Adventures Self-Publishing

 I recently self published a short story Moore For Less Investigations: The Husband that is a precursor to my forthcoming novel Moore For Less Investigations: The Kid. It was brought up to me that I should start a discussion about what I went through.

 The actual publishing part is easy. The preparation is the challenge. Kindle Direct Publishing requires the document be in either MOBI or EPUB format for the upload. There are a number of options for this. Kindle offers Kindlegen which is a bit tricky and requires the use of the Terminal or Command Prompt to convert the file. There is also Mobipocket Reader which is another free software, I found this one a lot easier to use.

Personally I use libreoffice as my word processor and used writer2ePub which is an extension to format the file. Both the Mobipocket Writer and the writer2pub allow you to load a cover, metadata and a table of contents. The TOC is the toughest part for me so far and I was happily able to skip for the short story. Kindle prefers that a TOC with hyperlinks be created for your ebook. Now as i said the application to create the ebook can make them if the proper information is provided in the file. The Table of contents have to be created and have the link predetermined.

Once have the file upload you are prompted to read the term and conditions. As with any contract you should take the time and read them. Next is choosing your pricing  With Amazon anything under 2.98 allots 35% of the return to the author. Any thing 2.99 and higher will see 70% return to the Author.

You will also get the option to use the  KDP Select plan  which mean you agree to give amazon exclusive digital publishing for 90 days during that time. the book is eligible to be included in the Kindle Owners' Lending Library and you can earn a share of the fund based on how frequently the book is borrowed (click to see how payments are calculated). In addition, by choosing KDP Select, you will have access to a new set of promotional tools, starting with the option to offer enrolled books free to readers for up to 5 days every 90 days. Authors and publishers can enroll a single title, their whole catalog or anything in between within KDP Select. 

I went with this option. After you submit there is a 12 hour reviewing process to make sure the file is up to spec and there you go you are a self  published writer.

Though the work is no where near done. That however is a topic for another discussion.

You can grab a digital copy of "The Husband" on amazon either from my website or  from the following link http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B623PCQ

I fighting with the Table of Contents on "The Kid" once I have that functioning I will be releasing the book.