SELF PUBLISHING

Amazon Createspace, Kindle, Smashwords

STEP ONE

Write an entire book.

Edit, revise, etc.

Decide it’s ready to publish.

UPLOAD INTERIOR

Blank page, half title page, other books by the author, title page, copyright, dedication, acknowledgements, table of contents, table of figures, preface

Word makes a great automatic table of contents.

Also a great index if this is nonfiction.

Afterward, Glossary, Bibliography, Index, About the Author

Black and white pictures are fine – must be 300 dpi high quality.

Consider a little icon at chapter starts or scene separations.

PDFs are more stable than Word.

COVER

Use Amazon’s templates

OR

Get a decent graphics program and a high quality background you like. One or two pieces of high quality royalty free clipart and some text and you’re done.

COVER CHECK

https://www.createspace.com/Help/Book/Artwork.do has a template for your book size and number of pages.

Make this semi-transparent and paste it over your book cover to make sure you’re in the lines.

FINISHING UP

Amazon reviews it for errors.

Amazon asks which sales channels you want (probably all of them)

And what price you’d like (they set a minimum)

Cover finish

Back cover summary, category, and keywords

EBOOKSNow that Amazon has all your book details, they’ll adapt it into a Kindle ebook and sell that too.

ACX.com will walk you through auditioning actors for your audiobook.

Now that your book is done, why not distribute the ebook to iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Scribd and everywhere else? Go to Smashwords.com, give them your manuscript (as a Word doc) and front cover and set your price. They convert it into EVERY ebook format and send it out EVERYWHERE…except Amazon.

They prefer a copyright page where you say “Smashwords Edition,” and no giant fonts or piles of line breaks in a row. It’s an ebook, after all. Charts are messy. Pictures jump around but still work.

These will all provide a free ISBN.