Great Advice from Bill Raymond

When it came time to launch The Road of Fathers, I was lucky enough to find Bill Raymond from Optical Authoring. He helped me out immensely throughout the final stages of self-publishing. Here he has provided words of wisdom for the process of self publishing:

our eBook Readiness Checklist

Self-publishing an eBook can be a lucrative business, if not just fulfilling. There is a lot that goes into storytelling, such as defining a plot, verbally painting the scenes, and introducing unique characters.

For every successful eBook author, hundreds never see a financial return. There are plenty of reasons why an eBook doesn't make it. Maybe the story is too complicated, or the characters are not inspiring.

The good news is, most authors are magnificent at their craft, and miss the mark on the small things, which are:

1) A poorly designed book cover.

2) No professional editing.

3) No marketing on the part of the author.

4) Poor eBook conversion.

In this article, I am going to walk you through these major points, plus share a helpful guide that you can follow as you go through the journey of publishing your eBook.

BOOK COVER

Did you ever go house or apartment hunting? If you have, then you probably went online to look at the pictures. If you see an outside picture with a horrible paint job or ungroomed yard, you might pass it by without ever looking at the property.

Book covers are the same as looking at property. It needs curb appeal. Now, this does not mean you have to pay a fortune for a book cover. You might have artistic family or friends who are willing to help you for free or at a low cost just to grow their portfolio.

Here are the services I use for my eBook covers:

www.99designs.com

www.freelancer.com

There are free options like Amazon's Cover Creator and Blurb.com. Beware of these services because you might be able to use a template and create a great cover quickly, but it might just look like every other book cover out there.

PROFESSIONAL EDITING

The biggest difference between self-publishing and working with a publishing house is the quality of the final work. That quality does not just come from checking spelling and grammar.

The quality of a book comes from refining the book to expand on a certain topic, tightening the plot line, and building up characters. Even the best writers in the business use professional editors. It may be costly to hire editors, but there are ways to deliver a high-quality book.

Here are some ways to find an editor:

1) Just like in my previous note, there are people on www.freelancer.com that can help. I recommend you find people that will go through multiple reviews. Make sure they are not just spellcheckers but people that will give you professional feedback and collaborate with you.

2) Reach out to family and friends to see if they can provide some off-hours expertise to work with you on the eBook.

3) Contact your local library, or find some meetups (www.meetup.com) where you can find professional editors.

Of course, you can just Google "book editor" but if your eBook is on a tight budget, these services might be a little expensive. Amazon's Createspace (www.createspace.com) offer an editing service but keep in mind they are a bulk service so you may not get that one-on-one service you want.

MARKETING

Marketing an eBook sounds pretty daunting, and in some ways, it can be. There are so many things you will learn about eBook marketing; it can make your head spin. There are some easy things you can do that most eBook marketers always recommend:

1) Start marketing before the book is even released. Use social media to post some tidbits about the story, tell people what you are working on, and share your experience.

2) Build a following on social media. Use Twitter to talk about what you are doing while also joining the conversation with other authors. If you lend someone else a hand by, say, re-tweeting, then they are likely to do the same for you.

3) Believe it or not, email is still the best way to reach people. Your conversion rate (people clicking on a link and buying your product) will be much greater if you have a mailing list of people that sign up for your eBooks. For a small monthly fee, you can use Mailchimp.com and Wordpress.com to build your blog.

EBOOK CONVERSION

Some eBooks, especially works of nonfiction, do not convert to eBook format. There are lots of free alternatives out there like Calibre and Sigil, but keep in mind they may not offer all the formatting options you may need.

When Steven Barron completed his eBook, The Road of Fathers, we used the Optical Authoring eBook Toolkit (www.opticalauthoring.com) to convert his eBook from Microsoft Word to ePub and Kindle formats. This toolkit output his eBook with a cover image, table of contents, and proper formatting for the popular ePub and Kindle formats.

FREE OFFER: AN EBOOK READINESS CHECKLIST

There are so many important steps you must take to ensure a successful book launch. To help you through the process, I provide a one-page eBook Readiness Checklist that you can download for free here:

http://www.opticalauthoring.com/product/ebook-readiness-checklist/