June 13, 2013

Indie Publishing Guide

About two and a half months ago, I announced on Facebook that I was taking a big step and writing my first non-fiction book about indie publishing. I never thought I’d ever write anything non-fiction, but in the last year I’ve been approached by multiple to-be indie authors asking for advice. I really love to help with publishing since I’m very passionate about it, but there is SO much information to cover and emails can get really long. My mom suggested an email to use that covered all the basics or have a page on my website. So I sat down to do this one afternoon and realized it was just too much for a  website. That’s when I decided I should just try to write a short book about it. I worked on it on and off since then and now have it finished at about 9,500 words. It’s not a comprehensive guide detailing every little part of publishing, but it will give you an overview of how I approach publishing and answers all the questions I’ve been asked in the last year. With working really hard on Ilyon Chronicles, this project has been at the back of my mind so I’ve neglected a lot of pre-release marketing of any sort, but I’m quite excited to share the cover.

Pageflex Persona [document: PRS0000026_00003]

I’m working on the final edits for the book and plan to have it available in eBook form for $1.99 in the next week or so. I wasn’t sure if I’d make it available in paperback, but then I thought, why not? :) So I’ll be working on that as well. Looks like it will come to be about $4.99. Here is the table of contents so you can get an idea of the topics I cover.

Introduction
1. Why choose indie publishing?
     —Indie Publishing Pros & Cons
2. Publishing
     —Book Printing
     —eBooks
3. Book Creation
     —Cover Creation
     —Interior Formatting
     —Converting to PDF
     —eBook Formatting
4. Copyright
5. ISBN Numbers
6. Marketing Tips
     —Word of Mouth
     —Pre-Release Marketing
     —Blog & Website
     —Social Networking
     —Marketing Materials
     —Book Trailers
7. Taxes & Business Expenses
8. Resources
9. Conclusion

I’ve really had a lot of fun putting this book together, more so than I thought I would, and I really hope it can help anyone who might be wondering where to start in indie publishing.

4 comments:

E. KaIser Writes said...

Sounds like a great idea, Molly! So many authors are coming out with a how-to book, I suppose it's because people ask them all sorts of questions!
If you need someone to proof it for you, I'd be willing to volunteer! I'm just reviewing Jordan Smith's Finding the Core of Your Story, and found a typo on page ten. Whoops! ;-) Those pesky little things slip past the nets so many times!
I'm not an expert, but with my background in graphic desing, etc. I have to ask; "Is your cover image a little too tall for it's width?"
or is there a tricky something I don't know about on that score!

Molly Evangeline said...

Thanks for volunteering! That actually would be really nice. My mom is going over it now. I could send it to you after she's finished. :) You're right about the typos. They are always popping up somewhere!

I think the cover is a tiny bit too tall. I grabbed it quick from my 8x5 cover template I'm working with, but some of it will get cut off in printing. I need to get a better sized one to upload to Kindle.

Faith Blum said...

That will be perfect! I am going to be, Lord willing, publishing my first book sometime around December. A book like this will help me a lot.

Molly Evangeline said...

I hope it does help! As I said, it's not a comprehensive guide, but I tried to cover the basics to have a good starting point.