These can be responses from other authors, book bloggers, reviewers, or other well known figures to advance reading copies or other work by the author. He adds that author-designed e-book covers tend to fall short in their use of typography, since it is not an easy discipline to learn, and often suffer from an author’s “attempt to squeeze in lots of symbolic representations of plot points or characters, and this rarely works out well.”Īuthors will also want to seek out blurbs and reviews to include on the book jacket or as part of the front matter. “E-book covers need to be simplified from print book covers,” says Joel Friedlander, a book designer who covers e-book design at The Book Designer. A more thorough content editor may also be valuable to help with the story arc, or to spot inconsistency in character behavior or speech.Ī great-looking cover is also essential for an e-book - one that’s eye-catching and looks professional, but also easy to read when seen as a tiny thumbnail image on a smartphone or in Amazon’s “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” section. At the very least, invest in a copy editor to review the manuscript for any typos or grammatical errors. Once an author has written a book of which he or she is proud, and gotten feedback from friends or other “beta readers,” it is worthwhile to pay a professional to review the text. “But smart authors are always testing and experimenting with what works.” Creating a Quality Product “There’s chatter among authors that the algorithms have changed in a way that doesn’t favor books that are free or cheap as much as they used to, so there may be less incentive to use KDP Select,” says Jane Friedman, online editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, who covers e-book trends and strategies at. Either way, authors who do opt in to the program are only locked in for 90 days, so it is easy to experiment with what offers the greatest return. For more established authors or those with significant sales on Nook, Kobo, and elsewhere, the math makes less sense. For those who already sell most of their e-books through Amazon or whose top priority is getting more readers (rather than high payouts), KDP Select offers attractive benefits. The catch in all this is that authors have to publish exclusively through Amazon. ![]() Authors can participate in the promotional tools Kindle Countdown Deals or Free Book Promotion. The program gives self-publishers the option to join the publishing giant’s Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (from which Amazon Prime members can check out as many digital books as they want) and the even more expansive catalog of Kindle Unlimited (in which those paying a monthly subscription fee can read as many books as they want). This makes it desirable for an author to distribute across as many platforms as possible, typically publishing with Amazon and then using Smashwords or BookBaby to distribute to all other major retailers.īut Amazon has complicated this with its introduction of KDP Select. ![]() These services are for the most part nonexclusive, so an author holds on to her rights and can use any or all of them simultaneously-making revisions, price changes, or removing the work altogether, whenever she chooses. The first major choice a self-published author makes is which major retailers ( Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, Barnes & Noble Nook Press, Kobo, Apple iBookstore) and distributors ( Smashwords, BookBaby, Blurb) to use to publish his or her e-book. But with so many good options, it is also more important than ever for authors to choose carefully how best to position themselves for the greatest chance of engaging the largest possible audience. The wealth of tools, platforms, and services available to self-publishers continues to grow and be refined for an ever-broader reach and greater efficiency. ![]() It has never been easier to publish your own e-book.
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