Self-Publishing

I don't know if there's a thread on here for self-publishing (I did a search and couldn't find one, only minor comments here and there pertaining to it), but I've finally decided to self-publish one of my books, but I wanted to know how to go about doing that.

I'm sure there's websites out there that focus on helping one self-publish a book, but does anyone here recommend any specific place? I want to make sure I'm getting a legitimate site, and not some scammer.

Also, how long does self-publishing take, and how much does it cost?

With all the memes about women choosing a bear over a man, Hollywood might wanna get on an 'East of the Sun and West of the Moon' adaptation

Lulu.com is a good one. I use it all the time; my oldest sister recommended it to me. :)

It's completely free to publish with them, and it only takes about an hour to publish a project at the most, give or take a few minutes.

I smell magic in the air. Or maybe barbecue.

Ironically, I've been thinking of switching to DIFFERENT publishing websites since I've been hearing lots of bad stories about the platforms I'm using right now. Thanks for the recommendation about Lulu, it's one of the top five reputable sites I've heard about.

While lurking over at Charles Stross blog "Antipope", I came across the following advice from a self-published author. I cant vouch personally for the accuracy of his information, but it has the sound of someone who has done it before. Take with a grain of salt, but potentially very useful:

Graydon @178 said:Book layout really is an art; having someone do a skilled job is consequently not cheap. It's something I've thought about for when the Commonweal is finished and there might be enough readers that such a project could pay its own costs, but I'm honestly not hopeful of this.

Graydon, I had resolved to take a sabbatical from posting during 2020, but so much misinformation about book layout and Print On Demand(POD) has been posted in the thread that I will do this one last post as if it was still 2019, and then fade away for the year.

• POD means that the book is only printed when it is ordered. You do not buy thousands of copies to sit rotting in your garage. If any service offers to do that, and it only costs "thousands of bucks to do", run away. HA!

If you do everything DIY, it costs very little to get your book into Amazon. If you don't want to do Amazon, look into Ingram Spark. Self-Publish Your Book with Ingram Spark If you don't want to deal directly with Ingram Spark try Book Baby. Book Baby I do everything through KDP, which is Amazon, so it only costs me dollars to have the paper book be in the system. Whatever way you go it still costs very little to create the PDF for the book block and cover.

• Use Libre Office for book layout. That's what it was designed for.

The guy who developed Libre Office had a design philosophy about Desk Top Publishing. He wrote a book about it. You can get a pdf of it at: Designing with Libre Office

• Basically, all you need for book layout is Libre Office, and use the Page Styles correctly.

I use Libre Office for book layout, using the Page Styles, and use the Draw part of Libre Office to assemble the cover. Then create the PDF for each using Libre Office. I use GIMP, and Inkscape, and occasionally Blender, for the art elements. All free graphic software. There are also sites where you can get art for the cover, they usually charge a small fee depending on the use, $10 to $20 dollar range. If you use the licensed art, be sure to mention that at the start of your book where you list copyright stuff. I do 6x9 book block, Garamond 12(don't use smaller than 11), single space.

• Garamond already has the proper spacing built in, so do not pad out the spacing.

Half inch margins all around. Set the margins to "mirror margins". Adjust the top and bottom margins for your headers and footers. Adjust the "inside" margin depending on the thickness of your book. I use "cream" paper, that thickens the spine so I can have clear text on the spine.

• Remember, the fancier you make the layout the harder it is to correct. Think playing whack-o-mole. Glug!

Look at what Dean Wesley Smith did with his Smith's Monthly magazine. Look Inside! on the first issue and read the introduction where he explains what he is doing. Notice the two column layout. He used In Design for that. The ebooks are linear. Notice in the copyright section he mentions where the cover photo came from.

• Smith's Monthly #1 (Volume 1)
• Look at the series he published.

Smith's Monthly Book Series (37 Books)

Look at the covers. He did all those issues spending only a little per issue. He did not spend thousands to produce each issue. He used In Design for the book layout, but I find Libre Office does well enough for novel layout. In Design is only worth it if you are doing complex things like a magazine the way he did, and you can rent In Design per month rather than buy it outright.

BTW, Chances are that you did not even read this far in the post, or bother to actually look at the links and do the work. Thus I am on sabbatical from posting the rest of 2020, because too many people simply ignore my Real World advice. HA! Have fun.

Unfortunately, the links he provided didn't survive the cut and paste. All the red links are where a commercial product uses two caps within one word (I don't know how to eliminate the red linking). However, if you cruise on over to Charlie Stross's blog and search comments to the latest post on genre writing, and search for Allynh, you will find them.

Edited by DeMarquis on Jan 12th 2020 at 7:52:45 AM