My Steps To Self Publishing

2009! We’re here!
To be honest, it’s not going to be anything like the number 2010. But I’m just bias being that I’m a Sci Fi fan. Heh. Heh. Plus my 20 year high school class reunion will be that year–2010. Such a round number. Sigh. 20 year reunion. That’s gonna be interesting. My 10 year was definitely worth it. Plus with Facebook (a whole lot better than MySpace, in my opinion), and every month someone is logging in that I haven’t seen in 18-19 years pops in, I think the 20 year reunion might even have more people.

I started off the year updating my WordPress (it’s like the fourth time since I installed it), which took awhile, and cleaning up 500 Spam from my comments (I thought I had the protector on. I’ve activated it now and see if that helps), and calling 911 to have the police get a drunk out of a ditch on the side of the street (he could have gotten run over…passing out like that on the road…too much Merry I suppose, and a very sad way to start of the year) and being a good citizen, 2009 was pretty interesting.

Oh yeah. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I’m sure 2009 now, like every new year, will have something different…that is if you want it to be. I sure my year will be quite interesing with this self-publishing thing.

Back to self-publishing!!

MOBIPOCKET

Here’s what I’ve been up to lately. MobiPocket The upcoming new age for books. The ebook! If you go to the main page (Home), down at the very bottom left, there’s a Publishers section, and you click on the “Welcome Page”. It took me a little while to figure out how to get my book on here, but I found it. Then it took me a bit to figure out how to upload. Once I figured that out and viewed my sample copy, I didn’t like it.

Oh. Let’s go back. Start from the beginning.

Everything is free! Which is exactly how I like it. I read the “Welcome Page” created a login and password by clicking the hyperlink “Publisher Application”. I removed my Paypal “Buy Now” button from my webpage since with Mobipocket, you’ll have to complete the “Publisher-Retailer Agreement” form. And that has to be mailed in or faxed in to Paris. Which is more money. So I just took off my Paypal “Buy” button. HOWEVER, Mobipocket uses Paypal to pay your royalties, which means my Business Account under Paypal would still be used.

I downloaded “Mobipocket Creator Publisher Edition” FREE, and then began my learning process. I had to figure out if I wanted to covert my book from the pdf file or the MS Word Document. Either way, I couldn’t SEE what it would look like in an ebook. You have to BUY that part. So what I did was search the site to find a sample of what it SHOULD look like before I upload it to the site. That took awhile to find. But here is how you find it. From the Welcome Page, if you click on any of the hyperlinks: “create or convert your Mobipocket eBooks” or ” Mobipocket cross-platform file format here,” on those pages, on the left-hand side, in the light blue section, there’s a string of other hyperlinks. Click on “Standard ebook” and scroll ALL the way down, you’ll see a Sample to download. It’s Alice in Wonderland. What a perfect example. It had images as well as a Table Of Contents. Perfect. So, I figured out that the entire book had to look like html format like the Alice in Wonderland example, and I made my book pattern to look like their Alice in Wonderland.

I changed my MSWord to html (just do a Save AS” and change the “Save As Type” field to “Web Page (*htm, *html).” I think this conversion recognizes the Page Breaks, so make sure you keep them between your chapters. All the rest of the formats (section breaks, margins, gutter space), you can get rid of and can change to a normal 8×10 paper, just like a normal document–but with a .htm file name instead of the .doc. Keep the Page Breaks though!

After making the htm document, I used the Mobipocket Creater to import. The section: “Import from Existing File” – “HTML document”. Once that’s done, it will create a file under the “Open Recent Publication” section. You’ll see that when you click HOME. But right after it imports, you’ll be directly in the file and on the left side, under the View column, highlighted would be “Publication Files”. So the file is imported. Then click on “Cover image” and upload the cover of your book. Make sure it’s a small size though. Mine was 52kb (Dimensions: 540×800), otherwise it won’t import the picture. I didn’t use Table of Contents, Guide or Book Settings. I had the Table of Contents I created directly in my MSWord document. Plus, I couldn’t’ find instructions on how to use Mobipocket ‘s. Then, I went straight to Metadata. I filled out the fields (make sure the Author filed is last name, firstname), and I put suggested retail price of 6.99, since most of the other books was that price as well. I put a check mark under “Adult only” for my book. Left the publication date, Demo PRC, and Territory Restriction fields blank

Make sure to press the Update button and Save button for each section.

Then on the very top (took me awhile to figure this one out), there’s a BUILD icon. Click that, and I used “Standard Compression” and “Content Encryption with DRM (Digital Rights Management)”, and then click the Build button. Once that’s done. Click the Deply icon of the very top, put in your login and password, and click “Deploy now” button on the very bottom.

And there you go.

Once uploaded, you login back into your account account and click the “Activate ebook,” put a checkmark on it, click the “Activate Selected ebook” which is at the top, light-blue section (that was hard to find), and your book is ready to buy…Immediately. After that, I downloaded Mobipocket eBook Reader 6.2 which is FREE, I just went to my book and downloaded a free sample.

Bad Side–I couldn’t delete the many attempts of uploading and not liking the way the sample look. I simply deactivated that, changed the “Title” to DO NOT USE.” I found out the reason you can’t delete is because if the book has sells, it has to be tracked. Also, for MobiPocket to recognize that you’ve uploaded a different file, make sure the htm file has a different name, otherwise it won’t take the changes.

To deactivate the book, you click “Browse all ebooks,” click your book and take off the checkmark on ” Activate for Retailers -” and this takes it off the shelf from being purchased/bought.

My book The Made: The Calling Series at Mobipocket is here

I still don’t quite like the way the sample looks with my pictures…but oh well.

So I ordered a copy of my book from LuLu. I’ve made it private so only I could see it. Unfortunately, I had to pay $19.77 for it ($13.64 for the book and $6.13 for shipping). I changed my royalty to $0.0 (zero), so I wouldn’t be paying myself back my own money. But the price… $19.77, even with out royalty. That’s just so high. And for me to get any royalty would make it even higher. Sigh. Even I wouldn’t want to pay for a book for THAT much.

What to do. What to do.

Hopefully the ebook would be much cheaper than print. But I understand the printing company has to get paid too.

Well, I found a few mistakes in the book that I need to correct, and my maps were very light, and not easy to see. I’ll have to try to darken them up a bit and see how that works. Some of the book cover was chopped of just a bit and, just a bit, went on the spine. Once I figure that all out, then I’ll have to pay for the $19.77 again to make sure the print comes out ok. And hopefully that will be for the final time.

Sigh.

What we do for self publishing.

Anyway, I also bought some T-Shirts and a cap, flyers and some posters, that I ordered from Vista Print where I uploaded my book cover. I also bought magnets with the book cover on it and that also had the 2009 calendar. I’ll send out the magnets to my family and friends along with my Christmas letter. It looks great! But it was a bit too long for a normal size envelope. Thank goodness it had a lot of white space where I just had to cut a bit of both ends and PRESTO it fits! The hubby bought me a nice cutter so that the lines would be straight. Cutting with scissors didn’t look so well. The magnets, however, were very easy to cut since they’re so thin, but not too thin to look cheap. They’re just right.

So, I’m off to figuring out more on getting my book to look better.

It was just so NEAT to see it in print though. The hubby said, “Wow. It looks like a real book!” And yes it did. The print was very nice! And to see it “looking like a real book…” what a wonderful feeling.

Yeah. So many choices. So many things to do.

I’m still researching and researching on where and who to print my books. Do I want to print locally? Have the books sitting here in my house and deal with all the labels and shipping and packaging? Do I want to use a Print-On-Demand company…but not to publish it. Just to print.

I’ve first scratched off Xlibris, iUniverse, AuthorHouse, etc, because of the upfront fees, and I’ve already put in the money for what they charge for editor, cover design, ISBN, etc. Plus, If I was going to go with some of their packages, I might as well have the book printed locally and ship it out myself, which might equal the same amount as the packages.

I’ve wavered around Lulu, CreateSpace, Lightning Source, and Booksurge(which is Createspace as well, or also just owned by Amazon?). I hear a lot of great things about LuLu, of course, but, again, to sell a book with no upfront fees forces the book’s price very high. Who wants to buy a $25.00 book? And Lightning Source has the Ingram edge, other places to distribute your book to, and CreateSpace only has its store and Amazon.

I’ve also learned that if I wanted to make some updates to the book, for some reason, Lightning Source charges an arm and leg, while CreateSpace is considerably lower. So some people have created the design and book on CreateSpace and moved them to Lightning Source since they use the exact file format on some paper weight/styles. Then there’s the “hassle” of working with Lightning Source as an independent author, yet in the long run, you get back more royalties.

Decisions. Decisions. Decisions.

Thus, it looks like people use multiple places to have their books printed and available.

And, as you can tell, Self Publishing is a lot of out-of-pocket expenses. But, like I said before, I spent $22,000 on wedding and honeymoon with someone I love, so why not spend some bucks on something I love.

When I figure out where I want to go and what I want to do…you’ll be the first to know.

Decisions. Decisions. Decisions.