E-publishing tips.

If you or a friend has been dealing with Self-publishing for a while I hope you can learn from my mistakes and the journey I took to recovery.Hi, my name is Drayton Alan… and I’m a … self-publisher.

I have been dealing with Self publishing for a while so I thought I would share a few tips. - Pay for a professional editor, you don’t want to do all the formatting work if you still have major changes to make. - E-Pub tip - Use at least Heading 1 style for chapter Headings. When you make an E-pub it will automatically make table of contents. - I recommend Calibre for generating E-pub or other electronic formats. Its very simple and allows you to go straight from .doc to epub, PDF, Mobi etc. - Make sure you layout the book properly in Word. Use a template or work hard to understand margin spacing requirements on manuscript pages. - Decide on ragged right margin or full justify. - Cover art insertion can be very tricky to get right. And each printer has different requirements. The spine art will have to be adjusted for the number of pages and the weight of the paper. - Any edges of cover art should be made so that they will over bleed cover. I had a box outline for one cover and it was impossible to get this to line up correctly. Use art that will not require precise centering. - If you insert pictures or graphics in with the text, make sure you examine each closely for spacing and margin. I’ve had them move around on me. - Order the maximum number of proofs allowed (usually like 5) go through one of these carefully. Give the other four to friends and ask them to find mistakes with the layout. - If the proofs aren’t too bad use them as marketing giveaways later. Limited printing, only 5 made, or autograph and give them to test readers as reward for reading. - Make sure you remove all highlights from editing and working with the manuscript. Just do a select all and set the highlight to no color! I forgot a few in the middle of my first book and didn’t notice them until I’d printed my first fifty! - Order just what you will need at first. Depending on your distribution. The expense of the first printing for me is mainly for marketing since most of these are given away for promotions. - To do free and reduced price promotions on Amazon you have to enroll in KDP which requires you to not offer the book elsewhere electronically. Lulu allows you to have your book listed on other sites but you can’t be in KDP if you list an electronic version with them. So no Nook if you KDP.