{"id":335,"date":"2011-10-19T16:25:09","date_gmt":"2011-10-19T20:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/?p=335"},"modified":"2012-02-15T10:29:56","modified_gmt":"2012-02-15T15:29:56","slug":"the-easiest-way-to-self-publish-your-next-or-first-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/the-easiest-way-to-self-publish-your-next-or-first-book\/","title":{"rendered":"The Easiest Way to Self Publish Your Next (or First) Book"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Following up on my recent blog post called <strong><em><a title=\"Edit \u201cHow to Use Amazon.com New Publishing Model as a Shortcut to Fortune &amp; Fame\u201d\" href=\"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-admin\/post.php?post=324&amp;action=edit\">How to Use Amazon.com New Publishing Model as a Shortcut to Fortune &amp; Fame<\/a><\/em>, <\/strong>I thought it&#8217;d be useful to share how super simple it is to publish your next (or first) book.<\/p>\n<p><strong><\/strong>My first book, <em>Podcasting for Profit<\/em>, was published the traditional route. I signed a contract with a publisher, got an advance, wrote the 350-page manuscript in 4-months, got published, then twice a year, I get royalty cheques.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-339\" title=\"Multiple Streams of Virtual Event Income\" src=\"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/DSCF4512-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/DSCF4512-300x225.jpg 300w, http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/DSCF4512.jpg 916w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>My experience as a first time author was good. I worked with an awesome publisher who encouraged me every step of the way. If it weren&#8217;t for the constant prodding by my publisher, I would have never published my 1st book.<\/p>\n<p>Because of the topic of my 2nd book, I knew that I couldn&#8217;t go the traditional route. The topic couldn&#8217;t wait almost 2-years for it to be published because by then, the topic would be stale. So, I decided that my <a href=\"http:\/\/multiplestreamsofvirtualeventincome.com\" target=\"_blank\">2nd book would be self-published<\/a> (and I&#8217;ve since published my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Virtual-Stage-Telesummits-Multi-Speaker-ebook\/dp\/B005T4GTSO\/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1318945178&amp;sr=8-2\" target=\"_blank\">3rd book as a Kindle ebook<\/a>\u00a0and I&#8217;m currently working on the manuscript for my 4th book).<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s what I did to publish my 2nd book:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>I wrote the manuscript<\/strong>. I had been working on the manuscript for about a year, so it was just a matter of cleaning up the content. Since I seem to be more brilliant when I talk, I use Dragon Naturally Speaking to turn what I say into text on a page. This helps to speed up how much content I can produce at any given time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>I formatted the content in Word<\/strong>. That&#8217;s right! I didn&#8217;t use any odd software to do any typefacing. All I did was change the page layout to 6&#8243; wide and 9&#8243; long (typical size for a trade paperback book). I added page numbers at the bottom, formatted the chapter headlines by making it a bigger font, added a table of contents, then added endnotes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>I made sure that my content fit 200-pages.<\/strong>\u00a0Doing so meant that I can mail my book using regular postage since it&#8217;s skinny enough to fit into the regular mail slot. Also, 200-pages at 6&#8243;x9&#8243; looks and feels like a book.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>I went to ShutterStock.com to choose a cover image<\/strong>. I love ShutterStock.com and it&#8217;s my stock image database of choice. For $50, I can download 5 high resolution images which I then use on my packaged materials. The images can be used for up to 250,000 runs without violating the ShutterStock.com copyright.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>I created an ISBN for my book<\/strong>. Because I&#8217;m a Canadian publisher, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.collectionscanada.gc.ca\/ciss-ssci\/app\/index.php?fuseaction=priv.registration&amp;lang=eng\" target=\"_blank\">I get 10 ISBN numbers for free<\/a>\u00a0as long as I register myself as a publisher with Collections Canada. After waiting just a few days for approval of my application, I logged in, entered the info about my book, then got a 13 digit ISBN number. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.terryburton.co.uk\/barcodewriter\/generator\/\" target=\"_blank\">I then used this site to generate a barcode for my ISBN number<\/a>\u00a0that I slapped on the back cover.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>I designed the cover<\/strong>. I have a graphic design background, so I downloaded a cover template from Vervante.com (the company I use to print my books), then went to work. If you don&#8217;t have a graphic design background, use 99designs.net to get people to bid on the right to design your book cover. Or, you can simply ask Vervante.com to do it for you.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>I asked Vervante.com for a cost to print the contents of the book<\/strong>. I told them the page count, the type of paper I wanted the content published on, the colours of the interior pages and the colour of the cover. Vervante.com gave me a price. I was then able to put a retail price on my book cover so I can cover the print costs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>I uploaded the cover design and manuscript to Vervante.com<\/strong>. Both the cover design and the manuscript need to be converted to PDF before it&#8217;s uploaded. You also need to fill out a credit application before you can do any uploading. You can find the credit app on Vervante.com and once you&#8217;re approved, you&#8217;ll get a username and password to login to the site and upload your content.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>I waited 2 business days for Vervante.com to approve the upload, then I ordered a copy to be shipped to myself<\/strong>. Having the physical copy in my hand helps me critique not just the layout on the inside, but also the design cover as well. What I like about Vervante.com is that they won&#8217;t ship if anything is off. For example, the spine was off by a few centimetres. Vervante.com said they needed to fix it before they sent the book to print. I gave the thumbs up and their graphic design department fixed the cover design for a small fee. Another thing I like about Vervante.com is that there are no minimums. In other words, they won&#8217;t print and ship unless the order comes in. That means I don&#8217;t have to store books in my garage or create a &#8220;fake&#8221; order just to keep my account active. For a small fee, Vervante.com will also list your book on Amazon.com so they can fulfill any orders that come through that site.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And that&#8217;s how easy it was for me to self-publish my 2nd book. The hard part was writing the manuscript, but an upcoming speaking gig forced me to get it done as I needed something for attendees to buy. A book is wonderful low cost, high impact item.<\/p>\n<p>So, what&#8217;s your excuse now? And if you have other self-publishing tips, do share.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following up on my recent blog post called How to Use Amazon.com New Publishing Model as a Shortcut to Fortune &amp; Fame, I thought it&#8217;d be useful to share how super simple it is to publish your next (or first) book. My first book, Podcasting for Profit, was published the traditional route. I signed a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[97,83,96,93,95,94,91,92,89,90],"class_list":["post-335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-tools","tag-99designs","tag-amazon-com","tag-create-isbn-barcode","tag-dragon-naturally-speaking","tag-how-to","tag-kindle-ebook","tag-publish-book","tag-self-publish-book","tag-shutterstock-com","tag-vervante","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":360,"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions\/360"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}