Turn Your Manuscript into an E-Book
My First Little Book
My Path to a Completed e-Book
I started my e-book publishing career with a small book of poetry, figuring that a small book could be quickly formatted, tested, and published. I then joined the Kindle Select program so I could offer my book for free for a few days to gain exposure. Kindle Select also makes your book available to borrowers through the Amazon Prime program. For a first book, the goal is maximum exposure and getting positive reviews while producing the next book as soon as possible and building a platform from which your writing can be discovered by readers in your niche.
I have now published over a dozen books and knitting patterns on Amazon as well as on Smashwords. Right now I am in the "writing the next book" stage of my plan, which will be my longest e-book yet. I hope others will find this information helpful. The more quality indie publications out there, the more the public will accept and demand e-books by independent publishers.
Image courtesy of adamr / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Your Book Cover is Important
Make Your Book Stand Out from the Crowd
When you shop online, are you more likely to buy a product with or without a picture? Most people want to see what they are buying, even if it is a digital cover for a digital book. A good cover design shows potential readers a little about your personality and gives them a taste for what is likely to be inside the book.
I have used a stock design from the Cover Creator in the Kindle Direct Publishing upload page for one of my early books. Then I moved on to using my own photographs for my knitting pattern books. I am also working on some possible covers from drawings made by myself and my daughters. I even have a cover design done for a book I have not yet written. Why? I find it very motivating to look at my lovely cover and title--such a great cover deserves a book to go inside, right? If you are stuck in the middle of a book, try pausing to work on a cover for a bit and see if that gets you jump started.
Subtitle Tip
When entering a subtitle in the Cover Creator, click on the subtitle area of the cover. You won't see a cursor. Ignore the styling options popup box and just start typing your text.
Producing my Content
I started small.
I had published poetry for several years on what were then Helium and Associated Content. It was a simple matter to take some of those poems (I still had rights to them--they were not exclusives) and paste them together into a Word document. I added a title page, preface, acknowledgements, and table of contents. I then followed Guido Henckel's instructions to clean up the html before uploading to Kindle Direct Publishing. Note: I now follow the Smashwords Style Guide to create my upload file and get good results.
My next booklet, According to my Research, I published on Smashwords as well as Amazon. Doing both means I can't enroll this booklet in the Kindle Select program, which requires 90 days of exclusivity to Amazon, but this is a specialty booklet of lesson plans for teachers, so wanted to cast a wide net to find my audience.
When my 90-day obligation on Kindle Select ran out, I also uploaded my haiku book on Smashwords so that users of Nook and Kobo reading devices can also find it. Since then, I have not used Kindle Select, but have published on Smashwords (opting out of their Amazon distribution option) and then tweaked my file to upload to Kindle Direct Publishing. (Kindle wants a .docx file while Smashwords wants a .doc file.)
