So I decided to self-publish my book and thought I would share my experience, since others might be interested in it as well.
[B]The Traditional Way
[/B]Now the traditional way to publish a book is to write query letters to agents you believe might be interested in your manuscript. However, these agents are incredibly picky and often receive hundreds of query letters every day. Unless you are an amazing writer, catch the agent on a day when they are looking for new projects, and you happen to have written something on a particular topic that they want to pursue, you probably will not be published the traditional way. That's why many people are turning to self-publishing.
[B]How and Where Do You Self-Publish?
[/B]Self-publishing is usually a print-on-demand (POD) service. This means that unlike traditional publishing where they print out a few thousand copies of your book and distribute them to bookstores, self-publishing companies only print out a copy of your book when someone orders it. For this reason, self-published books are typically sold online, like on amazon. As for which company you do it through, I chose to go with CreateSpace, which is free (except for the small fee to buy a proof of your book before you approve it to be sold on amazon). The quality of their books is very good and the process is pretty easy and straight-forward. Another popular company is Lulu, but their turnaround time is a little slower and I've heard the shipping costs are higher. However, at Lulu, it is easier to sell in other countries and sell an e-book version. It's really up to you. Both sites have their advantages.
[B]The Process
[/B]For CreateSpace, the process is as follows:
1. Submit the title, your name, page numbers, what dimensions you want, etc.
2. Upload the internal pages and the front/back cover design. The nice thing about CreateSpace is that they have a handy Cover Creator program that helps you design the cover to the right specifications. I found that my book cover does not [I]exactly [/I]match what I uploaded, but it is pretty close (it got cropped slightly). For the internal pages, I took care of all the formatting in Word (got the pages the right size, added page numbers, got all the margins correct) and then converted to a PDF. The formatting took a few tries to get right (more on that later), but it worked pretty well.
3. Choose a price and where you want to sell it. CreateSpace offers a $40 membership that allows you to get a greater portion of the profits (so you can set a lower price for your book and be more competitive) and sell it in more locations. I do NOT recommend the membership if you want to sell it in more places (amazon is probably your best bet and I have heard bad reviews of people's books never showing up on the other websites), but it is worth it for setting a lower price on your book!
4. Submit everything and wait!
5. After your files have been approved (it usually takes 10 hours or so, but I've had it take as few as 3), you can order your proof. Once your proof arrives in the mail, you can then either make changes to your files or decide everything looks good and submit it for publishing. Around a week later, it shows up on amazon!
[B]Problems I Encountered
[/B]Oh god, the formatting. I wrote half the book in Open Office (NEVER AGAIN) and it totally screwed up the margins when I tried to change them. I ended up having to go through and delete the indent on every paragraph and then redo it (of a 309 page book!!). The page numbers were a pain to do in Word because I wanted to skip the page numbers in some parts (at the beginning of each chapter) and I didn't want page numbers on the title page or anything. However, it is eventually possible to figure out. I also didn't realize I needed to write my own copyright page, so I had to resubmit my files to fix that.
[B]Would I Recommend Self-Publishing?[/B]
Yes. Assuming you do not want to become rich or famous. It's a great way to show that you really wrote a book, but it's very difficult to actually make much money in this process. If you want to become a professional author, it's probably best to keep hounding the literary agents. However, I found it a really fun and rewarding process. Seeing my name on amazon is awesome. The quality of the book is fantastic and it's fun to show it off.
[B]My Book!
[/B]If you're interested in reading fantasy (or just want to see the finished product of a self-published author), my book is located [url=http://www.amazon.com/Girl-Born-Smoke-Jessica-Billings/dp/1451582722/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271249189&sr=8-3]here[/url]. If you would like to read the first chapter of my book to see if you like it, check out my website [url=http://jessicabillings.weebly.com/]here[/url]. Let me know if you have any other questions about self-publishing and I'll try to answer them.[URL="http://www.amazon.com/Girl-Born-Smoke-Jessica-Billings/dp/1451582722/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271249189&sr=8-3"][/URL]
How much money have you made from this if you don't mind me asking
[QUOTE=Fergeh;21352177]How much money have you made from this if you don't mind me asking[/QUOTE]
Well I just published within the last few days, so I've only made ~$15 so far. I only make $1/book sold because I wanted to set my price as low as possible. There are other authors with createspace that make a pretty good sum of money, but that's because they put the time and effort into marketing, contacting small newspapers to run pieces about their books and setting up book signings at small bookstores. You can also do pretty decently with a book in a niche market.
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