Gordon Burgett's Blog

9 things to do (sort of) to get your ebook out fast and cheap

Quickly publishing your ebook through Kindle and the rest sounds easy enough. Just write a book, bang it out on your computer, get your spouse or a buddy to give a quick proofing, set up pages that look like other books in Word (File/Page Setup), and send it to Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords to let them post it so you can go back, make it look better, and submit it again. If you tweak it often enough, it should look 90% right, right?

A cover? Buy a fotolia .jpg, shrink it, put the title above it, add your name as the author below, save it in a free .pdf, and find a free .pdf to .jpg convertor. Voilá! Submit both files and wait for the monthly royalties. Fat city!

In fact, you can do just that, though I’ve simplified it some. Use my book How to Get Your Book Published Free in Minutes and Marketed Worldwide in Days to wend your way through the ancillary or open press publishers’ submission thicket. Once your book is written, proofed, and styled, it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours to see your words in print.

“STOP!” he blurts, tongue in cheek. That’s like seeing two training videos, buying a glove, and playing in the majors! Slow down. Here are the most important hurdles to clear so your book is first-class, looks spiffy, and readers will stop shaking their head and laughing long enough to want to buy your second venture!

1. Figure out what your book is about. You can define a book in a paragraph. If you can’t, stop until you can.

2. Find something—better, many things—to share on your pages that the readers can’t get in others’ books!

3. Create some kind of outline so the chapters (remember them?) make sense, are in the right order, and guide the reader effortlessly.

4. The most important step is the proofreading. Your final copy must be clean and clear, so forget your mama or your so-so literate cousin. Ask around for a no-nonsense proofreader, pay them to save your hide, and make the changes they suggest. (Pay them again to read the final draft before you subject the public to your mysterious prose…)

5. Find another book that you think looks super, copy the style, and follow it in form throughout your book. Only steal from the best, and as long as you’re doing it, do it from the first page to the last. I’m talking about a title page, the copyright page, the table of contents, the chapter headings, sub-heads, and all the rest of the text between the covers. Use serif type.

6. Spend time writing an honest, compelling book description and a persuasive (also honest) bio to submit with the book’s interior text and the cover.

7. If you can’t tell a mobi from an ePub, get somebody to convert your Word text into ebook tongue for you, so it comes out of the chute immaculate and shouting to be bought, 100% ready. That will cost $50-100.

8. The front cover (there is no ebook back cover) needn’t win prizes if your book is nonfiction; but it needs some artwork, a large title, a catchy subtitle, and your name. It should look better if it’s fiction, since others’ novels will also look better. Check Mark Coker’s suggestions at Smashwords, or ask around. Under $100.

9. Finally, get a day job—and/or another at night. Despite the claims of other ebookfolk that they are earning $5,000 a month on royalties (even more), you’ll be lucky to sell 100 copies of your first book, or earn $500 from it. The first book may be the hardest book you will ever write, and if you just dance through it, likely the only one. Don’t blow it. Turn out a quality tome. Just because anybody can see their book in print quickly and free through the ebook miracle, get a grip. Do it right, say something valuable, pay a few bucks for production, make the prose and style sing, and ebook printing can open up a new, profitable world for you. But if you just wing it and don’t have the goods, it ultimately takes too long to get to first base, much less the majors. And that’s a shame because the ebook path is there for the taking and can be a profitable, solid, quickly accessible launching pad.

(An aside, I will discuss in detail the very important but little known difference between two distinct ebook paths, one far more profitable and just as fast as the other. See my [free] newsletter on February 6.)

Best wishes,

Gordon Burgett

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Is your book almost finished but it needs a final, last-step professional review by a no-nonsense editor with 40 books in print and 30+ years in publishing? That's what I mostly do, plus run a publishing company. Email, call, or check this link for details. Other things: my website, a free monthly newsletter, bio, and my latest book, How to Get Your Book Published Free in Minutes and Published Worldwide in Days. Also, daily tweets as GLeeBurgett and other social networking links at about.me.

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