If you’d like to go the traditional route and submit your manuscript to publishing houses, print that baby out and mail her off. If, however, you’d prefer to choose the more modern route, you may submit your manuscript in e-book form online and skip some of the hassle and rejection letters.
Make sure your new e-book has a fabulous, eye-catching cover. Just because you are going to be publishing online doesn’t mean you don’t need to draw the eyes browsing the digital bookshelves to your work. If you are not the artistic type, spend a few bucks and pay someone to make you a professional book cover.
Book and cover ready…check. Now what? You have several options available. You can choose to go with several companies which provide online book publishing services. Each company has their own requirements and each offer different profit margins for the writer. A few companies are Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Smashwords, BookBaby, Barnes & Noble's PubIt, Lulu, and many more.
I looked in depth at Lulu, as this particular company seemed to be very user-friendly for first timers. On this site, you have the option of paying to have your document transformed into an ebook, or the free option of doing it yourself. Lulu will also get you an ISBN number for your book free of charge enabling you to actually sell it.
Lulu provides step-by-step instructions to make sure you have everything you need, and that you have done everything necessary to get your new book published. Lulu will give you 90% of the proceeds from selling your book online. You can choose to distribute only through their site, or through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and many more.
You may be tempted to price your book on the high side... BUT WAIT! While you might think that this will earn you more money pricing high, online book buyers tend to look for books with a price range of $.99 to $2.99. Pricing your book competitively with others in the same genre will increase the likelihood of people downloading your book. Consistently pricing your books reasonably will also make sure you get people coming back for more.Not enough info, you say? Please check out the following links for details:
Lulu http://www.lulu.com/
Smashwords https://www.smashwords.com/
Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing https://kdp.amazon.com/kdp/self-publishing/signin?language=en_US
Very Informative. That is some info I shall have to put to use.
ReplyDeleteTo Lulu I go!
Amazon Kindle Direct is a really great tool, however I have heard that some readers have difficulty downloading your book, if they are using an e-reader that is not a Kindle brand. What do you think of using multiple sites to publish your works?
ReplyDeleteWell, from researching the Lulu company, I found that they offered publishing across various platforms and companies. Not only did they publish through Lulu but also iBooks, Amazon, Barnes & Noble NOOK. They also enable you to have the book published in all the formats necessary to work with each platform. Smashwords states that they publish through multiple popular companies and platforms.
ReplyDeleteThis is really great! I am looking into online publishing for a few short novels I've finished. Blurb.ca is really good too!
ReplyDeleteThis is the most fantastically useful thing I've read in weeks. Thanks!
ReplyDelete