Odhora Alo: How I wrote a book and self published

I don?t have the book entirely self published but I wanted to make a post (I will update it as the process goes) to save people perhaps some of the pain that I went through.

I will tell you now that if I had to do it all over again I would have gone with a publisher. ?Not for writing the book, ?that part was fun and easy, ?but rather just designing and formating for self publishing.

I should also disclose that if you actually can focus on one thing this would not have been that bad? but I am doing a lot so it was frustrating to constantly have this on my list to get back to.

But I am a control freak. ?And Amazon?s self publish platform looks really awesome? plus there is no minimum commitment unlike other self publishing platforms.

Also I have a few marketing things planned? ?and I would never be able to do them with a traditional publisher.

Ok so like I said writing the book is a no brainer and just writing. ?Nothing revolutionary learned.

When you upload your book to create space you need to specify a size. ?6?9 is the most common.

Hey why re-invent the wheel. ?Also that seems to be the best price wise.

So first off? and I felt like a retard once I figured this out. ?Every book has a color cover. ?That is not a option to not have one. ?Not like I wanted to have one but I never saw the option to have one or not? if that makes any sense.

Before you do any formatting download their word template and move your content into that. ?This way you can properly number pages and junk like that. ?Its the little things that take forever.

Speaking of numbering pages it took me a long time to figure out how to do it properly. ?Sure it looks easy but you don?t want to count the first 5 pages so you have to use wordpresses formula thing to do it properly.

Here is a site that will save you a ton of time with that:

http://dev.kafol.net/2011/04/custom-page-numbering-in-ms-word.html

Now once you get that right you are going to see some horizontal lines pop up. ?This will drive you mad on how to get rid of them cause you cant just hit backspace.

Here is a article that walks you through that:

http://lawyerist.com/three-microsoft-word-formatting-snafus-solved/

Next once that is all good you have to make the cover. ? If you to save you a TON of time and headache you can use one of their many pre-made ones.

Course me being a control freak I wanted to design my own? from scratch. ?They give you a template but when I followed that to the letter it looked totally jacked.

This is a REAL BITCH.

The reason is that you can?t tell if you calculated the spine correctly. ?They give you a formula but from talking to others the only real way is to get a physical one and see for your self.

In order to even see what its going to look like you have to submit it? wait the up to 48 hour process for them to approve. ?Then order one.

Standard 6-7 day shipping is $5.

Expedited 3-4 day shipping is $20 (around).

Overnight shipping is $29

This blows ass cause obviously you want to get it as soon as possible to see if its jacked up. ?So they DRASTICALLY inflate ?the shipping charges.

Like for me lets say I get it and its jacked and I do it again and its jacked and again. ?Your looking at a months time?. ?which for me is an eternity.

On their proofer it does look right? but it will be here in a couple days and we will see:

So thats pretty much it, ?for now. ?I will update this as I learn more about their royalty, sales, and marketing proccess.

My next challenge is trying to get it in the apple book store. ?Its so lame cause even though its the same system that you submit apps you can?t use the same account that you use to submit apps?

About the author...

Jeremy Schoemaker ? who has written 2589 posts on ShoeMoney.com.

Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.