Start Your Book Publishing Journey
In a recent column celebrating Make A Book Day, I offered to share some links to help would-be self-publishers get started. Here they are.
There’s this old joke:
The comedian starts out saying: “Alright. Now I’m going to tell you the easy way to pay zero taxes on a million dollars.
“Step One: Make a million dollars…”
There is no Step Two. That’s the joke.
It comes to mind because of the topic at hand here: How do you go about publishing your own book?
Well, first you have to write a story people will want to read. That’s the blood, sweat and tears part.
As it turns out, the publishing bit is the easiest.
So, let’s say you’ve written something and you want to share it with the world. There are many ways to do that. You don’t have to actually print a book on paper. You could, for example, serialize your story on various online media, like here on Substack, or Medium, Wattpad, Royal Road and other platforms.
Any number of traditionally published authors started that way. In fact, my latest novella, Scribbles From Space, began as a serialization right here on Substack. It will be released soon as a free-standing ebook on Kindle and later this year will be included in a science fiction anthology along with the works of a number of other writers.
Here’s a sneak-peek at the cover:
When it comes to self-publishing your own book, the best way, in my opinion, is to go straight to Amazon and their Kindle Direct Publishing platform. There you can create ebooks, paperbacks, hardcovers, and even roll over to Amazon’s Audible for audiobooks.
The easiest of these is the ebook format, Kindle. Once your manuscript is complete, signup to create your KDP account, then download the Kindle Create app on either your PC or Mac and follow the step-by-step guidelines.
For the six books in my Strange Files series, I did not take this route but, rather, used a commercial book designer based in New Zealand named Damonza, which I highly recommend. In my case, my publishing company, Tropic Press, was creating ebooks, trade paperbacks and hardcovers for not only Amazon but another major book distributor as well, Ingram Spark. So I thought it best to subcontract the book production.
But you certainly don’t need to do that, especially if you are satisfied to just publish ebooks.
For my latest short story, The Code, which is now available as an ebook on Kindle, I did it myself using Kindle Create to format the text, and I used AI-generated artwork from Canva for the cover.
Creating either paperbacks or hardcovers is a little more challenging than ebooks as you have to navigate cover formatting for the front, back, and spine of the books. Not saying it isn’t do-able. Millions of people have done it. I just haven’t done it myself.
As I promised in my column, here are a few links to get your started. You will no doubt discover more on your own.
One word of advice: There are a lot of people out there eager to help you — for a fee. Buyer beware. Before you give your hard-earned dollars over to anyone, do your homework.
In fact, let’s start there. Here’s a helpful story from The Authors Guild:
And here are some other useful articles to get your started:
https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G202172740
https://kindlepreneur.com/kindle-create-tutorial/
https://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Create/b?ie=UTF8&node=18292298011
https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/bookshelf
And remember, the hard part of all this is the actual writing, creating a readable story. If you can do that, then the publishing part of the equation will be relative easy.
Good luck!
J.C. Bruce is a journalist and author of The Strange Files series of mysterious novels (available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, other online booksellers, and at selected libraries). He holds dual citizenship in the United States of America and Florida. His latest novel, Strange Timing, was recently named Book of the Year in the Royal Palm Literary Awards where it also won Gold Medals in the Sci-Fi and Thriller categories. When he’s not writing, he’s in training for the International Underwater Ping-Pong Championships.
Sponsored by TROPIC PRESS, publisher of The Strange Files Series of Mysterious Adventures.
