This article provides some good pointers, but for more detail (all you need to know), read Aaron Shepard's blog, and also read his <i>Aiming at Amazon</i> and <i>POD For Profit</i>. You'll thank me.<p>To keep your options open, you definitely want to buy your own ISBNs from Bowker (if in the US).<p>Above all, do not use a "vanity press" that charges you to publish your books.<p>Source: The rewarding and time-consuming experience of self-publishing my first book.
Both this and the link to James Altucher's article in the sibling comment should prove to be very useful for my upcoming self-published book[1], especially the link to the image generator. Thanks for sharing!<p>[1]: <a href="http://www.petekeen.com/mastering-modern-payments" rel="nofollow">http://www.petekeen.com/mastering-modern-payments</a>
great stuff, thanks! you should also check out James Altucher's recent article, it has tonnes of great tips:
<a href="http://www.copyblogger.com/professional-self-publishing" rel="nofollow">http://www.copyblogger.com/professional-self-publishing</a>
Can someone explain to me why the author is implying CreateSpace is disreputable?<p>Apparently ISBN's are not acceptable from there an bookstores will not order through them. Why would this be?
Great list of tips. I helped a friend self pub his first novel about 3 years ago. Amazing experience, I organized the cover (lucky to kow an extremely talented graphic designer who worked for a small percentage of sales) and I did all the internal layout using indesign (the OP was right on how much of a technical nightmare it is to get up and running with InD!)<p>My inspiration and guide for working with the interior of the book, believe it or not, was don knuth's TAOCP. That is one of the most beautifully typeset books I've ever read (ha, I mean have <i>tried</i> to read over the last 12 years). It was a lot harder than I had imagined, and took a lot of by hand tweaking to make each and every page look just right. But it was worth it as the printed version of the book looks great, without the self-published look I've noticed from people who I believe may have just downloaded a template for Word to layout the book.<p>I don't know about the various comments here about createspace isbn's. That's what we went with, and small bookstores and Barnes and Noble stock the paperback version. (Although I don't know if B&N have it in their stores, but you can buy the paperback version online through them)<p>The hardest part we found was the marketing. My friend started a blog, and is active on twitter, pinterest and Facebook. The book is a novel so he can't show domain knowledge via the blog, but his blog is entertaining and does lead to sales as the book contains comedy, but isn't a comedic work.<p>The biggest problem was trying to reach out to traditional media - not even a rejection email from various reviewers we tried to reach out to, even though we focused on papers where he is from and also where the book is set (Philly and Pitsburgh). This could of course be because of the fact that it's self published. But when is next book becomes a big hit we will remember the great websites and independent magazines that did review the book so they'll get first dibs on the author. But I will definetly go through this list with a fine toothed comb when I have a chance and check out the marketing tracking tips.<p>Regarding piracy, we believed in the old adage that I think O'Reilly came up with - 'It's not piracy that kills authors, it's obscurity.' But I couldn't convince him to go the whole hog like Paulo Coello and upload his book himself to pirate book sites, and I can understand as we worked on the book for about 4 years (by we I mean him doing all the work and me cracking a whip to keep him motivated and writing, then proofreading and editing through 4 drafts)<p>Happy to say he's sold a few copies, and it keeps plugging along. This summer I get to do it all again as he has almost finished the first draft of his second novel.<p>If you want to check it out, the novel is called 'Senseless' and the author is Damien Galeone (<a href="http://damiengaleone.com" rel="nofollow">http://damiengaleone.com</a>). The book is available on both Amazon and B&N (paper, kindle and nook) Or you can email me if you want a copy of the book in PDF, if you'd like to check out the internal formatting (this is marketing, not piracy and I just called the author he said he's fine to hand out some copies:)my email is in my profile.