At Betacowork we help each other out a lot. One of the ways we do this is with member only workshops where we exchange knowledge in a safe environment. The self publishing workshop was one of the most successful ones, as we have many authors among the Betacoworkers. Some are professional writers while others, like me, do this on the side of the many things we do for work and fun. As I lead the workshop, I drafted a list of interesting links based on my experience self publishing (The Coworking Handbook: Learn How To Create and Manage a Succesful Coworking Space), publishing in traditional media (Mac OS X Jaguar: iniciación y referencia, Constitución Europea: manual de instrucciones), and our interactions.
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Self publishing links
Practical books about self publishing
- Createspace and Kindle Self-Publishing Masterclass. The Step-by-Step Author’s Guide to Writing, Publishing and Marketing Your Books onAmazon. Rick Smith. This is the book that I used as a reference to self publish The Coworking Handbook. You don’t need any other book.
If you want more to read, check out these publishing books on Amazon.
Financing
- Finance your book via a crowdfunding campaign. I used Indiegogo. I got €3111 with this crowdfunding campaign.
Interesting author forums:
Free ISBN numbers
- Get free ISBN numbers for your books (you have to communicate in French, it takes 3 weeks to get them): AFNIL
Writing tools
Any word processor will do. If you want to try a writers tool:
Best markets for ebooks
Thanks to Stéphanie Michaux for this list 🙂
- Amazon
- iTunes
- Barnes & Noble
- Kobo
- Google books
Self publishing distribution platforms
- Amazon: CreateSpace (paper) & Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)
- Update 200160818 Had a horrible experience with Bookbaby and ended up removing my title from their platform. They did reimburse me. I ended up using eBookPartnership.
Bookbaby: You pay a fixed fee and keep 100% royalty net revenue from all sales. They distribute to Google books via one of their distribution channels. - Lulu: Expensive in fees (% of royalties)
- Smashwords: They did not reply to my Twitter messages about distribution to Google Play/Books, plus website that looks so old it scared me about the user experience.
-
Pronoun: new platform in development, just launched
not yet ready. No Google Play Books. -
IngramSpark: For traditional distribution channels.
- Bad reputation: Author Solutions, multiple brands, among which is Penguin books. E.g.: Booktango They say it is free but charge for these. Slice of royalties you get. Blogposts about them: 1, 2.