Right … You've finished your book and you're about to
release your masterpiece on an unsuspecting world, a world full of readers who
will rush to buy your book.
Wrong! You have a product that’s one of millions of other
similar products. In just five years, from 2006 to 2011, the
number of self-published books exploded by 287%! By December 2013, Amazon
revealed that 25% of its Top 100 eBooks were independently published.
Now, in 2014, when independently publishing your book is
even more accepted, your book will be just one of those millions of voices. As
hard a fact as that is to swallow when you’re dreaming about writing your first
book, it’s a reality about independent publishing you must accept and work with
from the very first word you write.
Eish! What to do? Give up your dream of publishing your book?
Never! Nooit! Absolutely not! What you do is you start to establish an
author brand.
Establishing your Author Brand
You’re not selling a book (a single product.) You’re
selling yourself as an author (a product brand.) Before you choose that brand
name, you need to consider:
·
Will you be publishing in fiction or
non-fiction?
·
What
genre will you write under, for example, romance, crime, literary?
Technical, self-help or religious?
·
What sub-genre will you write under, paranormal
romance, sweet romance, erotic romance or medical romance?
If you intend to write in one genre and one sub-genre,
you could publish under your author name only.
If you intend to publish across genres, consider
establishing a publishing
imprint. I write novels, poetry and short stories, and I’ve independently
published them under the publishing imprint Aztar
Press, which has its own logo and website.
Choose a brand name
that works. If your name is Percival Archibald Wroskovoskovitch, write
under Percy Arch or Archie Wros or use your mother or grandmother’s name. You
want a name that's different but short, sharp and pronounceable like Dan Brown
or Chinua Achebe. Can you imagine have a twitter handle like @PercivalArchibaldWroskovoskovitch?
There won’t be any space left to tweet!
Have good author
photo taken. You can hire a professional
photographer, or you can get a friend with a good camera to spend the
afternoon doing a photo shoot. Try to resist making the photo cutesy or fun –
browse any well-known author and the main photo they use for publicity is a
clear head and shoulders shot. You can add the cutesy photos in the spaces
provided by various websites such as Amazon author page, Goodreads author page.
There are sections where you can easily upload more images for anyone who wants
to look at them.
Before you even start writing set up your social media (more later) with your author brand name.
You'll be amazed at how many people have the same name as you no matter how
unusual your name (there is a Judy Croome who lives in Canada!) Even if you’re
not ready to start your social media marketing just yet, you do want to reserve
your author brand name for when you’re ready to start tweeting, googling and
facebooking.
So … you’ve written your perfect, professional book.
You’ve established an author brand. The next step is dressing your baby up so
she’s ready to face the world. This is also called publishing your book.
Publishing your Book
If you’ve
decided you’re only going to publish your book as an eBook, you’ve cut your
publishing work in half. But you still need to follow certain critical steps to
publish your eBook and make it easily available for readers.
a. Book Blurb
Before they’ll buy, readers
have to know what your book is about. You’ll need to write a short description (called a
book blurb) of your
book. This blurb will be used in loading your e-Book to on-line distribution
sites and, if you decide to publish in print at a later stage, this will feature on your back cover. To get an idea of what a good description
does, browse on-line bookstores and read the book descriptions of the
top-sellers. Look on this as your sales pitch to potential readers.
b. Cover Design
Cover design is another
critical factor in the process of making your eBook into a professional
product. While a professionally edited book brings the reader back to buy your
next book, a brilliant cover design captures the reader’s attention from among
the thousands of eBooks your book is competing with in on-line stores. You can
do the cover design yourself, but then you need to beware of the numerous
pitfalls that await. Or you can hire a professional cover designer.
I designed my own cover
for my first-ever book – here’s what a reader had to say. I took his advice, found a
professional cover designer and ended up with this cover. Can you see the difference a
professional designer makes to the first impression a reader has of your book?
Before you decide which
route you want to take, browse through these cover design articles on self-publishing guru Joel
Friedlander’s blog The Book Designer.
Also look for recommended cover designer websites or, alternatively, if you like the
look of a cover from a particular eBook you read, look on the copyright or
acknowledgements page – the author may have a link or mention who the cover
designer was. Chances are, if you love the look of a particular eBook cover,
the designer will match your expectations. Check costs first though, as some
designers can be expensive.
You could also set your
own cover design price and run a freelance cover design
competition.
Make sure that both a
high resolution image and a smaller image to use for web thumbnails is included
in the price, as well as asking how many alterations are included in the
original cost (you can’t expect to make infinite changes – the designer works
by the hour, so he’ll have a set number of hours he can work on your cover.)
Check that the font used
for the title and your author name is clear and legible in both the large and
small image. As you’re not selling a book, but selling yourself as an author
brand, your author name must be prominent, but not overwhelming.
c. Formatting
Correctly formatting your eBook is another critical area in
publishing your own eBook. Poor formatting and book design are as off-putting
to the reader as poor editing. Make sure your eBook format is professional.
There are two main eBook
formats, .MOBI (Amazon only format) and EPUB (industry standard). PDF is
another popular format, but it’s easy to copy and re-distribute books without
the author’s knowledge or consent.
There are software programs that allow you to format your own
book into eBook format, and most distributors of eBooks offer a formatting
style guide and/or process suitable to their site but, unless you’re an IT
whizkid, it’s wiser to stick to professional formatting services and hire a
professional eBook formatter who will convert your book into the standard
formats for a fee. You will then have a professional eEPUB and MOBI file to
upload to your on-line distributors.
d. Setting your Price
Pricing for independent publishers is a controversial topic. Some
experts say, keep the price cheap. Others say, place a fair value on
your work. Still others say, play around with the price and find what pricing
level readers are willing to pay for your books. Another option is to price
your new books higher than the books listed on your title back list. You’ll earn a % of that price as a royalty.
Think carefully about what a realistic price for your book is and be willing to
change it up or down if you need to.
e.
Digital Rights Management
Digital Rights Management (DRM) limits sharing of content to
protect you against reasonable pirating of your books. When publishing your
book to on-line distributors you’ll have to elect whether to activate DRM or
not.
The next
step, discussed in Part 3, is finding an eBook distributor who will help us
reach those eager readers!
***
You can
read How to Publish your eBook in South Africa - Part 1 here
You can
read How to Publish your eBook in South Africa - Part 3 here
***
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