Publishing Your eBook

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by Peter Cooper

Now that you've reached this installment, you're either just interested in the process of publishing your eBook, or you're really getting along well with your eBook and you're nearly ready to start selling! Sadly, we can't help you finish your eBook. After all, there's millions of subjects you could be covering! Thankfully though, we're going to help you find out how to publish it to the big wide world.

By now you should have learned about and chosen a format to distribute your eBook in. You've either chosen to package it up with HTML, use the trusty PDF format, or perhaps even experiment with Microsoft's Reader package. Whatever your choice, your book is close to useless until it's published. We're going to help you with that now.

There are two main routes to take to publish your eBook. You can either self-publish (which some traditionalists call 'vanity publishing') or use an on-line publisher who will package and sell your book for you and give you a cut of the profits. Let's investigate self publishing first, and then look at some companies who could publish your book for you.

Self Publishing

Many people turn to publishing their own eBooks because it seems the most simple solution. It often can be, although you will usually need to make a lot of preparations. The benefits are:

When self-publishing your eBook, there are a few key steps you need to consider. Let's look at these.

Constructing your eBook

We covered this in the Formatting installment. Put simply, you should have your eBook in a 'ready-to-download' format, either as a document file (such as PDF) or as an application (EXE file with HTML).

Hosting your eBook

You've got the file(s) ready to go, but you need to make them available to people. The way to do this is to have them hosted somewhere. If your book is free, this is simple. You can simply upload your eBook to your Web site and link to it from one of your pages. If it's an EXE file, your potential reader only has to click on a link, download it and then load it up. If it's a PDF file, they can open it immediately with their Acrobat Reader.

If you intend to make money with your eBook, you need to look carefully at your options. Do you already have a way of accepting payments for on-line goods? If you already have a merchant account and shopping cart system set-up, you could include your eBook with this system. If you don't, you need to look at other systems for accepting payments.

A useful up-and-coming on-line system for accepting payments is PayPal, provided by X.com. PayPal was specifically designed so that private retailers could trade on-line in confidence. You can use this system to your own benefit. Once you're set-up with PayPal, you can accept payments immediately and the charges are minimal! Once you receive payments from your customers you can simply provide them with a 'secret URL' to download your eBook. Simple!

Alternatively, you could abandon self-publishing and look for a publisher who will sell your book for you and give you a cut of the profits.

On-line Publishers

iBoost doesn't have ties with any on-line publishers who deal with eBooks, and we're not able to recommend any specific companies. But here's an overview of on-line publishers, and links to some of these companies.

eBook publishers vary widely. Some will only offer to publish already respected offers, some will charge high fees, and some will do no work and merely provide a remote-merchant service for you to sell your own eBook. You need to be sure of exactly what you're getting when you enter into an agreement with a publisher, or you could get burned later on.

BookLocker.com is a famous and well respected eBook publisher. They offer an 'eBook program', which is a scheme for you to publish your book. They currently pay 70% royalties on eBooks over $8.95 in value, and 50% royalties on eBooks with a lower value. Because they are a publisher and not merely a 'sales point', they accept submissions on their merit, and only in subject areas in which they require more eBooks. However, one benefit of BookLocker is that you don't need to pay them anything to do the hard work!

The Author Network is an eBook publisher who provides a number of other services. Their goal is to provide writers with all of the information needed to progress within the on-line writing industry.

1stBooks.com is another big name publisher that offers off-line publishing as well eBooks. They offer a wide range of services and can even produce and distribute a press release for your book. Their royalty scheme gives you 100% of your sales up to $300, and then 40% after that, so the risk is lessened until you're well on your way. Acceptance is on a one-by-one basis so you need to have finished your eBook and filled in their contract before you can receive further details.

A Further Resource

If your book is in a particular niche, you may be able to find an eBook publisher specifically focused on promoting it. There's a very useful index at the eBook publishers' section in the Open Directory, with nearly 100 such publishers.

Part 2