Amazon self publishing -anyone?

Originally Posted by Tobi

MadamStar....Good luck with your book! You have also given me some really valuable advice, and probably will come back to you for some more tips yet -so watch out!
I definitely have to set the publicity wheels in motion. But I haven't quite finished the book yet; still have a couple of chapters to go.
I need to be a bit more left-brained to focus on that, and need to be so right-brained to finish the book! LOL! The more tech./internet stuff I do, the less I can write those chapters properly....and the more writing I do, everything else disappears!
haha....dilemma.....it will be fixed.

Thanks everyone

Sounds good :) you can always send me a message.

This is what it says on the Kindle formatting site:

Plain Text (TXT): KDP converts all text to HTML. Image locations referenced in the TXT file will not result in an image displaying in the eBook after conversion. For this reason, TXT files should only be used when your book file does not contain images.

Rich Text Format (RTF): KDP converts rich text format files.

The page break issue is a problem, not sure how to get around that, but since Kindle takes these two formats maybe it's not that essential?

Here's an idea: can you use a computer at a library? Maybe they have Word on their computers; you could bring a .rtf file and convert it to Word there?

I second the recommendation that you start a blog asap. There's a lot of books out there and it's hard to stand out.

[Tobi]

Yay! The book's finished! Its title is:
"Angel From the Streets".

Now for the really hard work......all this techie stuff is out of my comfort zone....

Originally Posted by Tobi

Yay! The book's finished! Its title is:
"Angel From the Streets".

Now for the really hard work......all this techie stuff is out of my comfort zone....

Congratulations!!!

[Adrienne]

Congratulations on finishing your book Tobi ! Good luck with the next steps to getting it published !

Hi Tobi,
Sorry I am joining this thread late. Ironically, I have been busy finishing up my second self-published book. :)

I successfully published my first book through Amazon's CreateSpace as a paperback and through Kindle Direct Publishing as an EBook. I will be doing the same for my second book, scheduled for release in January. I found the tools and templates easy to use. CreateSpace is also very inexpensive. Where you'll spend the most money is on promoting and marketing the book yourself.

I'd be happy to answer questions and share my experiences. Feel free to send me a PM.

Best of luck with your book!

Pink Roses

[Tobi]

Thank you Pinkroses! That's a lovely offer.
Thanks everyone for some great replies.
I'm editing now and it's taking ages. I keep seeing things wrong with it! haha

Google Docs seems like good word processing software to use, but the page breaks are behaving oddly at the mo.
Not being a 'techie' person, I definitely appreciate any tips.

Congratulations, Pinkroses, on your two books! I hope they do very well indeed. I will probably send you a P.M. (My brain's a bit scrambled tonight though....LOL!)

Originally Posted by Tobi

Thank you Pinkroses! That's a lovely offer.
Thanks everyone for some great replies.
I'm editing now and it's taking ages. I keep seeing things wrong with it! haha

Google Docs seems like good word processing software to use, but the page breaks are behaving oddly at the mo.
Not being a 'techie' person, I definitely appreciate any tips.

Congratulations, Pinkroses, on your two books! I hope they do very well indeed. I will probably send you a P.M. (My brain's a bit scrambled tonight though....LOL!)

Tobi, I'm reading someone else's self-published book right now and it motivated me to come here and give this piece of advice: while you are editing, give the manuscript to someone who can spot typos. It's hard to see them in your own book but it is very important to rid the book of as many as you can. Typos jump off the page to me as I read, and when I am reading a book with lots of them I judge the contents more harshly. It also makes the book seem amateurish (although I am shocked at the typos I find in books from major publishing houses today).

[Silver]

Originally Posted by Kathleen Brugger

Tobi, I'm reading someone else's self-published book right now and it motivated me to come here and give this piece of advice: while you are editing, give the manuscript to someone who can spot typos. It's hard to see them in your own book but it is very important to rid the book of as many as you can. Typos jump off the page to me as I read, and when I am reading a book with lots of them I judge the contents more harshly. It also makes the book seem amateurish (although I am shocked at the typos I find in books from major publishing houses today).

For those who can't afford the money or the time, and planned on proofreading / editing themselves, read it backwards - paragraph by paragraph because if you read it forward or normally, you expect a certain flow, and will zip right over mistakes or things you want to change and rearrange. It sounds weird, but works great.

And Tobi, it's a good reminder that just because the writing of it is finished, there's still work to be done and to remain patient!

Great thread!

[norseman]

Check this one out
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Christopher-Kennerley/e/B00C0I2D00/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_14?qid=1389344675&sr=1-14

[my son ]