Action Guide for LESSON 5

Transcription

1 Action Guide for LESSON 5 Publishing Your Print Book What You Will Need 1. Your finished book saved as a PDF. This is the interior of your book completely written, edited and designed, from the first title page to the very last page of your book. 2. Your book cover design files. 3. A free Author Account with Vervante.com. While it s free to set up your account and upload your book files with Vervante, you will need to keep a credit card number on file for automatic billing of your book orders. o For example, let s say Vervante prints one book. They re going to charge you about $7 (on average) for your book, and you might sell it for $9, $15 or whatever it is you choose to price your book. They re going to want to charge your account for that.

2 Or set up an account with publishing company of your choice. 4. Your Publishing Information ISBN o You can purchase this within your Author Account of Vervante or at ISBN.org (formerly Bowker.com) o The ISBN number is displayed on the bar code image on the back of your book and in your publishing information page that follows the title page of your book. o You can send this bar code image to your book cover designer to add to the back of your book or ask Vervante to do this. o This is also when you ll decide on the retail price of your book. If you would like to set the price within the bar code of your book cover, your designer can integrate the price into the bar code. Library of Congress Control Number 2

3 o This is only necessary if you plan on having your book in libraries or bookstores. o This number is displayed on your publishing information page that follows your title page of your book. o Go to LOC.org o This is a two step process: 1) apply for a preassigned control number program and 2) in 1-2 weeks you ll receive your account number and then you will be able to request a Library of Congress Control number and receive it in a few days. o This gets integrated into your publishing information page of your book, as per the example in Lesson 3. 3

4 Step 1: Get a per book printing cost for your creation. A typical text paperback book printing via Vervante costs about $7. If your book is an unusual size or design, or has lots of color images within the book, you may want to an exact cost to print your book. Contact Vervante with the final page count and book size dimensions for an accurate cost. This will obviously affect how you price your book. For more details about Vervante s book printing specifications visit their website or this direct link here: Step 2: Set up your free Vervante.com account Go to Vervante.com Set up a free Author Account o On the home page, click on Get Started and look for Setting Up Your Author Account. o Tell them we sent you in the how did you hear of us section (We do not receive kick-backs but enjoy the brownie points!) 4

5 That s it! You ll receive your author user name and login info via . When you have your completed book converted to a PDF file, log into your Author Account Dashboard, look for send files and follow instructions for uploading your files. Your book will be ready for print within a few short days and you will be able to place your first order to ship to your home or office. BONUS: Two of our authors are in Australia and used the following service to publish their books, as working with Vervante outside of the US was cost prohibitive. BookPod.com/au BONUS: Once you re in your Author Account, you can customize your packing slip to include a personal branded message from you. BONUS: You can have your soft-cover print book available on many other Retailers and we recommend you outsource this to Vervante to set this up for you. See additional notes on outsourcing the publication of your book at the end of this Action Guide. 5

6 Publishing Your Digital Book What You Will Need 1. Your PDF file of your completed book (one file for the cover, one file for the interior) for Vervante, converted into.mobi file (for Kindle) and.epub (for B&N Nook & Kobo) If your book is not converted to the appropriate files, this can be done via Elance.com/Upwork very inexpensively about $50 for both Kindle and Nook. Many book formatters will now do this for free. 2. Your credit card info 3. Your Tax ID number Either your social security number if you re sole proprietor Or your corporate tax ID number if you are incorporated 4. Bank account number and routing number (your biz account, savings account or personal account) 5. Digital image of your book cover (Note: This is where you want to consider how your cover looks as a thumbnail image online). 6

7 Publish on Amazon Kindle Go to: If you already have an Amazon account, login using that info o If you already have an Amazon account, you will see a text box that says Your Account is Incomplete o Click to complete the info for setting up your Kindle Direct Publishing account If you don t have an Amazon account, you will need to enter your credit card info Save everything Don t forget to fill in your Author profile information (free promotion) on Amazon. Search for to do so. 7

8 Publish on Barnes and Noble Nook (Currently ONLY for US, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, The Netherlands, and Belgium. Skip the NOOK if You Live and Work Outside these countries.) Go to: o If you already have a Barnes and Noble account, login using that info o Follow instructions for setting up an Nook Press account o This will require all 5 pieces of info we outlined in the info you will need Save everything Have your book s file converted to epub for nook (your book designers can do this for you or you can do so via Upwork.com) and upload your file Again, take the opportunity for free promotion and fill in your author profile information. 8

9 Save all your account info in an easy-to-reference place. Repeat this process and use the same files for the Kobo here: That s it! Selling Your Book On Your Website Once your book is ready for print, log into your Vervante account to get the Vervante code for your shopping cart, then copy/paste it into your shopping cart or have your virtual assistant do this for you. Click on place an order and you ll see the v code part number for your book (there is one for every single product you create with Vervante) It looks something like this: V You need a shopping cart to sell your book online from your website 9

10 There are many shopping carts like Aweber.com, Ejunkie.com, a WordPress Simple Paypal Plugin (again, for WordPress based sites), Clickbank.com, Stripe and many others. (Whatever shopping cart you decide on, make sure it comes with the capability to automatically Vervante of orders and keep track of and in touch with your buyers.) Inserting this Vervante code into your SKU code of your shopping cart for your book will automatically notify Vervante every time you have a book order (whether someone orders 1 or 1000 books, at any time of day). Vervante will print it, pack it and ship it on your behalf and you don t have to do a thing. SKU = stock keeping unit a standard product/service identification code that is machine-readable and helps the item be tracked for inventory. See Lesson 6 for more resources for promoting your book on your website and more. 10

11 BONUS Outsourcing the Publication of Your Book Get Your Book On the Amazon.com Marketplace (print and Kindle edition) and Barnes & Noble.com (print and Nook) and Other Online Retailers with Vervante.com While you can absolutely follow instructions for the DIY version of getting your book on Amazon and Barnes & Noble outlined in this Lesson, Vervante is offers a done for you service that takes care of all of the following for you. 1. Set up your book in the Amazon Marketplace (print edition) that mails from (shipping from Vervante, not Amazon warehouse which means you ll know who purchased your book!) and Amazon Kindle edition as well. 2. Set up your book to be available for purchase on Barnes & Noble.com print edition (shipping from Vervante, not B&N warehouse) and the Nook edition. 3. Set up your book to be available for purchase via the Vervante.com Bookstore (might be relevant if your audience is the entrepreneurial type using Vervante as a service themselves, otherwise skip.) 11

12 4. They can also set up your book to be available for order from Baker & Taylor (the largest distributor of books where any bookstore can look up and place an order for your book). However there are some caveats to this, and Karin recommends skipping this for now unless you really want your book to be in bookstores, due to some marketing and pricing limitations. But it s up to you. Turnaround times for your book to appear in Vervante & Amazon Marketplace: 3 business days, Amazon Advantage: 7 business days, Baker & Taylor and Barnes & Noble: 14 business days. Alternatively, you can hire someone off Upwork.com to take care of all of this for you too. Here s how you can find out all the details for this service: Log into your Vervante Author account Find the link for List Item for Retail (currently under Support tab) All the details are there for your review, including pros and cons for each listing, and there is a form to complete on that page if you d like to proceed (you ll need an ISBN number for your book, also available for purchase from Vervante, to do this, so do this first (takes just a few minutes!) 12

13 This is a great option if you don t want to bother with looking on Upwork.com for someone to do this for you. A huge time saver! Great job! Lesson 5 is complete. When you re ready to start promoting and showcasing your book, take the next and final step with Lesson 6. 13