Publishing Resources for Authors by Erika M Szabo

Help for self-publishing authors

by Erika M Szabo

The publishing business is changing.

With smaller publishers closing their doors because the investment into marketing is too high to make a decent profit, or because they can't compete with big publishers, low book prices, and free giveaways created by self-published authors.

The large publishers are cautious and choosy because they want to publish only potential bestsellers. I've seen a publisher putting it on their submission page: "We'll consider self-published books that sold at least 500 copies."

Yeah, it would be profitable to publish a book that is popular already, but then why would the author need a publisher if their book is selling so well?

Authors who decide to self publish:

There is a lot of help on the net and you can learn the publishing process step by step.

Editing:

There are a few great editing programs out there. I've tried a few and although they provide great help, correct grammar and catch improper word usage, nothing replaces a good human editor. It's worth to invest in editing and have your story corrected and polished by a good editor.

Book formatting:

There are formatting programs you can use but I'm partial to manually format books in MS word. I used the Kindle formatter recently and although the book looked okay on the formatter program's screen, there were a lot of issues after I uploaded the Mobi file to KDP. I ended up reformatting the book manually.

In this video you can see the formatting errors authors make.

Formatting errors

 

A little help for authors who don't know how to use the formatting options in MS word.

(Sorry for the bad recording, my PC is ancient and I really need a new microphone) Authors can download a free, formatted template from my website.

Download the MS word template here: https://www.authorerikamszabo.com/store/p238/Formatted_Book_Template.html

Need help preparing your book for publishing? GBB Publishing Services: https://www.goldenboxbooks.com/

YouTube has many educational videos, this is a pretty good one that explains how to format in MS word.

Correct formatting

Book cover design:

If you use Photoshop, this tutorial is pretty useful.



Marketing and promotion help:

This video explains how to set up your AMS ad

This tutorial is helpful when you advertise on Facebook:



Getting help with the steps you need help with:

There are a lot of Publishing Services you can use. Do your research, compare prices, and get recommendations from fellow authors.

Beware of vanity publishers that promise to do everything but deliver very little. They rely on the authors to pay for everything, therefore, they have little interest in selling books to other than the authors. Don't fall for their great salesperson's well designed speech.
https://www.authorerikamszabo.com/my-thinking-board/the-warning-signs-of-vanity-publishers

Research Publishing Services that tell you exactly what you're getting for the price you pay.

https://www.goldenboxbooks.com/book-publishing.html

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All in the Day's Work #OurAuthorGang

All in the day's work

by

Erika M Szabo

Today I'll share a story that happened not too long ago...

I do eBook and print formatting for GBBP for the authors who don't have the time to learn how to do it or don't have the time to format the books themselves, therefore, they have to rely on services to have their books correctly formatted.

I want to share this very interesting conversation with an author that got my head spinning. I got a message from her, "I heard from author friends that you format books. I need my book formatted to be acceptable by Createspace and Amazon. Can you do it?"

I replied, "Yes, I can."

Her reply, "Oh, good! Give me your email and I'll send you my book. I want the print 5x8 size."

Ding-ding the bell went off in my head, "Okay, we will discuss the details after you order the formatting service. Here is the link to the page: http://www.goldenboxbooks.com/book-formatting.html"

She sent me another message shortly after, "I was under the impression that you format books for free for author friends."

"Formatting a book is tedious work, I don't do it for free."

"Okay, but my eBook was formatted already, I paid $149 for a company to do that, so you should give me a discount because it had been formatted already."

Me, "Then why do you need formatting?"

"Because Smashwords keeps sending me emails about errors and they keep rejecting my book."

"Well, then have the company that formatted your book correct the errors, it must be included in their price."

"Okay, I'll be honest with you, they did correct it and it was accepted, but after I downloaded the book from Amazon and read it, I found a lot of mistakes, and then I realized that I sent them the wrong, unedited file, so there were hundreds of mistakes. I corrected the mistakes in the original file but now the company wants me to pay the same price for formatting that I paid already."

Me, "Sounds legitimate to me, because they have to do the work again."

"That's not right, they should have done it for free, but anyhow, can you at least give me a discount?"

"Usually GBBP gives a discount if the author has more than one book to format, but how much discount you have in mind?"

"I'm thinking half price, at least."

"Well, if you looked at the prices, you must have noticed that you're getting less than half price already compared to what you have paid for that company."

"No, I meant half off of your price!"

I wrote back, "Sorry, I cannot do that. Formatting a book  is tedious work but if you want to save money, you can download formatting guides and learn how to do it yourself."

"Okay, I'll find someone else to do it. Goodbye."

Me, feeling much relief, "Sure, no problem. Good luck with your book."

Respecting the work of others and not trying to take advantage of others are human values, which, unfortunately, are not possessed by everyone.