Publishing Service
It doesn’t have to cost $1000′s to publish a book anymore. You don’t need to get approval from a publishing house, based on someone you don’t know, reading (maybe) your work, and thinking it might be worth putting to print. You don’t need to actually print anything anymore either…which means your upfront hard costs are non-existent.
Don’t Print it, Digitize it
Everything I just mentioned still goes on…if you hard print your published work. So don’t hard print it. Yes it is that easy. Nobody has to approve your book judging if it’s content and interest is good enough…but you. Nobody has to pay, well any money really, to make this happen. You just write it, save it to .pdf, html or special online reader code and upload it to the many available online sources for publishing and accessing digital books….for free. That’s right FREE. Nothing to be approved, unless it is illegal or deemed offensive. Nothing to pay for…until AFTER you have sold the book. No printing costs, since the book is delivered in digital format…and read on the buyer’s computer, handheld device, or digital reader. Ever hear of the Amazon Kindle? How about the NOOK?
Take a look at any of the digital reader sites to see how many books you can find available…with more being added every day. Many are digital reprints of hardcover books already in print, but this thriving media allows all of us who have ever thought of writing a book to now do it. It’s simple. There are even books available on how to write books and get them published.
What Should I Write?
What type of books you say? Almost anything. Write stories, fiction, non-fiction, technical, children, professional, political, anything you have knowledge about can be put to sale…and when you take a look at these sites you’ll see exactly what I mean. Don’t think anyone will buy what you have? So what. What’s that famous saying? “If you never ask, the answer will always be no“. Well, if you never try, the answer is always failure…and if the cost is only your time, what have you got to lose? So do it…now, while it’s fresh on your mind. Once you get started, there’s no stopping you.
The following can be applied to publishing books for the Nook and Kindle platforms. It is really very easy and incredibly inexpensive too. Can you say almost free?
I don’t know how to write a book? What do I write about? I probably don’t have the right software, and if I do I don’t know how to use it. Publishing ican be time consuming, hard to figure out, and expensive. I have no idea how this can help my business?
The first step is to just get organized…and write. I’m told everyone has at least one book in them waiting to leak out. Just pick a topic on a subject you know and what you love to talk about and just talk through your hands…and edit it later. Don’t do any spell checking and grammar fixing until after you are done…or at least done with a chapter of a thought. Don’t break your flow by editing on the fly. Like I tell my softball players about hitting…it’s all about hand speed. Let your hands fly.
A sure-fire way to stay organized, is to start out with an outline…which after you edit that, will probably end up being your Table of Contents. Now I’m sure you remember your days in school when you were writing essays and the like for class. If you don’t, I’ll remind you that the first thing they always told you was to start with an outline. That’s the way I do it. Also, keep it light. A technical manual can be dry and boring, well not boring, but to keep your reader engaged it’s best if you can keep the feeling comfortable for the reader.
Not sure what to write about? Everyone has some kind of background either in their careers or even their hobbies. Sometimes, your hobby actually makes a better book since it is usually more fun to write, and that comes across to the reader.
For software, any word processor, even “notepad”, will do. You can write in .html if you like too. First you need to go to the publishing sites where you and find out what they need in the way of formating for publication. Each software language you use has a different set of rules to follow, so find out what they are before you start writing. If you do it will make editing and the actual book setup for upload much easier. Graphics are great things to use to enhance your book, but keep them small as far as file size. Keep in mind, not everyone reading this will be using the latest and greatest hardware, so don’t bog them down waiting for a graphic to load. This also means you will need some type of graphic editing program too. Make sure it can edit all the main graphic formats, like .jpg, .gif, and you can download a free .pdf editing program as well.
Where you publish is kind of up to you, but with the popularity of Nook, Kindle and the other handheld readers, I would strongly recommend you start, and maybe even end, there. I remember my first book was just a regular e-Book because I knew how easy that was to put together, but you needed to market and sell it…and be able to take in money and deliver the book to the buyer. It’s really easy to publish to the Nook and Kindle platform, signing up is free, and there is usually no charge to put your work of art on their site to sell. They do all the selling and handle the transactions for you. They take a percentage of what you sell it for, but you don’t pay them anything upfront, so there’s no startup money to recover before profits. All your costs happen after the sale. It doesn’t matter how many you sell. Sell 1 or 100 books, unlike hard publishing, there is no quota of sales needed to break even and, there is no one to tell you your book won’t be published. I really like that part of it. If you ask people who attempted to publish “hard covers” they will probably tell you the hardest thing is to actually get the publisher to read it…then like it…then recommend it for publication.
Like I said earlier, the costs are non-existent. You pay for the hardware to run the software, but after that the rest is yours…minus the publishers cut. If you want to self sell, you will need a merchant account, an auto-responder, a website or blog, a marketing package,…get the picture? It is much cheaper, and easier, to just let the online bookstores do it all for you. Just write it, and they will sell it for you. All that’s left is to market it. There are certain formatting rules you need to follow in order to get your work of art published. It’s pretty straight forward. You can find the list on the Nook and Kindle sites as well as on this website.
Now, one of the great reasons to write this book might be for business reasons. One of the most important aspects of attraction marketing is the ability to prove your expertise to the reader…and in the case of business, your client. Writing a book, even if nobody buys it, can go a long way to accomplishing this. How many times have you been impressed by someone who says they are published? Now can be the one saying it, instead of hearing it from someone else. Once written, you need for people to read it. When you are participating in online discussion groups, refer them to your book for more information. Actually, just refer them to your blog where you will have a link to your book found in the Nook or Kindle library. At this time I want to remind you that you don’t have to have the Nook or Kindle hardware in order to read one of their books. You can download a reader for free for each that goes on your PC or even your phone. Whenever you market your book make sure you mention that or you will lose a potential sales from people that might want to read your book but don’t have the hardware. They don’t need it.
How Easy is it…really?
So you don’t have the time you say. Let me ask you this. Have you ever done presentations to a group or even just one person? Then you have your material…just edit it as described above for the format needed for publishing. Don’t have anything in writing at all, other than maybe a few notes, since you do it from the hip? Fine, the next time you do one of these presentations, use “Speach-to-Text” recognition software and let the software produce your presentation in writing for you.
I’ve mentioned this before on other postings. Do you want to know how easy it can be? My 11 year old daughter will be writing a series of children’s stories during the summer. Kind of makes you want to start your own now, doesn’t it? What’s stopping you?
Now, if all of this is still daunting to you, or you aren’t sure if you can handle it, just let us do it for you.
