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Bookstore information -- Distributed through Ingram. Print ISBN: 978-0-9833191-0-8 Ebook: 978-0-9833191-4-6 |
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more about -- Self-Publishing Secrets: 12 Steps to Success |
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Self-Publishing Secrets is for any author who wants to make a good living from writing. Filled with practical, real-world examples on how to self-publish a paperback with zero advance printing costs... and profit from the POD Print On Demand revolution! This clear, step-by-step guide also shows how to make truly interactive ebooks with embedded Flash and video multimedia. Make more money -- no more waiting on agents or publishers. Triple your income compared to regular publishing royalties! Written by a multimedia designer with more than 10 years of Fortune 500-level experience. Step-by-step, up-to-date (2012) information about ISBN and copyright, Print On Demand publishing, PDF ebook development, ebook creation for Kindle, and much more... see book's Contents, below. Free 'Kindle Formatting Guide', click here ...suddenly, it's really easy to create ebooks for the Amazon Kindle platform. NEW,
updated --
Amazon Kindle ebook -- Self-Publishing
Secrets 2012 -- $9.95 BEST IN PDF FORMAT, so you can easily use all the hyperlinks -- buy direct from author, it's part of my CVP Communicator Value Package -- click here for more Paperback -- get it from Amazon, only $15.56 Or, you can get it from Barnes & Noble stores, for $19.95. If not on the shelves, it's in their catalog -- just ask for it, and they will get it in for you... ISBN 978-0-9833191-0-8. Free eBook for paperback customers, click here Read the sample text below... then get the book! UPDATE PAGE -- click here -- get latest ebook news |
----- Contents ------
Front cover 1
Title page 3
Contents 6
Introduction 14
Self-publish? Why? 16
Revolution -- POD and ebook 21
POD -- Print On Demand 21
SPS -- There is no penalty for a short run. 23
Note -- 'SPS' is a Self-Publishing Secret... vital information.
Books and the internet 24
Quick start -- 12 steps to success 27
Write your book 30
SPS -- Write, don't format 31
Free writing programs 31
Illustrate your book 33
SPS -- PDFs can be used as images 33
Images for POD printing 34
Images for ebooks 35
Graphics tips from a multimedia designer 35
SPS -- Color-check your printed book cover 36
Layers and Levels 38
Free illustration software 39
Art software worth buying 41
Price your book 42
Pricing printed books 42
Pricing ebooks 44
Make a website for the book 46
Copyright your book 50
SPS -- Search existing copyrights first 51
Get an ISBN number 52
Books In Print 53
Get a Library of Congress listing 55
Print: format and PDF the interior 61
Printed book interior layouts 61
Page size for printed books 63
Book length 63
Print margins 63
Justification 64
Headers, footers, and page numbers 65
Paragraphs 66
Interior fonts 66
Page count 67
Editing 67
PDF creation for printed books 68
Acrobat Pro setup for printed books 68
SPS -- Font embedding 69
PDFs from Word or Writer 71
Print: design and PDF the cover 73
Cover fonts 73
Cover art for your printer 75
Cover artwork on a printer's template. 76
Cover artwork elements 77
Cover art for printing: PDF output 77
Cover art for printing: editing and proofing 78
SPS -- Cover art for printing -- CMYK color-check 78
Print: work with a POD vendor 79
Lightning Source 79
Lightning Source POD manuals and guides 81
Estimating printing costs 83
Uploading your book files 83
Ebook: Primus inter pares 85
Ebook: DRM, Kindle, Nook, more 87
DRM - Digital Rights Management 88
SPS -- PDF ebooks without DRM 90
The DRM dilemna 91
Ebooks for Kindle 92
SPS -- Formatting HTML for Kindle 94
Ebook: PDF sales channels 97
Selling your PDF ebook on Amazon (not) 97
Ingram Digital and unencrypted PDFs 98
SPS -- Ingram Digital PDF setup 99
Ebook: make a PDF electronic book 100
PDF - the universal ebook format 100
Making ebook PDFs 101
One ebook page size fits all ereaders 102
SPS -- make a PC-to-PDF ebook for Kindle, Nook 105
Ebook margins and pagination 107
Ebook color 108
Ebook: make a multimedia PDF 110
Flash animation 112
Embedded video 117
Setup an online store 120
Online vendor order fulfillment 120
Online printed book payments 123
Improve your website 125
Metadata, SEO, and SMO 125
Free web development programs 128
Revised webpage design 129
Advertising 131
Publicity 134
Who to contact 135
Sample press release 136
How to write a press release 139
Press release tips 142
Book reviewers 143
Marketing and sales 145
Know your numbers 146
Trade discounts 148
Maximize profits 148
Sales targets 150
Best average cover price 152
Write your book's marketing plan 155
Selling in person 160
Selling to Barnes & Noble 160
Selling to the whole Barnes & Noble chain 163
SPS -- B&N has a Small Press Department 163
164
164
Other chain bookstores 165
Selling to independent bookstores 165
Bookstore 'meet the author' gatherings 169
Other retail locations 169
Other distributors 171
Libraries 171
Corporations and companies 173
Make your own CDs, cards, and flyers 175
CD-ROM sales 175
Cards and Flyers 177
Selling from your own website 181
External links 183
Google Analytics 184
Hits and misses 184
Developing qualified leads 186
Costs, 120-page book 189
Cost per title 189
Pricing 190
Costs, 240-page book 191
Cost per title 191
Pricing 192
Self-publishers and the IRS 194
Some Tax Court decisions 197
Industry links 208
EBM -- the future is here 213
SPS -- Meet the Espresso Book Machine: 213
Afterthoughts 216
Don't know how to use a computer? 216
Self-publishing compared to vanity press 220
The impact of ebooks 224
About the author 226
Back cover 229
sample chapters --
Self-publish? Why?
What? Me, a publisher? Why?
Two reasons. First, because you can easily get your work into the printed-book selling system. These days, the internet makes it easy for anyone to become a publisher. Second, because you can also sell your work over the internet in ebook format, for increased profits.
The book business is a consignment game. The publisher sells the books to a distributor, who sells the books to a bookstore. But the bookstore can return unsold books to the distributor, who can then either resell them, dump them off to a wholesaler at a horrendous discount, or send them back to the publisher and get a credit against the next batch of books the publisher wants to sell.
For the publisher, it couldn't be worse. What a mess. The distributor, just to start, is getting 35% to 65% off (the industry-standard trade discount is 55% off the cover price). Which means that the publisher and the author have to fight over the 45% that's left... actually much less after deducting publishing costs.
In traditional publishing, the publisher takes the risk. After the costs of book design, book preparation, printing, shipping, losses due to returns, office costs, and taxes - there isn't much left for author's advances or royalties.
The publisher and author are like gamblers in Vegas, hoping against hope for that one big hit where the volume will make up for all the losses. And, just like losing gamblers, they fight a lot - with each other. Endless accusations and contract disputes... it's no way to make a living.
The numbers are not in a traditional author and publisher's favor. The average US lifetime sales for a book are about 2000 copies. And that includes the best sellers! Realistically, not counting best sellers, true average book sales are less than 1000.
This is why the traditional publishing system is such a train wreck. The money just isn't there. And now that internet ebook sales are increasing, there's even less profit. It's too bad. At Folio Books, my mother thought that traditional publishers were next to God, since they risked their own money to prepare and print works by unknown authors -- writers like Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck. But that was then. Today, forget it. Even if you could get a publishing house to take on your book, why would you want to? You'll be fighting the publisher for your share of the small amount of money left after the considerable expenses of traditional publishing.
There has to be a better way. There is. You can write and illustrate the book yourself, and then publish it yourself thanks to a new technology called POD -- Print On Demand. Suddenly, the economics start making sense -- for you, anyway!
Revolution -- POD and ebook
Just a few years ago, it was practically impossible for an author to sit in Starbucks, write, edit, and format her book, and wi-fi it to a POD printer halfway across America. Humor me -- let's briefly go back to the good old days, 1965, when I was a 20-something in New York, and the newspaper unions went on strike because new offset printing was obsoleting their oldstyle letterpress skills. Working as an artist at an an ad agency, I loved offset -- an exciting negative-to-plate technology that made it easy to use photographs in ads... and let the ad designer use any typeface whatsoever.
A revolution that lasted into the 1980s, when graphical computers appeared, and you could design onscreen. But you still had to take your computer file -- a PDF -- to a print shop, where it was transferred via negatives to metal plates, one for each of the four CMYK colors, on the offset press. And an offset press isn't for short runs. You burn through 200 copies just getting the ink right, and you have to run each sheet through four times for a color print job.
So it was utterly impossible for someone to print their own book -- unless they (or their publisher) came up with the money for a print run of 500, 1000, 2000 books at a time. Like anything, offset gets cheaper with volume, but that didn't do self-publishers any good. Rich people could afford a garage full of books, but the rest of us? No way.
But that was then. Just a few years ago, like a shark sneaking up on an offset-press swimmer, the color copier industry finally succeeded in marrying their electrostatic printing technology to a computer. You see it every day now at places like FedEx Office, at Staples Copy Centers. But the big news is that very large, very fast full-color digital copiers are now installed at major US corporations, for in-house brochure, report, and poster printing. And they are used by digital book printers, like Ingram Lightning Source.
The electrostatic, dry-toner process -- let's just cal it xerox -- still uses the traditional four CMYK colors (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black). But each color is fused onto the sheet of paper almost simultaneously -- the sheet only goes through the press once, instead of offset's four passes. There is no drying time. And, just like an offset press, the toner-printed sheets can be varnished, laminated, embossed, gold-foiled, etc. The xerox process also lets you print one sheet... or one book... just as easily as 1000.
SPS -- There is no penalty for a short run.
Once your digital book file is downloaded from your POD printer's digital library to the press, the printer can make as many -- and only as many -- books as you want. Or as many books as are ordered. At your end, is there anything you have to do differently to set up your book for POD printing? Well, sure. But not much. And if you've run off a flyer or brochure at a copy center in the last few years, you're ahead of the curve already, Later chapters will detail the few extra things you'll need to know.
Books and the internet
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair..."
-- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
As I write this, publishing's 'Big 6' -- Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan, Penguin Group, Bertelsmann AG (Random House), and Simon & Schuster -- have gobbled up all the small publishing houses. Large retailers like Borders/Waldenbooks (was 674 stores) are going Chapter 11 (WSJ, Feb. 13, 2011). Barnes & Noble, the largest bookseller, makes cutbacks... including the legendary Marcella Smith, director of their Small Press Department. And, thanks to the internet, Amazon is suddenly selling more ebooks than paper books.
Like the revolution in printing, there's a revolution going on in communications. It is fast moving, like Sidney Carton's French Revolution, and, as then, it eats its own children: "La révolution dévore ses enfants" -- Danton, just before his own execution.. First bulletin boards, Then AOL. And now, e-mail becomes old, as Facebook and Twitter move in. Next flavor of the month? Who knows. This is a time of change.
But for self-publishers, it's the best of times.We can sell directly to the customer, right from our own websites, maximizing profit margins by eliminating the printer, the distributor and the bookstore. And, if we also move printed books through the old system, the internet really makes it fast and easy for customers to order our products.
You, the author, can now sell an electronic file, such as a PDF, rather than a paper printed book. Actual printing costs are pushed to the customer, who may print your ebook out on paper, if desired. You can give the customer a better price on an ebook, because you have zero printing costs, and no need to stock inventory.
Also, you'll net more money, because you don't have to give a cut to the distributor, or a discount to the bookseller.
We'll go over all this in detail in the chapters ahead. But for those of you who want to just go at it immediately, read the Quick Start guide in the next few pages. It covers the 12 essential steps you'll take as you self-publish your work... your 12 steps to success.
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NEW,
updated --
Amazon Kindle ebook -- Self-Publishing
Secrets 2012 -- $9.95
Loaded with links to everything you need!
Paperback -- get it from Amazon, only $15.56 Or, you can get it from Barnes & Noble stores, for $19.95. If not on the shelves, it's in their catalog -- just ask for it, and they will get it in for you... ISBN 978-0-9833191-0-8.
