© D.G.Valdron, 2026
1301 – 90 Garry
Wpg, Man, R3C 4J4
Eml: dgvaldron@yahoo.ca
Ph: 204 794 3151
SELF PUBLISHING
A Field Guide
Presenter Background
D.G. Valdron is the author or editor of over forty books. A lifelong writer, he has had books with Five Rivers Press in Ontario, and At Bay Press in Manitoba, and contracts with Renaissance Press, ECW and Titan Books in England. He has published short stories in magazines and anthologies in Canada, England, Australia, the United States and Russia. He has written for and worked on newspapers in the Atlantic Provinces. Under Fossil Cove Press, he has published roughly 27 books of his own, plus books by Scott Ellis, R.J. Hore, Eve St. Albert, Bruno Lombardi and Ewen Campion-Clarke
We learn by doing.
CAVEATS
There are certain things that we will not be doing, and that are outside the scope of the workshop.
* We will not edit your book for you. We may not even read it. I’m lazy.
* We will not be getting into copyright, copyright registrations, or contracts – different workshops.
* We will not be giving advice or assisting in getting a registered business name, company or company name, or other business issue. I charge for that.
* We may refer you to various programs, including format conversion to ebooks, zip and unzip, photo-editing or manipulation, etc. I don’t endorse anything.
* I’m not an expert. I just know more than you do and am willing to share. At the end of the workshop, you should know almost everything I do, so you’ll have to stop asking me questions.
* On covers, I’ll try to help, but you’re taking your life in your hands. I’ll do my best, but it can go very wrong.
FIRST PRINCIPLES
Copyright, ISBN, National Archive
COPYRIGHT
* Copyright is the Right to Make Copies – it is the core of intellectual property, and the fundamental tool of publishing.
* Copyright comes automatically with creative work rendered into a fixed form – speech or dance is not copyright. Ideas are not copyright. The written expression is copyright.
* Copyright Registration is not required – comes automatically.
* Both Canada and the US have Government Copyright Registration Services. These are useful for certain purposes. But requires a registration fee. You can do it online, must sign up to a government portal.
* There are private registration services for things lke scripts or music.
* For more information on copyright generally see www.denvaldron.com
ISBN (International Standard Book Number)
A digital identifier that helps supply chain participants (ebook publishers, distributors and retailers) accurately track and identify your book, and communicate about your book. ISBNs are of primary benefit to retailers, because it allows them to track everything related to your book (metadata, sales, updates) by connecting everything to the book’s ISBN. ISBN’s are issued by individual countries, some of which charge a fee per ISBN. In Canada, you can sign into the ISBN registry and get them for free. You should requisition a different ISBN for an ebook, a printbook, an audiobook. In some cases, you may want an additional ISBN for a print or audiobook on another platform – Draft2digital for instance. An ISBN is not a copyright registration.
* Each Country has an office that provides ISBN numbers.
* In the US its Bowker, they charge $25.00
* In Canada, it’s the ISBN Registry office, Government. Its free, you can sign up online. Once registered, you can obtain ISBN numbers.
* Note the system is so crowded, there is now a waiting period to get registered. But once registered, there are no limits.
* Generally, for a book, I do a minimum of four ISBN’s –
– General Ebook ISBN
– Amazon ISBN
– Draft2Digital ISBN
– IngramSpak ISBN
* But there could be more – if you do an audiobook, a hardcover book, a large print edition, etc.
NATIONAL LIBRARY BOOK DEPOSIT
* This is not an ISBN registration. Also not a Copyright Registration. Own thing.
* All books, magazines, ebooks or audiobooks published in Canada must be deposited with the National Library of Canada, in their National Archive.
* Physical books must be sent by mail. Ebooks can be deposited electronically.
PLATFORMS
If you are self publishing, there are a number of companies that you can deal with. These companies are called platforms. They will help accept your ebook. They’ll do more than that, in most cases, they will help you format your ebook, or provide you with guidelines and specifications to format it. They will sell your ebook for you, and provide you with a royalty.
Some of them will allow you to to print-books, and again, format it or provide guidelines to format it. They will even meet you half way, with cover design formatting so you can take a picture and use it as the face of a wrap around cover. Once its in their system, you don’t have to do anything. An order comes in, they’ll print your book for you, send it to whoever bought a copy, and give you a royalty. Some of them will also host audio books, either narrated by a live actor, or artificial intelligence. We won’t talk about that too much though.
Each platform is slightly different. The overall requirements will always be the same. But they may have individual quirks, so you may have to customize your book from one platform to another. They will also have different royalty rates.
AMAZON – KDP (Kindle Direct Reader)
This is the dominant bookseller and the one we will focus on, for the following reasons:
* Amazon is the dominant marketplace – 90% of my sales are through Amazon. They control a huge part of the ebook market overall, somewhere around 70% to 90%. Basically, they’re the elephant in the room.
* They have an exclusivity program – sign on with them exclusively, they’ll give you better promotion and support (allegedly). I haven’t done so. The question of whether to go exclusive is one of the biggest challenges you’ll face. Not going exclusive with Amazon is called “going wide.”
* They do print books. Their Royalties on print books are better than others like Draft2Digital or IngramSpark. Their shipping costs are also better.
* They have a distribution deal with ACX or Audible, so they do audiobooks and carry audiobooks, just not AI.
* You can probably do Amazon only, as your first, last and only stop. KDP Select option.
* Problems with Amazon, sometimes their Algorithms are finicky. Several writers have had problems. Difficult to get human service if there is a problem, they can and will freeze all your books, dump your reviews, force you to prove you are the author.
Registering with KDP – Authentication
* AI has created an explosion of publishers, books and Scam artists
* As a result Authentication requirements have gone up – have to submit a drivers license. Or other ID by photograph
Registering with KDP – Taxes
* Tax Identification Number (TIN) is your Social Insurance Number (SIN)
* You are required to provide this.
* Canada has a Tax Treaty with the US
* Because of the Tax Treaty, once you provide the information and complete the form, Amazon will not withhold any Tax from your Royalties, they will pay the full amount.
* As part of the process, you will need to complete and sign a form called a ‘tax interview.’
* At the end of the year, Amazon will upload a form to your account called a 1042-S, it’s about two pages
* Once you receive the 1042-S, just download, print it off and include it with your taxes.
* If you don’t complete the tax portions, you may or may not have difficulty uploading your book.
KDP Getting Paid
* Amazon will not use Paypal
* Originally, when I signed up, I didn’t put down anything for payment. So my account just piled up. I made no effort to collect. Eventually, Amazon just got fed up and sent me a cheque for $285.00.
* You can do this, set defaults for them to issue you a cheque, once there is enough money in your account, quarterly, yearly.
* Alternately, you can arrange for Direct Deposit.
* You will need to give your bank number, your transit number and your bank account number.
* For Direct Deposit, monies are deposited monthly.
DRAFT2DIGITAL
The big challenger to Amazon. Them and Smashwords. But Draft2Digital has bought out Smashwords and the two are merged.
* Draft2Digital and Smashwords are hosting platforms, the term is “aggregate publisher.” In addition to putting your books up on their site and selling directly, they also have deals with a lot of other platforms, including Amazon and Kobo, but also including Apple, Barnes & Noble, Vivlio, Tolino, Taylor and Baker, Biblioteca, Scribd, Oversdrive, etc etc. They distribute between them to as many as seventeen platforms. If you want wide distribution, they’re the place to go.
* In addition to online bookstores, there are subscription service -These services allow members to pay a monthly or annual fee and read ebooks included in the service for no additional fee. Publishers are paid based on how much their books get read. There are also Library Services -these services allow members to check out ebooks on temporary loan.
* They provide good author support – Smashwords in particular provides extensive, extremely detailed manuals, literally a couple of hundred pages each, which walk you through the processes of doing your book, help you troubleshoot problems, etc. They are very responsive to problems if you email them, a live person will get back to you in a day or so.
* Smashwords provides promotion opportunities, a full author page, author interview, etc.
* Draft2Digital has started doing print books. The royalties are not as good as Amazon, shipping charges are higher, and if you make a mistake you either have to pay $30 for a token or wait three months to re-upload. You can sneak around that though.
* One interesting thing is that they’ve partnered with an Audiobook company, Findaway Voices, so they’re creating options for you to do audiobooks. Haven’t tried it yet.
KOBO
Was originally Canadian, started by the people who do Chapters/Indigo. They’ve since been sold. Kobo is working to compete with Amazon on the international front. You can go with them through Draft2Digital or Smashwords or sign up independently.
* Kobo carries ebooks, standard.
* Kobo will also carry Audiobooks, including Artificial Intelligence Audiobooks. This may be a big thing.
* If you want printbooks on Kobo, then your best bet is Draft2digital.
GOOGLEPLAY
Googleplay is created and operated by Google, one of the very few players large enough to challenge Amazon. Googleplay’s focus is on Apps and Games, that’s their specialty, but they have branched out and maintain a sideline on books.
* They aren’t on Draft2Digital or Smashwords, have to sign up to them separately.
* They carry ebooks.
* They don’t do printbooks.
* They have a program to generate AI Audiobooks, which you can sell, or put up on other platforms like Kobo.
* Poor customer support.
DRIVETHRUFICTION
Drivethru is another specialty player. It’s main area is role play games support, dungeons and dragons, etc. Because of that, they have a strong, very loyal customer base. They have also established a book line.
* They aren’t on Draft2Digital or Smashwords, you have to sign up to them separately.
* They carry ebooks.
* They don’t do printbooks
* They carry audiobooks.
BARNES & NOBLE
Mainly American, has both ebooks and printbooks. They use the same printing company as IngramSpark.
APPLE
Another rival to Amazon, like Google. They have their own infrastructure and followers. Ebooks. Interface is difficult.
PUBLISHDRIVE
Another aggregate publisher, does ebooks, print-books and audiobooks. Very wide reach, including to China. Subscription based – you pay a monthly fee for the publications that you host on their platform, but you keep any net revenue.
INGRAMSPARK
A major independent book producer and distributor. Widest reach of all the platforms, 6 regions, 36 distributors. They distribute to brick and mortar stores, 40,000 stores/retailers/libraries. If you wanted to do a print book, they used to be one of the main stops. They’re less important now that Amazon and Draft2Digital are doing print books. But they’re still a major player.
* They will distribute to brick and mortar and physical stores, including Target. They can also do Apple and Amazon for you.
* Low Royalty rate – 40% on ebooks, compared to 70% to 90% elsewhere.
* There are some risks. Don’t do returns.
* Poor customer support.
LULU
Billing itself as the World’s Largest Independent Bookstore. Many prefer them to Ingramspark. They are also an aggregate publisher with a wide reach, in addition to their own store and catalogue, they distribute both to places like Kobo and Apple, but also to physical bookstores. They do ebooks and print books. Print books excellent quality, lots of options. Been around twenty years. If you want to set up your own website, and your own bookstore on your website, selling your books directly through your website rather than say through Amazon (or in addition to) they can do this for you.
BLURB
Platform, Amazon, Google, wide distribution. Excellent quality, lot of options. Good royalty rate for ebooks. Base cost for print books high, unique specifications,
AUDIBLE
The dominant audiobook publisher, likes exclusivity, probably has about 70% of market, doesn’t do AI Audiobooks. Affiliated with, but not integrated with Amazon.
FINDAWAY
Another audiobook publisher, more user friendly
This is not a definitive list. There may be others out there. Some of these may come up, or go away. There used to be things called Lightningsource and Createspace, but these have been absorbed by Ingramspark and Amazon KDP respectively. Smashwords and Draft2Digital have just merged. Google and Apple both diversified and jumped into books. Barnes & Noble and Chapters were both regular bookstores that jumped into ebooks. In the future, we might see WalMart, Target, Virgin or some other existing company getting into ebooks, printbooks or audiobooks. Or we may see industry consolidation. We might see brand new companies starting up. Or large new players from Japan, China, India or the European Union.
EBOOK FORMATS
There are a number of formats in which you can read Ebooks. Some of these formats have different qualities and flexibility. The more formats you allow, the more choice you allow your readers. How do you translate your book to these formats? Usually, the Platform will do it for you, so you don’t need to know too much about it.
But there may be times where you may need to export from one form or another. Your computer word processor should have functions to automatically export documents to text or pdf format.
Apart from that, there is software or apps you can buy or download, or online programs or services which can export your file from one format to another, zip or unzip, etc. Some of these are free. I don’t guarantee any of them, but you can look them up.
EPUB
Your most important file type. Epub is used for Apple Books, Googleplay, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, OverDrive and others. Also popular with customers of the Smashwords Store.
KINDLE (.mobi)
This is a popular file type for Amazon customers who read on the Kindle and some handheld devices. This and Epub are the two vital file formats for most ebooks.
Portable Document Format, or PDF, is a file type readable by most devices, including handheld e-readers, PDAs, and computers. Good for preserving complex design, charts or images, but generally not a popular reading option for fiction. Basically, it is not flexible at all, there’s no ‘reflowable text.’ I find PDFs are useful when converting a file for a print book, because it locks your formatting down completely.
PLAIN TEXT (.txt)
Plain text is a widely supported file type. Basically, it’s rock bottom text with almost no formatting at all, so it can be read by just about any kind of word processor and or ereader format. Although it’s readable on many devices, it cannot display images or complex formatting. Like PDF this can be used as an important part of your publishing process, to clean and format books.
ONLINE READER
Produces the book in HTML, allowing customers to sample, browse and read over a web browser. A lot of platforms will have this function, particularly for marketing.
SONY READER (LRF)
LRF is the file type used on older Sony Reader ebook devices. The newer Sony Readers use EPUB.
PALM DOC (PDB)
PalmDoc is an older file type primarily used on Palm Pilot devices, but readers are available for PalmOS, Symbian OS, Windows Mobile Pocket PC/Smartphone, desktop Windows, and Macintosh.
METADATA
What is it and Why do you Care?
Metadata are the codes and information which you normally don’t see in computer files, things like the date the file was created, the dates it was revised, the changes or revisions, etc.
For purposes of Self Publishing, Metadata is the information about yourself and your book that you upload into online forms. You don’t just upload a book file and a cover file. Some of the Metadata will be available to the public and go into a book page on the bookseller or platform’s website. Some of it will be used for thumbnails with your book on a page of books. Some will go to an Author’s page. And some of it will not be seen by the public, but will be used by the platform for purposes of managing and administering your book.
AUTHOR SHORT AUTHOR BIO –
Ten to forty words (50 to 200 characters) – this won’t go on your book page. But it may go on an author page on the platform.
LONG AUTHOR BIO
Up to 800 words, tell us about yourself. It may help sell a book.
LANGUAGE
Always English. Sometimes a platform will ask, sometimes it won’t. Depends on international distribution.
TITLE
Book title. Never use ALL CAPS. Just use Capitals for the title words, but not the connectors “and” “it”
SUBTITLE
Sometimes a subtitle option is given.
AUTHOR/CONTRIBUTORS
That’s you. That’s also co-writers, editors, or in the case of a short story collection, the short story writers.
SERIES/EDITION
Don’t worry about these. A lot of self publishers do series, if one book is successful, they’ll do a sequel, and another sequel. People like buying a lot of the same thing. It can be a good marketing tactic once you have a few books, to set them up as a series. There is usually a sub-process where you can give a series a name, assign books to it and even the order of books in a series. Editions are what you use when you keep revising a book, to keep track of revisions. For now, leave them both blank.
ELEVATOR PITCH
One sentence, five to fifteen words (25 to 75 characters). Generally useful to pitch or sell your book. Use it on the front cover, or as a tag line in advertising.
SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION
Ten to Eighty words (50 to 400 characters). One sentence to one paragraph. This is your book boiled down to its most basic summary. It may be used to merchandise the book to passing readers, sort of a thumbnail, like a reduced image of your cover. It is used to hook the reader. Not all platforms will require it for an ebook, some will, some won’t. But if you do a printbook, it will be very useful.
LONG BOOK DESCRIPTION
Maximum of eight hundred words (4000 characters), but can be much shorter. This is the detailed description of the book that a reader will find if they look up the book’s selling page on a platform.
KEYWORDS
Search engines use keywords to find things. Some search engines like Google trawl the whole internet. Other search engines built into the booksellers website. Your book title is a keyword, as is your name. But it is useful to come up with a number of descriptive keywords that describe your book in order to help search engines zero in. Most sites will ask you to provide keywords. It’s useful to have ten or fifteen ready to go.
BISAC (Book Industry Standards and Communications)
The standard book category coding system. In other words, BISACs make your book discoverable in category searches at retailers. Authors select categories for their books from the coding system. Each platform will require you to select at least one two BISAC codes, some will allow more. Each is formatted differently, but it’s on a pulldown menu. Don’t worry about it now. The platform will give you a menu to scroll through.
ISBN ( International Standard Book Number)
AGE RANGE / CONTENT RESTRICTIONS
Most platforms will want to know who is or isn’t supposed to see the book. Typically, they will ask you if this book is for children, for adults only, for all ages. There may be special rules for erotic content.
PRICE
Most books will ask for a price in US Dollars and then provide a series of automatic adjustments.
RIGHTS
You will be required to confirm that you are either the owner of the book you have rights or permission for the book, or its public domain.
COMPLETING YOUR BOOK
OVERVIEW OF EDITING
ASSUMPTION – I am assuming that your book is completed, that it is edited to the best of your ability, or the best of the abilities of your software, your friends and family, or someone you paid, and that it requires no further editing or fine tuning.
REALITY – There is always something.
KINDS OF EDITING
There are numerous kinds of editing, depending on the book, the content of the book and the stages and requirements of the production process, or even the marketplace. Even within areas, there is a difference between say a literary editor and a commercial editor, where their input will produce a very different book. We’re not going to get into that. But for our purposes, we will define three different kinds of Editing:
CONTENT EDITING
COPY EDITING / PROOFREADING
FORMAT EDITING
CONTENT EDITING – YOUR BEST BOOK
COPY EDITING – TYPOS, MISPELLINGS, GLITCHES AND GRAMMAR
FORMAT EDITING
SPELLCHECKS ARE YOUR FRIEND
* Self sabotage
* Limits of Software
* Amazon KDP
HIRING AN EDITOR
* Where do you find an Editor?
* Literary Conventions – Editors associations will have tables
* Writers organizations
* There are a lot of free lance editors
* The Right Fit
* Not every Editor is right for you
* The wrong fit can be worse than none at all
* Interview, discuss
* References
* Samples
* Buyer Beware
* Scammers
* The Limits
* An editor will edit, they won’t necessarily guarantee the results
* Expenses.
* A few thousand dollars
* Negotiate deals – but beware
* Beta Readers
KINDS OF EDITORS
* Copy Editors
* Writing Content Editors
DESCRIBE YOUR BOOK
The book description requested is designed to help with the design process. The answers may influence the choices you make for the book.
Title of the Book:
Word Count:
Rough Page Count
Word Processor Format:
Fiction or Nonfiction:
If Fiction, Novel or Short Story Collection
If Short Story Collection/Anthology – Single or Multiple Authors
If Nonfiction – Subject Matter
Are there Chapters
Are the Chapters Named or Numbered
Are there Subchapters
Is there a Table of Contents
Footnotes
Index
Interior Matter like Photographs or Drawing
Special Format requirements
BOOK CONTENT
TITLE PAGE
Title,
Publisher
Author
Logo
COPYRIGHT PAGE (Just steal it)
Copyright © Notice and Year
Name of Author & Publisher
Address of Author/Publisher
Name of Cover Artist/Cover Description
Name of Copy Editor/Editor
ISBN Number(s)
Attributions (borrowings)
Assertion of Ownership
DEDICATION PAGE
Optional
ABOUT THE AUTHOR (From Metadata)
Optional
Photo-Optional
Can be Front or Back
OTHER WORKS BY AUTHOR
Optional
Can be Front or Back
TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE
FORWARD/INTRO
Optional
CHAPTERS / CONTENT
AFTERWORD/COMMENTS
Optional
THANKS/ANNOTATIONS
Optional
OTHER MATERIAL/SPACER PAGES
FORMATTING MANUSCRIPT
FOR PUBLISHING
THE JOY OF STRIPPING
How to strip.
1. Put on some sexy music.
2. Copy the entire Manuscript on whatever word processor you are using, cut it.
3. Open Notepad or Wordpad.
4. Paste the entire manuscript on wordpad or notepad.
5. Save it as a text (___.txt) file.
6. Close wordpad or notepad.
7. Open it again, open the saved title.txt file.
8. Cut and Paste that text file back onto your word processor.
9. Congratulations, you now have an absolutely clean document, with no more hidden codes and other surprises waiting to go off like ticking time bombs.
10. You may now proceed to do your basic formatting – start with page size/trim and margins.
11. Next, format text and headline fonts and sizes, spacing, bolds, italics, titles, chapter heads, page breaks.
12. From this point on, no matter what word processor you use, always save as .doc or docx
13. Save the manuscript as title-basicformat.doc.
14. Starting each time from title-basicformat.doc, save as a new document with a new title, either title-ebookformat.doc, or title-printformat.doc
15. From here on, save each fancy formatting as a new document, and number each additional formatting – headers, footers, page numbering, hypertexting, table of contents. A new document for each new formatting step.
16. Review each platform’s format requirements. Customize formatting for different platforms, after considering the format steps.
17. When in doubt, or when in trouble, go back to step #1.
BOOK SIZE
If you go to a bookstore, there are an almost infinite number of book sizes. There are different heights, widths, thicknesses.
However, certain sizes or size categories tend to be fairly standard. Generally, the standards are pocketbook size, trade paperbacks, hard cover, magazine and oversize. Most book sizes are variations within those.
The original books were hard covers. Books were expensive, printing was difficult. So the pages were bound between heavy durable covers to protect them. Hard covers were expensive. In 1939, gas cost 10 cents a gallon at the pump. A movie ticket set you back 20 cents. John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, the year’s bestselling hardcover book, was $2.75. Hardcovers, because they’re durable, remain expensive, but have best quality – intended to last.
Pocketbooks were the product of the Depression and WWII. Basically, soldiers weren’t always fighting. They spent a lot of time sitting around and waiting. A soldier doing nothing can be a hazard – they drink, they fight, they develop bad habits, they become insubordinate. So you have to make sure that a soldier’s time is occupied. One of the ways that they came up with was books – a soldier reading was a soldier not getting into trouble. The military commissioned a book that was designed to fit into the standard pocket size of a military uniform – the pocket book. They were thinner than they were today. Paper quality was low. They were cheap and disposable. Covers used technology and techniques designed for military maps, and cover art was a thing. After the war, pocketbooks stayed popular, people were used to it, and the highly standardized size allowed for book racks and shelves.
Trade Paperbacks came out after WWII in 1953. They were a compromise. You had hardcovers which were super-expensive and durable. You had pocketbooks which were super-cheap and disposable. There was a big gap, you wanted a reasonably durable book which wasn’t super-expensive. The solution was something the size of a hardcover, but with cardboard covers like a paperback, and images like a paperback.
After that, some lower end hardcovers had to follow suit – Words and later images were imprinted onto these heavy hard covers. This could be expensive, so paper ‘dust jackets’ were added to imprint images.
As a Self Publisher, everyone is able to do trade paperbacks and pocketbooks. Ingramspark and others do hardcover. Amazon and others are working on hardcover. Right now, for self publishing, your default is trade paperback.
Your book size is partly aesthetic, what you like. But it’s partly a factor of your word count, the size of your text, the number of pages, or internal materials.
BOOK SIZE OPTIONS
Because the different book formats evolved so long ago, in 1939 for pocketbooks, and 1953 for trade paperbacks, the standards were developed in the imperial system, not metric. So when we talk book sizes, we talk inches. But we also have to convert to equivalents in metric.
Metric Conversion Calculator
https://www.metric-conversions.org/conversion-calculators.htm
4.5 x 6″ (11.45 x 15.24 cm) (pocketbook)
4.25 x 6.87” (10.79 x 17.45 cm) (pocketbook)
5 x 8” (12.70 x 20.32 cm) (trade paperback)
5.06 x 7.81″ (12.85 x 19.84 cm) (trade paperback)
5.25 x 8″ (13.34 x 20.32 cm) (trade paperback)
5.5 x 8.5″ (13.97 x 21.59 cm) (trade paperback)
6 x 9” (15.24 x 22.86 cm) (trade paperback / hardcover)
6.625 x 10.25″ (16.83 x 26.04) (comic size/hardcover)
8.5 x 11” (21.59 x 27.94) (textbook/magazine)
MARGINS
The space between the edge of your page and the text. Top, bottom, left and right. There is room to play with. Generally recommend top and bottom margins of 1.9 or 1.5 centimeters.
Left and Right margins are tricky. Why? Because of the Gutter. The gutter are the margins where the book is bound. You open up a book, the Gutter is the space between two pages.
The Margins for the gutter left margin on the left side, right margin on the right side needs to be wide enough that you can easily read a book without breaking the spine.
Now, if you into fine detail, you can identify what is on every single page, and you will know which side of which page will be the gutter. So you could have a wider margin for the gutter, and a narrower margin for the edges, so that you can maximize your efficiency and pack the most into each page.
That’s stupid. Don’t do that. If you are formatting a two hundred or three hundred page book, even a small glitch or adjustment will throw your plan off, and your book will be a mess. The best approach is uniform margins on left and right. Or uniform all the way around.
We recommend at least 1.9 centimeter left and right margins.
We also recommend at least 1.9 margins top and bottom. If you are using footers or headers, you can allow yourself an extra 0.4 to allow for those, and a 1.5 margin.
DESIGN YOUR BOOK – OPTIONS
* Choose a Text Font and size
* Choose a Text Style
– Paragraph separation
– Indent paragraphs
* Choose a Chapter Head Style, font and size
* Choose a Chapter Sub-Head Style, font and size
* Choose Your Copyright Page font and size
* Choose Your Title Page fonts and Styles, etc.
* Make Sure Your Chapter/Sub Head style is different from your Other Large Fonts
* Choose your Book/Trim/Page size
* Write down your Design choices, this will be your blueprint.
HANDS ON EXERCISE
* Go ahead, build your blueprint for your book
* Test it out on your computer, see how things look
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN
EBOOKS AND PRINT BOOKS
Ebooks are electronic books read on computer, tablets, phones or dedicated readers.
Because its electronic, the reader often has a lot more fluidity in how they read. They can adjust the brightness, they can sometimes reverse the text from black on white to white on black and other colours, they can adjust text size and even font.
Flowable text – Devices will adjust how many words are on a page depending on choices, and how the pages flow.
Because the page can appear differently, things like page numbers or headers, particularly fixed may not be significant or useful. If you can literally change the size of a page, or the size of a font or text on a page, then the page numbering will go all over the place.
Ebooks will therefore navigate differently than paper books.
Paper books will have page numbers throughout, plus a table of contents up at the front identifying stories or chapters, and the pages that those chapters start on. They may have footnotes at the bottom of pages or the end of chapters. They can have an index with page numbers as referents.
Ebooks usually don’t navigate that way. They may or may not have page numbers. But what they will have is something called hypertext and bookmarks. These are links between places within the document, usually highlighted in blue. Click on a hyperlink and it will automatically go to a location that is bookmarked in the book.
The entries in the table of contents will be hyperlinked to all the chapters in the book. At the end of each chapter will be a hyperlink back to the table of contents. That way, you can navigate around the book. You can also use this for footnotes and for an index.
What does this mean? Extra work! You may have to format your book twice!
Generally, you don’t have to start from rock bottom. A lot of formatting will be the same in both print and ebooks. But at some point, you will have to save the basic book as baseline, and then start from that baseline to your final form drafts for print and ebook.
WATCH OUT FOR
PLATFORM REQUIREMENTS
One of the fun headaches is that different platforms will have different requirements, so that you will need to fine tune your book for each platform. Here are some examples.
* On Amazon, you can use Word’s automatic table of contents generator for ebooks and paperbacks. Saves a lot of work.
* Smashwords rejects an automatic table of contents for its ebooks, so you have to hypertext the whole thing manually.
* Draft2Digital will automatically generate its own table of contents for you, but it may not be the table of contents that you want.
* Draft2Digital will very helpfully add front and back material to your ebook or printbook, and a lot of very nice formatting options, which can be fun for doing an ebook.
* Draft2Digital will very helpfully add front and back material to your ebook or printbook, and a lot of very nice formatting options, which is a giant pain in the ass for doing a printbook. It’s best to give them a pdf file for a printbook.
* Draft2Digital will automatically search your book for the word ‘Amazon’ and will bounce you. The other platforms it hosts or distributes to don’t like advertising for the competition.
* For a paperback on Draft2Digital you will need a new ISBN, if you already have a paperback on Amazon with its own ISBN.
* Kobo will not accept a pdf file at all.
* Googleplay will only accept an epub file for an audiobook.
* Some platforms will accept a word ‘.doc’ file, but will not accept a ‘.docx’ file, and vice versa.
Generally, try to read or double check the format requirements on each platform, and determine if you need to customize.
Sometimes you don’t know about something, until they reject it.
I will generally try to establish a final formatted book and if a platform requires customization, I will save a file, identifying the platform.
BOOK COVERS
MAKE AN IMPRESSION
Clear striking image / presentation
Readable title
YOUR COVER WILL HAVE DIFFERENT FORMATS
Full size on your print book – 5×8 or 6×9
Half size on your computer – 3 x 4.5
Thumbnail Size on your book page – 2×3
Thumbnail Size on general bookseller page – 1×1.5
B&W inside a print book
It should look good in all formats -.
Height to Width Ratio
BOOK COVER OPTIONS
TOTALLY BASIC
OPTION – DON’T EVEN BOTHER WITH A FANCY COVER – JUST TEXT IT.
Final Cover, or Placeholder?
Design a Basic Text Book Cover on Your Word Processor
Text – Title, Subtitle, By-Line, Other
Choose Font and Text Sizes
Text Colour
Page Colour
Converting text to pdf
Word Processor
Printer
Converting pdf to Jpg
Software on your Computer or Available online
https://www.freeconvert.com/pdf-to-jpg (online free)
https://pdf2jpg.net/ (online free)
Remember Get Maximum Density – 300 dpi is minimum
Remember Get Dimensions Right
Size, larger the better 1600 x 2400, You can always reduce
BOOK COVER OPTIONS
DO IT YOURSELF
WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR COVER ART, OR – THE TROUBLE WITH COPYRIGHT
Your own photographs and artwork – if you created it, you have the copyrigh and you can use it as you wish.
Public Domain work – Anything created before 1931 under American law. Also anything falling into the public domain in the US for lack of registration, under old system. Or 70 years after publication by corporation, or lifetime plus 70 of the artist in Canada. Also, stuff assigned to Public Domain, Creative Commons, etc.
Stock Licensed photos – Alamy, Adobe, Shutterstock – pay a fee for that.
If using material under copyright, make sure you obtain permission or license in writing.
Commission an artist or photographer.
USE A RAW PHOTOGRAPH OR ARTWORK, SELF CREATED OR PUBLIC DOMAIN OR LICENSED.
Fixing it up with photo editor
microsoft paint
adobe photoshop
https://pixlr.com/x/ (free online / no sign in)
https://www.canva.com/photo-editor/ (used by Draft2Digital)
Cropping and Dimensions
Adding Titles and By-Line
Tricks and Effects
BOOK COVER OPTIONS
COMMISSION A COVER
Where do you get an Artist? Giant Headache
Friends and Enemies
Local Conventions
Deviant Art
Recommendations
Referral Sites
Referrals
ARTISTS I HAVE USED
Dawn Dominique
https://dusktildawndesigns.com/
Eldon Corrientes
https://www.instagram.com/lunggacreatives/
RULES FOR COMMISSIONING AN ARTIST
Here are the things you need to consider when Commissioning an Artist.
PRICE / PRICE RANGE – How much is this going to cost.
RIGHTS – You need the following rights:
Trade Paperback Print Book
Hardcover Print Book,
Ebook
Audio-Book
Advertising and promotional rights
Duration of the book –
DELIVERY DATE – Timeline
CREDIT AND ACKNOWLEDGMENT on copyright page – can include specific or chosen name, email, website link etc.
DESIGN YOUR BOOK COVER
YOU HAVE SELECTED YOUR IMAGE
COVER REQUIREMENTS
Text placement
Minimum 300 DPI
Match Dimensions of Book
Basic Dimension Options
DESIGNING AN BOOK COVER
Select elements and make decisions
Image or Basic Text
Title – font and size
Sub-Title – font and size (optional)
Name (font and size)
Other text – font and size (optional)
Sizing
PUBLICATION SERVICES
Doing the book yourself just too overwhelming? Luckily, there are a number of companies, services and individuals that will help you with every aspect of getting published.
Some of them are even legitimate.
Let’s run top to bottom…
FRIESEN PRINTERS
* Real Printer – does work for all sorts of publishing companies, books from the big five, works on a national or international level, very respected and recognized.
* Has a Vanity/Hybrid publisher sideline, doing books for people.
* Full spectrum services – one stip shopping.
Manuscript evaluation
Manuscript editing
Formatting
Cover Design
ISBN Registration
Catalogues
Others
Basically, every part of the publishing process from finishing the manuscript to the print run of published books, and getting it into stores.
* Very nice people, genuinely committed, good professional manner.
* Every step of service costs – Manuscript evaluation is $500. Total costs can run to $10,000 to $15,000.
* Met a woman in Calgary who spent $12,000 – but she was happy with the service.
* YOU WILL NEVER MAKE YOUR MONEY BACK.
* Good for people who require or want help and hands on guidance, surplus of money, purposes such as family geneologies or memoirs where sales or the general readers marketplace/audience is not a factor.
* Will provide some services, guidance and advice – but they won’t market or promote your book for you. You’re on your own.
* May or may not be a good fit – In-House or Stable of Editors. In House book design and covers. You may find a better fit with a Free Lancer you select and retain yourself.
SMALL PRINTERS / PRINT SHOPS
* Used to be Printing required huge infrastructure, printing presses, equipment, skills, etc.
* Technology, particularly computers, have advanced to the point that Print Shops are now able to do credible books and can and will do small print runs, of a hundred or a few hundred books.
* Manitoba Writers Guild used this – Print Pro, I believe, for their Literary Contest publication.
* Will not do full spectrum – you do your own editing, design, etc. They will work with you to make sure that your book complies with technical requirements of their print process.
* Small company, even small orders are relatively large, so you will get personal service on the aspects they work on. Local.
* Can’t speak to price – probably better than Print on Demand. Worse than Friesen’s per unit print run of a thousand or more.
* Service provider – basically.
HYBRID / VANITY PUBLISHERS
* Vanity Publishers are basically a scam – they’ll produce your book for you. They don’t care about quality or editing. Notoriously poor quality. Since they are paid up front, they have no motivation to do a good job. On the other hand, they’re notorious for one sided contracts, and stealing or locking up rights.
* Hybrid Publishers – are basically Vanity Publishers that claim to have ethics. They present as an intermediate model between self-publishing and mainstream publishing. Mileage varies. Many Vanity publishers masquerade as professionals.
SERVICE PROVIDERS
* For literally any aspect of writing or publishing, there are service providers who can provide any aspect of Publishing. This includes free lance editors, free lance artists, book designers, publishing associates, etc.
* The field of service is literally overrun with scam artists, particularly for marketing services, including book clubs (current scam), literay festivals (current scam), movie producers (yes). They will either deliver no actual services, no useful services, or extremely poor quality service. Buy beware: Tip – if they approach you out of the blue, they’re scammers.
MARKETING AND PROMOTION
This is the tough part, and it is getting tougher.
CONVENTIONS / APPEARANCES
Conventions – Example – I attended When Words Collide this year, a Writers festival in Calgary, about 800 people attending. I was a listed panelist and presenter, and had a name, picture and profile on their web site. I moderated a Panel on AI and did presentations on Copyright and Publishing Contracts – at least 200 people attended my panels in all, a quarter of the convention. In addition, I handed out some 250 cards, signed up for the autograph table, and volunteered for the book sales in the dealers room. By any account, I worked harder at this Convention than any other.
Results – Five copies sold in Authors Alley. No appreciable impact on Sales on Amazon or other platforms.
Conventions – Similar examples – I did 11 panels at North American Science Fiction Convenition in Buffalo, three and a reading at World Fantasy Conventions, multiple panels and presentations for other Conventions and Conferences. Also, presentations for Writers Guild, Canadian Authors Association, other groups. I’ve had up to 200 people in a room. And presented for 1 person. I’ve done single person presentations, sat on panels, moderated panels, given readings, participated in events.
Results – No appreciable impact on Sales on platforms.
REVIEWS
Reviews – Ottawa Review of Books, Toronto Star, multiple reviews in Amazing Stories Online. No appreciable difference in sales month to month (poss exception). Reviews can be difficult to obtain – on Squad Thirteen, I approached almost a hundred reviewers, only one even wrote back, to say that they’d review the book for $250. It can be very hard to get reviewed byvenues which might move your book sales.
Making Reviews Work – there are sites like Goodreads, now taken over by Amazon. But there is a lively review community there, if you can engage. Specialty sites like Reddit. One strategy – shotgun, do an ARC, send out lots of reader review copies, some of them may come back.
Reviews Can be Critical – Amazon’s algorithm will track reviews, and determine your placement on their promotions. So if your book goes viral and gets tons of reviews, Amazon will put the algorithm behind it and promote it. But watch out – if you get caught trying to game the Algorithm, you can be suspended. If you can get reviewed, if you can get reviewed in the right places and the right ways, then yes. Is there a clear path – no.
TRADITIONAL MEDIA
Mainstream Media Coverage – Almost impossible. It used to be different, I had a feature in the free press, coverage on CJOB and CBC radio, CITY-TV, college papers, community papers. Didn’t sell any books. But now books and writers seldom even make mainstream media.
NEW MEDIA
Social Media – This can be a useful platform for selling books, if you can spend the time and energy on it. You need to know the Social Media well, you need to understand the algorithms, You need to build up a large following. And you need to invest time and effort into regularly producing social media content – posting or updating at least two or three times a week, or preferably two or three times a day. You have to either already be very active on it, or you have to make a commitment to learn and put the time in. Currently – the best Social Media for writers is TikToki and Threatds.
Podcasts and Other Promotion – I’ve done a handful of podcasts. No appreciable impact. Possibly if you were doing a podcast tour, say thirty or forty in a two month span, you might get there. Or getting on the right podcast, something with a huge following.
Newsletters – This has been a huge tool. Every marketing course, venue, workshop etc. talks about Newsletters and the importance of them. An account on social media is the property of the social media company, they can cut you off or curtail you at any time. So if you have a Newsletter, all those subscribers and email addresses are yours. If you have a base of say 10,000 or 50,000 subscribers you can make a living as a writer. Minimum, you want at least several hundred to a few thousand.
Difficutlies with Newsletters: Must produce engaging comment regularly and build a personal relationship with your audience – ‘authenticity’ the sense of you as a human being and a faux friend whose life they are interested in seems much more important than your actual writing – so people like it when you talk about your cat, or your kids or your cooking, much more than your actual writing. You have to constantly generate engaging ‘content.’ You’re job is basically to amuse a fan group or ‘superfans’ so they’ll support you as a writer. If you’re a private person… maybe that’s tough. And it can be difficult and time consuming to recruit subscribers. I know a guy, started a newsletter, after a couple of years 37 subscribers. At the Calgary Convention this year, I put out invitations to join a newsletter I was starting – out of literally hundreds of people I performed in front of in panels and presentations, or interacted with… I got one subscriber.
ADVERTISING
Online Advertising – This actually does work. Maybe. Advertising can provide a return of up to 500% on investment, and can sell a huge amount of books – Potentially lucrative, but risky. Best places for ads so far? Facebook, followed by Amazon possibly
There is a steep and very expensive learning curve. It is a complex process – you don’t just buy an add, you design them, you need to understand how to do adds, and you need to experiment for effectiveness of ads. Your metrics are clicks – how many people look at your add. But beyond that, you need to to turn those clicks into sales – which is where you hear all the ‘book funnel’ or ‘sales funnel’ bullshit.
You also need to learn to identify and demographically target your audience in sophisticated ways – if you’re marketing specifically to fourteen year old girls living in the midwest with pets, you can target that. Generic population – you’ll die. You need to learn and anticipate an algorithm which is continually changing.
Certain things seem to be clear – very well defined genre works – Series are critical – one off novels will not easily get bang for the buck. But a three or six book series is a marketing bonanza. Advertising works best with the right kind of product.
There are people that will do and design facebook advertising for you. But they’re expensive. Start at $1000 and go up. There’s a good chance it’ll be worth it. But there’s always a risk.
DIRECT SALES – BOOK LAUNCHES, CONS AND TABLES
You can sell directly through Book launches, at Flea Markets, Collectibles and Craft Fairs and conventions, Writers and Science Fiction Conventions, Comic-Cons, or other venues. There are at least sa few large conventions in each city which have attendances in the thousands or tens of thousands and are simply an accumulation of merchants tables.
Great way to meet people. You might sell some books. For a really big convention, you might sell a lot of books. Maybe.
Is it cost effective? Will it materially advance your career?
PROSPECTIVE MARKETING CAMPAIGN
Easy Reaches – Amazon and Smashwords both have Author Page spaces, where you can upload pictures, bio, and links to your blogs or social media. Take advantage of that.
Medium Work – Set up a Website / Web Page for your work as an Author. Personalize it. If you have one book or prospective book, foreground that. If you’ve got a series, foreground that. If you have multiple books, foreground yourself. The Web Page should contain a short and long bio, resume, author pictures, and provision for updates, focus on your books, reviews and other resources.
Hard Work – Learn Social media, focus on TikTok, Instragram, and Threads. Open accounts. Locate and haunt the ‘book forums.’ Learn what seems to work. Learn what works that’s closest to your books. Research the algorithms, how the algorithms work. Train your Social Media to prioritize book and genre related material. Learn how to post effectively – this is achieved by posting a lot and experimenting.
Homework – Start a newsletter – get thousands of subscribers (!!!). More seriously, subscribe to a handful of newsletters, preferably similar to your book. Study how they operate. Change up subscriptions from time to time. Learn how they work. Ask questions to Newsletter operators, regarding methods, technology, automation, etc.
Alt-Homework – Sign into promotional venues – Substack, Medium, Royal Road, Wattpad, etc. Sign up for Goodreads. Review sites. Reddit, etc. Research podcasts, prepare a list of potential podcasters you can approach. Same thing with Reviewe sites – develop a list of reviewers in your genre that you can approach.
Unpleasant Work -Research Facebook and Amazon Advertising systems.
Schedule a Book Release – Schedule a date for your book to be released, give yourself six to eight weeks. This should be publicly scheduled, and with notations on Amazon, D2D and other sites, to allow for advance sales and advance notification.
Advance Reader Copies – Send out free copies, known as ‘Advance Reader Copies’ to potential reviewer. A couple of hundred should do. You might get five or six reviews. But try to create a buzz.
Start Pushing – Begin uploading regularly (at least a couple of times a week, daily or multi-daily) to promote the book. Updates on Web site, push through Newsletter, ask other Newsletters you’ve subscribed to for support, design content for multiple forums. Also start contacting podcasters, see if you can get on to talk about your book. Schedule convention appearances. Travel to conventions. Look for any means to promote or publicize the upcoming book. You can’t do all of this simultaneously. Establish a timetable through the period, identifying priorities and schedules. Be flexible, if something takes off, focus on that.
Book Launch – Optional, but potentially useful, if you think it can create or contribute to buzz. You may use records – pictures, videos, etc., for content for social media, newsletter, etc.
Book Release Date – Begin Facebook / Amazon Advertising – Amazon’s Algorithm prioritizes books that have lots of early reviews and strong initial sales. Prioritizing means a higher rate of recommendations, more appearances on ‘if you liked’ etc.
Post Book Release – Keep doing everything – sending out review copies, punching social media, newsletter(s), conventions, updates, etc. for a period from two weeks to a year, depending. Amount of follow up work depends on success and returns.
Will this Guarantee Results – No.
Labour – This is more work than an average person can do and maintain a full time job. It may help if you are not working, retired, unemployed, have a spouse supporting, or independent wealth, but even then its still an unsustainable amount of work. If you have a spouse, parent(s), child(ren), etc., that you can enlist to work for free that will help. Otherwise in terms of planning your campaign, you may need to try and prioritize your activities. Advance work helps a lot. Planning for marketing, in the ideal super-best case scenario might start six months or more before book release.
BEWARE SCAMS
There is always someone out there to eat your dreams. A lot of people want to write or be writers, and a lot of people have a very deep urge. There are going to be people that take advantage of that. This part is to give an overview of some of the scams or types of scams.
SERVICE INTERMEDIARIES
I looked up KDP Publishing on google, and the first two hits were:
https://www.pandapublishing.com
https://www.primedirectpublishing.com
Who are they? They’re not KDP Amazon. You can go directly to KDP Amazon’s website, fill out the forms yourself, sign up as a KDP creator, and upload books directly, filling out the forms and uploading the book.
Or you could go to one of these sorts of guys, give them all your information, they’ll then go to KDP Amazon’s website, fill out the forms for you, sign on as a KDP creator, and upload the books you give them. Or they could just upload your books and metadata that you give them to their own KDP account so you get published. You’re paying them $200 to $1000 primarily for them to insert themselves between you and KDP.
You will see them advertising on social media as well. There are also similar or other parties which will charge you to get ISBN’s that you could get for free. Or do Copyright registrations for you, charging you extra fees. Basically, these companies or operations insert themselves between the government or online services that you could normally access directly, in order to charge you. Apart from being costly, they may actually cause legal problems for you, where they end up the technical owner of your work.
Always be careful to go to the source, the original source, for services. Always be cautious about anyone charging fees.
SERVICE PROVIDERS / MARKETERS / BLOG TOURS / VIDEO PRODUCERS
Essentially, these are people who promote or offer marketing services. They may offer to create or generate promotional videos or youtube videos. When I did a kickstarter, I was inundated with people offering marketing services to make the kickstarter a success. Sometimes it’s a specific marketing offer – like a blog tour. Sometimes its general marketing sources. They troll social media constantly. The standard tactic is to make contact in the open on Social Media, and then immediately ask to go to DM or Direct Messaging. Why? Because with Direct Messaging, they’re not in public, will not get called out for their scam by observers, and can try to build a connection. Typically, these services are of no measurable value, and may not even be peformed. If services are performed, there’s no way to judge the authenticity or actual work, there’s typically no meaningful result. Such providers usually have no web site, or their platform is a Facebook profile, they work through Fiver, they have no resume, no references, etc.
One major problem here is that there are genuine service providers out there – people like Free Lance Editors, Artists, and there are even genuine Marketers or Promoters, or genuine technical services. It can be extremely difficult to distinguish genuine articles from the scammers masquerading.
The problem is compounded by the uncertainty of your service. How do you measure success on a blog tour, if your book is publicized through a dozen blogs, but doesn’t result in a single sale? What if you are on a blog tour and notice that each of those blogs is identically worded and formatted, and none of them have followers? If you are looking for a cover artist, and someone presents themselves as one, but does exclusively only AI… is that an artist or a scammer?
IMPERSONATORS / AGENTS / FESTIVALS
These are the most insidious, because they often pretend to be something else. I’ve been Friended by semi-famous writers who want to start up conversations, which very quickly leads to them telling me about marketers who changed their lives. I’ve been approached by Book Clubs and Literary Festivals. An Agent contacted me about movie rights. Sometimes they use the real names of real people, agencies and institutions, sometimes they just say Book Club.
They are pernicious. They use AI to both mass deluge thousands of writers, with personalized, even glowing comments on your books. It’s a love bomb. They often look legitimate on the upper service – google the name, real people come up.
They never ask for money initially, and will aggressively deny if you suggest they are. But once they reel you in (and they are friendly, positive, and work hard to make a human connection), then as part of whatever they are pushing, there are modest incidental fees….
SPOTTING SCAMMERS
* They approach you, that’s the big red flag.
* Use of Fiver as a connection point. Use of Lead or Wells Fargo banks.
* Odd language uses or idioms suggesting non-English users, or non-western English (Nigerian etc.)
* Double check URLs – for extra characters, or similar looking, cyrillic characters in place of standard ones, red flags suggesting it’s a dummy URL intended to hijack a real one.
* Real businesses have their own company email suffixes – if you are hearing from an agent or a publisher using gmail.com, instead of say @randomhouse.com or @pdqliterary.com – scam.
AI AND SCAMMERS
Most scammers are low end, looking for relatively small amounts, a hundred or a couple of hundred. So most of them are relatively small operations, often not sophisticated. But because its money for no work, it’s a lively industry, and because writers are desperate for affirmation, there’s always targets. AI has allowed scams and scamming to grow exponentially, and to be more sophisticated. It’s always changing. Always be on guard.