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Making It As A Self-Published Author

By Chris Chardon

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 04Mar2012 Word count: 1548 Viewed: 29 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Nowadays, it's no secret that Amazon has completely changed the way books are published. Not only are they getting into transitional publishing, with the ebook Kindle platform (not to mention competing products such as Kobo, Nook and so on), authors are no longer at the mercy of large New York publishing houses. Nor is the only alternative vanity publishing, where you have to spend a lot of money up front to pay a company to print, bind and stock your books (which may or may not sell). So even first-time authors can write a manuscript, upload it and start collecting money via Amazon's distribution network.

However, there are still a lot of pitfalls out there for the unwary. First, there are thousands of people writing and uploading ebooks now. Naturally, with such a large amount of competition, getting your work noticed takes a bit of effort. And this is where a lot of new writers are falling down on the job. They seem to think that once the manuscript is done, they're finished. But there are still a lot of things to do.

Number one: get a good cover made. Nothing makes a book stand out from the competition more than an eye-catching cover. And a poorly done cover will limit sales, because few people will bother to take a chance on a story when the author hasn't bothered to get a good cover made for it.

Second, there is the technical process of formatting the manuscript for Kindle, Kobo and so on. Each device has a different standard, and just putting an MSWord document up on Amazon is going to create a Kindle book that has odd spaces, line breaks, chapter breaks, etc. In extreme cases, this lack of formatting can render the manuscript all but unreadable, and even in cases where it's not that extreme, bad formatting will leave a bad taste in the reader's mouth. Along the same lines, you should employ a professional proof-reader to give your work a once-over. Misspelled words, run-on sentences and the like will drive away many readers, and if your book should happen to get reviewed by a blogger with a large following, you can bet that technical English issues will draw criticism. Unfortunately, all too many authors neglect this vital aspect of publishing, resulting in books that are, in a word, unprofessional. If you plan to sell your books, that means that you are going to be a professional writer. So you should uphold the standards of professionalism as much as you can.

Finally, there is uploading the manuscript to whatever website or service you're going to use to distribute it. Again, many authors simply don't want to deal with the hassle of this step. But even the technically challenged will have to either figure this out or else hire someone to do it for them.

Fortunately, there are services out there that can help with all of these issues. And they don't have to cost an arm and a leg. Depending on how much help you need, you can get, for example, a guide to upload books on Kindle, complete with snippets of HTML code already written out for you, for as little as a couple of dollars. Editors can be hired for less than $100.00 (for a normal-length manuscript that doesn't require too much in the way of fixing). And there are cover artists who can be hired for a similar amount. Alternatively, there are reputable companies that will provide some or all of these services as a package deal, thus saving you both money and time... time that you can then spend on getting your next book written.

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