6 Easy Steps to a Very Profitably Published Book

Step 1: Write the Book -- Start with a good idea of what you want to say, Create an outline of how you plan to say it. Start writing. Make sure you are writing about a topic you know very, very well and writing for a group of people you know very, very well. Do not write a book for Hell's Angels if you are not a Hell's Angel and don't know any Hell's Angels. That is a waste of time. Do not try to make the book longer than it should be. Get to the point. Get their fast. Short books often sell better and are more profitable than longer books.

Step 2: Get the Book Professionally Edited -- You can go on to www.Craigslist.com or any number of other sites and hire an editor to give your book a once over for just a couple of hundred bucks. Don't skip this step. Your book will sell far better if its got clean copy. There are crazy people all over this planet who just can't deal with typos. The turn around for editing a fairly well written book should be under a week. I'd recommend you give them the file in a Word .doc file, let them make the edits, then review the finished copy. You can always change back anything you hate.

Step 3: Format the Book -- Go get a standard book similar to the one you want to publish, get out a ruler, measure the margins. Go into your word processor, set up the margins and paper size, start formatting the text. Use Style Sheets. If you don't know what style sheets are, read your word processor's help file on the topic. Its not rocket science. Make sure that the fonts you choose are things like Arial and Times Roman. Fancy Fonts will make your life miserable at the publishing stage and they will drive you crazy. Add hi-res (300 dpi) pictures, tables and figures to your book as appropriate. If this sound's daunting, go buy a book or two about your word processor and master it. If you can pay taxes and drive a car you should be able to format a book in your word processor.

Step 4: Print Your Book to a PDF File -- You can skip this step in some cases. Sites like www.lulu.com will let you upload a book as a .doc file. Some sites, like www.createspace.com (which will make your book available through Amazon) do want you to feed them a PDF file. You can use cheap software like BCL Easy PDF to print a Word .doc file to a PDF file. Make sure you've formatted your book using the fonts the Create Space and/or Lulu like or your book will print as gibberish.

Step 5: Find or make a High-Res cover -- If a book is 6"x9", the cover is going to be 6x300 by 9x300 in pixels. That 1800 x 2700. It may have to be a little larger to account for cropping. Photoshop and other applications will let you create .jpg files of the right size and resolution easily. Lulu.com has free covers you can use which may work well in some cases. You can find clipart to use on your cover at www.clipart.com.


Step 6: Upload the book and cover to one or more publishing sites -- Since you're publishing the book it is your content and you can publish it anywhere you like. Check out www.lulu.com, www.createspace.com, www.booksurge.com, www.lightningsource.com, www.booklocker.com. Publishing your books through these sites is just as real as publishing them through a "traditional publisher". Many folks (like the guy who wrote What Color is Your Parachute) self-published a book they later sold to a traditional publisher for millions. The only reason to go to a traditional publisher is if they are going to actively market your book. Otherwise you're giving up 85%-95% of each sale you make for no good reason.

Step 6: Contact folks who need your book -- Remember Step 1? That was an important step. If you are a tax advisor and you write a tax book, you'll sell a lot of them because you see potential customers every day. If you are a witch telling fortunes, your tarot card book will also be an easy sell. If you are a stay at home mom and you are writing a book for investment bankers working out of Hong Kong, profitability may be more illusive. On the other hand, there are times when writing a book is profitable just because you really enjoy it and it looks good on your resume.

Tip: Most of the publishing sites I mentioned will publish your book in print or as ebooks. Ebooks are selling better all the time, and they are more profitable for you as publisher. Also they can't be returned, which print books can in many cases.