How to Self-Publish Your Non-Fiction Book

Information technology's time: You've got an idea burning in your head and want to write a non-fiction book. Just should you go the agent route or cocky-publish it on your own? I've had success with the latter, and would like to share how I did information technology. While others have written guides like this, the ones I've constitute tend to focus on fiction, which is a dissimilar animal than non-fiction similar my own projection.

For this guide, I'll share what I learned while writing and publishing my kickoff book, Breakout: How Atari 8-Scrap Computers Defined a Generation. Some of this advice is distilled from Guy Kawasaki's excellent APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur—How to Publish a Book, with an emphasis on not-fiction and the state of self-publishing today–which has advanced considerably in the five years since that volume was written. If you want more detail, I recommend ordering a copy of Kawasaki's book as well as reading this guide.

Going in, I'm assuming y'all've got a handle on the writing of the volume itself, and that y'all're debating how to go along every bit a self-publisher. For my volume, I used Scrivener, Microsoft Give-and-take, Amazon's CreateSpace service (for print), and Kindle Directly Publishing (for the Kindle version). Here's what I did; I learned many of the below tips the difficult way.

Write a Proposal and Outline

Even if yous've already decided you want to self-publish, it will assistance tremendously to put together a proposal equally if yous were pitching information technology to an amanuensis or publisher. That ways you'll look at the competitive landscape, summarize your book, effigy out its key points, what will brand people want to read your volume in detail, and the potential target cost, format(s), and audition size. It volition besides assistance you brainstorm to hash out a rough outline for the book.

Check Out Comparison Books

With any blazon of creative piece of work, it helps to pit your own against "competing" works. Not that this is a zero sum game, as people interested in a subject will often purchase and read multiple books, merely checking out the competition lets run into how others are designed, laid out, researched, and so on. This procedure volition give you valuable clues as to how to prepare your own book and the choices you want to make—which may well be quite different than similar books, but at least you're making informed decisions.

Cull Your Tools

I initially wrote the book using Scrivener, then transferred it to a double-spaced Microsoft Word document (which made tracking changes much easier when passing back and forth to my editor). I probably used three pct of Scrivener's features, since I wasn't plotting out characters; I simply used it because it let me create lots of pieces of text and rearrange them into capacity every bit I saw fit.

I probably tried out a dozen different layouts and narrative arcs before settling into a final listing of chapters and subjects that worked well for the presentation, after discussing information technology with my editor numerous times. I couldn't have lived without Scrivener'south Binder feature or its word-count-per-twenty-four hour period tracker. (Notation: You tin can accomplish a Scrivener Binder-like design in Word, although it takes some footwork and still packs everything into the same file, which tin go unwieldy as your book grows).

Print Your Manuscript Multiple Times

I constitute it immensely helpful to print copies of my manuscript at diverse stages along the way, and especially subsequently each round of edits from my editor. I marked these upward in pen and went back to the calculator for more than changes that for 1 reason or another didn't jump out at me on screen.

Assemble Photos and Write Captions

Depending on what your topic is, y'all may have some inline photos in each chapter, complete with figure numbers, captions, and photo credits. I highly recommend professional person photography wherever possible, and regardless of what y'all're using, you have to be triple-sure to have permission to reproduce the photos and to credit the photographer underneath every single one.

As your manuscript nears completion, yous'll desire to gather upwards exactly what photos to employ, separate them out by chapter, and gear up a credit and caption canvass; y'all don't necessarily need to embed all this in Word as y'all piece of work (it will balloon the size of the file and brand information technology even slower), but you should exist all ready to put them in nearly the end. Your editor needs to see the captions as well; not merely on a explanation canvas, but in the volume (to make certain the correct captions are on the right photos).

Choose Your Cocky-Publisher

For my book, I used Amazon's CreateSpace. I ran the numbers on CreateSpace, BookBaby, and Lulu, and institute CreateSpace to offer the biggest bang for the buck for what I wanted to do. CreateSpace doesn't do hardcovers, but does offer a high-quality product along with professional person editing, embrace design, and layout services if you lot need those (and yous do, if you don't already have them lined up). CreateSpace besides lets you order as few or as many books as you desire, without penalizing y'all on the price per book, which is a fantastic feature.

To get started, you'll need to create an account and project, at which indicate you lot can input championship data and some of the basics. For my 292-folio volume, I went with a adequately traditional six-past-9-inch paperback size, cream newspaper, and a sleeky encompass; matte covers are more often than not more than popular with fiction, but there are no hard and fast rules.

Become Your ISBN Number (or Numbers)

CreateSpace lets you use a free number, but and then the printed book will always say the publisher name is CreateSpace in Amazon. Kindle books don't demand ISBN numbers. CreateSpace sells individual ISBNs for $99 each, or you can caput to a site like Bowker and buy a package of 10 for $295—which makes sense if you want to upload your book to Google Play, Apple iBooks, and other services, or write more books downwards the route.

Design Your Comprehend (or Hire a Designer)

CreateSpace offers cover design equally a service, and companies like Canva offer a free tool. CreateSpace also provides a embrace template builder based on the size and specs of your book. Something I noticed and went back and forth with CreateSpace on is whether the spine portion of the cover design template is exactly on the spine, or if it's slightly off (in other words, bleeding a tiny bit onto the front or back cover). In emails with CreateSpace, the company confirmed they let upwards to i/8th inch variance, and mine were showing roughly i/xvith inch—though many copies I've ordered in majority since have all been pretty much on target.

Basically, don't worry too much about it; it's likely some books on your shelf already have a tiny chip of bleed from slight variances in manufacturing, and it's merely even visible if your spine color is very different than the front end and dorsum encompass (similar with my volume).

Grab CreateSpace's Interior Layout Template

To save money, I ended up doing the interior layout myself. You'll want to use CreateSpace's layout templates equally a reference, as the side margins change on fifty-fifty and odd pages in the book. CreateSpace too offers templates to show fonts and internal layout design; I ended up cribbing from one of these and using free fonts that looked a lot like the expensive commercial fonts I saw in CreateSpace'south instance layouts. Another pick is to rent someone to do the layout; CreateSpace also offers this service. But since I did it myself, I'll go on with some tips on that front.

Use Headers and Section Breaks

On a bones level, you can use Microsoft Word to add footnotes, page numbers, the title of your book (at the elevation of even pages), and your author proper name (at the summit of odd pages), which works fine in fiction. You may as well want to leave the headers of the kickoff page of a affiliate blank, and with not-fiction books, accept each odd folio header contain the affiliate name.

In Microsoft Word, the way y'all become there is with section breaks; they're extremely important for getting headers and page numbers right. Information technology's simple, also; just insert a new section interruption before each affiliate, and another one again subsequently the get-go folio of the next chapter. Then you can alter the header within that chapter afterward the first page. You'll also want to add an extra blank even-numbered page if your chapter finishes on an odd page; section breaks make this easy besides.

Fix Upwards an Automatic Table of Contents

I set up a basic scratch table of contents as I wrote the book. Just in one case you're getting most the finish, for Kindle publishing, you lot'll need a table of contents that's hyperlinked to each chapter, which Microsoft Give-and-take can assistance with. Since a printed book needs one also, yous might as well fix it up the correct way first. I ended upward having two split up versions to constantly update—one for print, which I had laid out just correct, and so one for Kindle with the hyperlinks added. I was so nervous at this betoken, since I had worked and so hard on the print layout, that I didn't desire to muck up a known proficient file. Not only that, simply I was constantly changing the numbers in the table of contents manually for the paperback version as the size of capacity changed during finalizing and editing. In other words, I could have saved a ton of time. Don't exist me, and practise information technology the correct way from the beginning.

Test Out Hyphenation

Hyphenation makes fully justified text await more professional person, though not everyone loves it. Simply turn information technology on in Discussion; you tin can fine tune it just to your liking, and so that it triggers only when words will exist spaced a sure altitude apart (the default setting is a good middle ground), or so y'all don't end up with v hyphenated lines in a row.

Create the Index

For non-fiction, you'll also need an alphabetize. I've got a few non-fiction books without one and it doesn't look as professional. Give-and-take has a pretty thorough indexing tool yous tin utilise that will automatically become through the book and tape instances of each word. That said, you lot'll also want to edit the alphabetize manually—and carefully—to add together commonly looked-upwards phrases and themes for your book, as well as prune odd-looking entries and bring together up groups of page numbers (like 33-37, instead of saying 33, 34, 35, 36, and 37). Professional person indexers charge upwards of $ane,000 or more than, and there'south a reason. Yous can get most of the way there on your ain.

Submit to CreateSpace Using PDFs

By this betoken, editing, cover design, and the interior layout should all exist consummate. Now information technology'due south fourth dimension to set your concluding manuscript for publishing. After much experimenting, I would now steer clear of CreateSpace's offer to accept and convert .doc and .docx files; for me, .doc files were working out fine until I realized CreateSpace couldn't handle converting hyphenation over. So at that indicate, I switched to preparing PDFs on my side, and that'southward how I'll practise it the next time from the beginning. In short: Use a solid, free PDF creator like the one built into Windows 10 or macOS, make a PDF that yous can preview on your side first (sized appropriately, such equally 6x9), and then upload that to CreateSpace.

Examination Your Printed and Kindle Copies

Brand sure you lot test and retest both on screen, on a (virtual) color tablet, and on a (virtual) blackness-and-white Kindle using CreateSpace'due south layout preview tool. One time you've got everything in order—you can make changes dozens of times, although it's fourth dimension consuming to re-upload each time—you're ready to order your first printed proof.

Breakout: How Atari 8-Bit Computers Defined a Generation

Here's where the prophylactic meets the road; you'll make it your first proof copy in the post, and it will be extremely exciting. You'll also get to encounter how your choices for paper size, cover finish, and then on await in person. And then you'll probably want to go dorsum and make any changes and society a 2nd or third proof every bit needed. I ended up re-reading my whole book not only a crazy number of times while writing it, and not just on the cease double-spaced manuscripts I gave to my editor, but all over over again in one case it was as a printed copy—and nonetheless found more things to adjust and fix. Sometimes it seems like it will never end…

Pull the Trigger and Get to Promoting

…simply so it does, and you're finally finished and tin publish your book. Congratulations! Staging promotions and setting upwardly a book bout are beyond the subject of this article—merely call up you can't practice pre-orders with print books when using CreateSpace and Amazon. That means you tin't send out a "pre-social club" link.

What I did is release paper and Kindle versions at once without announcing the book. I test-purchased ane impress and one Kindle copy to see how they worked. I received both and checked through them, and so I made my announcements everywhere, once I was sure the ordering process worked. (I had seen people mail about their new book non being available or out of stock for some reason or other, and that'due south exactly what I wanted to avoid when I was making the initial self-promotion push.)

Amazingly—answering another question I had—Amazon says the book is In Stock and fifty-fifty gear up for same-day delivery. That'south serious print-on-demand speed, especially considering the quality is indistinguishable from major publisher paperbacks on my bookshelf.

Track Your Sales

Yous can track your sales in CreateSpace and KDP, but information technology'south a little annoying; they're on different systems, even though they're both coming from Amazon. CreateSpace and KDP will make your book available in other countries, and will parse out the royalties accordingly. Y'all become paid for a item month at the end of the following calendar month, and you can export statements from both systems.

A few small-scale quirks with society tracking: CreateSpace has some lag fourth dimension (up to a day or 2) on print sales, while KDP reports immediately, CreateSpace keeps a running total of how many books yous sold each month, but KDP doesn't; you'll take to manually count each day's sales on the line graph. That said, you lot do get a daily line graph, which you don't get with CreateSpace. It'south all a little weird, but not a big deal in the end, as you tin can export full reports after a month closes.