First, as always, is business. My book is available for sale as a paperback on createspace! Here is the link:
It should be available on Amazon as a paperback soon, perhaps in a week.
Today my blog is going to be a little different. My father-in-law is interested in publishing on createspace, so my husband wrote up some general instructions on how to do just that. So, we have a guest writer for today!
To self publish Erin's book in print we used Create Space, which is owned by Amazon.
Its website is very helpful, though not very well organised. Much of it is marketed towards pay for services, but everything can be done for free (except ordering proofs). I will go through the steps we used. A useful starting page is:
from which most of the useful stuff can be accessed.
First we downloaded a Word interior template for the book:
This page has all the submission requirement for the interior of the book, but most useful of all is a list of example Word files for each of the book sizes supported and Word template files ready to download and use. We used the 5 x 8 inch template into which we copied and pasted Erin's book text into, and then formatted it the way we wanted the printed book to look.
The next step is to export as a “print ready PDF”. Their is a whole bunch of software that can do this, but we used OpenOffice Writer since we use this software instead of MicrosoftOffice.
This program has an “Export as PDF” option under the File menu. It is important that when saving as PDF you check the box next to “PDF/A-1a” and do not check the boxes next to “Export bookmarks” or “Export comments”. When we first uploaded the PDF file generated with these boxes check it was rejected.
To upload you book you will need to sign up with an account on Create Space.
then start a new book and start entering all the relevant information about your book (which you can change later). If your book is black and white you will need to decide on white or cream paper, etc. Create Space can also assign your book an ISBN, but you can't change it once you accept it. You can work on each section later and the “Dashboard” will indicate what section needs your attention before you can submit your book for review. Once you have uploaded the PDF of your book interior you will need to decide on a book cover. The simplest option is to use the Create Space “Cover Creator” tool into which you can upload your own images:
Though we wanted more control over the final cover look, so went with creating a PDF file of our book cover using a template generated by Create Space:
and the software InkScape to generate the PDF:
Once you have uploaded the files and supplied then necessary information you can submit the book for review. After a couple days your book should hopefully pass review and you can order a proof. The proof should arrive within a few days. Assuming you do not need to make any changes you can accept your proof and publish your book (a week or so for Amazon, we are still waiting).
The only pay option we went with was the “Pro Plan” for $39 which offered significantly cheaper books and an “Expanded Distribution Channel”.
Thanks for sharing this useful (!!) info.
ReplyDeleteI am working on a book about an horrific torture & murder that happened loaclly in Sept 2010. (Google: "Dystiny Myers Nipomo" if you need to get depressed about human nature.)
I expect to publish on Amazon, and appreciate this guidance.
Did you acquire the ISBN or does Amazon do that as a service for you?
sorry meant to comment as ME! rjeffries@gmail.com
ReplyDeleteron k jeffries