers, but their silence made you seize direct control of your affairs? Maybe you had a positive response from your traditional publisher, but you are not very comfortable surrendering all your rights over all formats and in all territories to him? Maybe you want greater control over how your covers look, how your books are priced, when your promotions happen, and so on?

Maybe you consider self-publishing as the faster and, therefore, the preferred way to reach your readers directly? Maybe you like the fact that self-publishing also gives you more royalty (e.g. 70%)? Compare this to the 10% royalty that traditional publishers have difficulty coughing up with. And that too after adjusting the royalties from the measly advances they offer to new authors.

Whatever be your reasons, as I have mine, you certainly don’t want to create just a book but a Professional Product, right? Then in normal course you should brace yourself for a host of costs, at every stage.

You may, for example, realise that you need to undergo some kind of formal training in writing, say, crime fiction. So, you pay for attending workshops.

Next, you may need to hire a professional editor and a book cover designer. 

And then you realise that you also need to pay for proofreading, formatting, keyword searches, advertising, creating an author website, designing a landing page, maintaining an e-mail list.... the list keeps getting longer and longer.

And this is how the problems begin and keep piling up!

I have been given to understand that the cost of producing even the simplest of books could range from anywhere between $500-$5000 per book and this is just for cover designing, proofreading and editing. The costs could be far higher than $5000 if you start investing in advertising, landing pages, and an author website.

This may not be much of a problem if you could somehow recover all your costs and have some surplus still left to help make a full-time living from writing. But the trouble is that most self-published books from newbie authors do not sell more than a few hundred copies in their ENTIRE LIFE-TIME.

So, assuming you priced your book on Amazon at $2.99, and you sell 100 copies of that book in its entire life-time, your earnings (for the entire life-time for that book, I’m repeating) would be approximately $2 x 100=$200 @70% of the selling price.

This would certainly not be enough to recover even $500 of your costs, which is supposedly on the lower side of the production cost, as we discussed above.

So, producing a book is a bad idea? Is that what I’m leading to?

Certainly not. If I