You have lovingly put together a manuscript, and you are ready to publish. Is this exciting or terrifying? And what is the next step?
Back in the day, publishing a book would have involved you submitting your manuscript often to several publishers and hoping and praying for it to be accepted. The disappointment rate was high (and still is) for new authors submitting to traditional publishing houses. For instance, J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, was turned down 12 times by different publishers until finally, someone published her manuscript.
The great thing about today is you can publish it yourself. You can get your book out there with relative ease.
For today I have guest author, ghostwriter, and editor John Wheeler to give you the information on the first steps to publishing your ebook. So John, what's the first?
Your first step is to find a platform you would like to publish on. With ebooks, there are two major platforms that most Self Publishers are using.
You have the Amazon-operated Kindle Direct Publishing. They are the front runner, especially with ebooks. They are an outlet that allows you to get your work to market fast. The setup is user-friendly, and books can often appear worldwide in less than 48 hours.
More importantly, the service is entirely free with no upfront costs, and you can earn up to 70% royalties.
However, with Kindle Direct Publishing, your book is limited to distribution to Kindle e-readers and the Kindle App.
The other option is Smashwords. From what I've seen, this is more of a third-party company where you can upload your work and they will distribute it to the other major retailers like Apple, Barnes and Noble Barnes and Kobo, as well as thousands of public libraries Smashwords. They are the largest ebook distributor for independent authors where authors can earn up to 80% royalties.
To contact John Wheeler visit www.John-Wheeler.com