Self-publishing - what to do and what not to do

Starting your self-published book

MORE and more people are turning to self-publishing. It’s becoming easier, cheaper - and for those who just want to print and hopefully sell a few copies of their book, it’s a better option than seeking an agent or a publisher.

Many wannabe authors have already made great strides towards self-publishing their book - only to discover they have gone down a blind alley and need to start again.

So for those literally just starting out, here are some tips on what to do - and more importantly, what not to do:

Do write your book! You need a ‘finished’ clean manuscript. Once you start preparing to publish it becomes very difficult to change, add or delete entire chapters. It’s best to work with a complete and finished product.

• Use Microsoft Word or Open Office to write your text. The latter program is free from openoffice.org.
• Do consider spacing between paragraphs but the use of italics and bold (or similar) may be left until the pages are laid out. Indeed, bold, italic etc will often be stripped out when your text is imported into page-layout software.
• Do get it proof-read. Use spell-check and grammar-check; use your friends. Proof-reading is harder than it looks.
• Do source high quality, high res images. Pictures need to be at least 300ppi (600ppi for glossy picture books).
• Don’t merge text and pictures. You may be tempted to merge pictures into your text at the appropriate places. Don’t. Text and images need to be separate ahead of laying-out pages. Just put a line saying “Teddy Bear picture goes here”.
• Do start thinking about a cover - a striking image will help sell your book so it can be worth paying a freelance photographer or agency (such as http://www.arcangel.com/)
• Do start thinking about how many copies you want printed (you can just print one!). If you are ordering more than 500 copies, how are you going to sell them? Start thinking about promotion.

Take a look at www.lulu.com and www.blurb.co.uk which are the two main self-publishing websites. In particular look at what format they require your files. Also see if they will include your book on Amazon or Kindle if you want to publish on those platforms.

Finally, have you backed up your precious book? Back up the data in at least three places (hard disc, USB, the cloud) in case you lose your computer. The cloud is probably the safest place to store data.