How to Create an eBook - Part 3

You've formatted your eBook
here

(or paid someone to do it)

You've created a cool cover here (or paid an aspiring graphics designer to do so)

You've created an account at smashwords (More on account related stuff later)

Now to publish your book.

Click Publish.
Enter the Title
A Short Description up to 400 characters. This is the all important blurb that readers read before they descide to download your book. It should be in the same style as the book and have a great hook.

Mine is:

Zoë Madison has escaped to an uneventful life in Dublin when she gets a call from sexy, celebrity gardener Larry Harte. Larry has found that her New Age hippy mother worked for Larry's popstar father before he died. But is there more to the story? The paparazzi certainly think so and pursue them across Ireland as they delve into the past and face the future. Life is the Story of Plan B.

Then an extended description, up to 4,000 characters. This is optional but I think you might as well use it. Don't just repeat what's in the short description as they usually display one after the other.

Language

Adult Content Flag - has to be pretty wild to be considered, I think.

Pricing Tricky one this. If you just want people to read your eBook, out it out for free or put it out for free for a while at the start. If you want to make some money, most people tend towards charging $2.99. If you charge less, e.g. €0.99, there are some places that won't take them as their cut is too low. But google around for thoughts on this. You can change to price at any time.

Sampling. I think 25% is best. If someone downloads 25% and reads that, they should really be into it by then and should pay for the remaining 75%. If they don't want to read on, you've lost nothing.

Categories Add two categories. e.g. Fiction > Literature > Mystery and Detective or Romance or Poetry Anthology or whatever.

Tags are used by search engines to find books that fit the searchers criteria. So if your book is a Romance in Shetland involving sheep, boats and a pregnant protagonist, those would be your tags. Or a murder mystery in Tipperary with vampires and hobbits or whatever.

eBook formats Choose them all. Why not?

Cover imageYou previously created jpg file from your PC.

files of book to be publishedYour labour of love, correctly formatted and saved in word 97 format (.doc)

Read the terms (i.e. it's your book and you know what you're doing) and hit Publish.

What happens next?
It goes into the meatgrinder queue which turns it into the (currently) 7 formats, checking for basic errors.
This stage used to take ages but now it's pretty quick.

There may be formatting errors reported. If it's not obvious what the problem is, you may have to start again and use the nuke method (see previous post). It's either that you have the copyright and header bit wrong or formatting.

If you're successful,

Congratulations. Your work...has been published on Smashwords and is now available for readers.

you're published! Congratulations.

You do need to assign an ISBN. Why? Smashwords retailers such as Apple and Sony will not accept your Smashwords book unless you have a unique e-ISBN.

I'd recommend using the free ISBNs for now from smashwords. Go to the ISBN manager and select the FREE one.

OK that's enough for now. You're published. Next to check the formatted copies, look at getting paid and also at Amazon.