More detailed information on how to publish your own e-book.

2. How to Publish Your Own eBook
By Alicia Morga
Caveat: The information I provide here applies mainly to those who want to write text dominant ebooks
(illustrated books have other issues). This quick guide also doesn’t apply to people who want to publish
books via the traditional route.
The first step, of course, is writing the book. After that, it’s a pretty quick process to publishing it as an
ebook.
The ebook market is evolving rapidly and today it’s easier than ever. There are three basic things to
consider when setting out to publish an ebook:
1. Getting your ebook formatted correctly in epub and mobi file formats;
2. Distributing your ebook for sale; and
3. Marketing your ebook.
Formatting Your eBook
There are several options for formatting your book. You can use free and paid services that will convert
a Microsoft Word doc or PDF into epub and/or mobi file formats. The epub format is required for
publishing on iTunes, PubIt (Barnes & Noble’s ebookstore for reading on the Nook) and Google eBooks.
The mobi format is required for publishing on Amazon for reading on the Kindle (also called DTP – digital
text platform or KDP – Kindle Digital Publishing). Further, you can use paid conversion services that will
not only convert your original document into epub or mobi file formats, but also distribute your ebook.
Do-It-Yourself Conversion Options
Do-it-yourself options include:
eBookBurn.com: costs $19 to generate both file formats
Sigil: free, but definitely a bit more complicated to use
Calibre: it’s for larger publishers and doesn’t make individual epub files that well
Mobipocket: free, but you do have to download it; it only creates mobi files
Paid Conversion Services
With these services you’re paying a person or team to do the formatting work for you.
Individuals that do this include Rob Siders and Ray Fowler. I have no experience with either, but they
are mentioned often.
Firms that do this include Telemachus Press. They are the publisher for John Locke who is notable for
selling over a million ebooks on Amazon. Telemachus will take what you’ve written, help you with the

3. cover art and put your ebook on Amazon and Smashwords. They charge a one-time fee of $995 (that
doesn’t include cover art work) for ebook publishing.
There are many firms like Telemachus that charge a one-time fee, but the amount charged depends on
the complexity of converting your file into the ebook formats, how much you want to preserve fonts,
art-work, etc.
Distributing your eBook
Telemachus, as part of their one-time fee, will also place your ebook in the Amazon store and on
Smashwords. Other service providers, however, do the conversion and distribution of your book for
free, but do take a cut of your royalties (the amount your ebook sells for minus what Amazon, for
example, charges you for selling through them).
Royalty Split Conversion Services
This is what companies like Smashwords, Lulu, and newcomer Bookhatchery do.
Other newer entrants, still in beta, threatening to change the space are Vook and Hyperink (formerly
Hyperink Press). It’s unclear as of yet if they will be taking a royalty split.
The advantage of services that take a royalty split is they can place your book in multiple ebook stores
without you having to manage them all. The disadvantage is that they take a royalty split. While most
don’t take a large portion, any portion of an already small portion is something.
What follows is a matrix of your options.

4. Using a Service
Company Conversion Fee for Helps Company Royalty to Distribution Note
Service Conversion with Cut Author Partners
Cover
Art
Smashwords Upload Free No Takes 60% of iBookstore, PubIt, Conversion
formatted 10% of retail price Kobo (Borders is tricky
word doc sale price on Apple; eBookstore), and may
42.5% of Kindle take
retail on several
PubIt; 46.7 tries;
% of retail getting
on Kobo placed in
distribution
channels is
taking a
very long
time
currently
Lulu Upload $99.99 to No Takes 56% of iBookstore,
formatted $299 14% of retail price Lulu.com
pdf sales on Apple
price
Fast Pencil Cut and $149 No takes 56% for a Nook,iBookstore,
paste word 14% of $2.99 Kindle, Sony
into a wizard sales ebook or readers, and
or upload price $1.68 Ingram digital
formatted network
PDF
Publish Submit $299 basic No 90% Pay $199
Green Word, PDF mobi file upfront to
or InDesign $399 for get full
file and get ePub and royalty
mobi/Kindle Mobi file up
file to $897 for
others
BookBaby Submit $99 for Yes; No 100% of iBookstore, $99 sign up
Word doc, Word, $99 $149 royalty net (after Kindle, Nook, fee plus
PDF plus $59 for to cut commission Sony Reader $19 annual
st
PDF to epub $279 to retailers fee after 1
and mobi; like year
more if Amazon)
graphic
heavy

5. That being said, it’s actually quite easy (and in some cases even easier) for an author to place her ebook
in a retailer directly. Below are your options.
Going Direct
Company File Required Conversion Royalty to Note
Service Author
Amazon (Kindle) mobi Yes and free. ebook price Pretty fast and easy
$2.99 or >
author gets 70%
of the sale price;
35% < $2.99
PubIt epub Yes and free. ebook price Customer support is next
Word files into $2.99 or > to nil
epub or can author gets 65 %
directly upload of the sale price;
epub files 40% < $2.99;
floor price is
$0.99 and
ceiling is
$199.99
Kobo epub Yes, but there is You have to email
a fee. $29 for content@kobobooks.com
most basic to ask to sign up for an
conversion. account
iBookstore epub None Apple takes 30% Usually don’t work with
of all sales individual authors, only
aggregators
Google epub Yes and free. Unclear Takes forever to process
eBookstore an ebook
Earnings are typically paid out in 60 to 90 days. Amazon pays out every 60 days.
What’s the audience for ebooks? Well you can start with the number of ereaders on the market. There
are approximately 15 million ereaders in the market. Amazon’s Kindle makes up 41.5% of that number.
Next is Sony’s E-Reader Pandigital Novel eReader with 16.1% of the market and Barnes & Noble Nook
with 15.4%.
The real question, though, is which channels are responsible for the most ebook sales? Industry
numbers say Amazon has 61%, followed by 20% for Barnes & Noble’s Nook, but anecdotally from other
authors I’ve heard 90% of sales they receive are from Amazon. So this makes using a service that takes a
royalty split on top of what an ebook retailer (e.g. Amazon) charges seem highly unnecessary.

6. So should you use a conversion service that also does distribution? Many authors are opting out of this
publishing route. More and more ebook authors convert their works themselves and sell through
Amazon and Barnes & Noble directly. Many have abandoned Kobo given the issues Borders has been
experiencing and many don’t even bother with iBookstore because of the difficulty and very limited
sales now that there’s Kindle for the iPhone/iPad.
Finally, I and others have also given up on Google’s eBookstore. They take forever to process an epub
file and it’s completely confusing to set up actually selling your ebook.
In my humble opinion, I think it makes the most sense to simply start where the most market traction is
– Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
If you start there, publishing your own ebook is relatively straight-forward and inexpensive. Your two
biggest expenses will be purchasing an ISBN (required by Amazon and iBookstore to sell on their
platforms) and having cover art made.
Marketing Your eBook
The real challenge, as ever, is marketing your ebook. I’ve found that many use the traditional online
methods:
1. Promote via email and social networks (Facebook/Twitter)
2. Write a blog post about it
3. Get someone to review your ebook
4. Do a promotion – give out a free copy
5. Play with the pricing of the ebook
It is interesting that so many companies exist to convert and distribute ebooks when the real need lies
elsewhere. Authors need help marketing their books. One company, BookHunch, is trying out a method
to help authors build buzz about their ebooks. Some people use sites like Scribd to do the same thing.
You can also publish a pdf easily on Scribd itself and even sell through them. They take a 20% cut or
your ebook’s price if you do choose to sell through their site.
We’ll see who else takes up the marketing tools for authors challenge.
What’s Coming Soon in eBooks
Lastly, the next frontier is making it easier to produce more dynamic, media rich ebooks. The next
version of Kindle, Kindle Format 8, seems promising in that allows for different fonts, etc. It doesn’t
include video but it’s making more possible in terms of design. So stay tuned for that.
To check out my first ebook publishing endeavor, see
Create iPhone Apps That Rock: A Guide for Non-Technical Folks.