Self-Publishing: Easy as ABC

By Meredith Bond

Have you been thinking about self-publishing your book but don’t know how to get started? From A to Z this book covers everything you need to know to get published. From deciding what goes into your book through to marketing, with an emphasis on how to format your work yourself, this book covers all the basics.

Meredith Bond has been formatting and helping authors get published since 2013. She has been teaching publishing since 2008. With this book, she combines these into something everyone can use to see their passions realized.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anessa Books
• Release date: Oct 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532978067

Meredith Bond

Meredith Bond's books straddle that beautiful line between historical romance and fantasy. An award-winning author, she writes fun traditional Regency romances, medieval Arthurian romances, and Regency romances with a touch of magic. Known for her characters “who slip readily into one’s heart,” Meredith loves to take her readers on a journey they won't soon forget.Merry has two independent children and a loving, supportive husband. She resides in Washington, DC enjoying the freedoms of having an empty nest.Merry loves connecting with readers. Be sure to find her:Website: http://www.meredithbond.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/meredithbondauthorTwitter: https://twitter.com/merrybondGoogle +: https://plus.google.com/+MeredithBond/postsPinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/merrybond/LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/meredith-bond/69/a64/647/Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/847484.Meredith_BondTumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/merrybond

Book preview

Self-Publishing: Easy as ABC

Meredith Bond

Copyright September, 2016 by Meredith Bond. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical—without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Published by Anessa Books.

For more information about Anessa Books please visit our website at www.anessabooks.com.

Dedication

To all my self-publishing students past and future. Without you, this book wouldn’t exist, and I wouldn’t have nearly as much fun in my work as I do.

Table of Contents

Self-Publishing: Easy as ABC

Dedication

Anyone Can Do This

An Introduction

Building a Schedule

Creating Your Cover

Deciding What Goes In: All the Pretty Pieces

Enlist the help of others

Formatting Introduction

Getting Started

HTML & Sigil

Ideas for making your book look professionally published

Jutoh

Kindle

Layout

Marketing

Never Do these things

Other Programs for Formatting

Print On Demand: CreateSpace

Questions: where to get them answered on the web

Resources

Formatting for Smashwords

Ten Rules of Thumb

Uploading Your Masterpiece

Virtual Presence

Where’s Your Audience?

Intro to Marketing

Xtras

You

Zoom In-Zoom Out

About the Author

Books By Meredith Bond

Anyone Can Do This

An Introduction

This book began as a self-publishing class. I’ve been teaching it both on-line and in person since 2012, when I first began to publish my own books.

The growth of self-publishing, and even more important the legitimacy of it, has been astounding. It has made it possible for so many people to publish the books of their dreams and their hearts rather than simply relying on publishers to determine whether a book is worth being published. Now the gatekeepers are readers themselves rather than the publishers. Readers vote with their dollars.

This has allowed for so much creativity within the market. We are no longer confined to writing books as pre-determined by where it will be shelved in a bookstore, or whether a few people think they can sell it. We, the authors, determine whether a book is worth being written, and there is no one to tell an author that their dreams aren’t worth anything.

My own writing history involves having four Regency romances published traditionally by Kensington Publishers, Zebra Books. The fifth book I sent to my editor was rejected when no one could figure out where the book would be shelved in a store. (It was both a paranormal and Regency romance. This was back in 2005 before paranormal romances became big sellers.)

I struggled a few years, trying to find a home for my odd-ball romance, and finally, with the rise in popularity and acceptance of self-publishing, I decided to put it out on my own. I haven’t looked back or submitted another book to an agent or traditional publisher since.

I love the freedom that self-publishing gives me. I love determining how my book is going to look from the cover design to the interior. I don’t love the marketing, but I would probably have to take care of most of that on my own whether I was self-published or not. With self-publishing, I get to make all of the decisions and put into the world a book I am happy with and proud of.

And there’s absolutely no reason why you can’t, too.

In this book, I will walk you through each and every step involved in publishing a book from editing, to your cover, to formatting, and straight through to marketing. Self-publishing isn’t for the faint of heart, but it’s not overwhelmingly difficult either. With the right team and a good idea of what you’re doing, it can be as easy as ABC.

About this book

Each chapter will begin with a tl;dr section. (My kids taught me this concept, and personally, I think it’s great!) For those of you without teenagers, tl;dr stands for too long; didn’t read. I do this all the time—just skim through something because either I think I know what it’s going to say, or I really don’t have the time or patience to read all the way through.

Basically, tl;dr is a summary of the chapter to follow. So, if you know, what you’re doing, read through the tl;dr and then give it a try. If it doesn’t work, or you need some more help and explanation, the section within the chapter with the same title will give you detailed information.

For those of you who know that they need the full and complete description of how to do what I am teaching, you can just skim through the tl;dr to get a taste of what’s coming. Then you can enjoy reading the entire chapter, and get all those wonderful descriptions and instructions you’ll be wanting. And if you have further questions, you can always email me at [e-mail].

Resources

If you skip to the "R: Resources" chapter, you’ll find a link to my a special page on my website where there are all the resources I refer to in the various chapters.

In particular, you’ll find a silly little story that I wrote, literally in five minutes, just for you to use to practice your formatting.

I know that you are probably all writers and have plenty of material at hand that you can use to practice on, but just in case you don’t want to risk any of your files, I’ve put this up for you to use as a test story to format. If you mess it up, it doesn’t matter. If you mess up your only copy of your manuscript, everyone will be upset. I suggest you practice on this first. It has in it everything I think you might encounter in your own work and will need to know in order to code or format. If you’ve got something in your book that I don’t have in this example, tell me and I’ll add it in.

Also, in the Resources section, you’ll find links to the computer programs I use to format books. Some are free but one is paid. Please hop over there to check them out and download them.

And finally, there is no better resource than contacting me directly, so please join my Facebook page where you can ask any questions and I’ll do my best to answer them.

For the ultra-beginners

…And just so that we’re all speaking the same language, here are some common terms which I will be using:

mobi: A .mobi file is the type of document you need to upload to Kindle Direct Publishing (the e-publishing arm of Amazon) in order to publish books to be read on Kindle e-readers.

EPub: An ePub is the type of document you need to upload to Nook Press (the e-publishing arm of Barnes & Noble), Kobo, and Apple iBooks.

HTML: Hyper-Text Mark-up Language. This is the computer programming language that is used to create web pages and ebooks. I will teach you only the very basics of the language—only what you need to know to format your book. If you have special formatting like a bulleted list, email me and I’ll tell you how to do them. Since most novels don’t contain them, I don’t teach them as a matter of course.

Uploading and Downloading: This is an odd thing, and a lot of people aren’t sure which is which. The easy way to think about it is that the Internet is the cloud. When you have something in the cloud, it’s somewhere else on some other company’s server. When you have a file in Dropbox, Microsoft OverDrive, or Apple iCloud, it’s in the cloud. Therefore, when you move a file from your personal computer to the cloud or to an e-retailer, your file is going up. You are uploading.

If you move a file from Dropbox, Overdrive, or iCloud, you are moving it down to your personal computer. You are downloading it.

Before we get started…

There are some free programs you will need in order to format your book, and which I refer to throughout the book.

If you’re going the HTML/Sigil route, to work with HTML documents on a PC, I use Notepad ++. It’s an easy-to-use text editing program. For Mac, I use TextWrangler.

For Jutoh, to convert your document into a mobi file, you’ll need KindleGen installed on your computer. You’ll also need to know where you install it, so that you can tell Jutoh where to find it. When we get there, I’ll give you some tips on this part—but don’t worry. When you install Jutoh, it will prompt you to download the program and even provide you with a link to