E-Book Publishing DIY
How to Publish an E-Book in Three Easy Steps
Third Edition, Completely Revised and Updated
Smashwords Edition
Copyright Tony Loton / LOTONtech Limited 2012, All Rights Reserved
This e-book may not be distributed in any form or by any means whatsoever without the prior permission of the author and / or publisher (LOTONtech Limited).
The material in this book is provided for educational purposes only. No responsibility for loss occasioned to any person or corporate body acting or refraining to act as a result of reading material in this book can be accepted by the author or publisher.
All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. LOTONtech Limited is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in the book unless otherwise stated.
Unless otherwise stated, any third-party quotes, images and screenshots or portions thereof are included under ‘fair use’ for comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship and research.
This e-book was proofread by Becky Loton, who also appears as the cover model on this edition.
About The Author and This Edition
Tony Loton is a publishing consultant who has helped many first-time authors realise their dream of publishing print books and e-books via popular channels including Amazon. You can find out more at:
http://publishingdiy.blogspot.com/p/publishing-assistance.html.
Tony has previously written and published two editions of the book Book Publishing DIY : The Do It Yourself Guide to Print-on-Demand Self Publishing as well as two previous editions of the book you are reading now.
Although I have styled this book as “E-Book Publishing DIY” to assure continuity from the previous edition(s) and consistency with my web site, it has in fact been written entirely from scratch to take account of the latest developments in the e-book industry as well as my own evolving knowledge and experience. So it’s the same topic and some of the same ideas as before, but entirely new content.
Having experimented with various e-book formats and publishing routes, I now realise that writing and publishing an e-book doesn’t have to be half as complicated as it is often portrayed to be. I hope to convince you likewise with my simple three step formula:
Step 1: Prepare Your Manuscript
It’s as easy as 1-2-3!
Once you’ve published your e-book and found that it is selling like hot cakes, as I hope it will, you might consider my Afterthoughts. You might also want to refer to my Afterthoughts if your e-book isn’t selling like hot cakes, because e-books don’t sell themselves.
You might be surprised at how quickly you read through this e-book; but of course it will take you longer when you actually follow the steps in practice. It doesn’t need to be any longer in order to tell you exactly what you need to know... and no more. So think not of how much reading you have done for the price you paid, but how much money you have saved by not following any red herrings on wild goose chases down blind alleys.
Step 1: Prepare Your Manuscript
The first step, or course, is to actually write the content for your e-book. You’ll need to choose a topic (if you haven’t thought of one already), choose your word processor (which could be a free one), and then set about laying out the e-book. Let’s look at each of those in turn.
Choose Your Topic
It is said that everyone has a book inside them, so what’s yours? Most importantly – will it sell, or doesn’t it need to? It’s an important consideration because books and e-books don’t sell simply because they are listed among the thousands of competing titles on Amazon and elsewhere. Personally, I long since gave up publishing material purely for vanity, merely to see my name “in lights” so to speak. If I don’t think my idea will sell, I don’t write the book -- or in this case, the e-book.
The first book I ever published (through John Wiley & Sons publishers) was titled “Web Content Mining with Java”. You might already have switched off, which only goes to illustrate my point. I put months of tender loving care into this work, and it received very favorable reviews on Amazon.com. See the proof at http://www.amazon.com/Content-Mining-Java-Tony-Loton/dp/047084311X.
But it didn’t sell many copies at all.
I have learned from this experience that it is not worth even beginning a book or e-book project unless you know at the outset that it has a potential audience. To have the best chance of selling a book, your e-book needs to be the first, the best, or the cheapest of its kind.
Before you move on, think again about whether you can meet at least one of these criteria; or – ideally – all three.
It’s a lot easier to sell non-fiction “how to” style books than fiction, especially if you are already considered to be a subject matter expert in your field. I can’t help you with the problem of how to write and market good fiction, but when it comes to non-fiction I can offer the following advice:
Pass on your knowledge. Write about something that has taken you a long time to learn. I spent quite some time learning the art of self-publishing, and now I’m saving you some time by passing on my knowledge in this book.
Learn something new. Believe it or not, I have sometimes used the book writing process as a vehicle for learning a new skill. Readers can be an unforgiving bunch, particularly in technical areas, so nothing forces you to really learn a subject more than writing a book about it. A good example of this is my book “Professional Visual Studio 2005 Team System” published by Wiley / Wrox Press.
Write a book as a marketing tool for your other products and services, even if your only product is yourself. My book “Professional UML with Visual Studio .NET” has not sold in particularly high numbers; but it sure got me a lot of consultancy work when I mentioned – in the interview or sales meeting – that “I have written the book on the subject”.
Choose Your Word Processor
When writing your e-book manuscript the emphasis should be on keeping it simple. There’s no point developing a fancy layout with multiple columns and multiple fonts when the ultimate destination for your e-book -- the e-book reader -- can only render text in a single column using a single font. For this reason you don’t need a full featured word processing package like Microsoft Word or even the free but somewhat difficult to use Open Office suite.
You can write your manuscript using any word processor that can save files in Microsoft Word (.doc) format and optionally Portable Document Format (PDF), and which supports basic heading styles. It might even be one of the free-to-use web-based word processing tools like Adobe Buzzword, the Microsoft Word Web App, or the Google Docs word processor that I’m using right now to write this manuscript. This could be a possible route for those of you considering using one of the newer web-only Chromebook computers (see Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk) rather than a traditional PC.