{"id":6968,"date":"2014-12-17T00:01:48","date_gmt":"2014-12-17T08:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=6968"},"modified":"2014-12-13T14:44:14","modified_gmt":"2014-12-13T22:44:14","slug":"adventures-in-self-publishing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=6968","title":{"rendered":"Adventures in Self-Publishing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently, I published two new Kindle books: Dan Gookin’s Nexus 9 Tablet A to Z<\/em> and Dan Gookin’s Nexus 7 Tablet A to Z<\/em>. I used Word to create the documents, but more than just writing, crafting an eBook or anything self-published takes special care. Here’s my advice:
\n
\n1. Create a template.<\/strong><\/p>\n

An obvious necessity, you need to have a consistent design and feel to the text. Even when you’re writing the Great American Novel, you need a basic template. Directions for creating such a thing are offered in my Word For Dummies<\/em> books.<\/p>\n

Don’t be afraid to change the template. As you write, you’ll modify the text or perhaps you won’t like the way it looks when you preview it in the Kindle Program program. That’s all a given.<\/p>\n

2. Write the text.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In my books, I recommend creating a Master Document. You build each chapter separately, then stitch those documents into a Master Document. You can then print that document, save it, apply headers and footers, and so on. That works swell in Word, but is impractical for Kindle eBook publishing.<\/p>\n

Rather than do a Master Document, I recommend writing the whole thing as one big document. Yes, Word will get sluggish the longer your document. My two eBooks weighed in at 170 pages each — that meant that Word slowed the entire computer down as I edited and especially as I added images. Still, it’s the best way to create a Kindle eBook.<\/p>\n

3. Take about a week off.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This step is completely counter intuitive. After all, you just finished writing a book! Don’t you want to see it published?<\/p>\n

Yes you do<\/em>!<\/p>\n

The New York City publishers will typically take 18 months to edit, copy edit, proof, and print your book. My publisher takes six weeks, which is incredibly fast for the publishing industry. Your first inclination is to take maybe an hour.<\/p>\n

Don’t.<\/p>\n

Wait a while. Do something else. Garden. Go on a walk. Whatever. Don’t immediately publish your book. And definitely don’t try to review or proof it immediately after writing. Let it rest.<\/p>\n

As a tip, take this time to craft a cover for your book. Get inspiration by looking at other books’ covers and see what you like, what you hate, what works and what doesn’t.<\/p>\n

4. Copy edit your text.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now that you’ve taken time off, go back and re-read your book. Fix it. Find the typos that the spell-checker didn’t understand. Look for the thoughts that go nowhere and the sentences that make no sense. That’s basic editing. <\/p>\n

Because you’re not hiring a copy editor, you need to do your own text review. After waiting a week, the process works much better.<\/p>\n

5. Publish.<\/strong><\/p>\n

No point in waiting any longer: Upload your text to the Kindle website.<\/p>\n

While eBook publishing is open to everyone, not everyone meets with success. That’s because you need marketing<\/em> to sell your book. I know that I suck at marketing, which is why my eBooks don’t make nearly as much money as my real books. Eventually that may change, but brace yourself for it!<\/p>\n

Good luck and have fun!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some tips on using Word to self-publish a Kindle eBook.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9],"class_list":["post-6968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main","tag-word"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6968"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6974,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6968\/revisions\/6974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}