In 2007 I published my first book, and in 2008 I published my second. You don’t have to use a Print on Demand (POD) self-publisher like iUniverse or Xulon Press, you can publish your own book for as little as $50.00. That’s right, I published my second book for $100 but I bought my own ISBN. It has over 300 pages and is 6x9 inches on good quality paper and cover.

I am here to tell you everything you need to know to do the same. I am sure there is more than one way to publish your own book, what I am going to tell you is exactly how I did it. Step-by-step, from typesetting to cover design. Here I am holding the first copy of my first book! I was very happy. See the smile on my face? I thought I was smiling really big!

I was selling this information in an ebook, but I decided to provide the information here FREE.

This information on HOW I PUBLISHED MY OWN BOOK is Not how to market it. There are lots of good books out there on marketing your book, nor on how to write your own book, or anything else related to writing and publishing, but only the details of how I published it and how you can too.

Part 1: General Information

If you can use Microsoft Office programs, like Word and Publisher, then you be your own book publisher. If you are not comfortable creating your own cover, there are people online who will produce a cover for you for a reasonable fee. Still a lot cheaper than the POD package deals. One of the best places to find book editing and cover design is www.getafreelancer.com. They are based in Europe and they have lots of members who live in India or China or the Phillipines, etc., who will do work for you for a fraction of what Americans charge. You can probably get a book cover for $50 or even less.

Xulon and Xlibris and all those like them claim that you keep all the royalties, but they charge much more for each copy of your book that they print than if you go directly to the printers. It only costs me $4.83 per copy. Those other guys charge about $7.50 per copy for the same number of pages. So your book can have a lower price and you have much more flexibility when you do your own publishing than if you go with one of them.

You can also make changes and revisions to your cover or text anytime you want without paying huge revision fees.

When you use one of the self publishers, even though it is supposed to be SELF publishing, they are listed as the publisher in your book and on amazon.com listings. The only way to have your own company listed as the publisher is to do it all yourself.

For the first book I published I used Lightning Source as the POD, online laser printer. They are likely the printers for most self-publishing companies. When you list a book with them it is included in the Ingram wholesale book catalog which means bookstores can order it. For $50 they will include an add for the book. They will also put up a listing on amazon.com for you and you can write the book description. But they charge a basic $12.00 per year for the book listing, plus $40.00 for each cover upload, and $40.00 for each text upload. So if you spot some typos and want to upload another text and cover file, that is another $80.00. You are also required to purchase a proof copy to examine to make sure it has printed correctly, and the proof cost $30.00 including quick shipping. Every time you upload a new cover or text you must buy a proof.

You will also need your own ISBN which you can buy from Publisher Services owned by Bar Code Graphics: http://www.publisherservices-us.com/ for only $55.00. I have seen selfpublishers charging $100-225 for an ISBN. But the same company has it for only $29.00 here: http://www.barcode-us.com/. But Create Space will not accept this ISBN, even though bookstores will, but you can use a Create Space issued ISBN.

For my second book I went with Create Space which is owned by amazon.com, but it only lists your book with amazon.com. But on the up side it comes with a “search inside the book” feature that is not guaranteed for all books listed with Amazon. But they will also sell your book direct from their site for less a percentage than amazon.com. So you can make more if you refer people to your book’s page at CreateSpace from your web site than just referring them to Amazon.

They have no setup fees but they charge more for each book unless you go with the Pro plan which is $39.00 one-time setup fee and $5.00 a year after that. You can use your own ISBN from Publisher Services or you can use one of theirs for free but if you use theirs CreateSpace will be listed as the publisher on Amazon.

With CreateSpace you can buy a proof for only the price of the book plus shipping, which comes to less than $12.00 total. They say it may take three or four weeks to get the proof but it never takes that long, it usually only takes a week or less than two weeks.

With standard self-publishers it takes several months to get your book done and for sale, but by doing it yourself you can have it up in much less time.

Part 2: Typesetting

If you can use MS Word to write your book, you should be able to use it for your book pages. Lulu.com, another online do-it-your-self publisher like CreateSpace, but with many more options which you can buy, has MS Word templates based on the size of your book, such as 6x9. You can then put headers and footers for the page numbers and chapter titles. I used MS Publisher to do the typesetting for my books because it provides more flexibility. Or, I am sure you can also use the free Open Office.

You can use the Styles to set the paragraph style you want with font and font size, and indention, etc., and then just click on each paragraph and it formats to that style. It is best if you don’t end a paragraph on the first line of a page. If you have two or three words at the top of a page by themselves it does not look good, so you will need to do some slight rewriting of previous paragraphs in order to get that line moved down to the bottom of the previous page. It is also best to use Times New Roman 12 point or 11 point for the text because it is very easy on the eyes and is the most often used font, so printers don’t have a problem with it and it prints well.

MS Publisher is part of the MS Office program but if you don’t have it you might be able to use other programs, just be sure you can save the file as a post script .ps file which Adobe Acrobat can use to create the .pdf. Or you can print to .pdf if you have Adobe Acrobat. All online printers require a high quality .pdf file with embedded fonts for the text and cover. Be sure to follow the specific instructions from the printer you plan to use.

You need to have at least ½ inch margin on the outside of your or text. On the inside, called the gutter, you need to have at least 1/8 inch, usually 3/16 or even ¼ inch, more than on the outside of the text. This is because of the binding and the curve of the pages reduces the effective margin, so you need more on the inside.

You need at least ½ inch on the bottom and top, before any text including page numbers. I only had extra text on the top. I had the page number on the outer edge and then the book title on left side and the chapter title on the right-hand page. This is called the “header”. If it was at the bottom it would be called the “footer”.

You can setup headers to appear on each page so you don’t have to manually create the text boxes and header text for every page. (Refer to the help file or your instruction book on how to do the above steps because it changes from version to version.)

Part 3: The Cover and Photos

To create the cover you will need to create an account at either Lightning Source or CreateSpace, then you will be able to download their cover templates complete with the bar code already created on the back cover. You can move the bar code to a different spot on the back cover if you want.

I prefer to use Adobe Photoshop 7.0 to edit my photos and create the text for the cover, but if you don’t know how to use it you can use just about any photo/graphic program that allows you to type text and edit pictures. There is even cover creation software available, just do a google search. You can also visit www.download.com and search for graphics programs. That site has lots of free programs.

Most not-free programs allow you to use them for 30 days free of charge! So you might even be able to use an expensive program like PhotoShop and Adobe Acrobat for free to create your files! How great is that?!

The photos you use need to be 300 dpi, which is also the case for any black and white photos you include inside the book. Sometimes you can get by with less than 300 dpi for the black and white inside photos, but the best quality will be 300.

So if you are looking for images on google-images click on the dropdown menu below the search box and choose “extra large” and it will only show very large images. When you reduce the size of an image it increases the dpi, so this way you can get a 300 dpi image.

Be sure to use images that appear to have no copyright, or it is sometimes possible to alter the image enough to make the original image unrecognizable. There are also web sites where you can buy images or have free images. Just do a google search for them.

If you need help with the cover you can go to Amazon and look at lots of book covers or just go to a bookstore or your own bookshelf and get ideas from looking at the covers.

Part 4: Creating the PDF

Once you get your table of contents, text, bibliography and perhaps an index, you will need to save each file as a .ps file (post script) or print to .pdf which will create a pdf file for each chapter file or however many files your text is in. Just go to “save as” and use the dropdown menu to find .ps and then save as. Lightning Source can actually use .ps files but other companies require a pdf.

You will need to set the printer settings before the file will actually save. Set the “Advanced Printer Settings” and be sure to have it not show crop marks, have it print full resolution linked graphics and use only publication fonts. Then select “Adode PDF” as the printer in the dropdown menu and then click “properties.”

Then click “layout” and it should already say “portrait” and then click “advanced” at the bottom right. Then select the paper size or “custom” and put in your book size. Then click the “Adobe PDF settings” tab and choose PDFX1a or High Quality from the dropdown menu depending on the instructions for the company you are going to use to print the book..

Once you get all the settings made you can save it as a custom setting so that you do not have to make all the changes every time. Then make sure there are NO check marks in the bottom box that says “do not send fonts to Adobe PDF”. Because you want the fonts imbedded and that will stop it from being imbedded. But I have found that saving the files in .ps and then converting them to .pdf with Adobe Acrobat does not embed the fonts like it is supposed to, but if you print to .pdf from Word or Publisher then it will embed the fonts.

The way to check to see if your fonts are embedded is to open the .pdt file and go to "file" then "document properites", then click on "fonts" and it will show the fonts and it will say "embedded" out to the right of each one that is embedded.

Then click OK and you are ready to use Adobe Acrobat to create the pdf from the post script files. If you don’t have Adobe Acrobat you might be able to get away with using a cheaper program but they prefer Adobe Acrobat. Since 6.0 will work fine you might be able to find a copy of that earlier version for sale on ebay or half.com or some other site that sells used software. There are also other .pdf creation programs that you can download from www.download.com and use for 30 days or buy.

Even if you do all that, Lulu.com still says the pdf is not acceptable because the fonts are not embedded, so I discovered that rather than going to save as and creating a .ps file, if I go to print, and choose to use Adobe Acrobat as the printer to create the pdf file, but you still need to use the previously described settings once the Acrobat window comes pops up. Now I know that MS Word will print to Adobe by itself but I am not sure about MS Publisher. Mine will print to Adobe but I have Adobe Acrobat on my computer, so I am not sure if it will if you do not have Adobe on your computer. Anyway, when you print to an Adobe Acrobat pdf file it creates the file and puts it in your My Documents folder. You can then use Adobe Acrobat to compile the separate pdf files into one and it will be accepted by Lulu.com.

Once you get the PDF made, you can also sell the book as an ebook and printed book at www.lulu.com. They handle the sales and take a small percentage and give you the rest. This is much easier than setting it all up with Paypal which does not work right. After someone pays they are NOT taken to the "Thank You" page where they can download the book, like they are suppose to, so I stopped using them and just use Lulu.

Part 5: Final Information

For my third book I am using Lulu as the printer even though the final price of the book is more, because they have distribution in many different countries and I can always use another service if I want such as CreateSpace, if the book sells well in order to provide the shoppers on Amazon.com with a lower price.

With Lulu I can also list it as being not available to the public, which means I can order copies for myself to send out for book reviews long before listing it as published at Amazon. If I start with CreateSpace then I can only buy one proof copy, and must list it for sale before I can order more copies, which means it will be up on Amazon before I can arrange for any interviews and book reviews. The normal process with regular publishers is to send out review copies before the book is available to the public.

It is also a good idea to have someone you know to read your book and write a review for you on amazon.com which will help get the review ball rolling and then other people will order it and post reviews. That first one is the toughest. But it should not be too great and full of praise because people are quick to suspect that the most glowing reviews were written by the author's friends or family.

The main advantage for using iUniverse or some others, is that they will write and send out a press release about your book and may even arrange for some interviews. The PR side of self publishing is a whole other subject that is not covered here.

Good Luck with your publishing venture if you decide to do it yourself or use a POD publisher.

Mike