[stylist] book publishing questions

Fri Jul 31 21:39:52 UTC 2015

Sarah, I am currently's self publishing my book through lulu.com. The site is pretty accessible. But, I have a team that's helping me because it takes a lot of work to self publish a book as you have found out from reading other answers to your question. You can sign up through Lulu.com to get emails on volume discount sales of your book. They give you options for choosing the cover. They also give you options for choosing the size of your book and the pages color and size. So, you can publish photo books, calendars, or print books. They have a Number of articles online explaining the publishing process. One big thing they do stress is editing. If you are working in a college environment then you probably know a lot about editing. I have to say and publishing my book this is the thing that is taking the longest to accomplish is the editing. But, while I am doing that I am learning how to do this online.

There are a number of packages you can purchase through Lulu so that they do all the work except the editing and writing of course :-) but, you can also do all of it for free and I have gone with that option simply because I can get people to help me out and pay them to format and publish the book. But, if you're willing to work you can do it yourself for free as I mentioned earlier. I've seen the packages range from $777 up to 3000 including publishing a chapter that can be read by others who are thinking about buying your book. It depends on what you want to do with your book after you publish it because you will be self marketing your book as someone else mentioned here. I have seen some marketing places online and of course a lot of it is word-of-mouth and people who know about your book I'm sure they would help you out to and if you have a website you can self market there. I have gone this route because I want to be in charge of my own work and I want to do the marketing I want to do. I do not want to deal with the middleman at least not right now. The option I chose is to publish the I think that is the case sometimes you end up not getting as much help as you thought you would get so you kind of have to be ready to do this on your own. I am in charge of editing and writing and then I will be working on the print book. I have a friend who is designing my cover. I am currently looking for someone to help with the e-book addition. You can do all this on the site yourself or get people to help you out or as I said they would also do it for you. I don't know about it I don't know The audible portion yet I am working on finding someone who will do that. I really don't have $3000 to spend or I would put it down on the entire package. Besides, this is kind of my baby and I want to do it my way. But, that is experience I've had so far and currently my goal is to finish this by the end of August and put it online in September. I have been working on this for about eight months steadily so if you got all the writing and editing done in a great deal of the work is done for you. Take a look at Lulu.com and see what you think. They give you an option to list your projects online so you can list your title and all of your dates that you want to have things completed by or you can create your book. Now, I have found Lulu to be accessible in those regards if you're using a laptop or a PC. Not so much for using the iPhone which I won't be using for final publication. I looking forward to getting this done and holding the physical book in my hand. Lulu does offer a bookstore so they will sell your books. They do advise that if you want to sell on Amazon or other venues that you must follow their formatting guidelines. There is someone who published on the site using Lulu and they directed me there. I went and found all the other information myself. Hope this helps :-) good luck it's a lot of fun, a lot of work and ultimately rewarding to publish your book's.

shelley Queen of Bells out Sent from my iPhone

> On Jul 31, 2015, at 1:16 PM, Julie J. via stylist <stylist at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Sarah,
> 
> I self published a book through Amazon Kindle.  I did need sighted help to get it set up.   I was able to sign up for the account and get the book ready, but while most of the process of uploading the book was accessible, not everything was.   It could also be that I'm using JAWS 12, which is older.   Perhaps a newer version would have done better.
> 
> You set your own price with Kindle.   The fees associated with sales vary depending on the price you set for your book.  You can also change the price in different countries, although I'm remembering this was one of the things that wasn't accessible.
> 
> The thing with self publishing is that you also are self marketing.   If you're good with that, then go for it.   The other big drawback is that Amazon has a bad habit of changing how they pay, especially with their  KDP select or whatever they are calling it now.  It used to be if someone downloaded your book with KDP, you got your KDP portion.  Now your payment is related to how much the person reads of your book.
> 
> On my never ending to-do list  I am looking into other options for self publishing.  I'd like to sell it directly, but that requires a lot of technical set up. In the long run, I think it would be more profitable and accessible.
> 
> HTH
> Julie
> Courage to Dare: A Blind Woman's Quest to Train her Own Guide Dog is now available! Get the book here:
> http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QXZSMOC
> -----Original Message----- From: Sarah via stylist
> Sent: Friday, July 31, 2015 12:06 PM
> To: stylist at nfbnet.org
> Cc: Sarah
> Subject: [stylist] book publishing questions
> 
> 
>  Good afternoon. I have written two books this summer, something I never thought I would do. Friends and family have told me I should have them published. I work at a community college and my boss said I should get an agent. Is an agent the way to go, or should I self-publish the books on Amazon? If I publish them on Amazon, what format do the books have to be in? Is everying on that part of Amazon's website accessible with Jaws? Would I need to write a synopsis of the books? Does Amazon determine the price? Thank you.
>    Sarah
> 
> Sent from my U2
> 
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