If you are considering self-publishing your ebook, consider free publishing options from Amazon.com and CreateSpace. In August, 2010, Amazon's Kindle vice president Ian Freed said that Amazon was "pretty sure we're 70 to 80 percent of the market." Before spending money for an ebook distribution package,you can publish your ebook for free for the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes and Noble Nook to see if print-on-demand publishing is going to be cost-effective.
An Overview of Publishing a Kindle Book with CreateSpace
There are different options available through Amazon's CreateSpace publishing platform, and there are different royalty options. My experience is limited to helping a tween writer in my family publish her book, which was only published as an ebook. She was not interested in having her book as a "paper kindle." Yesterday's kids dreamed of seeing their books in the school library, but today's kids dream of seeing their books appear in the Kindle store.
The CreateSpace community has a lot of free resources to help you figure out how to put your ebook together, how to choose a price, and how to market the book. There are options for people to buy services such as editing and marketing, but you can also learn to do the process and independently publish your ebook.
CreateSpace eBook Basics
CreateSpace is free to use if you are going to publish an ebook. It is not necessary to have an ISBN if the book is just an ebook sold in the Kindle store, so there is not an ISBN fee. It is best to save your manuscript as a .doc file because .pdf files are not as flexible for different text flow options. If you do not have Microsoft Word, don't despair. I used Open Office and saved it as a .doc file when I was testing different publishing options, and the tween writer I was helping wrote her book in Google docs and downloaded it as a .doc file. It is not necessary to use Microsoft Word to get a .doc file.
You will need to have a cover for your Kindle book, and it can be a simple cover with just the title and your name, which you can create in Paint or with an image site like picnik.com. If you want your cover to appear on the Kindle book, you will need to put that at the start of the .dov file. There is no reason to get too caught up in the spacing of the title, copyright, and dedication because Kindle users adjust the font to fit their reading needs needs.
After you upload the cover and the .doc file, the ebook appears on a Kindle-like screen so you can see how it looks for users who choose different font size options. If you are happy with your file, press submit. You can choose your price and your royalty options, and in a few days, the file will appear on Amazon.com and in the Kindle store, and royalties show up as the ebooks sell. You need to make $10 before Amazon.com will send any royalties to your bank account.
Most Amazon.com ebooks sell for 9.99 in the Kindle store, but that might be a little expensive for an unknown author. Even well-established authors do not always price their books at 9.99; War of the Roses author Warren Adler is using CreateSpace for his new book series and his books are under $8.00. If you choose the 70% royalty option, you have to price your books at 2.99. My tween writer wanted to sell her short pet rock manual for .99, so she had to use the 35% royalty option. You can change the price of your ebooks and re-upload files if you discover mistakes, so CreateSpace is a flexible tool for people interested in self publishing their ebooks.
"Amazon: We have 70-80 Percent of E-book Market" was written by David Carnoy. It was published by CNET on August 2, 2010.
Alex Sharp - Alex Sharp is a teacher who has been keeping Suite101 readers up to date with the latest in audio- and e-book gadgetry since 2008.
