In July, it will be two years since I published my
first novel The Aledan, a scifi
romance set in the distant future, at Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). I learned
about direct electronic publishing, perusing Amazon’s website from something
and learned that I could self publish my books purely by accident---for
FREE! All I had to do was upload the
files and create covers.
Basically, anybody can use a computer and word
processing program can do it. KDP gives you the instructions, and KDP is not
the only direct publishing company that allows individuals to publish their
work free of charge. You’re not limited
to publishing electronically either. In addition to publishing my Aledan Series
on Kindle, I published them in paperback as well through CreateSpace an Amazon
related company. You can publish free there also---IF you do all the work of
editing and formatting yourself.
How can it be free? No books are printed until there
is an order. Your book is stored electronically until someone places and order
and pays for it. The price is determined by the cost of printing the book, and
profit margin. When you submit your book
and it’s approved, they determine their cost and state the minimum retail price
you should sell the book for to cover their cost and give you a small royalty
on the sale of each book. CreateSpace allows the author to buy their own
printed books at cost plus shipping whether you order one or one hundred. This
includes proofs.
So, I published five novels that took me years to
write. It wasn’t something that I did on a whim overnight. I had to do major
rewrites on all of them to reflect the technological changes that happened in
the years since I started them. Before I discovered direct publishing, I spent
years submitting work to traditional publishers. All I had to show for that work was a pile of
rejection letters and a pile of rejected manuscripts. The times my work was accepted, the companies
folded before anything was published.
That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m a bad writer. In part,
it means the traditional publishers didn’t think publishing and marketing my
book would meet their required profit margin. If they agree to publish your
work, they pay someone to proof read and edit it. Then they pay to print and
advertise it. A traditional publisher has a great deal of money invested before
a book ever goes on sale.
Being a self-published author means you either must
pay someone to edit and market your book; or you must do all that yourself. The
cost can run into thousands of dollars. The hardest part for me is always the
proof reading my own work, where typos in other people’s work may as well be
highlighted. When I find them, I sometimes
will send a polite email and give the author the location of the typo so they
can fix it and upload the corrections. I have corrected and uploaded my own
books a few times.
Do I make lots of money publishing my own work? No,
but it keeps me from being bored with retirement.
To learn more about direct publishing visit the KDP
website https://kdp.amazon.com .
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