Hopefully, you're now convinced that you need to publish an ebook. So, how do you get started?
You need a formatted ebook file to load to the publishing platforms. This is your completed, edited manuscript in specific formats: mobi for Amazon and ePub for the other stores.
You have two options to produce these:
(1) Learn how to do it yourself – as I do. It really isn't that hard, especially if you have plain text books without tables and images. There are also many software options to help you nowadays.
(2) Outsource this task and pay a professional to format your book.
Why learn to do it yourself?
One of the reasons I like to keep formatting in my control is because we often change our ebooks over time.
Every time I put out a new book in a series, I want to update the back matter of the previous books with links to the new book.
There are also the inevitable typos. Even if you use multiple proofreaders, someone will always find a problem later. It may be within a month or two, it may be a year later, and you know you're going to want to fix it! If you have control, you can fix it yourself and upload a new file easily for no extra cost.
If you outsource this task, you will need to pay for these updates, and it won't be as fast.
Do-it-yourself formatting
I use Scrivener as my writing tool, and Vellum as my publishing tool.
Vellum is Mac-only, but many authors buy a secondhand Mac in order to use it because it makes formatting easy and fun. You can also use Mac-In-Cloud from a PC.
Check Vellum software out at:
www.TheCreativePenn.com/vellum
You can also find my tutorial on how to use it at:
If you're using Scrivener for formatting and having difficulties, then I recommend the Learn Scrivener Fast course which includes lots of mini videos on the functionality that will help speed up your writing and publishing process.
Check it out at: www.TheCreativePenn.com/scrivener
There are other options for doing it yourself.
- Draft2Digital have a formatting tool
- Reedsy have a writing and formatting tool
- Amazon KDP have Kindle Create, a Kindle only formatting tool
Also, if you have books in print from previous publishing deals, you can get them scanned from print back into Word so you can produce an ebook from that retrospectively.
Many authors who had deals over ten years ago will own their ebook rights, so it's worth checking your contracts to see if you can publish digital versions, even if a traditional publisher owns your print rights. You might have only licensed a specific territory e.g. US and Canada, so you could self-publish in other global markets.
Considerations for images
If you have a lot of images in your book or a lot of complicated tables, then you will have some problems in ebook formatting. You will also have a bigger file size. Although ebooks are typically free in terms of delivery, Amazon does include a delivery cost in their pricing setup which will be higher if you have a bigger file and images really expand the file size. If your delivery cost goes too high, you're not going to make much royalty. So, it's important to consider the size of your file and whether you really need those images.
If you write children's books, consider the Kindle Kids Book Creator, which is a specific tool for image-heavy children's books. You can also check out iBooks Author, which can be used for children's books on the iPad as well as textbooks with enhanced video and images.
Amazon has other tools for image-heavy books, including Kindle Edu for enhanced textbooks and Kindle Comic Creator for comics and graphic novels.
If you're writing non-fiction with images, consider whether you really need them and whether they are critical to the reader's experience.
Authors can get romantically attached to images that actually might not be needed. It might be better to put your images on your website and include links within your ebooks. This will get people over to your website, where they could potentially sign up for your email list. You could also put the images on a Pinterest board for social media sharing and use them for marketing. You could also consider using images in your print book but not in the ebook or (obviously) the audiobook versions.
The other thing to consider with images is ensuring you have the right copyright license. Are they your own images? Do you have permission to use them and what type of license have you paid for?
Outsource ebook formatting
If you want to outsource formatting, then check out this list of formatting options and professionals: