Hey all!
So, one of the most important decisions you'll have to make in your journey to self-publishing, is choosing a Publisher. Luckily, there are plenty of services out there for a person to choose from, and we're in a great place in the publishing world right now that we have the ability to choose a print-on-demand option, which means no out-of-pocket costs. Or low out-of-pocket costs, depending on which service you go with. And with most of these publishing companies, you'll have other services at your disposal (for a price) if you need/want them.
Now, when it came time for me to choose a publisher, I was really only considering two companies: Lulu.com and Amazon.com. After doing some research into both, I realized that with Lulu, there were set-up fees (a couple grand), along with distribution fees I'd have to shell out up-front before the book was set to be published. Amazon, however, had no up-front costs and seemed to pay a decent percentage of the profits (the big upside to self-publishing!). Amazon also has the appeal of their audience. (Who DOESN'T already buy their books on amazon.com?)So, I turned to Amazon's self-publishing service, called CreateSpace to publish LAW.
There were a few things I had to do before I was able to upload my book for publication (I'll talk more about that in my next blog), but once I was ready to upload, things went pretty quickly. Like I mentioned before, you can choose to use Amazon's services for a fee if you would like. They have people who can create a professional book cover if you need one, you can get access to professional editors, you can pay to have a book trailer made and even sign up for a team of PR/publicity people help market your book when it comes out. Luckily, I already have access to all of those talented and intelligent kinds of people, so I didn't have to pay anything extra to publish my book. But it's nice that the services are there if you need them.Amazon makes it really easy to upload and format your book, too. In fact, all you have to do, is choose the size of your book, download a template, then copy and paste your book into it. After that, I just did a little formatting and tweaking and it was ready to be made into a PDF. The only other thing I had to do, was to have my book cover/spine/back of the book created by my designer. For this, she had to figure out the dimensions of the book based on the size and number of pages and then design it from back to front.
Now, I ran into some issues with uploading my PDF's, but with one phone call, I was able to get one-on-one help from an amazon associate. Their customer service is top-notch and the woman I talked to was very helpful and even uploaded my PDF's for me when I couldn't do it. This was a big draw to working with Amazon on such a personal endeavor. I really liked having access to help along the way if I needed it.
After that, I finished up a few things and it was all done! Within about 12 hours, I had been cleared to print and ordered my review copy. Now, I'm expecting my first copy of my book less than a week after I hit publish.
I can't wait to see what the final product looks like and tell you all about my experience!
If you guys have any questions for me, please send 'em! I'd love to help answer any questions you may have about self-publishing!
5x5,
B.
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