How to Publish an eBook
While print books have been the backbone and primary format for traditional publishing for… well, forever, that’s not the case for indies. Typically, indie authors are ebook first, focused on ebook sales and then audio and print. So how do you actually publish an ebook? The Alliance of Independent Authors extends thanks to Ebook Advisor, Linh Thoi, for her contributions to this post. This is how to publish an ebook.
If you’re an author looking to turn your print book into an eBook, or just wondering how to release a solo digital title, you may be pretty baffled about where to begin. Many—if not the majority—of self-publishers will turn to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing for the creation and distribution of their book, whether it be print or digital. Amazon does hold the majority share of digital sales (67% as of February 2021) and 50% of print sales. It’s a natural route to take, but knowing which platform to use is just the beginning. It’s important to first learn about the basics of digital books.
Step 1: Edit the manuscript
Readers might be hungrier for ebooks than ever before, but their appetites aren’t indiscriminate. If you want to entice them into reading your work, you’ll have to serve up something mouthwatering — prose that’s good down to the last drop.
Okay, enough culinary metaphors. The point is, whether you’re self-publishing a fantasy novel or an actual cookbook, quality matters. Before you even think about publishing your ebook, you’ll want to make sure there’s not a comma out of place.
A word of warning here: self-publishing an ebook is fast — so fast it can be dangerous. An impatient writer can turn a draft into a bona fide ebook in under an hour and see it go up for sale the next day. This greased-lightning pace is exactly why so many indie authors prefer digital releases. But the convenience of ebook publishing has a downside: it’s all too easy to send your work out into the world before it’s ready.
Don’t jump the gun and publish as soon as you type out the last sentence, or even as soon as you finish a thorough round of edits. Instead, put your manuscript away for a while, so you can come back refreshed enough to spot mistakes you missed on the last pass. Then bring in another pair of eyes — ideally, a trained editor who will leave your manuscript spotless.
Step 2: Design a book cover for your eBook
Remember, your cover is your ebook’s first and best marketing asset. It should look great in ads, draw likes on social media, and, above all, grab attention on crowded online marketplaces. Whether you attempt to DIY or hand a professional designer the reins (which we recommend), it’s important to use cover art to do your book justice. Phoning it in with a hastily produced, clip art-heavy image would be like shoving a priceless gem into a burlap sack.
Give your ebook the cover it deserves
If you want a deep dive into the world of book cover design in general, we’ve got a post that covers it (pun absolutely intended). But here’s one crucial, ebook-specific consideration to keep in mind. Unlike a print cover in brick and mortar bookstores, your cover needs to look good — and make sense — at full scale and in miniature.
Ebook publishing platforms require you to upload large, high-resolution JPG images for your cover. If you outsource your cover art to a professional, your designer will send you an image of appropriate size and quality. But if you’re going it alone, consult this guide to make sure your homemade image has the right dimensions.
Now, your cover image may be big, but on retail platforms like the Amazon Kindle Store, potential buyers will first encounter it as a tiny thumbnail — often no more than 100 px wide. This fateful glimpse can turn a virtual window-shopper into a devoted new fan.
A cover that’s gorgeous at full scale but a meaningless blur in miniature won’t do you any favors in the sales department — so make sure you invest in art that shines at any size.
Visibility
There are a lot of books out there. And so once your books are on sale, you have to make sure that people can find them and read them — and, hopefully, ask for more. This is often referred to in the self-publishing community as visibility.
If you’re going to use KDP Select, then a good place to start is to investigate all the various tools that Amazon makes available for promoting and marketing your book; for example, the ability to run limited-time discounts or free book promotions (which can be especially useful if you want to build up a series). But outside of that — and no matter how you’re selling your books — there are other services that have sprung up.
One popular site, BookBub, helps readers find books through recommendations, updates from favorite authors, and other means; it also offers marketing tools to authors such as book launches, preorders, and promotions. Book Funnel and MailChimp both offer help with promotional mailing lists, an important way for independent authors to sell their works. There are also sites for reading enthusiasts where you can join discussions and otherwise promote your book, such as Goodreads.
In the end, Rogers says, it’s all down to old-fashioned marketing. “You can do it with banner ads, with all kinds of online advertising. There’s places like BookBub that send out newsletters. You can talk to fan groups and you can go to conventions. Anything else you can think of that might qualify as marketing.”
Take responsibility for your books
Producing and selling your own work without a publishing house behind you means both the freedom to create your book the way you want to, and the responsibility to make sure it’s done as professionally as possible. “Understand that everything falls on your shoulders,” says Aukes. “You are accountable for the success of the publishing process. By taking on the kind of freedom and flexibility of self-publishing, you’re also taking on the accountability.”
In short, the process of publishing your own book can be both very simple and very complex. The actual mechanics of publishing an ebook, or even a print book, has become relatively easy, especially if you give yourself to the Amazon ecosystem. However, doing it well — and gaining a following of readers who will enjoy and buy your books — is not as easy. It takes trial and error, patience, and work. But if you’re a writer, and you want people to read your books, it’s certainly worth it.
McPhail urges new writers to stick with it. “There is disheartenment that can come along with reading reviews or the book isn’t selling quickly,” she says. “You have to have a lot of fortitude and conviction about your work so that you can stay the long haul — long enough to develop an audience for your work.”
Source:
https://selfpublishingadvice.org/how-to-publish-an-ebook/
https://blog.reedsy.com/guide/ebook/how-to-publish-an-ebook/
https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/1/18285875/self-publishing-ebook-amazon-kindle-epub-book-how-to-editing-art-sales-strategy
How to Publish an Ebook (in 9 Easy-to-Follow Steps)
How to Publish an eBook
While print books have been the backbone and primary format for traditional publishing for… well, forever, that’s not the case for indies. Typically, indie authors are ebook first, focused on ebook sales and then audio and print. So how do you actually publish an ebook? The Alliance of Independent Authors extends thanks to Ebook Advisor, Linh Thoi, for her contributions to this post. This is how to publish an ebook.
If you’re an author looking to turn your print book into an eBook, or just wondering how to release a solo digital title, you may be pretty baffled about where to begin. Many—if not the majority—of self-publishers will turn to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing for the creation and distribution of their book, whether it be print or digital. Amazon does hold the majority share of digital sales (67% as of February 2021) and 50% of print sales. It’s a natural route to take, but knowing which platform to use is just the beginning. It’s important to first learn about the basics of digital books.
Step 1: Edit the manuscript
Readers might be hungrier for ebooks than ever before, but their appetites aren’t indiscriminate. If you want to entice them into reading your work, you’ll have to serve up something mouthwatering — prose that’s good down to the last drop.
Okay, enough culinary metaphors. The point is, whether you’re self-publishing a fantasy novel or an actual cookbook, quality matters. Before you even think about publishing your ebook, you’ll want to make sure there’s not a comma out of place.
A word of warning here: self-publishing an ebook is fast — so fast it can be dangerous. An impatient writer can turn a draft into a bona fide ebook in under an hour and see it go up for sale the next day. This greased-lightning pace is exactly why so many indie authors prefer digital releases. But the convenience of ebook publishing has a downside: it’s all too easy to send your work out into the world before it’s ready.
Don’t jump the gun and publish as soon as you type out the last sentence, or even as soon as you finish a thorough round of edits. Instead, put your manuscript away for a while, so you can come back refreshed enough to spot mistakes you missed on the last pass. Then bring in another pair of eyes — ideally, a trained editor who will leave your manuscript spotless.
Step 2: Design a book cover for your eBook
Remember, your cover is your ebook’s first and best marketing asset. It should look great in ads, draw likes on social media, and, above all, grab attention on crowded online marketplaces. Whether you attempt to DIY or hand a professional designer the reins (which we recommend), it’s important to use cover art to do your book justice. Phoning it in with a hastily produced, clip art-heavy image would be like shoving a priceless gem into a burlap sack.
Give your ebook the cover it deserves
If you want a deep dive into the world of book cover design in general, we’ve got a post that covers it (pun absolutely intended). But here’s one crucial, ebook-specific consideration to keep in mind. Unlike a print cover in brick and mortar bookstores, your cover needs to look good — and make sense — at full scale and in miniature.
Ebook publishing platforms require you to upload large, high-resolution JPG images for your cover. If you outsource your cover art to a professional, your designer will send you an image of appropriate size and quality. But if you’re going it alone, consult this guide to make sure your homemade image has the right dimensions.
Now, your cover image may be big, but on retail platforms like the Amazon Kindle Store, potential buyers will first encounter it as a tiny thumbnail — often no more than 100 px wide. This fateful glimpse can turn a virtual window-shopper into a devoted new fan.
A cover that’s gorgeous at full scale but a meaningless blur in miniature won’t do you any favors in the sales department — so make sure you invest in art that shines at any size.
What about piracy?
- Most readers are not pirates. Most readers are wonderful people who are happy to support authors. Why miss out on the real market for fear of the pirates?
- Piracy will happen if your book is popular. There’s really no way of stopping it, but what do you think the most pirated books are? Harry Potter and other big sellers, of course, and does that impact their sales? Most people who pirate books are not going to be your readers anyway. It’s more important to consider obscurity, then piracy. More authors suffer from being completely unknown than from being famous enough to be significantly pirated.
- Some authors have used piracy as a marketing tool.Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist, released his book in Russia on the pirate sites and his sales picked up after word spread about him. Tim Ferriss launched The Four Hour Chef with a promotion on Bit Torrent which resulted in massive sales.
- Stay aware just in case. You can set up alerts with sites like mention.net around your book title or lines from your book. There are ways to get your books taken down, but in my experience, they pop up again all over the place. If you are seriously worried, then check out The Self-Publisher’s Legal Handbook by Helen Sedwick.
OK, we’re done. Now you can go and self-publish an ebook!
Need more help?
Source:
https://selfpublishingadvice.org/how-to-publish-an-ebook/
https://blog.reedsy.com/guide/ebook/how-to-publish-an-ebook/
https://www.thecreativepenn.com/how-to-self-publish-an-ebook/