EBooks
Your book is now ready to be published. You can go the route of submitting it to publishers such as Random House, and in the process possibly rack up a number of rejections for a variety of reasons. To circumvent this situation, a number of authors are turning to publishing their work online as Online Publishing, EBooks or Publish On Demand.
There are a whole host of companies who will sell you a number of services. One very popular POD (publisher on demand) is Lulu, (www.lulu.com ). They offer a variety of services such as Publishing Packs. It would appear that if you want Lulu to take care of such things as ISNB numbers, Amazon distribution, copy rights, author support, custom covers, including a sample copy, etc. then their “Classic Pack” would cost you just under $1000.00 US. A bare bones publication package costs about $370.00 US dollars.
Now, you need to get printed copies. In addition to Lulu, there are many online printers that will print as many or few copies as you wish. Instant Publisher (www.instantpublisher.com), for example, will sell you 500 copies for just under $4000.00. Companies such as this specialize in small run printing. By the way, be sure to get a quote for shipping when you are thinking about an online printer.
EBooks are an option some people are looking at. The simplest way is to create a PDF copy of your book, put an excerpt on your website, (or make arrangements to have your book listed on a commercial site), include a picture of your book, and send the full pdf version to people when you receive payment. One difficulty with this is that multiple copies can be printed from your pdf version, which you would not have any control over. However, if the cost of publishing and distribution are issues, then this is the most economical route to go.
There are companies such as Amazon.com who do all the work for you. Pat Doyle has written a ‘how to’ for publishing with Amazon.com. http://www.patdoyle.com/publish-an-ebook-in-amazons-kindle-book-store/169/. With Amazon, they are pushing their new reader, Kindle and since many of the Kindle titles are $9.99, the author would receive 35% of that price.
Please keep in mind that there are many issues to consider when publishing. Receiving payment for books that are sold is one of them. Are you dealing with a reputable distributor? Do they have major advertising that you can be part of? Do they help protect the DRM (digital rights management) of your work? Finally, are there hidden costs?
An online search will bring forth a lot of ideas and support for writing, publishing either in paper or online, and distribution either electronically or physically. You can even get help from Microsoft Office. There are techniques for automatically producing a Table of Contents, and an Index. There is no time like the present to put your ideas to paper and have fun.
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Share your ideas with the author at: mail4wayne@cogeco.ca or http://rtocomputerease.blogspot.com/
