This article was written by J. Dane Tyler and originally appeared on one of his blogs. You should also check out his fiction blog.

This series reflects the path Dane took to self-publish his short story collection via the Kindle Store and SmashWords. You can check it out prove to yourself that he knows his stuff. (And of course read some good fiction)

• A Fine Cast of Characters [Amazon]
• A Fine Cast of Characters [SmashWords]

Thus begins my series of posts about how to self-publish an eBook on Amazon.com’s Kindle store and Smashwords.com. As I warned before, if this is not something you’re interested in, click away and I’ll see you when the series is over. I’m not sure how many parts this will run, though, so I hope at least some of you with stories you feel are entertaining and would be enjoyed by others but don’t think you have a market for them will stick around and consider this.

J. A. Konrath also suggested if you’ve got a manuscript which did its rounds – that is, you sent it out for representation and an agent didn’t pick it up or your agent sent it around and no publisher picked it up – you consider doing this with those as well. What have you got to lose? At the worst it languishes just like it is now. At best, you have an eBook bestseller on your hands and who knows what doors that will open.

I self-published my eBook for a number of reasons.

• Short story markets are generally non-paying and take months and months to respond, in general, to submissions. Not all, but some. The benefit is a publishing credit, and you know what? I have those already from a non-fiction book. Why do I need them from non-paying markets?
• My situation isn’t stable and my future’s a little rocky. I wanted to see results now.
• I believe the buying public will let me know if story collections are still interesting or desired by the readers of the world.
• EBooks are the way of the future. As many people as there are bellyaching about I’ll never give up books, I’ll never give up books, lots of figures show eBooks are currently outselling print books by a fair margin, which is only going to grow. Get with the program or be run over by it.
• I can get 70% royalties with Amazon’s Kindle program. Try THAT with a mainstream publishing house. Go ‘head, I dare you.
• My stories were already on my blog for free; why not try to make a little money from them?

I could keep going, but you get the point. All the money I’ve made so far is that much more money than I made with them by not publishing them on Amazon and Smashwords. I’m already ahead of the game. That’s why I did it, and it looks like I was right so far.

First things first: What you need

You’re going to need a few things, but you’ll already have most of them, and what you don’t have is free, so don’t freak. Just go get it.

• A good text editor. Something like Notepad++ would be ideal, but you can use Notepad – which comes with Windows – if you’d like. If you’re not using a PC, or if you’re using a PC without Windows on it (AHEM, Bryce) [Note from Bryce: What? I use windows. I just don't use Word...], you’re on your own. But I think Notepad++ is multiplatform, so I use it and I’m going to assume you’re using it too for the rest of this tutorial series.
• Amazon’s Kindle for PC or Kindle Previewer software. I prefer the latter, but I have both. I can’t speak for how Kindle for PC works; never used it. The previewer does everything I want it too. I need this; it’s the only way I can test the behavior of the file and get an idea about how it looks on a Kindle. You can’t skip this one; go get it from Amazon’s Kindle publishing page.
• Microsoft Word, or something which can save as a Microsoft Word document, like OpenOffice Writer or such. Try to avoid Wordperfect; it does strange things and no one recommends it. Also Smashwords ONLY accepts Microsoft Word documents. Go figure.
• Mobipocket Creator. This is the program which will transform your file into a Kindle-friendly format for you. This is completely optional; many, many people upload their HTML document straight to Amazon’s DTP (Digital Text Platform) and the conversion to the Kindle-native file format is done for them. No hassles, no hair-pulling, no cussing. What fun is that?
• I like to use KompoZer – which is a free, multiplatform HTML editor (like a word processor for HTML) to do some of the heavy, repetitive lifting. It’s not necessary, but you’ll see why I use it when we get into the process.
• Patience. Yep, you’re gonna need it. It’s gonna take a couple of days to get this right, but by the time you do, you’ll be a pro and can do it in your sleep.

Okay, once you’ve got all that stuff together, you’re going to need a story. Of course, that story should be imported or copied and pasted into Microsoft Word if you didn’t write it in Word. The part where you have a story, I’ll assume is done.

Next time, we’ll get to the nuts and bolts.

See ya then!

*edit* Added info for page breaks and cover images

After you’ve set up your account at dtp.amazon.com, there are a couple of ways to prepare your ebook so that you can upload it. You can prepare and upload it in html, doc, prc, or one of the other accepted formats. I like to prep books in html and then upload to Amazon. I let them do the conversion to the Kindle’s format. So in this article I’m going to talk about preparing a book in zipped html. If you want even more control, you can produce a file in the Kindle-Friendly .prc format. My buddy Darcknyt has a tutorial for that.

Why HTML?

If you are going to publish your ebook directly to the Amazon Kindle Store, one way you can upload your ebook is in zipped HTML format. I like html because it is easy to work with and I understand it inside an out. Plus, it’s easy to test.

Basic Steps

1. export book to .html
2. clean up html using notepad++ (or any old text editor with a search and replace)
3. test in a browser.
4. put html file into a zip file (using windows archiver thingy or 7-zip)
5. Upload zipped html to dtp @ amazon.

1. Export

Exporting is easy. I use OpenOffice.org, so when I want an html version of my book, I just use File->Save As

then I select html from the Save as Type list in the file dialog.

Microsoft work handles it in a similar manner.

2. Clean Up

Word processors tend to put in a whole bunch of stuff into the html that doesn’t need to be there, and may very wel affect your formatting when you upload the book. So I open the file in my favorite text editor ( notepad++ ) and erase the crap.

The crap come in two forms: header crap and extra styling crap that is fed into the body of the work.

Header crap is easy to remove, just select it and delete it.

The extra styling crap I take care of using search and replace. In notepad++, you just hit Ctrl+H to open up the dialog.

In my OpenOffice.org exported html, I had just a couple of tags that extra crap thrown in.

<H1 CLASS="western" STYLE="page-break-before: always">
<P CLASS="first-paragraph" STYLE="margin-left: 0.49in; text-indent: 0in">
<P CLASS="first-paragraph">
<P STYLE="font-weight: normal">

I used the find and replace to change them to (respectively)

<H1>
<P>
<P>
<P>

Also, if you have extra lines anywhere that look like:

<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<BR>

or

<P></p>
<P></p>
<P></p>
<P></p>

make sure you remove them, too.

3. Test

Just close the text editor, then find the html file and double click it, or use file->open in your browser. Just scroll around and make sure things look ok.

4. Zip

You need to put the html in a zip file so that you can upload it to Amazon. Just put the .html file in it’s own directory, rename it to index.html (your windows may automatically handle the .html part), then right click the file and select Send To –> Compressed (zipped) folder.

You can now use the zipped html file.

5. Upload

As you are using the wizard on dtp.amazon.com to create your book, just select your shiny new zipped html file at the appropriate time.

Other Stuff

Table of Contents

If you want to have a table of contents, here’s how you can easily add one in.

Open the html file in notepad++ (or your favorite text editor). After the title & copyright information, you add in an unordered list that looks like this:

<p>Table of Contents</p>
<ul>
	<li><a href="#ch_01">Chapter 1</a></li>
	<li><a href="#ch_02">Chapter 2</a></li>
	<li><a href="#whatever">Chapter Whatever</a></li>
</ul>

The hash mark “#” is important, but you can pretty much name your chapters anything you want after that.

Now you add anchors to your chapter headings like this:

<h2><a name="ch_01">Chapter 1</a></h2>
<p>It was a dark and stormy night...</p>
<p>...</p>
<h2><a name="ch_02">Chapter 2</a></h2>
<p>Her hair smelled of watermelons and rancid corn...</p>
<p>etc...</p>

Make sure you test the html file in your browser to make sure you’ve gotten the links right.

Page Breaks

If it’s important to you to have page breaks before each chapter (to make sure every chapter starts on the top of a page) you have two options.

1. Add in the special tag <mbp:pagebreak /> before each chapter heading.
2. modify the h1> (or h2> or b> or whatever) tags to be like this <h1 style=”page-break-before: always”>

Adding a Cover Image

Ok, here’s how to add an embedded cover image.

1. Make a cover .jpg image. For example, call it “cover.jpg”
2. Put the cover .jpg in the same directory as your .html file
3. Open the html file in your favorite text editor. Right after the <body> tag, add in the following line
   <div id=”cover”><center><img src=”cover.jpg”></center></div>

   then save the html file.

4. Now select both the cover and the html files in your file explorer and right click on one of them, then choose Send To -> compressed (zipped) archive from the menu as before. Both files will be included in the zip.
5. Upload your new cover-containing zipped html file to dtp.amazon.com. Amazon will grayscale and resize your cover for you.

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There are two great places to distribute your book in electronic format.

• The Kindle Store
• Smashwords

If you are lazy and only want to choose one, choose smashwords. Smashwords not only sells ebooks from their own store, but they distribute to several other stores: Barnes & Noble, Sony eBook Store, KoBo, Amazon, and the Apple Store. Smashwords takes a 15% cut of your profits to distribute. That’s great for the stores you can’t get into by yourself, but hey, that’s like an extra dime for every sale if you set it up yourself. So, yes, you can get a higher royalty if you set up Amazon separately, but there’s no shame in only wanting to manage your ebook in one place.

Thoughts on formatting an HTML file.

Here’s the basic idea: use your word processor’s “export” or “Save As html” to get a basic html document.

Your word processor is almost certainly going to add in a bunch of html tags that you don’t want. To fix this, you need to get really familiar with your plain text editor’s “Find and Replace” function. If you only have notepad, I’d suggest downloading Notepad++. As you look at the text, it may have tags that look like this:

<p style=’font-size:10pt;font-family:tahoma;’>

You may want to find and replace them down to <p>

You will also want to remove any extra line breaks. Because eBooks can end up on any number of eReaders, you don’t know how the extra lines are going to work out for you. Instead, you should just leave extra lines out.

Usually if there are css instructions in the <head> section, you can take them out.

Thoughts on formatting a .doc file (for smashwords)

To make your life easier, you may want to attempt the following.

1. Format your book in html. Make the formatting simple.
2. Save a copy of your html file, but with a .doc extension.
3. Open your new doc file in your word processor, make a change (add and erase a space or something.) and then save it.

The html file will have the crap screened out and Word and OpenOffice are smart enough to open a .htm file that has been renamed to .doc, but they will re save the file in the full .doc format.

Unless of course your original .doc already didn’t have any crazy formatting. If it already had minimal formatting, just upload it. No extra conversion crap necessary.

Thoughts on cover creation

Smashwords requires a at least a 900×600 image. Kindle wants one that is much bigger. From amazon’s help: “Image pixel dimensions of at least 1280 pixels on the longest side, 2560 or larger preferred.”

Cover page?

Don’t bother making it a separate page by adding in extra lines or anything. Just make it a section before the body of your text.

The book info section at the beginning of my book Oasis looks like this:

Oasis

by Bryce Beattie

Smashwords Edition

Published by Baby Katie Media, LLC at Smashwords

©2008 Bryce Beattie
Bountiful, Ut
http://www.StoryHack.com

For Aurora, who encourages me to write, even when it’s about zombies.

1: The Last Shift

I heard Donald running down the corridor calling my name, but I didn’t care. I just tightened the straps on my backpack kept walking toward the door. In fact, I sped up, hoping to get to the parking lot before he could…

For more information, check out:

• The Smashwords Style Guide – the official resource for what to do when formatting your book.
• Amazon’s Digital Text Publishing Forum

Note: lots of pictures here. It may take a minute to load.

The purpose of this tutorial is to help you create a simple yet attractive cover for your self published book. With just a little work, you can achieve much better results, or at least more of the results you want, than you can get with the automatic cover designer that CreateSpace offers.

Step 0: Get the stuff you need

Here’s the stuff you’re going to need for this tutorial.

1. A CreateSpace.com account.
2. A manuscript pdf (see my text formatting tutorial)
3. A big background image. Check out http://www.sxc.hu and http://www.morguefile.com. Both sites have plenty of images that you can use for. Be careful with the licenses of the pictures.
4. If you want cool fonts, you’ll have to find some that allow for commercial usage. I recommend http://www.fontsquirrel.com. It has many free fonts that can be used for commercial purposes.
5. Download & install OpenOffice.org and the Gimp. Both are Open Source and FREE.

Ok, now that you have everything you need, let’s get going.

Step 1: Start Your Project & Download your Cover Template

Login to your CreateSpace.com account. On your main “My Account” page, click “Add New Title”

and then select “Paperback Book” from the list that appears.

Fill out all the information for your book.

And then click the save & continue button at the bottom.

Now you should be looking at the “physical properties” page.

This is why you should have a finished manuscript pdf – you need to know how many pages so that it can calculate the spine width of your book. Click “save & continue”.

Now you are to the “Add Files” screen. This is where you can download your cover template file. So, you know, download it.

Step 2: Make your cover.

I’m going to use a few features of the Gimp just to give you an idea of things you can do. I’m not claiming to be creating a lasting work of art.

Ok, so unzip your newly downloaded template.

Start up the Gimp.

Open the unzipped file that ends in “.png”

The filename is something like BookCover6X9_280.png

Now you can see the file open in the Gimp.

Hit Ctrl+Alt+O (that’s an O as in Open) or select File -> Open as Layers…

And navigate to / select the image that you will be using as the background, then click “Open”.

The picture will now open up as a layer.

The picture I imported is too small for the cover! SO I’ll need to resize it. To resize it, make sure the picture is selected in the Layers dialog. (One of Gimp’s weird floating windows.) Select the layer simple by clicking on it.

Once the layer is selected, select “Layer-> Scale Layer”

Then set the width or height and click “scale”.

I had to set my height to about 2800. You want to make sure that the red part of the layer below is covered up.

That brings up a good point, I think I need to talk about the Background “template” layer a little. Let’s bump it up so we can look at it better.

In the “Layers, Channels, Paths…” dialog, Select the “background” layer and then click the move layer up button.

Now you can see the template layer on top.

Now, the explanation:

The red zone is going to get cut off when the cover is printed.

The blue zone may get cut into a little, so it’s not safe to put important pictures or graphics there.

CreateSpace is going to superimpose the barcode over the ISBN area.

As you work, you may not always want to see that template layer. If you want to hide it, just click the little eyeball in the Layers dialog. It is useful to keep the template layer at the top so you can judge where you are putting things.

Okay, let’s add some text using the text tool. (circled) Once you select the text tool, you can adjust how the Gimp is going to render your text by playing with the options below. (see arrows)

So play with those options and then click on the main image window near where you want the title to go. Type in your title.

Now use the text tool to put in the rest of your horizontal text.

I have turned off the template layer for the moment so you can see better how it’s coming. Also at some point it might be nice to turn back on the template layer.

The text is still hard to read, so I’m going to create a new layer (click the button in the Layers dialog)

Then move the new layer down to just one spot above my background image. (Using the move layer down button again.)

Now use the rectangle select tool

To select an area behind the title. Just click and drag to create the selection.

Now change the foreground color to white.

Then click OK in the Change Foreground Color dialog.

Now select the bucket fill tool.

Then click in the selection you just made.

Now by making new selections, changing the foreground color, then using the bucket fill, I’m going to put a box behind all of the text I’ve created, as well as one for the spine.

Now I’m going to make the spine Text just the same as any other. Put it anywhere, we’ll move it in a second.

Now select the rotate tool.

And click on your spine text.

Enter 90 in for the angle then press enter then click rotate.

Now select the move tool.

Click on the spine text and drag it where it belongs. If you start dragging other stuff, you’ve not clicked right on the letters themselves. Just hit Ctrl + z to undo then try again.

Make a new layer and select white as the layer fill type. Then click OK.

Then move that layer down to the very bottom. Don’t ask me why we do it, but just know I do have a reason.

Now hide your template layer if it’s not hidden. (click the eye)

Select the layer with the colored in boxes, then change the layer mode to overlay.

Now make a duplicate of that layer by clicking the duplicate button.

Here’s my result:

Last thing for the cover.

Select the layer that has the title. From the file menu, click Filters –> Light and Shadow –> Drop Shadow

Set the Offset X & Y to 0, and set the blur radius to 40, then click Ok.

And just for fun I’ve used the File –> Open as Layers… again to import a picture of the author. Here’s with the template showing:

…and without:

Make sure that the template layer is no longer visible. Now click File –> Save As and save your work as MyCover.png or something else ending in .png. Select “Merge visible layers” from the dialog that pops up, then hit “save” on the next one. The Gimp will then grind away and save your image. Remember where you saved it.

Huzzah! Now your cover image is made! You can close the Gimp and move on the step 3.

Step 3: Make a pdf.

I’ve never figured out a good way to export from the gimp to a pdf, so this is my workaround.

Start OpenOffice.org Writer.

Go to Format –> Styles and Formatting or press F11

In the Styles and Formatting dialog, click the Page styles tab.

Then right click on the “Default” page style and select “Modify” from the menu that pops up.

On the “Page” tab of the Page Style dialog, change the width from 8.5 to 17 and set all the margins to 0. Then click OK

Now select Insert –> Picture –> From File from the menu bar.

And select the cover image you just made in the Gimp. Then click Open.

Your cover image should fill the whole page.

Now click the “Export to pdf” button.

In the dialog that pops up, choose a name and a place to save the pdf. Then click save.

You may get this warning (Just click OK if you do.):

You can close OpenOffice without saving, unless you really feel the need to save the cover document.

Open your newly made pdf in your favorite pdf viewer to make sure everything is all right.

Ok, now you have your print ready cover pdf and you are ready to upload it!

Step 4: Upload Cover pdf to CreateSpace

Go to CreateSpace.com and log in. Go to your “My Account” page. Click on the title of your book from the “My Products” list. IT should return you to where you left off before on the “Add Files” step of the “Title Setup.” Scroll down to where it says “Book Cover” And click “Upload a PDF”.

Click choose file then navigate to your freshly minted pdf file and click “Open”. The click “Upload”. Depending on your connection speed, it may take a bit to upload.

Once it says “Your upload was successful”, click close. Then click Save changes in the main window.

You are finished with your cover! You’ll just need to finish going through the CreateSpace publishing wizard, and order a proof copy of your book, then you’ll be good to go.

Good luck and let me know if there are any questions.

Book Teaser Website Generator

You’ve seen how a lot of books are ranked for something more specific?

Do you want yours to rank for categories other than “Books”? Are you pretty sure you’d be topping the fiction > horror > supernatural > pirate > romance category, if only your book was listed there?

You have two options.

1. Be incredibly popular. Someone at Amazon will sort your book.

2. Ask nicely. When trying to figure out how to do this for my novel, I contacted Amazon Author Central. So the first thing is to get an Amazon Author Central account. After that, just follow the instructions they sent me. (pasted below)

Hello,

The “Browse Subjects” feature is designed to find the best-selling titles in a particular subject area. If you’d like to update the Browse Category for your title, please take a moment to search through the “Browse Subjects” section of our Books store. Click on each main category to see a list of sub-categories. Clicking on one of the sub-categories will bring you another sub-category list and so on.

The browse categories you choose must relate to your title. For instance, if the item in question is a book, only those browse categories that are related to books can be assigned to it. It is not possible to select browse categories related to Office Products for your book.

Once you’ve identified one or two “browse paths” appropriate to your book, write back to us by clicking the link below. In your e-mail, include the ISBN of the book, as well as your desired browse categories.

https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/help/contact-us

We can’t currently add new categories to our browsing lists, but feel free to check back from time to time. These classifications do expand and change as our bookstore grows.

The browse paths will appear on the book’s catalog page once they’ve been assigned. Your title will only appear on the “Browse Subjects” bestseller lists if it is one of the top sellers in that particular category.

Pretty easy stuff, huh? Of course, things won’t get changed overnight, but they’ll get to it.

For Fiction

Online

Here are a few of the online articles that have made the biggest difference in my fiction writing.

Randy Ingermanson -

• Writing the Perfect Scene – online article
• The Snowflake Method of Writing a Novel – online article

Jim Butcher -

• Introduction
• Story Craft
• Conflict, Logical Response and Point of View
• Story Skeletons
• Characters
• The Great Swampy Middle
• Scenes
• Sequels
• Story Climax
• Putting It all Together

Larry Brooks – story structure series.

• Story Structure — Just Possibly the Holy Grail of Storytelling
• Story Structure Series: #1 — Introducing the Four Parts of Story
• Story Structure Series: #2 – Milestones Along the 4-Part Storytelling Road
• Story Structure Series: #3 – Five Missions for the Set-up (Part 1) of Your Story
• Story Structure Series: #4 – The Most Important Moment in Your Story: The First Plot Point
• Story Structure Series: #5 — Part 2 of Your Story… The Response
• Story Structure Series: #6 — Wrapping Your Head Around the Mid-Point Milestone
• Story Structure Series: #7… the Part 3 Attack
• Story Structure Series: #8 – The Second Plot Point
• Story Structure Series: #9 – Pinch Points
• Story Structure Series: #10 — Part 4… the Final Act
• Story Structure Series: Epilogue… the Fine Print
• The Single Most Powerful Writing Tool You’ll Ever See That Fits On One Page

Books on Writing Fiction

Characters and Viewpoint, Orson Scott Card

Techniques of the Selling Writer, Dwight V. Swain

Non-Fiction

Actually, I’d still suggest a variation on  snowflake method. Other than that, I don’t really have any advice yet.

Why?

Most of the self published books I’ve read look completely unprofessional on the inside. No headers, bizarre margins, and funky spacing are not only common, but seem to be the standard. Fortunately, it’s easy to format things in a way so that it doesn’t detract from your work. Yes, you may get a little extra something if you pay the $10 a page (or $500 flat rate) some people charge. However, You can do pretty well by yourself with free tools.

The Plan

We are going to take a plain text file (this short story by Mark Twain) and turn it  into this pdf. Of course you can use your own work. This method is by no means the only way to do this, and you’re pretty flexible as far as fonts/sizes go. We won’t be working with graphics for this tutorial, but it’s not that hard.

Before We Start

If you want to follow along with this tutorial, you need to go download and install OpenOffice.org.

Here we go.

Part 1 – set up the file

Part 2 – insert the text

Part 3 – export/upload/profit

Conclusion

Pretty easy, huh? If you have any questions or comments, just leave a comment below.