She just had a "coaching session in public" with Corrina Gordon-Barnes from You Inspire Me to help Corinna self-publish her first book.
This is done in interview format and is literally crammed full of golden links to incisive self-publishing resources and go-to experts in the exploding self-publishing industry ... editing, cover designers, ISBN resources, legitimate reviewers, etc.
This video and written coaching/learning session is just too good not to pass along:
How To Publish Your Book
by Joanna Penn on September 21, 2011
It’s fantastic to talk with passionate people who take action on their dreams.
Corrina Gordon-Barnes from You Inspire Me is a coach helping others turn their dreams into businesses. In this interview, I help her with information on self-publishing her first book. It’s like a coaching session in public! We have a lot of fun laughs but there’s also a lot of valuable information if you are just starting out in your publishing journey.
In the interview, we discuss:
How I got started with self-publishing
and how The Creative Penn has evolved. How the publishing world is global now and the options are fantastic. Even if you want a traditional book deal, it’s good to know the options.
Self-publishing is not just a negative end-result of being rejected. There are now people actively choosing to self-publish. There are people with Kindle success who have got book deals because of it, and also authors leaving traditional publishing to go indie. It is a fast-moving world right now.
Vanity publishing vs self-publishing/indie and print on demand
I explain the difference between vanity publishing/assisted publishing and self-publishing/indie-publishing. I’m all for author services but not thousands of dollars for a load of printed books in your garage. Indie publishing does involve partners e.g. book design, ebook formatting, editing.
How print on demand publishing works. You load your book and each sale gets printed and sent, so there is no upfront bulk cost, no postage and packaging, no storage. Options include: Lulu.com, Createspace.com, LightningSource.com or Blurb.com. These all have varied packages for publishers and there are pros and cons of each. I get very excited about print on demand (here, I explain how it changed my life!) All these sites have good help information. You can also order books directly from the site, not from Amazon so you get it cheaper.
NOTE: It now looks as if Amazon has changed the way they work with other companies and CreateSpace may be the best option. Read this article on Amazon & Lightning Source: End of an era.
A book designer like Joel Friedlander, will give you print ready files. If you work with a site directly, there will also be wizards and ways they can help you. There are options for all levels of knowledge.
ISBNs can be bought per country – I mention Thorpe Bowker which is for US and AU, but it is Nielsen for UK. Also, check out this page on ISBN from TheBookDesigner
On pricing and print books – and we discuss the options for Corrina who wants to include the audios for her book. She was going to include the audio within the book and include it in the price so the book would be more expensive. I suggest perhaps selling the audio package separately so people will pick up the book and may buy the extra.
Kindle publishing
Corrina starts by suggesting she will start with print and then do ebook later. I explain my lessons learned and why it’s a good idea to do ebook first. (1) People will pick up any mistakes and you can fix them more quickly than with a print book (especially if your print book is in In Design or another package professionally formatted) – but you can upload a new version with any print on demand (2) You can get reviews on the Kindle version early and they will synch with the print book when it’s up (3) You can start earning money earlier as the print book takes longer to get ready.
Read and learn more
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