The Self-Publishing Tools I Use & Recommend
Self-publishing is more than pulling up a Google Doc or Microsoft Word and writing a book. It takes more than that to create your dream book. I learned that quickly on my self-publishing journey. Once I finished writing the essays and compiling them together, I began researching what I needed to make my book, an actual book. There are many tools one can use to create a book. I haven’t used them all, but the following tools I used to make my book and I highly recommend them to those of you interested in self-publishing.
Though I highly recommend getting your own professional book cover designer, if you want to make your book cover, BookCoverly will definitely help you. The software can help you design it and properly format it. I designed my cover using the software and kept coming back to it so I could format the cover right for each publishing platform I uploaded my book to. BookCoverly asks for a one-time purchase of $49, then you can use it without ever being charged again. A great investment if you want to be hands-on with your cover.
Kindle Create — Uploading eBook To Amazon
If you want to sell your book as an eBook on Amazon, then you should look into using Kindle’s very own Kindle Create. The free software will help you turn your manuscript into an eBook ready to be uploaded on Kindle Direct Publishing. In Kindle Create, you can upload the document of your book and then format it into an eBook. Once you’re done, you save and download the file and publish it on KDP. That’s the way I did it with my own book. But may you, this is only for publishing your eBook on Amazon. There’s another method if you want to publish it to other book vendors.
Draft2Digital — Publishing eBook Everywhere Else
I was interested in selling my eBook more than just on Amazon. I wanted my eBook to be sold on most platforms where eBooks could be sold for increased visibility. For that to happen I needed a platform that would help upload the book everywhere I wanted to be. Luckily for me, I quickly found out about Draft2Digital. Draft2Digital allows authors to upload their eBooks on their platform, then they add the eBook to other book vendors. Meaning, that I didn’t have to upload my eBook multiple times on several different platforms. I could just upload it once on Draft2Digital and they would take care of the rest. This is how my eBook managed to be on Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Scribd, and more without me uploading it to them.
KDP, Barnes & Noble Press, & Lulu Direct — Paperbacks
Not to forget about the actual physical copies of my book, I used three different platforms to create paperback versions of Living Rent Free In My Head. Sounds like overkill, but it makes sense when the reasoning is laid out. Kindle Direct Publishing is Amazon’s book publishing company. Amazon of course being the biggest marketplace where people buy books, I had to have my book on there. I also wanted to have my book on Barnes & Noble website and had to publish the book through Barnes & Noble Press to achieve that. And lastly, there are other book-buying platforms that people use and I wanted my books there too. Lulu Direct allowed my book to be on more websites beyond just Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
There you have it! These are the tools and platforms that made my book become a real book. Before this, I didn’t realize just how many avenues I would need to go down in order to make Living Rent Free In My Head. I didn’t know a book required all of this, and more depending on what type of book you’re writing. I’m glad to have learned this and be in a place where I can share it with all of you.
My book Living Rent Free In My Head: Essays On Pop Culture comes out on August 2, 2022. Pre-order it now for only $3.99 on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other vendors.
Originally published at http://fairlyprofessional.com on July 7, 2022.
