Self Publishing

I decided to give self publishing a try on Amazon Kindle. Basically I considered it an experiment with a huge learning curve. What did I learn?

The first thing I learned was that you do not need to own a Kindle to download eBooks from Amazon. They now have FREE Kindle Apps for iPads, smart phones and Windows 8.

After I created an account for self publishing on Kindle, I downloaded the book. How did I put the book file together?

 First I made all my photos low res images. Then I opened a new document in Word, there I wrote my title page and first page. Next, I inserted the photos. You don't have to include the cover page at this point. If you need a cover for your book there are options on the Kindle site that help you create a cover. If you have your own  front cover design, it's uploaded onto the site separate from the body of the book.

Once the book is uploaded the site offers you a chance to view the book on several different devices. My book is mainly made up of images, keep that in mind.

On a black and white Kindle all my images were in gray scale. Not a good thing for a picture book. Kindles do come with color screens. On these devices I noticed an extra blank page on one and on another version there was a strange page break at the end. The images also looked small, they didn't fill the screen. But these were truly minor things.

Hands down, the best way to view an imaged based Kindle book is with an iPad, go figure!

If I had a more serious book to publish I would probably use a site like Smashwords. Self publishing on Kindle costs nothing, sales are split 70/30. Smashwords has some fees but they offer authors more help and some marketing. Smashwords distributes to Barns and Nobble, Sony, Apple iPad iBookstore, Kobo and Diesel.

Amazon Kindle link to my book:
Fly Me to the Moon link

Yep, it's the new remix version of Fly Me to the Moon!  A book of humor and visual fun!

 

Fly Me to the Moon is a recreation, on a larger scale, of a sketchbook I made for

The Sketchbook Project 2013. The sketchbook is touring the country right now!

To find out more about The Sketchbook Project click here.

 

Have a great weekend!