BLURB:
Frustration
With Traditional Publishers Leads To Self Publishing
In
2007 my wife Barbara completed a wonderful children’s chapter book called
Lottie’s Adventure and begin sending it to traditional publishers. Despite some
great preliminary reviews, all she got was rejections and lack of response.
This was quite frustrating for her and I wanted to help.
As
an IT professional, I had read a lot about print on demand and made up my mind
to learn all about it and then publish Lottie’s Adventure. It was a lengthy
learning curve and I made lots of mistakes including the selection of a POD
company that was more expensive than necessary. Nevertheless, we produced a
high quality book and in spite of our lack of knowledge we sold quite a few
copies of Lottie’s Adventure.
After
this success I realized that self publishing had potential for some of my own
writing and began developing effective, efficient, and lower cost methods to
publish the books that I wrote. Since then I have written and published six
books and a few ebooks of my own and established a publishing company that has
published six books plus several ebooks for other writers.
After
consistently producing and marketing quality books worldwide I decided to share
these proven methods in a new book covering every step from idea through book
creation to worldwide sales. That book is Self Publishing: Writing A Book and
Publishing Books and Ebooks For Yourself and Others.
Excerpt
Planning The
Book - The Outline
The Plan
Step one for
any book, after the basic idea appears, is to create a clear and concise
plan. Knowing
why you are writing the book is important to developing a viable
plan. If you
are writing simply for your own enjoyment and to share some
knowledge or
an experience with anyone who may be interested, with little
concern for
potential profit, then the first step should be creating an outline for
your book.
The Outline
You begin
this outline by writing down all the major topics you wish to convey to
your readers.
Put them all down without attempting to flesh them out or placing
them in particular
order. At this early stage, spending too much time on
individual
topics could cause you to lose focus of the main topics. After you have
listed them
all, organize them in the best possible order so that each topic
logically
follows the previous one.
Now is the
time to flesh them out. Go back to each topic one at a time and add
whatever
thoughts come to you. There is no certain length for this and don’t
worry about
structure. You are still at the thought development stage to cover as
much as you can
before actually beginning the writing. As you write down all
these
thoughts, new topics and ideas will come to you. Don’t dismiss them; write
them down as
they come to you even if they belong elsewhere. You can move
them later.
The important thing at this stage is not to lose the thought. Read the
section on
creating and using an outline to see the simplest way to take full
advantage of
an outline to create your book.
Your
Objective
If profit is
the main objective of your writing, another method may be more
appropriate
for you. Once you know the niche or topic of your book, find the
market for
that particular niche. That is, determine whom will purchase your
book and
where you can find these prospects. This is a critical step because if you are
unable to locate readers interested in your topic, it may be that a niche
doesn’t exist or is so small as to make reaching it difficult and unprofitable.
Since your intent is to profit from writing your book, this is a good time to
revisit your concept and perhaps alter it for better marketability or perhaps
abandon the idea and look for a marketable niche.
Knowing Your
Market
While this
book doesn’t deal directly with marketing and promotion, the odds of a
book selling
are increased considerably if you know your market and write your
book to
fulfill their needs. This is not possible if you have no idea about those
interested in
your book and how to reach them.
While it may
seem that this knowledge is about marketing and not writing or self
publishing,
it’s just the opposite. This knowledge will help you write the book so
it’s of real
value to your potential buyers and to create a cover that conveys a
strong
message indicating clearly that the information these book buyers want is
in the book.
This will make your book marketable and contribute to increased
sales before
you even publish.
The Final
Format
In this early
planning stage you must decide on the final format. Is it just going to
be available
as an ebook? Kindle is really popular but it doesn’t work for some
books that
require a much larger page. There is a larger Kindle available but it is
considerably
more expensive then the standard model or the Kindle Fire which is
the one to
which you should aim your ebook. There are other kinds of ebooks that
work perfectly
well even with letter size books. Learn more about publishing for
the Kindle in
chapter fourteen.
Is the book
going to be available as a paperback? Are you going to come out with
both
paperback and ebook at the same time? Making these decisions should be
part of your
planning. All of these various formats and how to take full advantage
of them is
covered in other chapters.
When I was
going to publish my first book, which was a children’s book my
wife had
written, I spent several hours at a large bookstore going through
similar
books. I must have looked through at least fifty different children’s
books to find
out if there was some standard formatting that I should use
for my first
attempt at publishing a book. I learned something very
interesting that
day. There were no two books formatted the same way.
There were
some similarities but many more differences. The important
thing was to
make the book look professionally published and there were
obviously
many ways to do that.
There is an
easier way for you to do the same thing using the Amazon.com web
site. Just go
to the site and search for books in your niche. Most of the books will
have the look
inside feature and you can take a look at the layout without going
to a
bookstore. You can even print out pages for closer examination. There are
also some
excellent books on the subject of book design. However, don’t believe
that you are
stuck with one certain format as right or wrong. Strive to make your
book original
and professional and there are as many ways to accomplish that as
there are
publishers.
If you decide
to read one or more books on book design or visit book design
blogs,
remember that the information you are reading is of value but not carved
in granite.
Your ideas also have value so use the information to learn the things
that look
obviously wrong but remember to be creative while maintaining
professionalism.
For an inexperienced self publisher it can be difficult to choose
the correct
format for a book. That’s the reason studying the work of others is so
helpful, at least while publishing your first book
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
From age
twelve I spent my summers and weekends working with my dad, a general
contractor, building homes and buildings. I contracted my first home at age
nineteen and built my own home by age twenty. For more than 30 years I have
operated one-person businesses. Twelve years of my life were spent working for
local government managing federally-assisted housing programs. I started as an
inspector with a three month assignment and was Director of Community Improvement
with 78 employees when I resigned to do writing and consulting.
Writing,
Publishing and Consulting
During the
80’s I established Rehab Notes Library a publishing company that published a
monthly newsletter (Rehab Notes) with subscribers in all 50 states, Canada and
England. I also did consulting and public speaking on housing related topics
for agencies and organizations in cities across the country and testified
before the U.S. Congress on housing issues.
I wrote and
published nine guidebooks on the subject of housing rehabilitation. After 1980
when most federal funding was pulled from housing activities, I took advantage
of my construction and business experience and started a handyman and
woodworking business.
Over Twenty
Years of Woodworking
For over
twenty years, first in Tampa, Florida and then in Austin, Texas, I built
hundreds of small and large cabinet and furniture projects for individuals,
companies and government agencies. During these years I began writing books
about my woodworking business experiences.
Positive
Publishing
In 2007 I
established Positive Imaging, LLC, to publish a children’s book for my wife and
then begin publishing my own books and that of other using methods I call
positive publishing. To date we have published twelve paperback books, a half
dozen ebooks, and presently have several books in various levels of completion.
Computer
Experience
My computer
experience dates back more than fifteen years and began in response to poor
technical support for our computers. I
used home study to acquire A+ and Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer
Certifications.
I was born
and raised in Tampa, Florida and moved to Austin, Texas in 1986, where I now
live with my wife, Barbara Frances. We have three adult children, eight grand-children,
and two great grandchildren.
1. Self Publishing Book Sales Pages
a. Main Sales/Info Page –
http://selfpublishingworkbook.com
b. Createspace Fulfillment Page -
https://www.createspace.com/3851405
2. Main Positive Imaging, LLC Site –
http://positive-imaging.com
3. Self Publishing Support Blog -
http://self-publishing-support.com -
4. PublishingSimplified Blog -
http://publishingsimplified.com
"Hey, Nikki, guess what Bill's giving away?"
"Tell me."
"He's giving a $5 Amazon gift certificate at EVERY blog as well as a $50 gift certificate to a grand prize winner."
"Hurry, Elizabeth, we have to comment. I want to win this thing."
You can find his schedule at http://goddessfishpromotions.blogspot.com/2013/11/virtual-book-tour-self-publishing.html
Thank you for hosting
ReplyDeleteThanks for hosting my book. I hope your readers will comment or ask questions. I will be glad to answer them.
ReplyDeleteBill
Good advice to share
ReplyDeletebn100candg at hotmail dot com
There is the control aspect that would appeal.
ReplyDeletemarypres(AT)gmail(DOT)com
Great advice, I know I'm scared to publish my book, and I've thought of self publishing myself.
ReplyDeletetiger-chick-1(at)hotmail(dot)com