Createspace & Kindle Self-Publishing Masterclass: The Step-By-Step Author's Guide to Writing, Publishing, and Marketing Your Books On Amazon

I have been thinking for quite a period of time about creating a book for CreateSpace and then Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). But I have a number of obstacles. One, I'm not only not a computer wiz, but I'm probably a bit below average in my computer skills. Two, I'd like to write the book on a Mac. This in of itself isn't a huge obstacle, but I would also like to use the simpler Mariner Write word processor for Mac. Three, I have some data to retrieve from a defunct early 90s stand alone word processor for conversion to a Mac. Because of these obstacles and others, I've been procrastinating. At times a bit more pessimistic than others I've found myself thinking, "There's no way I can do this. I don't have the ability. This is a pipe dream that'll never happen."But I saw this book and decided to buy it. When I received it I went to chapters 7 and 8 on CreateSpace Publishing (P.108) and Kindle Publishing ( P. 149). With my modest computer skills, I found pessimism kicking in again. "Oh my goodness, this is too daunting."But then I did a smart thing. I started reading the book from the beginning and found that Mr. Smith seems to have a gift for encouragement.This kept me going. A big mistake I was making was thinking I have to do everything myself. The people at CreateSpace will help you. It may cost some, but if you're driven, it's possible. I can save my work in RTF-Word file on Mariner Write and this will make a CreateSpace document possible. Here are some of the encouraging words from the book:"Amazon now makes it easier than ever for new authors to publish (P.11) ...the process of publishing on Kindle is well within the reach of everyone, irrespective of their computer skills level. (P.21) ... If you can do basic word processing and use a web browser, you can easily publish via CreateSpace and Kindle. ... they have designed a system which does all the hard work in terms of formatting (P.24) ... CreateSpace is not as daunting as it looks (P.33) ... Amazon's platform will automatically publish your CreateSpace manuscript on Kindle, for no added cost, and usually with no additional work! ( P. 34)There's also encouragement for Mac users:"Everything you need to create a great manuscript is included in Pages, and there's also a compatible mini-version for iPad. Pages documents are also interchangeable with Microsoft Word." (P.49)How exciting it is to live in an age when your work can be available to people around the world without the financial backing of the big publishing houses. I know there are tough days ahead for me in writing a book and e-book, but if I'm discouraged I'll quit for the day and come back tomorrow. Or maybe I'll come back Monday after the weekend. From time to time I'll probably use some of the down time to review some of the encouraging passages in this book.I'll end with a Scripture I like on encouragement:"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and God of all encouragement, who encourages us in our every affliction, so that we may be able to encourage those who are in any affliction with the encouragement with which we ourselves are encouraged by God. For as Christ's sufferings overflow to us, so through Christ does our encouragement also overflow. If we are afflicted, it is for your encouragement and salvation; if we are encouraged, it is for your encouragement, which enables you to endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is firm, for we know that as you share in the sufferings, you also share in the encouragement." -2 Cor 1:3-7

This is for beginners who have no knowledge of or wish to use html code. Rick’s advice is aimed at finding a niche market and getting a financial return for your writing efforts. As a non-US publisher, I found the instructions explaining how to avoid 30% US withholding tax excellent, although I did use my accountant to help the IRS jargon. He has much sound advice on how to choose keywords to make you book appear early in searches on Amazon and on software to create an effective cover design. His emphasis on a quality product appears constantly, although on my Kindle boxes appear on the left containing ? that should contain numerals. Unfortunately this is common when there are so many different types of ereaders.I was about to launch into an ebook, but Rick said it was easier to start with a print-on-demand book which I did. This advice really only applies to novels, as non-fiction print books can be very tricky to format if you are not familiar with using styles and handling hyperlinks etc. This only partially worked for me, as the print book was too complex for CreateSpace to automatically convert it to an ebook, although the cover went straight through to KDP. Rick discusses several common word processors. I ended up dumping Word and using OpenOffice Writer because it is faster, able to present verso and recto pages correctly side by side on the screen and produce a single PDF file as opposed to multiple files from Word that required later joining. I followed his instructions so much that at times I had my Kindle beside me as I filled out boxes in CreateSpace and KPD on the laptop screen; it was like having a helper beside me and was, for me as a learner publisher, one of the most useful parts of the book. I had no trouble uploading the cover which I basically did myself with an artist suppling the image. The interior required several attempts because some lines on one page extended beyond the print area. I fixed this after I discovered the actual pages that were unacceptable were indicated on screen. If I had read Rick’s ebook more carefully he had actually told me where to look. I think the hardest part of publishing a book is eliminating typos and grammatical errors. Do get a proof print from CreateSpace. The rest is easy of you follow Rick’s instructions.I found the Kindle publishing part took less time overall, but was more frustrating. I rebuilt the book from scratch to eliminate any unnecessary formatting code. This took time because there were about 200 footnotes. At this stage do make the non-printable characters visible to show where you have put in a new paragraph by pressing “enter”. Where you do not want a blank line on an ereader press “shift-enter”. As Rick suggested I used the downloadable Kindle Previewer. For some unknown reason the previewer readers made some font sizes so small they could hardly be read and there was no normal relativity between 11, 12 or 13 point fonts. After days trying to work this out, I decided to just upload the html file (using the KDP instructions) and see how it looked using the onscreen viewer. This allows you to view your work on the ipad etc and it works brilliantly. The relative font sizes were perfect! My advice is to ignore the downloadable Kindle Previewer, upload your files and then check them. It is faster and more accurate. I suspect that this may be a new feature since Smith wrote his book. My last step before publishing was to adjust a couple of lines of html code to center the two images and their captions.Rick, thank you for writing this book.

Amazon makes it easy to publish a CreateSpace Print-on-Demand Paperback or a Kindle ebook. That is, their publishing interface is easy to follow and fill out. And if that's all there was to publishing, we'd all be making a good living as authors. Unfortunately, that's only one tiny part of what it takes to SELL a book.This useful guide will help you pick a topic to write about, and it will give you some pointers on how to write productively. It will help you with the all-important and sometimes difficult formatting of your book, and designing your cover or finding someone to do it for you.This book also walks you through Amazon's Publishing interfaces, though they really are pretty self-explanatory.OK - now you've written your book and published it. So you're done and can sit back and let Amazon sell it for you. Right?No, unfortunately you'll also have to do some marketing work too. Fortunately this book covers that base too, from how to price your book to how to get book reviews and how to write your all-important Product Description - which you are going to have to think of as a sales pitch.They also include a list of additional resources - a great bonus!

Amazon makes it easy to publish a CreateSpace Print-on-Demand Paperback or a Kindle ebook. That is, their publishing interface is easy to follow and fill out. And if that's all there was to publishing, we'd all be making a good living as authors. Unfortunately, that's only one tiny part of what it takes to SELL a book.This useful guide will help you pick a topic to write about, and it will give you some pointers on how to write productively. It will help you with the all-important and sometimes difficult formatting of your book, and designing your cover or finding someone to do it for you.This book also walks you through Amazon's Publishing interfaces, though they really are pretty self-explanatory.OK - now you've written your book and published it. So you're done and can sit back and let Amazon sell it for you. Right?No, unfortunately you'll also have to do some marketing work too. Fortunately this book covers that base too, from how to price your book to how to get book reviews and how to write your all-important Product Description - which you are going to have to think of as a sales pitch.They also include a list of additional resources - a great bonus!

I wanted simply publish my books, without any concern about selling them. After reading Rick Smith I have changed my mind and decided to make some money, while enjoying myself in the editing activity.

Before finding this book, I spent hundreds of pounds (in dollars) by joining an Author Membership site, hoping it would give me precisely the information that Rick Smith offers here for next to nothing. I only wish I had found him a week earlier! His writing is straightforward, friendly and in a chatty style. Starting from scratch, he leaves no stone unturned in his explanations. Mind you, after 70-odd pages elucidating the pros and cons of various software and various approaches to book-writing; I was desperate for him to get down to the nitty-gritty. But it’s worth ploughing on, as he doesn’t get round to it until Chapter 6. However, once the preliminaries are over, he comes up trumps with his everything-you-need-to-know instructions on preparing and getting your book set up in CreateSpace and Kindle formats.Thiis has helped me to familiarise myself with the process. And he follows through with a great deal of generalised advice on covers (such as adding artwork in ‘layers,’ but unfortunately without any precise details of how to do it); plus marketing, pricing, reviews (but not how to get them), tax, tracking, and loads of other useful stuff, for which I am most grateful. Although other more experienced Kindle and CreateSpace authors find the book is lacking in some areas, as a know-nothing ‘newbie’ I have no idea what he has left out, but what is there has definitely made me comprehend the process much better. However, even I have a few niggles, such as his numerous typos and grammatical errors (that he so emphatically warns us against); which is why I had to laugh when I came across the sentence: “I’m so arrogant and confident that I reckon I’m the best grammaticist I know.” In a few instances he omits to explain some new ‘seemingly self-evident’ function. For example, “Because you're using right-justification, you should set up Automatic Hyphenation”, which may confuse beginners like me (and did for a while) by not having it clearly explained. He also mistakenly advises “Some Product Descriptions will contain advanced formatting, such as orange coloured headers,” which delighted me for a moment, until I asked for it. But the Amazon staff told me they do not offer this function. It is only possible if you know how to use the geeky html coding. So I have to knock off one star for the omissions and lack of proper proof-reading. However, on the bonus side, he generously offers several free “How to” videos (in return for your email, of course) which I found really helpful. So in all, I am happy to have the book, and if you are completely new to self-publishing, you won’t regret buying it either.

‘First, let’s get one thing straight: there’s a book inside you right now.’ says Rick Smith, author of Create Space & Kindle. A good positive attitude leaps right off the page as you start to read and learn how you are going to be as successful in publishing your magnum opus on the Amazon platform as he is.The book is divided into three main sections; Writing, Publishing and Marketing. One of the many items in the writing section that grabbed me was that Quality Matters and make sure you are using a Comfortable Chair. I've been snoozing in mine for too long, so I grabbed a spare dining room chair and replaced my too-comfortable office chair; yes it has really made a difference, thanks Rick. He suggests getting a laptop computer so as to be able to able to get out and write where the mood takes you, mine is Starbucks, and always make backups of what you are writing.The second section of the book covers, in great detail, how to get your book off of your computer and into the world of Amazon. There is a couple of items I would have liked to have seen more information on and they are, Expanded Distribution, and how to get to your Amazon Sales Page; though I’m sure it will all work out as I go through the process.Marketing to me is a dark art, and Rick sure put the lights on when I started to read through his very helpful and informative chapters. I like the idea of balancing the cost of ordering and shipping author copies from the USA against just ordering direct from Amazon in the UK.All in all, Create Space & Kindle by Rick Smith is an excellent source book for those, like me, who are just setting out on the journey of being in full control of Writing, Publishing and Marketing their own book.