Since you have and use a PC or laptop, it's important to maintain it. Your PC needs editing just like any good piece of writing or poetry.
Here you will find resources, rules, tips and techniques for writing, editing, and publishing your best work
Saturday, August 14, 2021
How Writers Should "Edit" their PC
Tuesday, August 3, 2021
How to Create an ebook for Amazon in 2021
Circa July 2021 BookBaby will charge you $138.00 to create a 300 page ebook. That’s $138 wasted if you have a few hours and the intelligence (and confidence) to do it yourself. At a minimum, you want your ebook on Amazon, and KDP is their platform for doing that. Sign up for a free Amazon/KDP account here. If you already have an Amazon account, use your Amazon login and password.
There was a time when you needed deep technical skills
to create an ebook. No longer. There was a time when you had to know the
difference between epub and mobi formats. No longer. In the past, you needed
specialized software like Canva to do so, and although Canva still exists, you
can still do it yourself by following step-by-step KDP instructions. And there
aren’t many of those to follow once you understand that an ebook is formatted
differently than a print book.
In fact, what you need, all you need, is to know how
to use MS-Word properly. All you need to do is to create a properly formatted docx document ready for upload.
Most services today worth their salt, like Amazon KDP, accept a docx and they do
the rest.
Writers should spend time learning MS-Word the proper
way through its tutorials and Help screens. Click MS-Word Help in your ribbon,
then Show Training, then select a tutorial. At a minimum, go thru the following.
Each has topics you need to get familiar with. Look through them.
- Write and
edit. You can also use MS-Word’s
Editor, Autocrit, Grammarly, or ProWritingAid to help as you type and edit
your work.
- Format text.
Important: choose Normal for most
text, Heading 1 for Chapter headings, or create and set the Style yourself.
Automatically generate the Table of Contents links. Create links for other
things as well.
- Lay out
pages. Set line spaces, indents, margins,
gutter, mirror image etc. Do not add page numbers. Insert Page and Section
breaks. Do not have any blank pages in an ebook.
- Insert
tables, pictures, and watermarks. All pictures or inserts must be jpg.
- Save and
print. With OneDrive on, you don’t
even have to click Save. And you should not print a 200-page book on your
printer. Staples online print services will do it for $.15 per page, or $30.00,
saving you printer cartridges and paper, aggravation, and time.
Always remember WYSIWYG. What You See on your Screen
Is What You Get when viewed. In Previewer you can toggle between phone or
tablet views to see how it looks.
Trust it.
When your docx manuscript is done, and your ebook/docx
formatted, click File in your Ribbon on top-left corner, Options, Save, and
check “Embed fonts,” and Save.
Then your ebook docx manuscript is ready for upload to
Amazon KDP.
Amazon KDP has three screens to complete, the first
with the title, your name etc. The second where you upload file and cover or
use KDP Cover Creator. On this page launch Previewer to see your epub book page
by page. The third screen is where you set the price, generally between $2.99
and $3.99. You will see how much royalty you will make as you set the figure. On
this page also you click “Approve” when its perfect for you. It takes KDP 1-2
days to review your submission and approve it/load it for sale on Amazon. They
will notify you by email.
PS And if you do have to change something inside, you
can do that, reload, and KDP will do it and review/accept it after a few days.
Creating the front cover, spine, and back cover in one
document are different stories entirely and require much more effort to specify
and set up. I recommend against doing that. Use KDP’s Cover Creator templates
instead, since they are good enough for most purposes. Your back cover will
have your author picture (small), short author bio, book blurb, and room for
the ISBN/price barcode.
Then, your marketing tasks begin, actually they should have already begun before.
Sunday, August 1, 2021
It's Easy to Use Amazon KDP to Publish
Back in 2012, when I knew much less about writing and publishing, I wrote my 320-page memoir Episodes and knew I wanted to publish my first book on Amazon Createspace. I didn't know how to use it, but its Help articles were good enough that I was successful. No one held my hand doing it, although, at the time, I talked to Createspace staff twice who helped me understand it better. The big benefit was the Previewer feature which allowed me to "see" my 6x9 book exactly as it would be printed. Kindle epub was off my radar because at that time, between epub, Mobi, and other formats, I couldn't figure it out.
Today, 2021, it couldn't be easier and you don't have to worry or use epub, Mobi, or anything else other than an MS-Word docx document to upload both as a paper trade book or a Kindle epub book. And I've learned another trick using MS-Word, generating a Table of Contents automatically, making all of that infinitely easier too.
The thing is this: you must write a good book. That's Number One.
Two, all grammar, spelling, accent marks, punctuation, etc. must be correct.
Three, you must format it correctly. In Episodes I had a line space between each paragraph; not good. It broke up the reading. But I thought I knew what I was doing. I didn't.
Four, KDP, the successor to Createspace for both print and ebooks, has fairly good tutorials and instructions to follow. You need some computer savvy, but the steps are there to follow. And you can always go back and correct things and upload a corrected Docx manuscript until you get it perfect.
And Five, it must be perfect. There are too many good writers, millions of books, and something that doesn't read well or look good will not sell. Nor will it make you look good. Above all, you are selling yourself, not just your book. You want readers/buyers to trust you. Trust that you know what you are doing, trust that you write good books.
Using KDP is free because down the road Amazon takes its royalty cut and makes its money off you. I think that's fair for the service. You can sign up for a free account here.
Since 2012 I've learned a ton. I took Episodes off the market and rewrote it completely, shaving 30 pages from it. I just released trade and Kindle versions of Coffee, Cigarettes, Death & Mania, a much more fitting ride with me on the rollercoaster of my life between 1979 and 1996.
I also have a website and a social presence on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, and Pinterest. If you as an author can do those too then you will do better.
Either way, check out KDP for fun, no obligation. Upload your manuscript. and see what it looks like.