Publisher tips for indie authors from Cincinnati, Ohio

Free self-publishing Easy self-publishing book guide for the indie author Tips to self-publish books from anywhere in the USA or from Cairo, Egypt or elsewhere in the world can seem like a big challenge especially the first few of times. Where to begin? It is a bit of a dilemma that all of us indie authors struggle with. I know the thoughts, I had them myself when I went out and started self-publishing my books. Here is the fast indie authors guide with the top 7 sites for free self-publishing.

There are three basic types of publishing forms; hardcover books, paperbacks, and eBooks.

Self-publish Hardcover Books The most difficult form is publishing a hardcover books although every author wants their book to be in a hardcover, it isn't always cost effective and most authors get caught up with vanity publishing. Many vanity publishers crawl around taking advantage of every possible author. It's the way they make money! First they will contact you by mail. Who, me, you think! The ego is swelled and author after author is taken in for the ride costing them thousands of dollars, and going nowhere fast. The world is promised and sold to them!

When you wish to pay to self-publish hardcover books I suggest going about it in a professional manor. First, make your choices in size and appearance, then make contact within your state for book printers and compare their prices. Ask how many for what and if and when… Do all of your due diligence gathering the facts, be sure to leave nothing to chance. Manufacture minimum quantities at first. You will need to be ready to knock on doors to sell your books; schools, libraries, small books stores and maybe even some of the chains. Another service you may want to look into is Lighting Source a POD, print-on-demand service and offer hardcover books plus ship anywhere on the globe.

Self-publish Paperbacks For paperback books self-publishing I always suggest CreateSpace for a few reasons. First, they print what you sell or better stated they are POD, print on demand service, 1 to whatever number you need. Second, there are no upfront cost or fees. Third, you can have an ISBN number for free, well sort of. Forth, you get distribution into the Amazon network. But understand you have to be the one out there marketing your books, working for a small percentage of the sales and let me tell you it might sound easy but...

CreateSpace offers forms to you based upon your print size. I do suggest using their document forms. Once you book is written turn your book into a PDF form. PDF offers much more stable electronic file environment. They also offer forms for your book covers, again based on size and number of pages. You will want to use them, they will make your life easier!

Self-publish eBooks The fastest growing segment online is eBooks. I do suggest self-publishing your book as an eBook too. That said self-publishing eBooks is a bit of a challenge. Most of the information seems to be hidden and you can spend countless hours trying to research it. I have to tell you, I did! From font size and types to image sizes the information I found was hidden from the main sites and it did seem like they wanted you to pay to find out how, especially at Kindle!

At Kindle you will need to work with font size 11, font type Times New Roman. Interior images have to be 512px wide and no more than 600px in height. These are keys to your success at Kindle. There is free software available online for creating eBooks so don't get caught up in all of the hype! Sigil is the best free open source software for producing acceptable ePub files for all of the eBook self-publishing sites; Kindle, Smashwords, and Book-Spot.com. There is one difference between the sites. Book-Spot.com allows the font types that are available in Sigil keeping your works presentation exactly as you want it to be seen by the reader.

ISBN number You'll need to have an ISBN number to be printed on your book. ISBN numbers can cost up to $125.00 per ISBN number! There are a few ways around that cost.

Pricing Books or eBooks Pricing a book or an ebook to generate sales as an indie author can be difficult. The best method of pricing a hardcover or paperback book is to go into stores and see what prices that are selling books for. Then based on the number of pages choose a price that best suits your book. For ebooks pricing is another story. There are certain proven best selling prices. It is tricky because many of the self-publishing sites restrict the percentage base upon price and it is the best selling prices that get hit the hardest, like spare change for food. The best selling price range for ebooks by indie authors are $0.99 to $2.99. You will sell more units and earn more revenue than those in any other price ranges, but again most of the online publishing sites take the lion share.

The 7 best sites for self-publishing with one free self-publishing site 1.	 CreateSpace - no fees and free to self-publish but a distribution percentage split through Amazon, of whom owns the company plus you have to wait to be paid for the sales from your book plus you do all of the marketing. They're good for printing paperbacks and a POD service.

2.	 Barnes & Noble B&N's 65 percent is close to Amazon for ebooks. PubIt includes a free conversion tool that takes your Microsoft Word, TXT, HTML, or RTF files and automatically converts it to an EPUB file, which you then upload to Barnes & Noble's eBookstore

3.	 Smashwords - no front money, free self-publishing but here too there is a percentage split plus you have to wait to be paid and you do all of the marketing. Earn 60% of List Price from Major Ebook Retailers and 85% Net at Smashwords.com

4.	 Kindle / Amazon - no set up fees, free self-publishing but again there is a percentage split plus you have to wait to be paid and you do all of the marketing Amazon's Kindle pays 70 percent royalty for ebooks, (Amazon also has pricing restriction to get its highest percentage rates). I understand that Amazon's Kindle is changing soon and you will be making much less.

5.	 BookBaby charges up front for self-publishing. Upload your eBook with them and pay just $99. Sell your eBooks around the globe. Get paid 100%!

6.	 LuLu.com, is one of the bigger online self-publishing sites. At Lulu, you pick the best price for your work and you keep 90% of the profits you set. Soon as you bring your ebook or book into the market place the profits fall. Apple has established currency-specific pricing tiers for all eBooks sold in the iBookstore in the U.S. and international regions. Apple takes a 30% commission on all sales. This tool shows you how a Lulu eBook will be priced on the iBookstore in each country, and calculates creator revenue per iBookstore sale.

7.	 Book-Spot.com - is unusual, they are a free self-publishing site. There is no front money, and no percentages, It is an author based free self-publishing site with a store. Although they do not presently offer ISBN numbers they are working on setting them up as a part of the book submission process. There is no middleman taking all of the money. Each indie authors and publishers is paid directly upon the sale of their books. The authors and publishers still have to market the books themselves, but Book-Spot.com offers easy to use free self-publishing marketing tools right at their site}. Book marketing is an area of the site that is being paid special attention to and they are planning on putting in the top of the line tools for marketing books, all free to use. They have no price restrictions or put any limitations upon the authors or publishers. Book-Spot supports all authors' efforts to generate sales everywhere and anywhere.

Marketing Self-published eBooks or Books This is a business that you are in and you'll need to make the hard discussions and they should be taken seriously. You want to weight out time vs money, the work and what are your rewards between all of the main self-publishing sites. Most of them don't offer much other than advice and costly services to market your books. For online marketing I suggest Book-Spot.com they offer many free easy to use tools for most of your marketing needs right there with Book-Spot for most of your book marketing purposes plus selling your books through Book-Spot.com you make 100% of your book sales from all your hard work, which does make it worth the efforts that you have put into marketing. 

That is indie author tips For information on eBooks fonts and images How to make an ePub file

Author Robert L Ruisi is a retired businessman is now an indie author of several self-published books and ebooks. Creator of Book-Spot.com