So you want to publish a book and do not know where to start?

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So you want to publish a book and don’t know where to start?  The good news is this isn’t a problem but means you are completely normal and just like everyone else. How can you possibly know where to start if you are doing something you have never done before and therefore don’t know what you don’t know about it.

As such I decided to write some quick tips to help you out. The key thing you need to know is you must start with the end in mind. In other words line up why you want to publish a book with how you plan to distribute your book and the rest of the process can flow from there.

Why are you publishing a book

I want to fulfil a dream – you must distribute your book yourself as there is no greater way to get satisfaction from publishing books then to be meeting your target market on a regular basis and seeing the changes you book has made in their lives.

I want to earn a passive income – you must distribute your book online as this is the quickest way to get the highest  financial returns with the least amount of ongoing work involved.

I want to gain credibility – you must distribute your book via bookstores as this method only works if media attention is involved and if the media is talking about you and your book so is everyone else.

Where to start for each process

Self Distribution – this only involves your time and you can set it up for free. Organise to speak for free anywhere you target market will be in return for being allowed to sell copies of your book afterwards. You can design and print your own order form to be completed by customers on the day and if you promote your events via social media there will be no marketing costs involved either.

Online Distribution – this has the highest set up costs but the lowest ongoing costs. Start with what you can afford eg. a template (customed designed to match the branding of your book), a content managed website (so you can edit it yourself) and a shopping cart (to automate the selling process for you). You can grow the functionalities of your store from the profits it brings in.

Bookstore Distribution –  this has no set up costs as such but a low returns on investment so it’s a numbers game. You might only get $1-$2 profit per copy of your book sold but if you move 5,000 do you care? The trick to this choice is to take it slow supplying low volumes of your book to stores so they sell out encouraging them to re-order as re-orders have higher volumes then initial purchases and also have lower return rates.

If you would like more information on the other 6 stages of the publishing process and how to create your customised publishing plan to get your from where you are now to where you want to be click here.

SO YOU WANT AN EBOOK - DO YOU KNOW WHAT KIND?

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So you have decided you want to create an ebook maybe because it is the most economical way to begin publishing, maybe because you want your book available in more than 1 format or maybe because plain and simple you think it is time you caught up with this increasingly popular trend.

The reason really doesn’t matter but what does is how you are going to go about it. Firstly how do you plan to sell it – from your webstore or from someone else’s? If you webstore what format do you want it in? If someone else’s which store will get you the best sales and what format do they need it in? The questions could be endless but the last one on any list is always ‘but how do I get my book into that format?’. Let me try and answer all of these for you in the quickest and most succinct manner possible.

1. For your webstore:

Currently the 2 most popular formats are the pdf (static acrobat based ebook) and the swf (animated flash based ebook). The pdf is print friendly - good for when people want to be able to print it out to read later but the swf is screen friendly - looks great on screen with its animated turning pages. What you want to think about is what is right for your target market but at the end of the day the decision is up to you whether you want to supply your customers with a pdf, a swf of both versions so they can pick and choose.

1. For someone else’s webstore:

There are lots of places to choose from these days but the only one I recommend is Amazon.com. There is 2 reasons for this 1) because it has the monopoly of traffic and therefore the highest volume of sales and 2) because it is a registered store which gives it (and therefore your book) higher credibility then just being available on any old webstore.

How Amazon differs from your own webstore is the manner in which your ebook is provided to the customer. From your webstore the customer downloads their ebook assumedly to read on their computer whether that be PC or MAC (as this is all most web solutions support) but when it comes to a registered store the download process (and therefore the way your book needs to be set-up and/or coded) is completely different.

A book purchased from Amazon is not an ‘ebook’ as such even though it is an electronic book but it referred to as a ‘kindle’ as it is sold through their ‘kindle store’. This opens a whole new world of opportunities up to authors wanting to publish an ebook. Suddenly your ebook is not just being read on a PC or MAC but on an ebook reader (such as a kindle or one of the numerous varieties available online or in any good bookstore) or an ipad, an android/blackberry phone or an iphone... the list is endless. Suddenly it is not about what you want your ebook to be but the market is dictating to you how they want to receive your book which means you either need to learn how to use this new technology (or pay someone to do this for you) or you and your book may get left behind.

Everything is continuously changing and changing rapidly - I can only wonder what the future of ebooks will hold.

For more details on our ebook services click here

For more details on our Amazon service click here