“I want to do something splendid…Something heroic or wonderful that won’t be forgotten after I’m dead…I think I shall write books.” - Louisa May Alcott
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Last time, in PART TWO, we talked about the ISBN and interior selections for you book, today we will take it outside!
Remember, I chose to use createspace.com and will be showing the steps using that site for the rest of the presentation.
Why createspace.com?
Because:
It’s FREE
It’s from amazon.com and so it is easier to list your books on amazon when your done
It was recomended by James Altucher who has been an inspiration to me
Let’s go outside!
And by that, I mean, let’s take a look at our cover options:
You can see the Cover can have a Matte finish or a Glossy finish.
Glossy finish “is a coating that provides a lot of shine, which results in a higher contrast and color gamut than other papers.’
This is strickly a preference on how you want it to look, so take your pick!
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Once you know how it will look, now you need to know what it will look like:
Again, you have options!
You can:
- Build Your Cover Online with their software, which is easy to use, but limited in choice
Pay to have a Professional Design starting at $399
Upload a PDF of something you made or had someone you know make (I had my artist wife design mine…)
But first, let us take a quick break...
Okay, good, we all made it back!
We’ve now uploaded our interior and the cover is complete and we’ve now moved on to the “Complete Setup” step.
Here we are going over the checklist to make sure everything that is needed to be done is done before they are ready to have your book as a Print-On-Demand product.
We’ve decided to Launch Interior Reviewer to make sure things look right on our end:
Here we make sure things are all set to jet and ready for printing.
At this point, in my book I had already printing a draft copy that looked the same from my own personal printer.
This was the copy I edited and and marked up to make changes and corrections to my manuscript.
For steemians, I’ve also reviewed @stellabelle‘s self-published book Un-Crap Your Life: Navigating Life's Crappiest Situations before it was put out. Ask her and see my review.
So if you are looking to hire someone for some editing or other feedback just drop me a message.
Wowza our Proof was Approved!
Now we have to determine how we want our new potential bestseller to be Distributed and what Sales & Marketing may be involved.
Here are check list items to set what Channels of Distributions, how people will get your book, along with Pricing because you want someone to pay you right…, along with Cover Finish, a Description getting people a taste of what you have to offer inside your book and selling them on the idea of actually buying it, and the option to Publish it on Kindle.
Each step will be walked through simply by clicking the corresponding links.
Channels:
Here you have the option to Make your book available on:
Amazon.com
Amazon Europe
CreateSpace eStore
CreateSpace Direct
And More…
Pricing:
How you price is up to you (with some minor exceptions).
You can research pricing strategies until you are blue in the face, but they kinda all boil down to these three:
Lowest Price - Make it as low as the pricing tool will let you, there are cost to printing that have to be covered, but once that threshold is met, you are free to make as little profit per book as you can stomach.
This is good if you are a new author and want to get your work out and seen by many people who may be reluctant to purchasing your book.
But you are not going to get rich this way.
Well maybe if the sales volume is really high, which you can do once you are more popular in order to get even more popular, but let’s wait until then to go over that…
Also you might want to go low if you have a message you want to share with the world.
Highest Profit - The sky’s the limit!
Well, your customer bases wallet is the limit.
Well, as much as you think someone will reasonably pay is the limit.
Well, you get the idea…
Price it high if you have a platform and good marketing and want good margins, but know that for some book buyers, price is sometimes what they make their decision on.
But if you know your book has great value to offer, don’t sell yourself short.
Don’t feel bad to charge more, because eventually, you are going to have to in order to ever make a reasonable amount of money off of publishing your own books.
Equilibrium Price - In economic terms is “the market price where the quantity of goods supplied is equal to the quantity of goods demanded. This is the point at which the demand and supply curves in the market intersect.”
So basically, find something in the middle, this might take time to figure out, but you might make more than you would going to either extreme.
I forget where, but once I read about how the specific price doesn’t matter all that much, but what matters more is making the sale.
If you can presuade people to buy, they will buy.
Description:
Here is your chance to use your persuasion powers to sell that book with a great description!
Also add your Author Biography so that people can get to know you, connect with you, and feel good about buying your book and hey, maybe even make a friend….
Publish on Kindle:
We all know people read e-books nowadays and we want them to buy our book too!
Sure having a nice print edition is fun, but we also don’t want to cut out any market segments, so we are going online with our content with one of the world's largest retailer.
Lastly we have reached the Sales and Marketing!
There are entire graduate level classes on these subjects, I know I’ve taken a few…, and so there is plenty else out there to find some help in these areas.
This “How-To” was “How To Self-Publish” which we now have done, so you are on your own… kinda.
We all know you can market using Social Media, Blogging (like on steemit), and by using Paid Advertising to get the word out.
Also:
I’m here to help YOU!
Just let me know what you are working on and how I can help and we can see what we can create together!
Thanks,
@strangerarray
If you want the whole presentation at once check out the SlideShare or let me know if you have any questions and I will do my best to answer them based off my own Self-Publishing experience!
I think this is a wonderful and interesting time to be alive.
What do you think?
The future together is bright.
Join me.
Check Out Some of My Previous Post:
Hey, before you go, I have a question for you, Are you interested in taking out a loan to consolidate debt?
If you use my Credible Referral link, you can get a cash bonus if you take out a loan.
It can be a Personal Loan or a loan to consolidate Student Loans.
Either way, if you use my link, it can be a "win-win" for us both by saving us money on interest and getting a little bit of money now!