Publish Your Own Book
by Ari Armstrong, April 11, 2011
Updated April 13
You know you have a book in you, and the idea of publishing it yourself intrigues you, especially given the rapidly advancing world of epublishing. In this brief essay I explain how to edit, design, format, and publish your book, then sell it to readers. If that's the information you're looking for, read on.
If, on the other hand, you see self-publishing as some sort of get-rich-quick scheme, you can stop right here. For nearly all authors publishing a book is far from that. If you're looking for somebody to hold your hand through every step of the process, again you've come to the wrong place. This is an essay, not an exhaustive tome. (You might find some useful starting points here that you can pursue further elsewhere.) Finally, if you have no wish to do your own research and check my claims, please stop reading and go find a guru somewhere else. I don't have all the answers, and some of my answers might even be wrong (though I'll try hard to avoid errors). You should independently verify all my information and critically evaluate my proposals. Obviously if you follow any of my advice you do so at your own financial and legal risk.
So who the hell am I, and why should you listen to me? I write about politics at Free Colorado and coauthor a column for Grand Junction Free Press. More relevant to book publishing, I came out with Values of Harry Potter in 2008 and an Expanded Edition of that book this year.
I plan to release two more books this year, both on politics. In addition, I've served as assistant editor for two other books critical of the drug war.
I do not, then, have extensive experience publishing books. I am interested in publishing only my work, and after my three books this year I probably won't publish another for at least a couple of years.
In terms of quality of design, copyediting, and formatting, I'll put Values of Harry Potter up against any book on the market, from any publisher.
I pursue two main purposes in writing this essay. First, I want to keep my notes and thoughts organized and accessible to me for when I'm ready to put together my next book. Second, I hope other independent self-publishers find some of the ideas and information here useful. (A third purpose is to suggest my book as a quality example of an independently published work.) I hope to offer some basic, no-nonsense advice on working through a book project—because it ain't easy.
When Should You Write a Book?
Just because you have a good idea doesn't mean you should put it in a book. Sometimes the best publishing venue is a magazine or journal article, a newspaper article, a web page or blog post (as with this essay), or even a social media site.
A book proclaims permanence. Readers will find these ideas in this form interesting for years. So you're going to spend the extra time—a lot of extra time—finely crafting your words and the look of your words. A book is not slapped together. A book is a work of art. A book is a reflection of you.
You should write a book when you have something that merits filling a book, and when you are willing to devote the time and resources required to publish a quality product. Because, in case you didn't catch this the first time, it ain't easy.
Two Selling Models
Should you sell your book primarily through distributors or more directly to your audience? The first approach invokes the traditional publishing model. You get an agent and publish your book through an established press, which handles all the editing, design, and marketing. The publisher ships copies of your book mostly to distributors, bookstores, and libraries, though these days most publishers also sell books directly to consumers through an internet site. With the second approach, you publish your own book and sell copies to consumers through online sellers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, independent retailers, and perhaps mail order.
I do not mean to suggest that the two models never overlap; obviously they do. Authors supported by large publishers may independently promote their books to consumers via web pages, blogs, live events, and social media contacts. And authors who publish their own works can seek to sell their books through distributors and large bookstores. But, in my admittedly limited experience, most authors best serve themselves by mostly sticking to one path or the other. I'll explain the reasons in coming sections.
Some Hard Publishing Facts
Bowker estimates that in 2009 the United States saw the publication of over 288,000 new books. That's about 790 new books per day. What fraction of those titles do you think your typical bookstore carries? Here's a hint: Tattered Cover, one of Colorado's largest bookstores, boasts "more than 150,000 titles in inventory," and many of those are perennial sellers rather than new titles.
Lots of people want to write a book. Of that group, some significant proportion can actually string together words and sentences into a coherent story or message. A few of those people will spend the time to actually write a book. Of that small group, a fraction will become big sellers, complete with prominent bookstore positioning and hefty royalty checks. Most people who write a book will see their title appear in few if any bookstores. If you're okay with that, then please read on.
Amanda Hocking made it huge selling her own novels, but she wrote the following advice about self-publishing versus traditional publishing: "One is easier to get into but harder to maintain. But neither come with guarantees. Some books will sell, some won't."
Even most books that sell okay usually don't sell very many copies. Consider these often-cited figures from a 2006 Publishers Weekly article:
"in 2004, 950,000 titles out of the 1.2 million tracked by Nielsen Bookscan sold fewer than 99 copies. Another 200,000 sold fewer than 1,000 copies. Only 25,000 sold more than 5,000 copies. The average book in America sells about 500 copies. Those blockbusters are a minute anomaly: only 10 books sold more than a million copies last year, and fewer than 500 sold more than 100,000."
In blunt truth, if you're not a big enough author to land a big publisher, chances are excellent that your book will sell in the triple digits, if you are relatively successful. Even if you write a wonderful book, design it beautifully, and sell the hell out of it, you'll be doing well to sell a few thousand copies. Yes, you might pen a runaway bestseller, just as the local rock band might record a major hit, but it's not likely.
It should tell you something that some of the most successful self-published books are about self-publishing.
The Big Publisher
Many publishers won't even look at you unless you've signed with a respected agent. This makes sense; agents filter out the reams of junk and offer publishers the best works. Of course this process can fail: publishers can sign duds and reject major sellers. But a publisher that signed every manuscript that walked through the door soon would go broke.
The problem for you is that, if you have not already written a profitable seller, or if you do not already host a major television or radio show, no agent or publisher is likely to take you seriously. How a first-time author signs with an agent and then a publisher is none of my concern. My point is that, if you're a first-time, unknown author, your only choice may be to go it alone.
Even if you have the ability to sign with a big publisher, I can think of at least four important reasons why you might not want to.
First, getting a book through an agent and publisher can be a grueling process taking months or years. I personally have neither the patience for that nor the tolerance for pleading.
Second, if you sign with a publisher, you lose control of your book. You don't have final say over the editing, design, distribution, pricing, or marketing (unless you somehow are able to write such points into your contract). I personally want to retain full control over my work and make all the final decisions regarding my books.
Third, you cannot stop your publisher from sending your book to the guillotine known as the Remainder Bin. A publisher may decide to declare your book a loss and focus on more successful titles. And you may have a hard time reclaiming the rights to your book.
Fourth, you might earn more solo. A publisher might pay you ten or fifteen percent of the proceeds from your book sales. The standard commission for digital sales stands at seventy percent. You can also make a much larger cut through paperback sales. So, even if you sell significantly fewer books on your own than you'd sell through a publisher, you might still make more money.
All that said, big publishers have longstanding relationships with distributers, stores, and reviewers. A big publisher can get your book onto bookstore shelves and into libraries. It can generate major reviews and buy advertising. A big publisher can promote a book in ways that practically no independent publisher can hope to match.
If you think you have a good enough idea (or a big enough name) to land a major publisher, Sam Harris offers some good basic advice on how to do it.
The Small Publisher
"Nearly 300 U.S. book publishers are members of AAP [the Association of American Publishers], the national trade association. They represent the nation's major commercial, educational and professional publishing houses as well as scholarly societies, university presses and smaller and non-profit publishers."
If there are 300 "major" publishers in the United States, how many small ones are there? The Independent Book Publishers Association touts "membership of more than 3,000 publishers."
My sense about small publishers is that they're great if you want somebody else to do all the work associated with publishing your book—and make all the money. A small but established publisher may be better able to place your book in libraries and select bookstores. And reviewers might take your book more seriously than if you publish it on your own.
However, to me it seems that a small publisher offers all the drawbacks of a big publisher with few of the rewards. You lose total control of your book. Somebody else makes all the important decisions. The author's cut is small. And you're still unlikely to see your title carried by bookstores across the nation.
I recognize that a small publisher can be the way to go for some authors who cannot land a major publisher. But, if you're willing to do the extra work associated with creating and marketing your book, you should seriously consider publishing it yourself instead.
"Self"-Publishing Mills
If you run "self-publishing" through a search engine, most of the top hits come from companies that make money from authors by publishing their books. These are sometimes called "vanity presses"; I call them publishing mills. In my view, they're not really about independent "self"-publishing at all.
I can think of absolutely no reason ever to sign up with a publishing mill. Remember that they're in business, not to sell books, but to make money off of authors. One report claims, "the average book from a POD [print on demand] service sells fewer than 200 copies." (Print on demand by publishing mills must be distinguished from author-controlled printing services that print books in small quantities.)
I've looked pretty carefully at several mill-published books, and generally they suck. The design is amateurish at best. One mill-published author complained on her web page that, after her book went on sale, she found numerous errors in it, requiring a major overhaul. Another mill-published book I purchased contains three typographical errors on the first page.
Think about the incentives. The idea is for the author to pay a publishing mill some hundreds of dollars to handle the design, formatting, and publication of a book. What is the incentive for the mill publisher to create a fabulous product or to actually sell the book? Largely it does not exist.
Successfully publishing a book takes work. It takes work to convince a publisher (large or small) to accept your book, or, alternately, it takes work to go it alone. Somebody who promises to take all the work out of the process for a nominal fee has somebody's interests in mind, but it is not the author's.
So my advice is to avoid mills and either find a real book publisher or become a truly independent self-publisher.
Independent Self-Publishing
So let us assume that either you cannot land a traditional book publisher or your entrepreneurial spirit drives you to break an independent path. You choose to become an independent self-publisher. What does that entail?
Publishing your own book means that ultimately you bear responsibility for every step of the process. You must conceive the story or theme, research and write the text, oversee the editing and design of the book and its cover, and then publish and market the book. You are responsible for all related expenses. If your book contains libelous material or violates somebody else's copyright, or perhaps even if it offers risky advice that causes damages, you are legally liable.
Publishing on your own also means that you maintain full control over your book, and you earn a large share if you manage to sell any copies. It is this independence that I find most appealing about publishing one's own book.
So how do you actually go about publishing a book of your own? That is the subject of the remainder of this essay. I reiterate my warning that my advice cannot possibly be comprehensive given the constraints of a relatively short essay, and I might even unintentionally make some errors. While I will strive to offer useful advice, I again urge you to independently verify all of my claims, to consider possible problems with my advice, and to actively seek out the views of others on the topic.
The Style Sheet
Is it "J.K. Rowling" (no space) or "J. K. Rowling?" When should I use the initials and when should I use only the last name? How should I use ellipses in citations? You will face similar questions and scores more as you write your manuscript. I encourage you to develop a style sheet as you write.
You can build and adapt your style sheet to fit your own purposes. Following are some of my suggestions.
Place a comma or a question mark inside a quote mark. But place a semicolon after a closing quote.
Spell out numbers through twelve, and use digits for the rest.
For citations, use ellipses to indicate you are skipping text or leaving text off at the end. For Values of Harry Potter, usually I omitted the ellipses at ends of quotations, and I think that's more standard, but I've decided I want to indicate to the reader when there's more to a quote.
Use an "em dash" between phrases. It looks like this—for which "—" is the html code. (For the pdf you use a real em dash; for the digital edition you use the html coding. See below.)
Use an "en dash" between page numbers (45–47, html code –), and use the complete page numbers. In my book I used abbreviated numbers (146–47), but I found the rules for this to be overly complicated. So for all future projects I will use the full digits.
Cite material exactly as it appears in the original, complete with capital letters, italicized words, etc. Do not put "emphasis in original" to indicate this; just reproduce the emphasis. If you do add or subtract emphasis, then say so in the note.
For citations, convert all titles to capitalize the first letters of each major word. (The titles of many newspaper articles capitalize the first letter of only the first word.)
In citations, use brackets to insert explanatory words not found in the original.
Don't use "and/or." Use "and" or "or."
Use apostrophe-s even for words that end in "s," as with "Jesus's."
Content Editing
As you write, you should seek out feedback from trusted friends and experts in the relevant fields. Networking can be key here. If you are writing a novel, you might join a writer's group and share your work with other published and aspiring novelists. If your goal is a nonfiction book, you should get to know others in your field of interest and find people willing to review your work.
While you can hire an editor for content editing, often the best feedback comes from your social networks. In order to get good feedback, often you'll need to give something in return. You'll be more likely to find people to read your manuscript if you offer to read theirs.
By seeking feedback, often you can avoid making big mistakes in your manuscript. For example, my father-in-law carefully reviewed my book and found several important mistakes that I was then able to correct. You want your own reviewers, not those writing about your book after publication, to catch the problems and mistakes. Moreover, critics will happily point out little errors in your book in an effort to undermine your broader points.
Remember to keep track of of those who offer you good advice, and thank them in your acknowledgements or footnotes.
Copy Editing
Nothing cries amateur so loudly as a book riddled with spelling and typographical errors, which is unfortunately typical of mill-published and self-published books.
You do not want to see a review of your book discussing your "spelling and grammar errors, which come so quickly that, especially in the first several chapters, it's difficult to get into the book without being jarred back to reality as you attempt unraveling what the author meant." (This pertained to a novel.)
If you try to copy edit your own book, you will fail. Once you get the look of the words stuck in your head, often errors will become invisible to you. You simply must subject your book to outside editing, if you wish to publish a product that you can be proud of and that other people take seriously.
Consider my own experiences. The first book I worked on (as assistant editor) criticized the drug war. We had seven people review the entire manuscript. Yet we rushed production a bit, and the final product ended up with several typographical errors. It was a good-looking book, but it would have been better if we'd taken the extra time to subject it to that final round of professional copy editing.
The one thing in this world that comes closest to making me believe in gremlins is the book editing process. In the final stages of editing my newly expanded book, my wife discovered that the word "matters" had somehow transformed into "maters." I have no idea how this happened: the original source file contains the correct spelling.
If you have friends able to competently copy edit a book, you might be able to get away with not hiring a professional editor. Just remember that often you get what you pay for: somebody accepting money for the job has a stronger incentive to be conscientious.
Generally I strongly recommend that you hire a professional editor. I had the good fortune of finding somebody who once worked for a large publishing house and who is superb. If you're not sure which editor to hire, you might try hiring somebody for a smaller project, such as a single chapter.
It is overwhelmingly important that any work you fund for your book is "work for hire," meaning that you retain the copyright to the material. Have a written agreement. The last thing you need is for somebody to sue you claiming partial ownership to the text or imagery of your book. For details please consult an attorney.
You'll probably pay a professional copy editor more than you'd pay for "editing" services from a mill publisher. Assuming you hire a decent editor, you'll also get results that are worth the money.
Frankly, if you're not serious enough to hire a professional copy editor, then you have no business going into book publishing. Write a blog or something else instead. Nothing screams "loser self-publisher" louder than a book riddled with mistakes. Be professional, or forget it.
Designing Your Book's Interior
The text of a good book is designed, not merely processed. If you want a beautiful book, you must hire a professional designer or learn the skills yourself. (I am fortunate to have married a graphic designer who expertly designed my book.)
Pretty much any standard word processor will export your text to a printable file. However, to publish a truly beautiful document, you need to create it in a software package that allows maximum control over the printed elements. Today's industry standard is Adobe's InDesign. It's expensive; you might do better to hire a designer who already knows how to use the software than to buy the software and try to learn how to use it yourself.
My book Values of Harry Potter contains not a single hyphenation that breaks a word at the end of a line. By contrast, the right-hand margins of most printed books bounce the reader's eye crazily over hyphens. But this sort of detailed design takes work. Sure, you can turn off hyphenation in your software package, but to make the text look beautiful sometimes you need to tweak the spacing between letters to achieve attractive lines.
If you don't know what "widows" and "orphans" are in design parlance, you need to learn or hire a professional. The basic idea is that you cannot leave stray words at the ends of paragraphs or the beginnings of pages. Nor can you leave subtitles disconnected from their text.
To publish a printed book in the modern age, you must convert your book (and its cover) to a pdf (Portable Document Format) file. This is what your printer (or printers) will use to turn your digital text into ink on paper. A pdf file retains all the page qualities and formatting as you want them to appear in print. Just remember that a pdf file is only as good as its designer makes it.
I recommend a book size of 5.5 by 8.5 inches, just because that's half the size of a standard sheet of paper and it's a standard book size. I also recommend that you designate the very first page as "1," rather than try to deal with roman numerals. That will keep your formatting and pagination much simpler. (I think Dan Poynter makes this recommendation.)
Designing Your Book's Cover
The single easiest way to get people to ignore your book is to give it a boring or visually grating cover. Even if you design the text yourself, you should probably hire a professional designer to create your cover. An artistic sense is not enough; a good cover design harmonizes images with typefaces. Unless you already know a lot about that, chances are excellent that you'll totally screw up your cover if you try to design it yourself. If you hire a hack, the results could be even worse.
People judge a book by its cover as a rule. And frankly they are right to do so. If you can't be bothered to oversee the creation of a visually interesting cover, changes are pretty good that the text sucks, too.
Promotional Quotes
Try hard to get at least one good promotional quote from a recognized leader in your field. If you can persuade somebody to write a foreword, you can put that person's name on the front and back of your book's cover. These quotes also add credibility to web pages related to your book.
Your ISBN
To publish a printed book you must obtain an ISBN, or International Standard Book Number. Currently Bowker sells an ISBN for $125 or a block of ten for $250.
You also need to convert your ISBN to a scannable bar code. Bowker offers this service for $25; I used a third party.
You can get an ISBN from others, sometimes for "free," but I don't know why you'd want to do that. For example, Amazon's CreateSpace will give you an ISBN, but then CreateSpace, not you or your imprint, is the publisher of record. If you're going to be an independent publisher, then be independent for real.
Various self-publishing guides will also recommend that you get a Library of Congress Control Number and, if you qualify (a one-book publisher does not), a Cataloging in Publication number. These are useful if you want library orders. I personally don't see the point. As a self-publisher your primary goal is to directly persuade consumers to buy your book. You can try to get library sales, and good luck with that. But you must get your ISBN.
Final Editing Passes
Before you send your book to the printer and make it available for sale, you need to run it through several final tests. Following is a partial list.
Search the text to eliminate all double spaces. (If you have double spaces following periods, frankly you have no business designing the interior of any book.)
Make sure all the page numbers in the book are correct.
Check all the headers.
Make sure the text and page numbers in the table of contents matches the text and page numbers within the text.
Make sure all the notes appear in the correct order and match between the text and the notes section.
Make sure the citations match the referenced material.
Check, recheck, and check again every single word and sentence of your cover.
Publishing with Amazon's CreateSpace
A basic problem with the original edition of my book was the cost of shipping copies to Amazon. You can avoid this cost, and probably earn a higher percent per copy sold, by using CreateSpace to sell your book through Amazon.
Notice that, while CreateSpace can function as a publishing mill, it can also function as an author-controlled on-demand printer. Because Amazon owns the company, books don't need to be shipped to Amazon, and they fall into Amazon's "super saver" shipping options. CreateSpace offers thorough instructions for formatting a book to specifications.
CreateSpace offers a couple other advantages. Authors can purchase copies at rates that compare favorably to independent printers I've seen. If you wish you can hire another printer to print a batch of your books for review copies and for sales elsewhere, or you can simply order extra copies from CreateSpace. And the service offers an optional "expanded distribution channel" to "make your title available to... wholesalers who in turn make your title available to thousands of online retailers, bookstores, and libraries."
CreateSpace does a very decent job of printing a book. A proof of my book revealed four minor issues. First, the color for the cover was not perfectly set, though I doubt anybody but my wife or me would have noticed. Second, the spine is pinched together at the edge, which leaves a crease on the front and back covers; this is no big deal. Third, CreateSpace's cutters leave the other edges of the cover slightly indented. And finally CreateSpace includes a coded page at the back and possibly some extra blank pages. But none of these issues bothers me. Overall CreateSpace books look good, provided the source files look good.
As of this writing, a 200-page book (black on white interior, full-color cover, 5.5 by 8.5 inch size), priced at $14.95, offers the author $5.72 with the "pro" plan through Amazon. (The "pro" plan costs $39 upfront and $5 annually as of this writing.) That's a 38 percent cut, which in the scope of things is not bad.
Having tried to sell books to customers with no third-party intermediary, I recommend against it as a general rule. Processing and mailing orders can consume quite a lot of time. And, if your state has a sales tax, dealing with that can be a nightmare. My advice is to let those who specialize in processing orders do that. You'll make less per sale, but you'll have more time to promote sales.
Producing the Digital Edition
The year 2010 was a watershed year for digital publishing. Consumers may now buy digital books for a variety of electronic devices from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, and other sellers. Reuters reports that from the beginning of 2010 to the beginning of 2011, sales of electronic books more than doubled, as sales of paperbacks and hardbacks fell. True, in January ebooks represented only $69.9 million of the total $805.7 million in book sales, or 8.7 percent. But ebooks represent a large and growing portion of book sales, and for some categories ebooks prove even more vital.
So how does one create an ebook? (Obviously I welcome you to check out the Kindle version of Values of Harry Potter.)
For printing, a pdf file mirrors the page. But for digital reading, text should flow freely to fit the screen size and font preference of the reader. Generally an ebook supports some sort of html coding, though different sellers format the final product in different ways. (While both the mobi and epub formats derive from html-style coding, I don't know the details about the formatting for those.) To publish your own book, then, you need to generate two basic sorts of files: a pdf for printing and an html document for ebooks.
In my view, your digital ebook should be formatted as simply as possible so that many devices and software programs can easily translate it. I will briefly walk you through the way I transformed my book to an ebook. I do not claim that I'm using "best practices," just ones that seem to work okay.
I do recommend that you translate your text to the digital edition by hand, rather than try to run a pdf or some other type of document through some automated translator. You have a great chance of introducing legion formatting problems by trying to automate the process.
I just use a basic text-only word processor. Add ".html" as your file extension. First I set up the basic html markers:
<html>
<body>
</body>
</html>
(Incidentally, I'm using a cool little translator to make my html coding appear.)
Then use basic header and paragraph markers to set up your text:
<html>
<body>
<h2>Title</h2>
<h3>Chapter 1</h3>
<p>This is the first paragraph.</p>
<p>I want to achieve a single return and an indent. With most web browsers, using paragraph markers will instead display a double return. However, Joshua Tallent notes (see below) that the Kindle translates a new paragraph marker as a single return with an indent.</p>
</body>
</html>
On the Kindle that appears as follows:
Title
Chapter 1
This is the first paragraph.
I want to achieve a single return and an indent. With most web browsers, using paragraph markers will instead display a double return. However, Joshua Tallent notes (see below) that the Kindle translates a new paragraph marker as a single return with an indent.
So far, this is relatively easy. The hard part is creating a bunch of internal links. I've successfully used the <a name=""></a> tags, but I need to check to see whether there's a better way of doing this. I think you at least want the TOC entries to link back and forth to the chapters and the note markers to link back and forth to the endnotes. I've linked up my entire index, which was a major hassle, but I think the results are kind of cool.
One thing I do that is fairly unique is to insert page numbers into my ebook that match those of the printed edition. Obviously in the ebook these numbers may appear anywhere on the screen, as the text flows freely. The advantage of inserting page numbers is that they make a book more citable. True, Amazon has started adding in page numbers matching the printed editions, but as far as I can tell it's impossible to figure out exactly where a page starts and ends. In my book the pagination is obvious.
I decided on the following code:
Page 46 ends following the next period. <sub><font size=-2>47</font></sub> Then page 47 begins.
This appears as follows:
Page 46 ends following the next period. 47 Then page 47 begins.
I like the small subscripted text for the page number because I think it lets the reader's eye float past more easily, while still providing the reader with the information. For page numbers that begin new chapters or sections, I use brackets ("[Page 87]").
Of course, if you don't care about readers citing your book, or if you don't even offer a printed version, adding in the page numbers makes little sense. For my purposes, though, I really like them. Notice that including these page references also allows one to link internally to specific pages.
I think it's best to transfer the text from the finalized pdf file to the file for the ebook. You can use your word processor's "search and replace" functions to translate smart quotes to dumb quotes, em dashes to their html equivalent, and so forth. You'll need to go through the pdf carefully to translate italics and special characters by hand.
If your pdf contains charts and graphs or illustrations, you'll need to convert those to standard images (I assume jpg files) and figure out how to incorporate them into the ebook. I haven't had to worry about that, so I don't know how to do it.
Both Amazon and Barnes & Noble offer additional information for publishing ebooks through their stores.
You'll need to proofread your ebook just as you proofread your pdf. For the original edition of my ebook, I failed to catch a few screwy characters. I spent more time going through the expanded edition.
A basic issue with ebook readers is that, depending on the size of the screen and the text, typically they show many fewer words per page than a printed page shows. While a reader of a printed book can easily flip through the introductory content to get to the book's main text, with an ebook it might be best to get to the table of contents as directly as possible. Therefore, one strategy is to move the ebook's title pages and cover copy to the back and link to it. However, as Talent notes, Kindle uses unique tags to recognize the table of contents and start of a book's content.
Incidentally, for my next project, I also intend to move the acknowledgements page to the back, both for the printed and the digital version, again to move the reader more directly into the main material.
Promoting Your Book
Entire books review the business of book promotion. Here I merely want to mention a few of the basics.
An important way to promote major books is through bookstore displays. As a small-time, independent self-publisher, you're pretty much ruling that out. But there are plenty of other ways to sell your book.
Create a web page and a Facebook page for your book. (I am especially intrigued by the possibility of advertising books on Facebook based on user characterisitics.) Consider starting a blog or Twitter feed devoted to your area of expertise.
If you have any friends in the newspaper and television industries, send them a review copy of your book. You should definitely also send out a media release at least to your local media; a news reporter might bite on a "local author makes good" hook. But don't expect major reviews in newspapers across the country. I managed an interview with Westword, Colorado's most important alternative paper.
Try pitching an op-ed based on your book. I successfully pitched an op-ed relating Harry Potter to modern politics to the Rocky Mountain News. Then Colorado's 9News saw the piece and based a television appearance on it.
Don't purchase print advertisements; they're a complete waste of money.
I would never refuse to send a review copy to a writer who asks for one. On the other hand, there's no need to blanket the world with review copies; that can get expensive. I'd send out a release and make it easy for people to request a copy, but then wait for that request, unless you already know the person or have some particular reason to pitch your book to a particular reviewer.
To successfully sell your book (with success being a somewhat relative term here), you have to know your book and its intended audience, and you have to find a way to reach that audience. You'd sell a romance novel, a science book, and a political manifesto to very different audiences through different means.
Honestly, if you're not thinking about how to sell your book before you even start writing it, and if you fail to deliver a superb product, you probably won't sell more than a few dozen copies, if that. Selling a book and writing a book are two aspects of the same project. Sure, some good books fail to launch due to poor marketing, and an exceptional marketer can move a mediocre book. Generally, though, you can sell only a good book, and you can write a good book only if you know how you plan to sell it. So the topic is worth a lot more time and thought than the brevity of my comments here might suggest.
Stay In Touch
I hope you'll "Like" my Facebook page and the page for my book.
Feel free to send me comments about independent self-publishing, though only if you want me to reproduce your comments below. I may respond to select comments. For God's sake do not email me solicitations (unless they involve you purchasing copies of my book). You can email me at ari (atsign) freecolorado (dot) com.
Happy publishing!
Comments by Sarrionandia and Tallent
In my original write-up, I included the following advice:
Then use basic header and paragraph markers to set up your text:
<html>
<body>
<h2>Title</h2>
<h3>Chapter 1</h3>
<p>This is the first paragraph. <br />
I want a soft return and an indent, so I use a break code plus some spacers. But now I do want a hard return, so I'll insert a close-paragraph marker.</p>
</body>
</html>
That appears as follows:Title
Chapter 1
This is the first paragraph.
I want a soft return and an indent, so I use a break code plus some spacers. But now I do want a hard return, so I'll insert a close-paragraph marker.
But then Roberto Brian Sarrionandia of Aberystwyth, UK, sent in the following comments:
Hi Ari,
I like the self publishing article, but I have one minor quip. The HTML you suggested for ebooks.
You are absolutely right that the HTML should be formatted as simply as possible, but there is a really important principle you need to keep in mind: never use elements that impose visual changes. This is often referred to as the separation of content and presentation.
For example: when you enclose a paragraph in <p> tags, you aren't really telling the browser to put line breaks around it, you are telling it "Do whatever you think is best to convey that I have written a paragraph". However, when you use the "soft indent" ( ) you are literally saying "insert five non breaking spaces".
This is usually OK, but it falls apart when something other than an able bodied human using a run-of-the-mill browser or ereader tries to read it. For example, a blind user may have configured an ereader to read one paragraph, then wait until it is asked to continue or repeat the last paragraph. Or, some special software might be used by the ereader or Amazon to count the paragraphs in your document in order to provide accurate progress bars or section skipping.
This is especially true of elements like <i>—usually when you italicise something, you are really just putting emphasis on it, so use <emph>. This way, a screen reader can just alter the tone of voice for emphasis (since you can't hear italics).
In short: the publisher chooses the content, the user chooses how he views it. That's the easy way to ensure your content works everywhere, for everyone. There is even a legal precedent to sue web publishers whose content is inaccessible.
See: http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/contentPresentation-26.html for more info.
Originally I responded:
I am very sympathetic with these comments. In fact, when I first tried converting the original version of my book to Kindle, I used paragraph tags to open and close each paragraph. I changed to the break and indent codes because otherwise Amazon seemed to insert double-returns between paragraphs, which I didn't want. However, this might have been the result of an imprecise representation by Amazon's display window. Or perhaps Amazon has updated its translation protocols. This is definitely something for me to check out before I publish my next book.
I am not persuaded that I should substitute an emphasis code for an italics code. Sometimes I want to italicize text, and sometimes I want to show it in bold. Moreover, when I'm quoting other material, I use the italics code to show when the original material contains italicized words.
I notice that there are several books out on formatting an ebook, including one specific to the Kindle. If somebody knows about a good free online resource, please send me the link.
To follow up with this, I contacted Joshua Talent, who wrote the book about Kindle formatting linked directly above. I asked him, "If I use paragraph markers (<p> and </p>) to start and close each paragraph, does Kindle insert a double return or a return-indent?"
He responded as follows:
Ari,
Thanks for dropping me a line. The comment about paragraph tags is correct: every web browser and eBook software/device can display your standard <p> tags however it likes. In webs browsers, that usually means some margins above and below the paragraph and no first-line indent. The Kindle does not include those margins, and it does include a default first-line indent. You have to specifically override those settings in your stylesheet if you want the text to be un-indented and have space between paragraphs.
I do cover this in my book, so please do feel free to buy a copy. It is a great resource for Kindle HTML.
Joshua Tallent
Founder/CEO
eBook Architects
www.eBookArchitects.com
www.KindleFormatting.com
Given this input, I plan to format all future ebooks with clear paragraph markers for each paragraph.