An Illustrated Guide to Getting Published: An Author 'How to...' Manual

By John Chapman

Author John Chapman leads you through the intricacies of getting your book to readers.

• Conventional publishing
• Independent - Print on demand
• Ebooks
...the choices are up to you, and are not as tricky as you may believe.

John directs you through cover design, book descriptions, keywords and book promotion because, unfortunately, getting sales is not so obvious.

Author John Chapman and his wife Shelia have written and published 17 books. As an ex-teacher, John can't resist giving you the benefit of his experience in getting books published.

John will show you how to publish your book and earn royalties each month from the sales. He'll show you how to avoid the many services offered to authors but which offer a poor return for their cost. Other services and software which offer good value for money. You can take advantage of these without going into debt.

An Illustrated Guide to Getting Published assumes you have a word processed story but also a limited budget. It will show you how to self-edit and proofread your book or find services to do the editing for you if this is your wish.

It will suggest how and why you should approach literary agents rather than publishers and warn you of the difficulties and timescale involved.

If you choose to publish independently it will guide you through formatting your book - a relatively simple process for both print-on-demand books and ebooks.

This 'how to...' book will teach you to produce an ebook from your word processed document using free software. It will show you how to make your book discoverable amongst the millions of books available.

Hints and tips abound in this book. You'll find everything from recruiting affiliates to guidelines on pricing your book for the greatest profits. It offers a handbook on creating or having created covers which will draw prospective readers to read your book description and think "I must read that."

Like other self-publishing 101 courses this guide tells you how you can become a 'best-seller' but also points out that being a best-selling author doesn't necessarily mean you'll get lots of sales.

An Illustrated Guide to Getting Published will show you how an author can convert their hobby to being a business. It will show you how to research keywords and use analytics to draw readers to your books. Whether you are writing children's books, women's fiction, action/adventure, a novel, a textbook or a PhD thesis. Whether writing in English, Spanish or Hindi it will suggest strategies to get your work into print.

Amazon should be the primary retail platform to launch your book in ebook format. The advantages and disadvantages of Digital Rights Management (DRM) are covered as well as Kindle Select and Kindle Unlimited. John will walk you through the process of publishing at Amazon but also cover publishing on other platforms such as Google Play. Through distributors such as Smashwords or Draft2Digital he will show you how to publish at Apple iTunes (iBooks), Barnes and Noble, Kobo and others.

Has anyone told you how to deal with tax on author income? John will tell you what records you need to keep throughout this guide.

Social media will have a significant effect on your earnings. Email lists are incredibly powerful promotional tools. This author manual will tell you what to do to build your social media network and more importantly, tell you what not to do when launching, marketing and responding to reviews of your book.

Finally there's a reference section with useful articles, links and contacts which may help authors whether they are novice or expert.

Not every technique in this book will work for every author. There's a lot of luck involved in becoming successful. But the more you work at it, the luckier you'll be. Some of the information provided can be technical but you'll find lots of illustrations and examples to deal with this which is

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Chapman
• Release date: Dec 9, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370862986

John Chapman

We started the 'A Vested Interest' series in 2007 and it took over a year before I came up with an ending we were happy with. At 170,000 words A Vested Interest was too long though for a printed book. We cut it heavily but still ended with a 140,000 word book. There was no alternative, we had to split it into a two book series. Doing that, we thought, would allow us to put back some of the content we had cut and expand the second book (Dark Secrets) a little.Well that was the plan. We ended up splitting the second book and making a trilogy by adding 'No Secrets'. The original ending didn't quite fit now so we moved it into a fourth book - Stones, Stars and Solutions.And so it goes on. We are now writing book 10 and 11 of the series. Shelia has written a spin-off 'Blood of the Rainbow' trilogy. Altogether it's 2 million words so far! In terms of time, we've only covered a few months. There is an end in sight but not for another 5,000 years. Maybe I'll get to use my original ending then?About the AuthorsJohn and Shelia Chapman are a husband and wife team who met on Internet and crossed the Atlantic to be together. John, an English ex-science and computer teacher contributed the technology and 'nasty' bits while Shelia drew on her medical experience in the USA and produced the romance. The humour? That came from real life.

Book preview

An Illustrated Guide to Getting Published

An author ‘How to…’ manual

John Chapman

Hexham 2017

John Chapman has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

without the express written permission of the publisher

except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Copyright © 2017 John Chapman

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American

Copyright Conventions.

ISBN: 9781370862986

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

DEDICATION

For Shelia, without whose encouragement I would never have considered publishing a book

Contents

An Illustrated Guide to Getting Published

So you want to get your book published? - Introduction

Things you can forget now

So let’s get started

Part I - Editing your book

Editing your book

1st step - Read the book through.

2nd step – Use a proof reader.

3rd step – Use a grammar checking program

4th step - What else to look for when editing.

5th step - Get the title right

Think you’ve got your book ‘perfect’?

Save the final document

Part II - Moving into Print

The next choice – Conventional or Independent

Conventional Print

Using a literary agent

Proofreading and preparing your book

Agent enquiry letter

Finding an Agent

Twenty ways to get an instant agent rejection

Writing a synopsis

What next?

Formatting the Agent Manuscript Sample

Rejected?

Got the Agent? What you can expect.

Do You Pay an Agent?

Had more than 30 rejections?

Taking the Independent Publishing Route

Using a Print-On-Demand Service  (Part 1)

Producing a document to upload

Setting up a CreateSpace Account

1st. Start a new book

2nd. Title and Author

3rd step. ISBN

4th step. Book Size

Creating your own Printed Book Template Document

Creating your book’s front matter

How to create and insert your front matter

Front Matter Page numbers

Starting Chapter 1

Creating Your Book’s Back Matter

Using CreateSpace’s Formatted Template

Checking the formatted document

Continuing with Create Space

Upload the body text

Bleed Choice

Producing the cover

Cover images to avoid

Finalizing your book

Choose a second genre

Price

Proof copies

Part III - Producing an Ebook

Creating an ebook

Why many ebooks are full of errors

Making your ebook Word file

Stage 1 - Remove hidden data

Stage 2 - Use only minimal styles you set up

Stage 3. - Create front and back matter.

Who do I send my ebook to?

Creating an ebook for Amazon

First Stage – Check what your ebook will look like

Second Stage - Using calibre to produce an ebook

2nd Stage alternative - Using Amazon’s KindleGen to create an ebook

Creating the Table of Contents

Making Your Ebook Available at Amazon

Kindle eBook Content

Upload the source file

Upload the cover

Preview the book

Kindle eBook Pricing

Kindle Matchbook

Getting paid royalties

For those who are NOT US citizens and NOT living in the US

Is Amazon KDP easy to use?

Publishing an ebook with Smashwords

Step by step publishing at Smashwords

Creating the Word File

Is Smashwords easy to use?

Publishing through Draft2Digital

Is Draft2Digital easy to use?

Publishing on Google Play

Step 1 – create a Google account

Step 2 – create a publishing account

Step 3 – Add a Payment Profile

Step 4 -Tax details

Step 5 – Add ‘Sales Territories’

Step 6 – Turn on Currency Conversion

Step 7 – Add a book template to the Catalogue

Step 8 – Setting a book template price

Step 9 – Settings

Step 10 – Adding your book to Google

Is publishing on Google Play easy?

Part IV -  Promoting your Book

Book promotion in the past

The Indie Book Promotion Plan

The Magic Promotion Button

Checking your ID - Author - Who do you think you are?

What if I want to use a pen name?

Author—How easy is it to find your book/s?

Search results

How well are your book sales doing?

Analysing social media accounts

Facebook

Tumblr

Pinterest

Twitter

LinkedIn

Google+

YouTube

Instagram

Reddit

BuzzFeed

Quora

StumbleUpon

More on the Author Book promotion Plan

Things to do while you are writing your book.

Read.

Learn not to offend people!

Start a Blog

What sort of blog post should an author make?

Twitter for Authors

Avoiding the Fake Followers

Who not to follow

Who to follow

To manually follow someone else’s followers:

Using ManageFlitter to copy followers

What to tweet

Twitter – a snapshot in time

Twitter Spamming

What constitutes spam on Twitter?

Making your tweets work for you

Twitter Lists

Twitter searches

Helpful websites for Twitter are:

Create a Website

Start a mailing list

Join Forums

Find the time to do all this!

Things to do when your book is published

Write the next book

Reviews

Amazon reviews

How do you find reviewers?

Dirty trick reviews

What if my book on Amazon gets a bad review?

Starting to promote your book

Promotion sites

Paid promotion sites

Free promotion sites

How do you determine which promotion sites to use?

Newsletters

Website listing

Twitter promotion

Beware of the I’ll make you a best seller… courses

Promoting through blogs and websites

Business cards and bookmarks.

Did I just get conned?

What can you do with a business card?

Bookmarks

Have you considered putting adverts on tickets?

Use YouTube to promote your books

Direct selling your book?

Selling Printed Books

Selling ebooks

Affiliate Accounts

Amazon Affiliate accounts.

Smashwords Affiliate Accounts

Making your book permanently free

Smashwords Coupons

A book marketing plan

Things to do after your book is published

How to track your book sales at Amazon

Find out ‘why?’ if there is a sudden change in sales and downloads

Get your book on Amazon’s ‘Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought’ list.

Join Amazon Author Central

Getting the Title, Keywords and Description just right

What influences a reader to buy a book?

Title

Keywords

Choosing Keywords

Other methods of selecting keywords

1. Steal them

2. Get them from Smashwords

3. Use the free keyword research tool at scientificseller.com

The description

Getting the cover right

Five top ebook covers. Which is best?

The Cover Image

Author Name

The Title (and sub-title)

Follow-up

Setting the best book price

Part V - Bits and pieces

A collection of hints and tips

Beware the word 'Bestseller'

So what do Amazon’s overall book ranking mean?

What if I find errors after my e-book has been published?

Heading order and the Table of Contents

Text Separators (Dividers)

Optimum blog post length

How much does editing cost?

Persuading people to sign up to an email list

Copyright

Make Google forget searches

Creating ‘Look inside’ links at Amazon

Getting seen on Twitter

Keep it Short

Be long winded

Twitter videos

Time management

Avoiding distractions

Where do you inscribe/sign a printed book?

More about Twitter

Cultivate a perceived higher value price

Re-tweet those who re-tweet you

Pinning a Twitter Post

Bump your tweets to the top:

Numbers are important

Twitter Research Shows:

What authors should tweet about in their promotions

Twitter Hashtags

Web of Trust

Reviews – the good and the bad

Good reviews:

Bad reviews:

Dirty trick reviews

Call to Action

So what should be in a CTA?

Adding a CTA as an HTML table

Part VI – The Appendix -

Kindle Select program

Advantages:

Disadvantages

Choosing a second genre at Amazon

Use the KindleSpy Application

Social Media Management Tools

Using Buffer

How to capture a successful Tweet from Buffer

HootSuite

Alternatives to Microsoft Word

Scrivener

Google Docs

LibreOffice

Not recommended alternatives

Modifying MS Word Styles

Font, Font size and justification

Why Garamond font?

Line spacing, paragraph spacing, Widows and Orphans

Basic styles used in printed books

Getting the first line right in Word 2007+

Here’s how to do it in Word 2007/2010+

Basic styles used in ebooks

Customising MS Word’s Quick Access Toolbar

Creating a Table of Contents in MS Word

Creating an Index in MS Word for print

Creating an Index in MS Word for ebooks

Making a Word Book template

Reading aloud on a tablet

How to send a file to a Kindle

How to send a file to another Android device

Using the calibre editor to correct formatting

Dealing with tables

Recreate the table as a list

Recreate the table using CSS styles

Special Kindle Formatting

Things you can change in Word

Getting the Start Location Right

Things to do in an HTML editor or the calibre editor

Start location - EPUB instructions

Lists

Improve Graphic Quality (Older versions of MS Word)

How to create drop capitals

Amazon’s Kindle Publishing Guidelines

Features supported by the KF8 format

Bibliography

Books

Publishing Websites

Software

Social Media Sites

Blogging Sites

Useful websites/links worth exploring

Publishing services

Useful Blog Posts Worth Reading

From the Author

What's the 'A Vested Interest' series about?

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

― W. Somerset Maugham

So you want to get your book published? - Introduction

This book isn’t about writing a book – it’s about what to do with it once you’ve written it. You must decide what you are going to do to get it published.

Things you can forget now

If you think you’ve done the hard bit, forget that idea. Your journey into print is just beginning and the hard bits are still to come.

Forget any idea you have of sending the complete manuscript off to a publisher. That’s no longer the way it works. Most publishers work through literary agents today.

Forget too, the idea that all your mistakes will be corrected by an editor. If your book isn’t already polished a publisher will just reject it.

Forget the idea that a publisher will promote your book. That facility is only offered to big name authors who already have successful books.

Forget any dream you have of making a fortune. You are probably more likely to win the lottery. It can happen, but for most it doesn’t. It is possible to make enough money to make a difference, but it’s going to be hard work. Those who stick with it are those that will make the money.

If you’ve handwritten or typed your manuscript out on a typewriter you are going to have to type it on a word processor. I know of no publisher who still accepts typewritten books on paper.

So let’s get started

I’m going to assume in this guide that you don’t have a fortune available to have your book edited, printed and promoted. I will assume that you are prepared to do much, if not all, of this yourself. I’ll also assume you are using a PC rather than a Mac.

If you are looking for a completely free option, then this isn’t the right book. (I’m working on that one.) I promise the amounts you must spend will be worthwhile though.

I’ll assume you have written your book using a word processor. There are many of these but probably the best known is Microsoft Word which saves files in .doc or .docx format. You can use other programs (see the appendix for a list of them). It helps if they can save in .docx format.

I strongly suggest you use the latest version of MS Word and keep it up-to-date. The easiest way to get up-to-date, and most painless on your finances, is to subscribe to MS Office 365. I spend £7.99 ($9.99 US) per month on that and get the full MS Office suite which includes the useful OneNote, Excel and Outlook programs. A current version of MS Word is particularly important if your book contains images since only recent versions allow images to be saved in the high-quality formats needed for printing on paper. Spending money on that and a computer will be an expense but remember that every penny or cent you spend should be recorded to set against your earnings. Watch out for the tax hints as below:

Don’t forget that this is an author expense which is tax deductible so record any payments.

Whatever process you’ve used to write your book you’ll need to edit it. This is probably going to be a harder task than writing it so I’ve devoted a chapter on this.

When you’ve done that you’ll have two choices:

You can approach a literary agent with an initial submission (no - not the complete book).

You can take the independent publishing route.

Whichever method you choose; you’ll have to start work on promoting your book. Fortunately, you can work on that at the same time as you are editing and producing your book.

Promoting your book, unless you are the sort of person who habitually wins the lottery, will be your hardest task.

Did you purchase this book? Did you find it on Internet after searching for a guide? If the answers are ‘Yes’ then don’t forget to record its purchase price as a tax-deductible expense. Claim some of your Internet costs too.

Part I - Editing your book

Editing your book

Assuming your book has been produced using Microsoft Word, you should already have used the spellcheck and grammar check available in the program, so you might think this step is pretty well covered. Right?

Wrong! It’s probably still full of mistakes. Here are the steps my wife and I go through before we send a file to a publisher.

1st step - Read the book through.

Reading it yourself on your word processor isn’t the best solution; after all – any mistakes were made on that. When we read our own work, we tend to read what we expect to be there rather than what is actually written. Here’s an example of how we can be fooled.

After reading the

the sentence, you will

now be aware that the

the human brain often

does not inform you that the

the word ‘the’ has been

repeated twice every time.

When you are proofreading a book, you need to get your text read aloud to you. A computer voice will read what is there rather than what you expect to be there. There are several ways of doing this:

Get Word to read the highlighted text aloud to you. Try [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [Space bar] You can also add a ‘Speak’ icon to your quick access bar. (§ Customizing the Quick access toolbar)

Send the file to an ebook1 reader or tablet computer and get it to read it aloud while you follow it. (§ Reading aloud on a tablet)

2nd step – Use a proof reader.

You can use a professional proof reader or a friend or do a swap with another indie author. Consider using a proof reader on the other side of the ocean at this stage to find those words and expressions which don’t quite have the same meaning. Here’s a couple of examples

Midgie – midget or small candy in the US.

Midgie – small biting fly, especially in Scotland.

I’ve seen books written by English authors referring to ‘tarmac roads.’ In the US these are known as ‘blacktop roads.’

Make any corrections you need on a copy of the original document. Make sure you save it with a different filename. Each time you make major changes I suggest you use a different filename so that you can revert to an earlier version if you wish later.

Hint - I would also keep a backup copy of your book on a different media such as a USB memory stick. Sooner or later you will have a computer disaster and you don’t want to lose all your hard work. If you are paranoid keep a copy in a different building or ‘in the cloud’ – online.

If you pay for online backups, flash drives or pay a proofreader – keep a record of the cost.

3rd step – Use a grammar checking program

Put the text through a grammar checking program. We use Grammarly (www.grammarly.com). It’s a subscription service but I find it well worth the money. An alternative would be another subscription service Ginger (http://www.gingersoftware.com). You might also want to investigate a free online service called Hemingway - http://www.hemingwayapp.com. There are other grammar checking programs and online services. If you decide to use one, make sure you check them out by looking for online reviews first.

Assuming you are using Grammarly:

Grammarly will find mistakes, which you didn’t spot, but not all of the ‘mistakes’ will be real mistakes just as the grammar checker in Word frequently finds false errors. I find it’s best to put no more than one chapter at a time through it.

These author services are tax deductible so keep a record of your payments.

4th step - What else to look for when editing.

Too much detail? Does it matter the route your character took to get to work? Must you describe his/her lunch in detail? Do you describe your protagonist in too much detail? Are there bits you could cut out of the story without damaging the plot?

Unnecessary words – dark black (does light black make sense?) – a loud shriek (quiet shriek anyone?)

Are you sure you have used the correct word? The classic example is ‘there/their/they’re’ Get this one wrong and your manuscript is unlikely to ever be printed. There are other common mistakes though.

effect/affect; off/of; to/too; your/you’re

Spelling I live in the UK and normally use UK English. My books mostly sell in the US and are expected to be in US English. I also have a US wife as a co-author. When I started writing I used UK English and was annoyed to be taken to task for my ‘poor spelling’. I presume Australian, South African and Canadian authors have had a similar experience. I used words such as colour, favourite, tyre, centre, neighbour, paralyse, traveller and leukaemia. All are correct in UK English but are seen as mistakes in US English. Although I felt I was betraying my country a little I eventually settled on using US English for my writing. I have had bad reviews from US readers who don’t recognise (oops make that recognize!) UK English but have so far not had a bad review from UK readers about my US spelling. I recommend that if you intend to sell world-wide, you adopt US spelling. If you don’t want to do that insert a note on the copyright /ISBN page that you use [Your country] English. US readers probably won’t notice this though so expect the reviews about poor spelling.

Are you too verbose?

Have you used author forbidden words? Have you used words such as ‘just’, ‘very’, ‘really’, ‘suddenly’, ‘then’, ‘started’ and ‘like’? If so seek them out and delete them or replace them with better words.

‘It started to rain’ or ‘raindrops pattered around them’.

‘She looked really sad’ or ‘She looked sad’.

Which do you think is better?

Samuel Clements (Mark Twain) once said:

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’, Your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

When I went through this book I looked for occurrences of ‘very’ to delete. I found 46.

5th step - Get the title right

A catchy title will help sell your book. Take some time over choosing it. In general, you should try to keep fiction titles short – four to five words or less. If you need more words – consider a subtitle. For non-fiction a longer more descriptive title works better. If necessary, use a subtitle also. You might at this stage, want to read the section on Producing the cover where it talks about the emotional marketing value of words

Think you’ve got your book ‘perfect’?

Even after going through this process you are still likely to have made or overlooked errors. Professionally printed books contain them. Take consolation in the fact that errors can be corrected in a print-on-demand book or ebook far easier than in a conventionally published book.

You are also unlikely to suffer the fate of the printer who in 1631 accidentally missed out a crucial ‘not’, producing what came