I was talking with a friend of mine recently about self-publishing options. He’s wanting to put a project management ebook together. The subject seemed to be a nice topic others could benefit from, so I wrote up the gathered information in the post below.
Do-It-Yourself Ebook Publishing
Publishing your ebook yourself will give you the most freedom during the process, but just as writing a book takes time, formatting your writing for an ebook layout can also take a good deal of effort. Commercial software such as eBooksWriter and Ebook Maker are options, but I personally recommend using free products like Sigil or eCub.
You can alternately format your book with software you know and use a converter like Calibre, also free, to get your book in the ebook format(s) you need. For good conversion results you should format your book in HTML, or if you don’t know HTML save your Word document as either HTML or RTF. Calibre will handle either source type well.
The most popular ebook formats are EPUB and MOBI, but you’ll want to offer your book in PDF as well to insure access to everyone. PDFs can be hard to read on mobile devices, but they are popular on computers and do have wide software support.
Selling your self-published ebook is also fairly straightforward. It’s easy to offer your ebook as a download on your website (if you don’t have a website, make one; every author needs one). Charging for book downloads can be done via simple PayPal, or you could set up your book in an affiliate network site like ClickBank. If your site runs WordPress, there are many shopping cart plugins available as well.
The main drawbacks to going it alone are you have to manage all of the technical issues yourself and you are responsible for all marketing. If your website doesn’t get a lot of traffic, not many people will see your book. Using an affiliate service can help, but the ROI may not be what you’re looking for. That said, you should also look at the self-publishing sites below.
Ebook Self-Publishing Sites
For less control but a lot less work, upload your book to an ebook site and make it available for purchase there. You can link to your entry from your own website, and you receive a percentage of each sale. Some sites 
require you format your book to their style guide, or you may have to make your ebook completely using one of the above tools before uploading. But the key benefit is your book is managed for you. All of the ecommerce is automated, and you benefit from traffic on a popular site that can find your book by browsing or searching. Additional marketing will help your sales, but it’s still a lot easier. Current options include:
- Amazon’s Digital Text Platform – You receive 35% or 70% of the net sales, depending on selected options/package; publishes your ebook in the Kindle Store
- Smashwords – This one is very popular; you receive 85% of sales; once you upload to their style guide specifications your ebook can be converted to other formats
- Scribd – Includes social networking elements in the site too, you receive 80% of the sales, but you’ll need to upload in the formats you want to sell
- FastPencil – This is a newer service, and it also offers print packages in addition to the ebook service; you’ll receive 80% of your net sales
- Barns & Noble’s Pubit – Pubit is so new it’s not available yet, but the expectation is that it will be similar to Amazon’s service; site still says “Coming Summer 2010″
Self-Publishing in Print
Most self-publishing these days is about ebooks, but I don’t want to ignore print. If you do want to pay to have a print run of your book there are some relatively easy options, but expect to pay a few hundred dollars for any of them. Most self-published print runs are vanity efforts, though there are the rare stories of authors who made it big selling their book one copy at a time till they got noticed. If you have the time and money to do that, I wish you luck, but please don’t expect these options to grant speedy success.
The major vanity presses are listed below. Their pricing options vary a great deal, so you’ll need to read through their guides to find one to suit your needs. There is no easy comparison between them, but be sure to look for both printing costs and any flat fees to use their service.
Good luck!
