How to Format your own books for Kindle and Print and sell them FREE

A fbf of mine asked how to format a book for publication.  I told her then thought I'd share the basics here, because I know there are quite a few people who would like to publish a book and sell it.  So far I've managed to do it for free.  I am going to invest $25 as soon as I get some funds to expand the print book's distribution so it can be ordered by bookstores and placed in libraries.

Not too shabby for a process that can cost a grand or two.

Amazon.com and it's affiliate CreateSpace give writers a great, free option to publish their books.  CreateSpace even assigns your books a FREE ibsn number so your book can be found and ordered.

Amazon specializes in Kindle/Downloadable books.  If you leave off the DRM management, your book can be converted to other formats for other digital book readers.  They general pay  35% - 70% royalties.  You have to wait 60 days for the first payment to be deposited for the first month, then you should get the payments steadily at the end of each month thereafter, as long as you've made at least $10 in sales.

CreateSpace specializes in print-on-demand books.  The books are printed as the customers order them.  The royalties are SIGNIFICANTLY less than the kindle books but that's because they are physically printed which has overhead.  Still, you have a real, hold-in-your-hand  book, and that's a very nice feeling.  But on a book priced at $8.99, you'll make about 92 cents per sale.  Doesn't seem like much, but if it catches fire . . . the pickings can be pretty good.

Here's the basics, copied directly from my reply to my friend:

FOR EBOOKS

Well, for Kindle, you format it the way you want in word, add a table of contents, save it as a "filtered webpage" (.htm or html) then download a free ebook creator like Moblipocket creator, select the saved html file, select an image for the cover, then "build" the ebook. It will be saved in several files, but the one most used is .prc. You can upload that after reviewing it, to amazon.com, then enter the description info, your bank account info to recieve royalties and set your price. Wa-laah. Published and selling within hours, and for FREE

FOR PRINT BOOKS

Formatting for printing is different. You have to size your pages to match the physical size of the book. Enter your title, copyright info, ibsn number (I got one free from CreateSpace) Dedication, Table of Contents, Acknowledgments, then the book content by chapters. You should have odd and even headers at the top of the actual story pages, the author name centered on the left page, and the title of the story on the right page. After the end of the story, you should put an "About the Author" blurb. My book is 6" x 9". I used .75 margins.

CreateSpace provides templates to help you format your book and create your book cover. It also provides services to do it for you, for a price of course.   It takes a little work to do it yourself, but with some determination, it can be done.

I hope this information is useful. :)

UPDATE:  You do have to pay for the "proof" which is a physical copy of the book that is shipped to you to be reviewed and checked out to make sure the book is ready for sale.

The cost: $4.47 + $3.49 shipping.  Total $8.06

That was the total cost to self-publish my book.  Still not a bad deal!

Enjoyed Bill Maher but was multi-tasking, formatting a book for print

Best line ever:  Bill Maher on Newt Gingrinch:

"If he was any slimier, you could kill him with a box of salt."

XD

He had a lot of zingers, but I was too engaged in trying to format my book "Sahara" for print distribution.  Amazon CreateSpace lets you format a book for print, then prints it on demand for any customer that orders it.  They offer formatting services, but man, they are pricey.  But they do give you a free IBSN number.

It appears to be simplicity itself.  They give you a nice Word template, already formated to book size.  You just have to paste your text into it.  Sounds easy right?  It is, until you look at the whole thing and find the formattings gone screwy.  After you fix up the oversized headers and huge gaps in the text, you upload it for an initial review.  Of course, the formatting is all wrong.  Words supposed to be formatted into the middle of the page are at the top, words formatted to be at the bottom are in the middle, part of the text is outside the margins . . . argh.

So I'm on like my 6th upload.  I'm determined.  And then there's the cover.  Again you get the template, but you have to design the cover with the spine and back cover.  You need a calculator to figure how big the spine has to be based on the number of pages in the book.  I see why people pay a couple of hundred dollars for the professional services.  They're frustrated.  But I am determined to get it right.   I also need to work on my Author Page at http://ruthrsolomon.com  It's rather sad with that "Coming Soon" text and pic of my book.  But in time.  I'm completely skivving off on a freelance assignment I have to do.  I already received the deposit.  Luckily it's a subject I'm familiar with.  Hopefully I'll knock it out tomorrow or Saturday in a couple of hours.  Well, that's it for tonight.  Take care.