Guest Post: How to Self-Publish Your Ebook

by Gary McLaren

Every day I receive multiple requests from authors around the world who are looking for assistance or more information on how to self-publish an ebook.

And the answer today is very different than when our Publish Your Own Ebooks website started back in 2003.

Then, your best option was to get your ebook into PDF and start selling it from your own web site. While you can and should still do that today, if you want to be taken seriously as an independent author then you must also make your ebooks available at mainstream ebook stores.

If you want to publish your own ebook then you need to consider the main online ebook stores where readers are buying and downloading ebooks. The four big stores right now are Amazon Kindle Store, Barnes & Noble Nook Books, Apple iBookstore, and Sony Reader Store. There are a few others to consider, but let’s keep this discussion to these four.

HOW TO GET YOUR EBOOK INTO THESE STORES?

Each of the major ebook stores has a portal for publishers to upload and manage their books. Remember as an indie author you are the author and the publisher.

You can choose to go to each store and publish your ebook directly or you can go through a distributor, sometimes called an ‘aggregator’.

An aggregator typically converts your manuscript into multiple formats and distributes your ebook to one or more stores on your behalf.

Some of the ebook aggregators commonly used by authors include Smashwords, BookBaby, and LuLu. They earn their income by a combination of upfront fees and annual fees for each ebook, or a percentage of the sales revenue from your ebook.

The process for publishing directly is different for each store and many authors use a combination, publishing directly to some stores while using an aggregator for the others.

WHY USE AN AGGREGATOR?

One of the main reasons to use an ebook aggregator is to get assistance with converting your manuscript into the correct format. Amazon sells ebooks in their own proprietary Kindle format, AZW, while the other stores use the EPUB format. There are sometimes complications encountered while trying to convert your manuscript from Microsoft Word into the appropriate format.

You may also decide to use an aggregator because you can’t meet the requirements to submit directly. Sony encourages indie authors to submit through an aggregator. Some stores require you to have a U.S. Tax ID or U.S. bank account if you want to publish directly. And in Apple’s case you need to submit from a Mac computer. Using an aggregator is a way to work around these obstacles.

WHY PUBLISH DIRECTLY?

Generally speaking it makes sense to deal directly if you can because you will save on costs and more of the profit from your ebooks will end up in your pocket.

If you are familiar with HTML you can probably handle the necessary formatting to successfully convert your manuscript to the appropriate ebook formats.

GETTING READY TO PUBLISH

Whether you publish directly or through an aggregator you will need to gather some important information for the submission process:

1. Book Title
2. Book Description – you need a professional-looking book description.
3. Ebook Cover – when your ebook sells in online stores it needs a cover image.
4. Price – decide on the price that you will charge. Sometimes different prices result in different royalty percentages so choose carefully.
5. Territories – you need to know which geographical territories [in which] you hold the rights for your ebook. If your ebook is an unpublished work then most likely you still hold rights for all territories.
6. ISBN number. You need an ISBN number at some ebook stores but not at others.
7. ISBNs for ebooks, ebook covers and pricing are all important topics which will be covered in detail in other posts.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, this is only a very brief overview of the self-publishing process and some of your options. I’ll go into more detail in future posts and be sure to watch out for our new ebook self-publishing guide which will be available here soon.

About the Author

Gary McLaren is a self-published author and the author of “The Beginner’s Guide to eBooks.”  He is also editor of Worldwide Freelance Writer, a weekly email newsletter for freelance writers with around 29,000 subscribers.