How to Simplify Self-Publishing and Save Your Hair
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Receive regular self-publishing tips in email and the full-color PDF summary of my book How to Simplify Self-Publishing and Save Your Hair.
Self-Publishing is Hard... Until It Isn't
Deal with Amazon Self-Publishing Changes Without Losing Hair
Easy Publishing Magic with Free Tools
Books2Read.com/SimplifySelfPub
Self-publishing requires a gazillion steps using half a gazillion different tools. Ripping out your hair in frustration at even 10% of these steps will leave you bald at the end of your author career. Simplify self-publishing and save your hair by starting your book production with the new and improved Draft2Digital platform and other (mostly) free tools.
Links
Links to Self-Publishing Tools Mentioned
Videos
Have It Your Way
Don't like reading long blogs? I am publishing the guide in various formats to cater to different needs.
To demonstrate the concepts in this guide, low-priced black-and-white versions exercise all the features of the Draft2Digital platform. The complex formatting exceeds the capabilities of its tools focused on narrative, however. Blank lines and borders disappear. Tables spill across pages. Color-highlights fades away. Using a theme with graphics and phrase caps adds more clutter. View the e-book horizontally in landscape mode, if you can. The large amount of screenshots blows up the file size, thus raising the minimum price required by online retailers.
The full-color e-book gives a better reading experience, taking advantage of highlights to convey information better. The e-reader still controls most of the text formatting. Effects such as highlighting sections with different fonts or colors may disappear. Its production required a second, labor-intensive pass through Kindle Create, and pricing reflects that.
The full-color paperback in an oversized format best reflects the source document and allows studying the screenshots in greatest detail. Of course, hyperlinks don't work in paperbacks. It required a third pass through KDP and expensive four-color printing.
Finally, the audiobook allows listening to the narrative repeatedly during other activities, but comes from a fourth time-consuming production that had to compensate for lack of visuals.
All proceeds support continuing research.
The images use my Young Adult (YA) Thriller Cyberspiracy for illustration.
How to Simplify Self-Publishing and Save Your Hair has three parts to cater to different needs.
Quickie Guides
To publish a narrative without complex formatting, the Quickie Guides will get you going right away.
Self-Publishing Checklist
Part II presents the concept behind the guide and the Self-Publishing Checklist organized by task with links to further resources.
Self-Publishing Checklist
Reference
The Reference section goes into details for tasks grouped in the order they appear on the Draft2Digital or Kindle Direct Publishing platform.
"If you’ve ever felt mystified by the process of self-publishing a book, or don’t know what’s involved—or if you know too much and just want someone to tell you the easiest path forward—then you’ll appreciate what our cover author, Wolf O’Rourc, is doing: simplifying self-publishing.
His book, How to Simplify Self-Publishing and Save Your Hair, offers helpful tips as it guides you through the process, explaining the tools that help you knock out self-publishing tasks quickly and efficiently. "