As much as I think that self publishing is a waste of time, I decided to follow through with it and make myself a book using Amazon’s CreateSpace. The other choices are LuLu or CafePress. CreateSpace is cheaper, you get a free ISBN, and the book appears on Amazon – that’s where the action is.

The hard part was creating a cover. I searched Flickr for images that were Creative Commons free for modification, etc. I then used Photoshop to make a front and back cover, modifying the image quite a bit. I had to go through the publication process several times before I got the image right with the proper size and bleed, etc. This is the biggest technical hurdle.

The next hardest part was to combine all the stories into a word document. Some of the stories are from 10 years ago and the formatting was wacky. I had to proof all of the stories (something I am bad at). My older stories have lots of errors. I have learned over the last 10 years a lot about grammar and style. I only learned all of the technical grammar rules for dialog in the last year or so, so all dialog had to be re-read and scrutinized.

I used the Word grammar and spelling checker to get rid of dozens of mistakes that I did not catch when writing the stories. It is a wonder that these stories were ever sold. I also cleaned up all the passive tense that I had the energy to work on.

I worked on making the book readable by choosing fonts that I thought enhanced the text while making it easy to read. I chose a Bookman font for the body text. I used some fancy fonts for headings.

I created a Table of Contents using the built in Word functions. This sounds more complicated than it is. It is a time when the built in Word “help” actually told me what to do.

I used this basic Word document to create all of the eBook versions of the book. The Kindle version is basically just the same document with almost all formatting removed and converted to PDF. I exported to HTML, edited the file directly and then imported it back into Word just to get everything the way that I wanted. The SmashWords system uses the DOC file and the Nook version required me change the book to an eBook format (you can upload a doc, but it screws with the formatiing quite a bit).

SmashWords is very picky about the content. I uploaded a half a dozen stories to SmashWords. They will give you a free ISBN once you get the formatting passable and they will publish to a bunch of sites including iTunes. I have yet to make any money off of SmashWords, though. I have had multiple sales from both Barnes & Noble Nook and Amazon Kindle since the book and stories appeared there in the week after Thanksgiving.

I finally got the CreateSpace version the way that I want it and it passed their review (after 4 or 5 tries) and I ordered the review copy. I should receive that in two weeks.

CreateSpace makes money off the sale of your book, but they also charge you for review copies, so check your book many many times before you offer. CreateSpace also has a premium package that costs $40. I researched this and everyone says it is worth it. The break even for my book is about 30 sales. I ordered the premium package and saved some money on the review copy, but I am pessimistic that I will ever sell 30 copies of the book.

I priced the book at $9, which seems cheap to me. I have decided that $9 is a fair price for a new book and I am convinced that people don’t comparison shop on books they want to read. My book is available at no other price and it’s not like someone will not buy it because there is another book with a similar title that costs less.

I’ll let you know at the end of January if all of this work (about 30 hours) is worth the effort. At my normal billing rate of $75 an hour I’d have to make around $2,250 – like that’s going to happen.

Keith P. Graham Amazon Page
Keith P. Graham B&N Nook Store
Keith P. Graham SmashWords Store

I’ll link to the Paperback version in a couple of weeks.