Self-publishing

[Jenna Terese]

As some of you may know, I plan on self-publishing a novella this summer. If any of you have any advice about self-publishing, I’d greatly appreciate you sharing! Do self-published authors have to store books in their home and send them out when people order online? What site is best to publish on (I was looking at Lulu and Ingramspark)?

@rochellaine @seekjustice @dragon-snapper @skredder @jane-maree @anyone @alia feel free to tag more people 🙂

I'm a Kapeefer 'TIL WE'RE OLD AND GREY!
www.jennaterese.com

[Rochellaine]

@jenwriter17 I’ve never heard of Ingramspark, but I’ve printed my books with two different sites, Diggypod and Lulu, and out of those two Lulu is much the better!  On Lulu they allow you to order a single sample copy to make sure the formatting and cover are all correct before you order your full shipment of books.

On Lulu also, you can set it up so they sell your books on both their site and on Amazon, very easily.  (I have actually done that for my time travel book, but haven’t linked my site to it yet because I haven’t gotten around to setting it up for my kids series and want to link them all at the same time…for some reason. 😉 )

So…I would definitely recommend Lulu! 😀

One thing to note about self-publishing and working with printing companies is to make sure you follow exactly the formatting instructions laid out by the printing company.  If you do that, everything else should be very easy.  And after you do that once or twice it gets really easy too.  You just have to figure it out.

Also, I would recommend the app bookcoverpro for making book covers.  It works great for designing the book covers yourself, and then you can convert to jpeg or whatever other type of file required by the printing company.  I think I had to actually go into the jpeg files and change the pixel coordinates for Lulu, but that was really easy, so…I don’t know…I’m just going to ramble on if I don’t stop now.  I’ll just end this and say if you have any more questions I’d be happy to answer them, because besides self-publishing my own seven books I’ve helped publish the forty plus books my parents wrote for their ministry, which website you saw.

Farewell for now, hope this was helpful in at least some small way!

"Sylvester - Sylvester!"

[Jenna Terese]

@rochellaine oh my goodness yes this was extremely helpful!!! thank you! I’m going to check out that app.. 🙂 <3 <3 <3

I'm a Kapeefer 'TIL WE'RE OLD AND GREY!
www.jennaterese.com

[Rochellaine]

@jenwriter17 Great!  Glad it was helpful. 🙂

I’ve seen your topic on the Story Embers forum and noticed that several people are recommending CreateSpace (or something like that.)  I’ve never heard of it before, so I’m not going to say anything about it, except that they’re probably right that it’s a great place, if they’ve already used it.  I just wanted to note that if the only reason it’s better is because it puts your books on Amazon with print on demand, Lulu does that too. 🙂

Here my book is on Amazon, set up by Lulu, and here my book is on the actual Lulu website.

That will give you an idea of what they look like when you put them up for sale. 😀

However, I think I remember the people on SE saying there were a couple of other good things about CS besides putting it on Amazon, so you’ll just have to go through and compare yourself, because I haven’t seen anyone who has used both Lulu and CreateSpace. 😛

So anyway, maybe what you should do is look at the formatting options on the several different sites you are considering and see which type of formatting you like best.  For example, for my books I would much rather use Lulu because it’s easier for me and is print on demand, but recently I was considering going back to Diggypod for something because I needed a different type of formatting for a certain book.  So I think formatting is the biggest thing.

"Sylvester - Sylvester!"

[Jenna Terese]

@rochellaine Oh, are you on SE? 😀

I have looked at Createspace, and I think I’m liking Lulu better. I’ve bought books that were made on Createspace and I didn’t really like how they looked. Still trying to decide though…

Thanks for the advice! 🙂

I'm a Kapeefer 'TIL WE'RE OLD AND GREY!
www.jennaterese.com

[Jenna Terese]

@rochellaine your books look great by the way! I want to buy some one day, when I have the money 😉

I'm a Kapeefer 'TIL WE'RE OLD AND GREY!
www.jennaterese.com

[Rochellaine]

@jenwriter17 I am not.  I don’t really have the time right now to be on another forum besides this one. 😉  But I go on there sometimes just to read articles or forum posts, because I know a lot of the people there. 😀

Really?  Which books were those?  What exactly didn’t you like about them? (I know absolutely nothing abut Createspace.)

Thanks!  I wasn’t advertising them. 😛  I was just trying to give you an idea of what your books would look like on Amazon or Lulu.  Wait…I’m doing this wrong, am I not?  As an author I should be saying, “Yes!  Please buy my books!  Please do, they’re wonderful, amazing books and once you have read them you will think they’re the best books you’ve ever read…” um…no.  Just no.  I am not doing that. 😛 😛 😛

"Sylvester - Sylvester!"

[Jane Maree]

@Jenwriter17 I know that @Hope uses CreateSpace. 😉

Other than that: self publishing involves a lot of marketing. You have to get your book out into the world without any help from the publishers. You also have to edit it as much as humanly possible, and it’s best to get a professional editor to look over it, otherwise you’ll be publishing and subpar book and people won’t recommend it.

Writing Heroes ♦ Writing Hope // janemareeauthor.com.au

[Jenna Terese]

@rochellaine Oh, yeah that’s totally understandable. Though it seem KP is being abandoned, at least somewhat 🙁

I can’t remember exactly, but I think they were devotional/theological books of some kind…

Yes, I knew you weren’t trying to promote yourself on me (but you should! 😉 )

@jane-maree Yes, I am preparing myself mentally for the marketing challenge 😉 I’ve been designing my covers on canva.com. Have you heard of it? I can make pretty nice looking covers there, along with other things like newsletters, cards, collages, etc.

I'm a Kapeefer 'TIL WE'RE OLD AND GREY!
www.jennaterese.com

[Jane Maree]

@Jenwriter17 Yep, I have heard of canva. Great job designing your own covers! 😀

Writing Heroes ♦ Writing Hope // janemareeauthor.com.au

[Jenna Terese]

@rochellaine I meant to ask, do you have a Goodreads author account?

I'm a Kapeefer 'TIL WE'RE OLD AND GREY!
www.jennaterese.com

[Rochellaine]

@jenwriter17 No, I do not. 🙂  How does that work?

(I do know what Goodreads is, of course!  I use it all the time to look up books.  I’m just not sure what an author account would do or how you would set it up.)

"Sylvester - Sylvester!"

[Jenna Terese]

@rochellaine I haven’t set up myself for the author account thingy (yet!), so I wouldn’t be able to tell you exactly how it worked. But I copy/pasted this here for you, maybe it’ll help:

Follow these steps to apply for the Author Program:
1. Sign in or create an account, and then search for your most popular book via ISBN, ASIN, or title.
2. On the book, click on your author name. Scroll to the bottom of your author profile page.
3. Click “Is this you? Let us know!” to complete and submit the application

I'm a Kapeefer 'TIL WE'RE OLD AND GREY!
www.jennaterese.com

[Author]

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