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How I Wrote and Self-Published a Book: Step by Step
- g0atbutt 15y agoWould you mind explaining why you decided to go with the Kindle Store instead of just hosting it yourself? Does the Kindle Store restrict you from doing that? Would you mind sharing some of your stats? Thanks for sharing your insight!
- bennesvig 15y agoThe Kindle store is where I made 99% of my book purchases last year, so I based the decision off my own buying preferences. Also, it's much easier to publish a book through Amazon than Apple (at least from what I've read). If you sign up for KDP Select, where people with Amazon Prime and a Kindle can rent your book for free, then the digital version has to exclusively be on Kindle for 90 days. As for stats, the book has only been out a week and a half so the data isn't that interesting. Plus, I've yet to really make a big marketing push behind it. In a few months I'll have another post sharing some stats and what I've learned.
- genieyclo 15y agoAre you selling on any other ebook platforms yet; like OverDrive for libraries, or in B&N's store? Do you sell physical copies through Lulu or their competitors? What do you use to track analytics if you use multiple platforms? Did you ever think about formatting with Markdown ever during the process? Can you expand upon why you chose $3 as the selling price for your ebook? I realize these are quite a few questions, but I value your input given your experience. It's a very interesting world in self-publishing today. Thanks.
- bennesvig 15y agoSelling on other platforms: Not yet. KDP Select prohibits me from selling the digital version anywhere else. Unsure of whether this was a good decision or not, but I'm stuck for the next 90 days. I did consider using Book Baby for distribution. I still might come march. Physical copies: I'll be submitting the book to CreateSpace once the designer I'm working with finishes the cover. Pricing: Pricing is a known unknown for me. $3 is as cheap as I can go while retaining the 70%. Below $2.99 and it goes down to 35%. Should I price it at $5? $7? $9.99? I'm not sure. Seth Godin has interesting thoughts on this: http://www.thedominoproject.com/2011/12/how-much-should-an-ebook-cost.html http://www.thedominoproject.com/2011/12/how-much-should-an-e...
- laktek 15y agoAlso, can someone residing outside US publish in Kindle Store? I see they send payments via checks, but it was not clear whether it's global.
- abhaga 15y agoYou can. They opened it up for international authors in January 2010.
- brador 15y agoAny tips on how to best market a self-published book?
- bennesvig 15y agoI can't give advice from experience for at least another month or two, but I'll post a conversation I've been having with a successful author on book marketing next week.
- davidw 15y agoI have a work in progress marketing guide here: http://www.liberwriter.com/documents/120 http://www.liberwriter.com/documents/120 Some of it is LiberWriter specific, but not that much and all the ideas are useful elsewhere.
- kirian 15y agoI found this digital book to be an excellent resource http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005DC68NI http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005DC68NI you can get a free pdf version at the authors blog http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/lets-get-digital/ http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/lets-get-digital/
- cfn 15y agoRead this blog: "A Newbie's Guide to Publishing" http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/ http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/
- jmtame 15y agoif this type of thing interests you, i also wrote in detail how i did mine here: http://www.startupsopensourced.com/2011/05/01/startups-open-sourced-1-week-later-10000-in-revenue/ http://www.startupsopensourced.com/2011/05/01/startups-open-...
- jc4p 15y agoYou misspelled Calibre. Ten minutes later: I can't believe I just spent that much time reading your article. You got yourself another sale.
- jordanmessina 15y agoAfter months of seeing this as the #1 recommended book by Amazon based on my previous purchases, I finally gave in and got Startups Open Sourced. It was the best book I read in 2011. I give you a lot of credit for putting together one of the best startup resources out there to date. Thanks for the hard work, Jared!
- jmtame 15y agoi really loved talking to the founders and working on this project, but hearing comments like this really makes me glad i did it. thanks for your support!
- dmerfield 15y ago"Everyone has a book in them, and in most cases that is where it should stay." Christopher Hitchens on self-publishing
- bennesvig 15y agoSturgeon's law probably applies to any book published, whether by traditional or self-published means.
- davidw 15y ago$89 for some guy on oDesk? Wow, I knew we needed to raise prices at LiberWriter, but... ouch. For someone technical - you know HTML and grok various XML formats - learning how to do it yourself isn't that big a deal. I have always likened it to changing a tire on a car - it's not that hard, but if you're short on time and patience, you'll probably be happier to pay someone to do it if possible.
- bennesvig 15y agoThe $89 was for CreateSpace conversion as well. But I agree completely. Deciding to outsource was lazy thinking in this instance. Formatting the ebook was a lot easier than I thought it would be.
- k33n 15y agoYou're advertising an ability to make an ebook beautiful through formatting and styling, yet this is your Website: http://liberwriter.com/ http://liberwriter.com/ I'd work on that if I were you.
- davidw 15y agoIt looks good to me - simple, direct and easy to navigate. Our customers are looking for quality formatting at good prices, not lots of rounded corners and other gewgaws. By and large, they have zero overlap with the HN crowd and could care less about the latest trendy design fads. Also, remember that Kindle formatting is very very plain.
- larrys 15y agoIt probably would make sense to get something from http://themeforest.net/ http://themeforest.net/ or similar and jazz it up a bit. I don't disagree with what you are saying but you will most likely do more sales that way. If you end up doing this make sure to write about it. Here's an example (not saying to use this one): http://themeforest.net/theme_previews/286942-cheerapp-premium-app-html-template?index=4 http://themeforest.net/theme_previews/286942-cheerapp-premiu...
- peterarmstrong 15y agoBen, I see you started with Google Docs and switched to Scrivener. Did you ever consider writing in Markdown? (That's what we use for Leanpub manuscripts, and we produce PDF, EPUB and MOBI.) Obviously your book is done; I'm just interested in your feedback on writing tools. (Basically, I'm doing customer development, trying to figure out if you could go back in time and use Leanpub, would you still use Scrivener, etc?)
- bennesvig 15y agoHadn't heard of Markdown until now. I can always be convinced to try something new, but Scrivener was incredibly simple. I can edit and submit an updated version to the Kindle store in 5 minutes (video of that here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puv9zCwrex4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puv9zCwrex4 ). My formatting isn't anything incredible, so if Leanpub could put together a quality conversion I'd consider checking them out.
- peterarmstrong 15y agoIf you email your manuscript to peter@leanpub.com I'll have this done for you so that you can compare. Ideally if you can save it as HTML we can convert it to Markdown automatically. However, if this is a hassle, then send me whatever format you have. The nice thing is that since you're publishing an in-progress book your approach lines up exactly with what we encourage authors to do. When you publish new versions your readers get free updates automatically, etc. We produce files that can be put in the Kindle store, iBookstore, etc and we also sell the PDF, EPUB and MOBI on Leanpub, paying a 90% - 50 cent royalty. Email me if you want any more info...
- mathgladiator 15y agoThanks for turning me on to Leanpub; it looks great for my need. I just wrote a book, and I was going to mess around with my own markdown convert to (something else).
- kadavy 15y agoAfter publishing a book through a publisher ("Design for Hackers"), I've had some other smaller ideas rattling around that I've considered self-publishing. Scrivener looks like a useful tool. I'm pretty sure I would hire an editor, though. Unless you're a trained writer, it can be difficult to keep grammar and sentence structure correct.
- bennesvig 15y agoAgreed. No matter what happens in the publishing industry, editors will always have a place. I'm halfway through Design for Hackers. The Kindle version is really impressive on the iPad. Whoever did the formatting did a great job.
- kadavy 15y agoHey, thanks for picking up Design for Hackers! I was pleasantly surprised by the Kindle version myself.
- manojlds 15y agoHow is this "self-publishing"? Isn't Amazon your publisher?
- Turing_Machine 15y agoPublisher and distributor aren't the same thing.
- kn0thing 15y agoHere's the tutorial I wrote after publishing xkcd: volume 0. Best of luck to all of you self-publishers! http://breadpig.com/2010/02/17/53000-profit-in-3-months-from-books-reasons-to-self-publish-or-start-your-own-niche-publishing-company-reasons-not-to/ http://breadpig.com/2010/02/17/53000-profit-in-3-months-from... http://breadpig.com/2010/02/19/step-by-step-guide-on-how-to-publish-a-book-lessons-learned-from-xkcd-volume-0/ http://breadpig.com/2010/02/19/step-by-step-guide-on-how-to-...
- jayliew 15y agoJust to mention another option for prospective authors to publish an e-book sans the sucky parts: HyperInk.com (YC startup)
- zupatol 15y agoYesterday I was trying to make an ebook out of a comic I made, where there is one image per page. The designers of epub and mobi apparently didn't think it useful to be able to put an image in the center of a page, it has to be glued to the top. That seems so idiotic that I'm still hoping I didn't look well enough. I'm also trying to find an easy way to make a book into an android and iphone app. O'reilly packages some of its books as apps using the aldiko reader, but I haven't found any explanation about how to do this.
- spodek 15y agoLast week I self-published my first book. My visit to North Korea last year amazed me at how much we base our impressions of North Korea on pre-conceived notions. I already blogged daily (http://joshuaspodek.com http://joshuaspodek.com), but the experience affected me so much I started posting twice daily, one post on North Korea (http://joshuaspodek.com/category/northkorea http://joshuaspodek.com/category/northkorea). Then Kim Jong Il died and tons of articles came out on North Korea, many or most had the same pre-conceived notions or assigned credit to the leaders that I thought were properties of the system, making understanding or achieving change difficult. Reading all those articles, I felt compelled to put my perspective out there. My posts on HN got high karma. I assembled a number of my posts, polished them (they needed more polish than I thought), and posted them on Amazon and Smashwords for download to electronic devices (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006PMDXTM?ie=UTF8&tag=joshspod-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B006PMDXTM http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006PMDXTM?ie=UTF8&tag=...). The first time was laborious and time-consuming. Now that I've done it, I know how to do it easier and I plan to do it many times. I'm going to start marketing soon. The big news days when Kim Jong Il died motivated me so I missed them as days to sell books, but I hope the book changes some people's views of North Korea and helps motivate people toward effective change.