Thursday, December 23, 2010

Twas the Night Before E Self Publishing




Happy Holidays…and what in the world could be a better gift for yourself than seeing your book on one of the e readers?

Like I said last week, don’t talk yourself out of doing this. You are allowed to enjoy writing and sharing your work with anyone who may want to buy it.

I’d like to start with giving proper credit to one of the blogs that influenced my decision to self publish on Amazon. A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing by J.A. Konrath is probably the quintessential reference about E self publishing. I highly recommend reading several of his postings. His posting on Dec 20th was especially good. http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/12/resolutions-for-writers-2011.html


Then you should get into the Amazon platform and horse around. It won’t bite. This is where you need to go. http://dtp.amazon.com/mn/signin

Setting up the account is pretty straight forward. You’ll find a community page and a tutorial. After watching the tutorial video, you’ll probably have very few obstacles.

You’ll need to click the add a new title button. Go ahead and do so. When I first got into this, I was so afraid I was going to jack up my upload. But you get to benefit from my school of hard knocks. Don’t worry. You can delete the record. Just make up stuff to put in the required fields so you see how easy it is. Then when you’re ready to really post your book, there will be no surprises. Just don’t hit Save and Continue yet which is at the bottom of the screen. It may save your work as a draft whether you tell it to or not. Don’t sweat it. You can delete it.

After Christmas break, I’ll offer some tips about which fields you really need to complete, the ISBN catch 22, and the surprise I got when I loaded my art work.

E.C. Stacy

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