There are two ways to do this: (1) you can save the bound copy just as it is in .pdf, then make that saved copy your in-house ebook to sell to buyers as an attachment to an email you send that buyer to confirm the sale. The buyer can simply download the book and read or use it. Selling the .pdf ebook version is a particularly good choice if your bound book has lots of artwork (photos, charts, graphs, etc.) in it since you will probably eliminate all or most of that artwork in (2), to follow. The only drawback to the .pdf version is that it can’t be read on any of the readers, like Kindle or Nook.

Let me say it again: your book exists the moment the final draft files are proofed and ready to transfer. It needn’t be printed in bound form nor must it formally be saved in special ebook format, as we will explain in a moment. Which means that your nose will not grow if you now call yourself a published author. Congratulations!

The second kind of ebook (2) you will submit directly to the open publishers, like Kindle, Nook, Smashwords, LightningSource, Lulu, and Scribd. There, the buyer can read your book on their respective reader. That, in turn, requires you to make some modest modifications in a copy of your final bound file so the ebook digital versions sold by the open publishers will read better and be more useful in the software languages where they will go, like Mobi and ePub.

(I’m rewriting and slightly updating much of this blog from my book How to Get Your Book Printed Free in Minutes and Marketed Worldwide in Days, so to see how the ebook process fits into the overall book prep, those pages will be very helpful.) Here are the steps I recommend to convert your bound book manuscript into an ebook format:

* Digital book copies mess up the pagination because the front cover (you don’t include the back cover or spine) becomes the first page. Also, you will eliminate any blank pages, so the numbers become a hodgepodge by the end of the book.

* Therefore, you remove all page numbers in the table of contents, the header or footer, and the index.

* In the index you add this comment under the title “Index”: “Please use the find key to locate the specific reference pages.” Then you delete the numbers but leave in the index words in alphabetical order so the reader knows what you found worthy of special inclusion.

* Since it doesn’t matter how many pages the digital version has, this is an opportunity to increase the text font size without financial consequences. So why not make it 12-point type, probably in the same serif type you used in the bound version? (Don’t use any size larger than 14 or it will take many more pages to print.) Remember, when you increase the font size that will alter your earlier page layouts—that will likely require you to insert and delete some earlier page breaks.

* The same logic regarding color. It matters little whether the text is black on white or pink on red—I’m joking. You can use any color combinations you wish in the ebook, including photos and images. The drawback with color? If the user is planning to print out some or all of the ebook text, he or she may not want to use color ink—and may not know that he or she can go to “Properties” before actually printing and tell it to use only black and white. (We use color sparingly in our ebooks for that reason.)

* Probably the greatest advantage to digital copies is that links can actually be inserted and activated. For example, if I wanted to send you to my webpage in the bound version I would direct you to www.gordonburgett.com. But in the ebook copy I would probably highlight the words Web site, go to Insert/Hyperlink/ and type in “www.gordonburgett.com” where it says address. That way you could simply activate the highlighted (or underlined) word in the ebook and my Web site would open up. Don’t forget, though, if the links are now suddenly alive, you should change the typed out addresses to links, then test each to make sure you got it right and it’s still active.

* In Word, the style program is baffling so it’s best to cruise through the text pages and be sure that it says “Normal” in the top bar before the font and size boxes as often as possible. Don’t ask why but that seems to eliminate most of the cases where regular type inexplicably appears twice (or half) as large, in italics, or in bold!

* Sometimes to read your book well digitally you must modify or eliminate your header and/or footer in your ebook.

* We also make our chapter and section heads smaller and uniform throughout our ebooks, so reading the book on a reading device is faster and smoother.

* And, because we aren’t techies and we don’t use much artwork in our books anyway, here we eliminate all artwork—like images, photos, charts, and graphs. Why? Because it simply won’t stay where you want it, look right, or somehow not mess up your text presentation.

This is the time you go to the respective open publisher websites, tell them you want to make a book, and follow point-by-point their directions for completing the submission. Remember, for ebooks you only need the front cover of the book, so that should be saved in a file for submission too. (Here, again, the book mentioned will decipher the harder-to-grasp instructions for all of the submissions processes of the open publishers’ inclusion directions.)

Fill in all of the lines and boxes, insert the content file and cover final, and tell the respective website that you want to see how your book will look when it is posted by that publisher. Don’t panic if there are ugly errors in the reader. Anything can be modified. Keep a page-by-page notation of anything that looks askance, then go back to your original digital file. If you omitted, double-entered, used tab keys (don’t) in spacing the original text, whatever, correct every defect on your Word dig file, and send the corrected file in again. (They don’t care how many times you enter it.)

After you’ve made every change you see, go back and read the whole book, at least on the monitor, to see that the layout and contents are exactly as you’d like the digital readers to see them on their computers, on readers, or on some hand-held devices.

When all of the changes, eliminations, and modifications above are made, save this file and add dig to the file body so you will know this file is for open publishing ebooks. So if the book is about bees, the body of your file name might now be beesdig. And if, rarely, somebody wants the modified ebook file in .pdf, after all the changes are made, save it in .pdf and call that body name beesdig.pdf.

The real question is, what do you do if you have to delete artwork that contains valuable information the reader should know? One, you can rewrite the specific section in your ebook digital file so the gist of the artwork is explained in printed text. Two, you can simply say nothing at all. Or, three, you say that there was artwork in the bound book version of this text, then send the reader by link(s) to a page (or pages) on your website where the artwork does appear as it was included in the original book.

That’s it. Step #8 of our book prep in 10 giant steps. See you next week with #9.

Best wishes,

Gordon Burgett

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1. Your bound books will require a full cover, meaning a front, a spine, and a back. (In the rare case you produce a cloth-covered book–a hardcover book–the needs are the same except that you might also use a dustcover, an extra paper cover, that may also have end flaps on the front and back covers. If so, you need additional text and perhaps more artwork for the flaps. Sometimes all of the artwork will appear on the dustcover and the book’s hard covers will be plain, although the hard cover spine might have the book title and the author’s name on it.)

2. If your paperback is too thin for a spine to be used, your cover will then have just a front and back, without a specific spine. Spines are used if the book contains 110 pages or more. Libraries rarely stock spineless books. (Consider using case studies to add in enough pages to reach the minimum girth.)

3. An ebook has a front cover only. It makes much marketing sense to use the same front cover on all issues of the same book, same edition. Having said that, ebook covers are usually seen in catalog thumbnails. That might require some text modification because the cover will be so small. If some of the cover text is too small to be read in the thumbnail version, that unreadable text might be eliminated altogether. Conversely, the title, author’s name, and artwork might be larger so they can be seen better. The important thing, if possible, is to use the same colors so the ebook will be identifiable as the same book in cloth or paperback. thus the cover artist must plan in reverse, using colors and contrasts that can be read in both regular and thumbnail sizes.

In open publishing, there are two ways to get a cover.

(1) In the first way, probably free, you design your bound book covers at Lulu, Blurb, and CreateSpace. If you have specific artwork in mind, plus a set text composition for the back, you can probably use it on any or all of these three. But each of these covers will be distinct. They might look alike, but they will only work for what you create on that particular site. That’s because covers created on the publisher’s software belong to that publisher. And there are limitations on what you can design. (The instructions aren’t that easy to follow either.)

These bound book covers will also have specific and different bar codes with ISBN-like numbers on the back that can be used only for that publisher’s version.

So if you create your covers this way, you will need to create another cover for the other ebook versions that the other open publishers will produce and sell for you. Of course you can closely imitate the others and you can use the same title, sub-title, and artwork you used before.

As I said earlier, make your title and sub-title larger and bolder, even at some sacrifice of beauty. That’s because ebooks aren’t bought by their covers. In thumbnails in catalogs all you need is for the title(s) to be pleasantly balanced and clearly readable.

(2) I have a strong bias here. I suggest the second approach where covers (and their ISBN number) are concerned. (But if your book is going to be published solely by one open publisher, forget this bias and just create your cover on their software.)

The bias says that any book good enough to be widely published by the open publishers should also be a core product of your own (perhaps new) self-publishing company, and for that you want the very same cover and ISBN number on all bound book copies, yours and the open publishers’.

Alas, that costs money: $27.50 for each ISBN number (available in lots of 10 for $275) and from $150-500 to get a solid, professional cover in the three formats that I describe above: a full cover, one without a spine, and an e-book front cover. That cover artwork should be provided in both .jpeg and .pdf formats, plus the cover files should also be usable for fliers, business cards, and in other promotional ways.

Then you simply submit your own cover with your ISBN in your bar code to each of the open publishers to use in their production and sale. That’s precisely what I do every time and it has worked fine with every publishing house. That way I could also release the same book simultaneously for my own in-house and commercial sales. The most important thing, all of the books look the same and all are tied together with my ISBN.

Unless you are gifted in book cover design (which means that others would pay you to design for them), I suggest that you either use the templates at Lulu, CreateSpace, or Blurb or hire a cover done by a professional.

It’s said that people buy books by the cover. That may be a bit less so with the Web, but it’s still a huge factor in their choice. So don’t make your cover look like you did it with a ball point pen in 40 minutes.
A friend once told my seminar audience of book publishers that if they would have their gravestone chiseled with a sledgehammer and a nut picker, then they should design their own book covers!

Best wishes,

Gordon Burgett

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In earlier blogs we read of getting the book in final proofed form in Word, getting a professional-looking two-sided cover for the book, converting your Word book interior into .pdf (with another quick proof to be sure the pages are as you want them), creating the submission info needed by the open publishers (two descriptions, a bio, and calculating a book price), and creating a landing page (or a squeeze page) to tell buyers summarily what the book is about and where it can be ordered.

You can find those earlier blogs right at this blog site by inserting the respective blog number in the search box, like #3, #4, etc.

Now, in #7, we want to get the paperback book in motion so we can have it printed and buyable worldwide in about 10 days.

Go to www.createspace.com, and open an account if you don’t already have one. Then tell the site that you want to publish a book. (It will be in paperback; that’s all they publish.) I won’t walk you through the submission steps here—how you will submit your book’s ready-to-go interior and its cover. You can see it at the website, or you can get more details in my How to Get Your Book Published Free in Minutes and Marketed Worldwide in Days book, a ganga at $10-15.

Do as the instructions say. They will ask your book’s title. That’s extremely important and not easily changeable later. Make sure it tells the buyer what the book is about (and what benefits it will bring them). You can add a subtitle too. Keep all of that precise and clear.

The most important item, other than the title and the book itself (with cover), is the description you provide. That’s what tells the potential buyer what the book says and does, the style of writing, how it is organized, and something about your writing skills. Spend lots of time on this; editing and rewriting are encouraged. I like to include the Table of Contents near the end of the description, and if I have a couple of very short and very positive reviews, I try to work them into the text as well. (You shouldn’t just make up the testimonials, and claiming they came from Plato or Ulysses Grant might be suspect too.)

They also want a bio from you so the buyer has some idea of why you wrote the book, what you know about the topic, and what other accomplishments you have achieved. Don’t worry if you haven’t received a Pulitzer or Oscar yet, just list your belt notches, putting those most related to your book first. You can include your hobbies and other things you do too, so you appear human. Just don’t lie; you mother and Sunday school teacher will read it. If the bio is short, so what?

There are other details they need to sell your book that you must provide: the price, its length, if you are providing your own ISBN, keywords that one might use at Google to find your topic, and others.

Soon enough they will ask for your cover file, in .jpg, and your interior or content file, in .pdf. Browse to find them on your computer, insert them, and cross your fingers that both are accepted as they are. (If not, don’t panic. Just make the changes they require. You can even telephone them as a last resort if you are confused: they are friendly and helpful.) If they are accepted, look closely at the interior file to see if it’s like you want it. (It should be since you locked the contents in place when you used .pdf.) But if it’s not or you see five semicolons in the first sentence (a couple a book is enough), go back to the Word file, make changes there, change it to .pdf again, and resubmit it. I suppose you could do that 500 times (again, a couple of times should be more than enough). Just don’t say it’s OK until it is. It’s best to have them mail you a copy of the final proof so you can hold the book in your hand to scope it out one last time. Scope the cover too. Mailing the proof only costs about $10 and it arrives in a couple of days.

At some point you tell them to publish it. Having a bound book in print is a huge leap forward. Best yet,anybody can buy it and have it delivered in a few days anywhere in the world. You can buy it too if you want a few copies to carelessly scatter around your apartment in all of the places guests might sit or go.

That’s it. It’s embarrassingly easy, particularly if you fought in the publishing wars of just a few years back when you either self-published and bought 500 or so copies or you charmed some major house into putting your brilliance in print.

There’s another quick comment I should make. You can also send that cover and interior to Lightning Source and they will produce print-on-demand copies too. They charge about $105 total, and if you get a stock of your books to sell commercially (or perhaps back-of-the-room at your presentations) you may well buy them in small lots there. The book box(es) will be delivered in about five days. Who does that? Commercial self-publishers if they haven’t nailed down a niche buying cadre. They will order 50 or 300 books to see how well it sells, then they will order in lots of 1,000 plus from small-run printers, to meet their regular customer needs. You can have your book at CreateSpace and get copies from Lightning Source at the same time, but if you are going to sell the book widely in paperback it’s prudent to get your own ISBN number and use that same number in all bound versions everywhere.

A bound book is the real thing. Get it out so you can focus on ebooks in the meantime. More about that in #8.

Best wishes,

Gordon Burgett

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The statement might be: “The purpose of this book is to explain how one can build their own empire by writing and speaking.” (I actually did use this starter question many years ago, for the book Empire-Building by Writing and Speaking. (it’s been out of print for many years.)

Explaining “how one can…” defines the book’s contents and reason for being.

That will help you weed out related but non-tangential facts and “stuff” that won’t appear in the book. It gives you a selection tool to determine what you will include on the book’s pages. It also tells you who should be interviewed (or quoted), the kinds of artwork (charts, graphs, tables) you might seek or create, and the key examples you will build from.

On the same working pad, write down anything you or the readers might expect to see addressed or explained, terms defined, processes to be used, or anything else. Volume helps! Don’t worry about the order or where you’ll find the information. Just write, list, envision what others would want to read and know, ask questions, draw arrows if related topics pop out from earlier ideas, make boxes, list follow-up books you might write later…

If you have already researched the theme, include what the authors wrote about and the structure or organization they used. If there are five books, pluck from all five! List all of the names of experts in your chosen field, or related fields, and note where they are and how you could contact them, if needed.

If nothing appears in print to draw from, all the better! You will be the pioneer, the expert others will be quoting and the speaker they will be hearing. Which makes it all the more important that your book provides a logical, comprehensive starting point from which you and others can build from in the future.

In lieu of any core publication at the present, perhaps a “state of the art” book might provide a solid foundation for your own empire: where your idea or concept is right now, others’ thinking on the subject, the most relevant tools the readers might draw from, how what is known about the subject might be organized or reorganized, where you might expect the answers or results to go, and how the field could be constructed (probably using writing and speaking).

Rare indeed is a new book that doesn’t build from other thinkers, writers, or speakers in its core field. Weave them into the fabric of your book’s organization. Plan to read everything about your topic, then to interview those whose work or ideas significantly add to your own–or oppose them, telling why.

Keep those starter pages nearby as you write the book, and continue to add to them. Often book #2 or even your third book will emerge from those beginning questions you ask.

One last helper tool, the questions that all of us raised in journalism first ask: who, what, why, where, and how. Ask those of your core subject from the outset to give your content gathering a good toehold.

I discuss the book writing procedure in the first half of How to Get Your Book Published Free in Minutes and Marketed Worldwide in Days, if interested. Keep your eye on this blog too: I’m in the middle (#6 of 10) of a series of book-writing and -publishing steps to get you quickly in print and widely sold.

Best wishes,

Gordon Burgett

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This landing page would be at your website. You could use the regular address (mine would be www.gordonburgett.com) with a slash and a code followed by .htm (if the page is created in html format). If the book is about “women in soccer,” you might call the page “womeninsoccer.htm” (without the parentheses), so the link that would get you to that landing page might be www.gordonburgett.com/womeninsoccer.htm. The buyer would actually see ORDER HERE but under that would have been the link in the last sentence. How do you do that? You write the words ORDER HERE, highlight them, go to insert/hyperlink ), write the www… link in the address line, and push OK.

Another way is to buy a URL that takes the person directly to the book (like womeninsoccer.com), make it part of your website, and put the landing page there so either when they hit womeninsoccer.com up will pop the specfic order page or write ORDER HERE and do the same kind of hyperlinking I just explained.

All of that is to grab the buyers’ attention, tell what the book is about, give the reader a taste of the book’s writing style (by how the landing page is written), and let them get a peek at the substance. One thing more: a link back to your selling mechanism so they can purchase it immediately. But nothing else. No additional links to a free chapter or the author’s bio or anything else that will let them escape from the sales page. The only way out is for them to click to some other page or to go to the ordering place and order (or not).

I will send you to a couple of landing pages in a minutes to show what I’m talking about.

You wonder about the selling mechanism. We use 1ShoppingCart where we post all of our products. Anybody pushing ORDER HERE will have a choice immediately: buy the book digitally or bound. If they want an ebook version they will click that choice and a shopping cart orderform pops up. They will enter the needed credit card info, push the order tab, and in about five seconds the actual book will digitally appear! (In truth, another link appears that they must touch for the book to unfold on the screen.) If they get a bound version, we will mail it to them within 24 hours. In the bound-book case, the buyer pays the shipping. If there is any tax from either purchase, the buyer pays that too. (Their payment is deposited in our PayPal account immediately.)

If you have no shopping cart system (and they are a bit costly), get their credit card info, their address or email, find out how they want the bound items shipped, tally their expense, and add in the shipping and tax. It’s best if they open the escape link to an order form so they can see the product(s) and the information you want to share. Then attach the ebook file or send the bound book by mail. It’s a bit old-fashioned but if they want what you’re selling, they will usually go along.

Another possibility. If your book is available only in ebook, you could list three choices of publishers where your book could be purchased: Kindle, Nook, or maybe Smashwords. (That assumes you submitted your book to all three! See How to Get Your Book Published Free in Minutes and Marketed Worldwide in Days! for submission guidance.) Under the name of each publisher you insert the hyperlink code they give you that goes directly to your book. The publisher will handle their order for you, mail the book, and pay you later. You will actually come out ahead too. (Ask each publisher what number you should use for the respective books you are selling.)

That’s it.

Here are two landing page examples that work: Bob Bly also has an ebook about landing pages, and his are the best examples I see in print.

One at www.gordonburgett.com/scavenger.html.

Another at www.gordonburgett.com/travel.htm.

#7 in this series next week.

Best wishes,

Gordon Burgett

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Novelists often write two to five pages a day, unedited. Old veterans can plunk out 10-20. Nonfictionfolk pretty much write once they have the facts. Somebody wrote the story of the seven-day war in five days, at least it’s said in publishing lore. Some seasoned writers work rain or shine, probably indoors. Some rest from writing on the Sabbath; some rest a lot more than they write. Most rest when the Bears play or the Ladies Math Society meets.

My observation? The more days you don’t put in at least an hour or two on your book, the less likely it is to ever see literary light. If it never appears, that proves that you are as unreliable, devious, lazy, and dim as the public says.

The remedy for such false talk is to determine how many days you will write per week and how many hours on those days. Create a pace you will sustain, set completion goals, and reward yourself. Some use fine food, sex, or a couple of days of fun when they hit key milestones.

If you fall behind, don’t quit. Pick up where you left off. A measuring tool for many writers is this: however long it takes you to write the first draft, double it and that will be how long it will take you to send the final, proofed, ready-to-go masterpiece to your chosen publisher.

So you need a calendar, conviction, captured words, and marked goal dates. You fill in the rest.

If you are interested in my system, I speed the process up by working in chunks. A chapter is a chunk. So I plan to complete a chunk a week, although some gnarly chapters might earn two weeks. I usually write from first chapter to last, but I might change the chapter order as I’m writing. I do no research when I’m actually writing. I have either completed the basic research or if I find a black hole (something unknown I must find later, in my own time). I write down a ____ line and next to it a [box] in which I write what I’m looking for. Then I keep going.

In the first draft my purpose is to get the book blocked out and starter words inserted. So I mostly write as I think. Those words get on the paper–and stay there forever. I don’t worry about spelling, grammar, details, synonyms. It’s as if I’m nailing down the boards on a back deck. My job is to get the boards nailed down as I designed them. I don’t nail, then unnail, turn the top to the bottom, sand a rough edge, paint a bald spot, … It all gets nailed, then I add the frills.

First draft is to get the boards (or words) down using the best ones at hand. I will mull over word choices, which use of words, tense and gender, and so on in the second draft. I will turn this rock into a jewel in the final, third draft.

Speed counts in draft #1 because nothing is sacred and I assume that lots of those words and phrases will change later.

There is one exception to the plow-forward, get-it-down dictum. If I start writing a word or phrase (or even several sentences) and as I am writing I think of a better words or phrase or sentences, I type / … / marks around what didn’t work and then write down the better idea, word, or words. I just keep going. It’s awkward at first but I soon see that when the first draft is completely typed out, on the printed copy of that first draft I will take a red felt pen and cross out all of the / … / segments, leaving the prose that worked. Mind you, I leave the red cross-out on the paper and in the digital text on the long shot that in that red rejected pile there are a few words or ideas I may want to recall later when I edit the final work. That way it’s a lot easier to find that particular gem again than it is to dig through last week’s trash to recapture that renegade idea or text.

How many book pages must you write a day? They asked Abraham Lincoln (a super writer) how tall he was, and he replied that he was tall enough for his feet to touch the ground. My only answer to everybody is that you must write enough words for the book to cover its ground–and probably add a few more to make it shine.

Best wishes,

Gordon Burgett

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The first is obvious. The second gives you peace of mind and lets you work on others’ computers and keep your results safe and transferable. You simply save that day’s work on both the hard drive and the flash drive at the end of each session. (I even pay Mozy to download it overnight and save it elsewhere. Overkill? Have you ever lost the only copy of a manuscript?)

The third may seem redundant yet it allows you to work on your book whenever you are unlinked, like in the doctor’s waiting room or in a park enjoying the summer sun without having to drag along a laptop. It’s where that flash of brilliance or that dancing dialog can be captured, to work in later. (All of my best thinking comes at the wrong times. I don’t want all of it to escape. Write it down! Sometimes, later, you wonder what possessed you to save that, but often that string of words will be exactly what your book needs.)

Most of your “extra” work so far is being saved in your computer. Now it’s time to divide that into its most comfortable parts and give it a protective three-ring cover. Buy some dividers for the chapters, print your copy on three-ring paper as it is created, insert the folder segments where they belong, and also tape in all of the remaining loose notes and clippings where they best fit, so you can keep all the primary and supporting data at hand in one place.

If you insert a few blank pages in each chapter in the binder as well, it’s surprising how often you will use them to leave additional critical notes and thoughts, which you can use when it comes time to finally get the text together and edited. The trick is to keep this folder with you pretty much all the time. At the minimum, it reminds you that you are in the middle of something important: writing a book!

(I can imagine almost every reader under about 30 or 35 scoffing at the thought of a three-ring binder. Why not keep it on their iPad or magic phone? Fine. But when I was 35 if I had had to keep my incidentals on a phone the cord would have had to reach Brazil or Argentina!)

Incidentally, much of this blog is found in the book writing half of my How to Get Your Book Published Free in Minutes and Marketed Worldwide in Days!

Best luck with your book!

Gordon Burgett

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Since the submission form requires all three items to have your book published free, or almost free, at Kindle, Nook, Smashwords, iPad, CreateSpace, Scribd, and other “contact” publishers, it makes a whole lot of sense to create one (sometimes two) versions of the above so you can just copy the item and paste it where needed in the submissions.

The description

The description is the most important (after the title), and most of the houses give you lots of room to tell what your book is about. Each will tell you the length they provide, but 5,000 words is not uncommon. Your best, most fetching prose is needed here because if the first paragraphs don’t rev up the potential buyer’s motor, they won’t pay much attention to the rest.

Think of writing a long article, though an article of almost any length has the same need. The first sentence (or paragraph) is called the “hook lead” for the simple reason that it appears first and it must hook you down to read what follows. The next paragraph or so is the “transitional paragraph,” and it helps your mind tie the lead to the body, usually by telling you a key fact the next paragraphs will develop. When that thread is explained, there will be segues that will link a new topic, and so on. Don’t ponder this. Just read almost any newspaper or magazine article and you’ll see what I mean.

The book description needn’t be that rigidly structured but early on the reader must know what the book is about, how you will introduce the characters and information, the order or geographic path the book will take, and anything else critical that causes the book to be written. I usually start with several hundred, maybe a thousand, words (some directly from the book), then I will introduce and list the table of contents. Most of the rest is spent explaining a sentence, or several, about each major section of the contents.

My guideline is whether or not the description reader says, “wow!” at the end, and thinks they’d be a fool not to read the book itself. And since most of my books contain a lot of humor, that too is sprinkled generously in the description as well.

Some publishers want you to have two descriptions, one long to be used where the book is fully explained (on their website), the other usually 150-250 or so words to appear on the thumbnail selling tool or in short ad plugs. Frankly, the short one is almost always the opening sentences of the long one, edited, with a wee closure. I can write this ahead but I usually don’t. I just copy/paste the beginning of the long description, then edit it to work.

[Incidentally, I explain all of the submission steps in detail, plus where they can be submitted, in my How to Get Your Book Published Free in Minutes and Marketed Worldwide in Days.]

The price

You used to be able to give the books away, which meant no price. Now, most ebook prices fall into three very loose categories: (1) very cheap, at least in the beginning; (2) a bit under $10 so it is $2-5 less than the bound or paperback version, or (3) what the author thinks the market will bear.

Most of the “open” publishers start their book prices at about $ .99. The (1) low category usually says to me that the book is fiction and its function is to snag a following of buyers that will later buy the rest of the series (or other books from that author) at a higher price. Or it is listed at $2.99 (or maybe $3.99) to get a premium royalty, since most of ebook “open” houses pay a royalty of about 30-35% for books under $2.99 or over $9.99. Between those prices they pay 65-70%, about double. The next group (2) charges $9.99 or a bit less so they get the premium, and they are still below the bound price of the same book, which may be $14.95 or so. These are more likely to be nonfiction books. The (3) group may charge $15 or $20 or $50 for the ebook, and probably not sell many as ebooks. Those are most often high quality cloth or paperback editions, nonfiction and more than not offering the ebook as an option since they expect most of the buyers will buy a bound version.

So here, at the time of submission, you must list some price. But you can literally change that price every day, if you wish and you want to drive your fans crazy.

Your biography

Just check the submission to see how much about you they want to subject their buyers to. It’s often 500-2,500 words. List all of your feats and accomplishments, then, on another page, prioritize them by how close they are to the topic of the book. If you have some other claim to fame (like, you are a Governor or notorious) you might put that at the top of the list. If you are already famous, that goes up there too. Then artfully list these items in a sensible order. If you have other books in print, include them too, with those most related to this book’s topic going first. 99% of this is common sense, but make sure to spell names, places, and books correctly. Then you cut/paste as much of the biography as you must or wish to share where it is requested. Incidentally, don’t just make stuff up. Invariably the least significant item listed will be challenged!

And that’s it. That saves me hours if I’m going to submit a book to four or five “open” publishers. I use this bio time and again, in the ebooks or in almost anything else that requests it. A bit of editing, pruning, or updating, and off it goes again and again.

Next week (see #6) we will talk about a dandy way to sell your book: a landing page.

Best wishes,

Gordon Burgett

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Move past World War II. If you wanted to be a published author (particularly of novels or children’s books), you found a publisher, sent a letter that sold your idea and skills, signed a contract, wrote the book, then waited what seemed like a lifetime to see your words in print—all for about 10% of what the buyer paid, and that begrudgingly sent a couple of times a year by snail mail (although snail mail then usually arrived in a day or two, for 3 cents.)

Computers appeared and all of the processes got faster and cheaper, the end product got better looking, and all the writers had access to the new magic machines! Authors could even get their own books printed in volume and shipped in less than a month. Self-publishing emerged and evolved. But self-marketing, outside of the niche fields, didn’t, so most of the new one-author enterprises required learning and using new sets of selling skills and tools.

That left the novice book writer with two reasonable choices: (1) the old “big house” query begging to get the prose accepted, with perhaps real begging to stay alive until the royalties arrived, or (2) having to learn and use new skills or means to convert a self-written offering into a self-published life-sustaining product. Self-publishing profits might be 25%, even 40% if the book was niched, but only after the book-producing and -marketing debts were paid.

Creating profitable books has always followed the 3-P process: preparation, production, and promotion (plus patience and prayer). If you had a book you wanted to write, you simply had to put the words together (or pay a “real writer” to quietly do it for you). But now, with the writing and editing done, when it’s ready to foist on a reading public, you have a choice of many no-charge publishers who will do the production and the promotion (or at least the marketing) for you.

They are called “open” publishers, but they aren’t doing that because it’s the 21st century and you’re a lovely lass or lad. They, too, have bottom lines. In exchange for you bringing them genius in a file, that is, a book in final form, they will convert your words into a professional-looking book and sell it for part of the money earned. (They may also hope that you’re a braggart with a huge, book-buying family.) Which are “open” publishers? Kindle, Nook, Smashwords, CreateSpace, Blurb, Lulu, Scribd, and others…

How much will these modern-day saints pay you? Something between 22 and 85% of the cover price—but most pay in the 35-45% range. For that, after you have entered the enchanted text and cover files into the publishers’ software and later proofread the final book, you can do nothing but spend your earnings.

I go into the details in my book How to Get Your Book Published Free in Minutes and Marketed Worldwide in Days. The publishing world really is upside down in your favor. If you dreamt of seeing your book in print in your own lifetime, can you see why this new business model throbs with so much potential?

Best wishes,

Gordon Burgett

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Maybe it’s a novel, a kid’s book, a joke book, a memoir, or a cookbook? Why not a “how-to” book that shares all you’ve learned about your job, coaching, or raising teens—or a book about rutabagas? Why not a 1,000-page revelation of life’s real meaning?

Then join the huge club of frustrated would-be book writers who didn’t write their book in the last 12 months (or years)—and probably won’t unless they can figure out a way to make all the rest of that, like publishing, happen! Some money for doing it wouldn’t hurt too!

The writing is daunting enough, but with computers, spell check, how-to books, and classes that will fill in the writing gaps, you could probably get the words down and even make them sound good.

The harder stuff is—or was—the publishing.

How would you put it together? Where would you get a decent cover? Where can you get it printed—and what part of a king’s ransom would that cost?

And even if you could print a dandy little book, how or where would you sell it? On the street corner? Knocking on doors? How would you get it in bookstores, libraries, Costco, and Amazon.com? How much would be left after paying the middlefolks?

That’s the problem, isn’t it? The writing, producing, and promoting, plus the shipping and storage. Oh yes, there’s also the expense of doing it too!

Open publishing to the rescue!

There are about 10 “open” publishers that are waiting for you to write your book and send it to them, so they can publish and distribute it, then pay you 35-80% of the royalty. They are called “open publishers.” They include CreateSpace, Kindle, Nook, Smashwords, Scribd, Lulu, and Blurb. Just check their websites or see the full process in How to Get Your Book Published Free in Minutes and Marketed Worldwide in Days. Your book will look professional in appearance, have a full-color cover, contain the words you submit with the title you choose, and will be available to buy by anybody interested almost anywhere. The best thing: the publishing is free (or under about $25)! And there is no middle-person.

“Open” publishers are sort of magicians who can turn anybody with a book into a publisher. It’s one of the few things I know that sounds too good to be true—but isn’t.

If you want a quick, nine-step preview of the process before you go any farther? I’m in the middle of a 9-blog explanation of the process right now–look here (in the list lower right).

rightI hope we see you in print soon!

Best wishes,

Gordon Burgett

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