Sunday, February 28, 2016

Here goes.... publishing your own eBook (Part 1) !

So I decided to stop procrastinating and just get a book out there. Well, why wait? After five minutes 'thorough' research, I picked Booktango as a likely candidate and started the process of creating my eBook and making it available for sale online.
Booktango offers 100% royalties to the author, but will also make your eBook available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Nook et al although these retailers will offer different royalty arrangements. It's not as if I'm doing this for the money, but these things will matter if your book takes off as a runaway success. The Booktango website is easy to navigate, and it took a short time to prep my manuscript, following their instructions. I had a cover ready (alright, I did struggle a bit with the pixel size/ratio, but I got techie help with this) and then it was a few days later that I uploaded my eBook ready text.
Slight hiatus while Booktango performed various checks, and I had to make decisions about royalty payments, a US tax return, account details and tracking. Then you wait - they suggest it can take anything from 1 day to 30 days for the eBook to appear live - I would recommend that you expect to wait a couple of weeks. I imagine they were checking for anything libellous, profane or plagiarised, but who knows? Et, voilĂ  ! My book is out there on the interweb!
http://bookstore.bookcountry.com/Products/SKU-001079318/Blacks-Crackle.aspx
Okay, and now for the marketing plan; hmm, I guess I will attack social media on all fronts - errr, Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogger, a bunch of specialist websites for eBooks, and then start getting some reviews, particularly on Booktango and Amazon. This should be interesting. I will report back after a few more hours battling with the devil that lives online...