Self-publishing on Amazon

onlyroz

Yes, that's the one. I hope your boy enjoys it. A review (good, bad or average) would be much appreciated.

I originally pitched the book at 10-year-olds, but decided to alter the ages of the characters up a few years. This was mainly so I didn't have to tone down the complexity of the language too much. So for a 9-year-old I'd say that it would be OK as a "read together" sort of book, maybe for bedtime reading.

I could approach my son's school, but I'm not the most outgoing of people. I could perhaps offer to do something for the school website, in return for a plug on one of the pages.

My Facebook page can be found easily enough by searching for "Fair Play", incase anybody is interested.

No sales so far today though

sniggings

sorry to nitpick but shouldn't it be "strange smelling" rather than "strangely-smelling", as it's a kids book, I think correct grammar is important.

onlyroz

sniggings wrote: »

sorry to nitpick but shouldn't it be "strange smelling" rather than "strangely-smelling", as it's a kids book, I think correct grammar is important.

I have to say that I'm not completely sure. Wiktionary defines "strangely" as "in a strange or coincidental manner" so presumably "strangely smelling" would mean "smelling in a strange manner".

sniggings

onlyroz wrote: »

I have to say that I'm not completely sure. Wiktionary defines "strangely" as "in a strange or coincidental manner" so presumably "strangely smelling" would mean "smelling in a strange manner".

yes the term can be used but not in this context.

"And what is the strangely-smelling thing that Jimbo's sister"

This sounds correct to my ear

"And what is the strange smelling thing that Jimbo's sister"

To use the term "strangely smelling" this reads better.

"And what was the strangely smelling" thing that Jimbo's sister "

I'm no expert on grammar, so may be wrong but using "strangely" in the past tense seems to work better.

onlyroz

It's been a quiet week. So far spent £20 on advertising and made £8 in sales. However, my facebook page has 27 likes - I'm not quite sure why people would like the page of a book that they haven't bought, but ho hum...

MrAuthor

Hi, can I please get some advice about the first stages of self publshing?

I have my book finsihed from the point of view of content, but needs tidying I mean in the right fonts and everything.

Where is a good place to start?

Then whats the next step please?

MrAuthor

What is the easiest way to get an ebbok out there?

onlyroz

There are some guides on the Amazon site on how to convert a word document into a Kindle format. There is also a lot of other advice on there as well:

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help

Amazon makes it fairly easy to get a book out there - you basically upload your document and front cover, and then supply information about the author, publisher etc (which is probably yourself). You then have to decide which royalty program you want to follow. As for marketing, you're on your own.

For myself, I'm a bit more technically minded so I produced my own epub file. I've got a Mac and so I used Calibre to convert a Pages document into an epub format, and then I used Sigil to play around with the epub and set up a contents page, and make sure it was formatted correctly.

onlyroz

If anyone here is interested, my book is available for free today.

MinxyChick

Is there a minimum word limit when writing an ebook?

I'm not sure I've got an entire book in me but I think I could write quite a few niche guides, let's say 10,000 words or less.

Do you think people would be interested in something that compact?

Surely it's the topic and price that matter the most?