Self-Publishing When You Are On A Tight Budget.

By D.J. Cameron

Having met authors who had self-published and those who went with traditional publishing, I decided I wanted to self-publish. However, I didn’t have money to spend on hiring a publisher or to have someone create the cover for my book and I certainly didn’t have money to have books printed out to sell.

If you’re like me and have decided to self-publish your book and on a tight budget, you might be asking yourself, ‘How the heck can I do this if I don’t have money to spend on artists for covers and books to be printed?’ I asked myself the same question.

After searching, I found a couple places to self-publish for…FREE. Yes I said the ‘f’ word, FREE. You start by creating your free account and follow the steps. You can choose from several templates offered for free to create your book cover or you can upload your own. There is also a free template you can download for the correct book formatting.

You can choose to have your book in paperback, which are printed on demand, epub, or both. Once you have everything uploaded, they will calculate what your base price must be on the printed books based on the amount of pages, type of paper you choose, etc.

What I like about self-publishing is that you have freedom to decide how much royalty you want to make on each purchase, you can do different promotions from discount coupons to free download. You can also make revisions or corrections and re-upload your book at any time.

I like having the freedom to choose where and how I want to sell, what I want as my cover and title. Not to mention there is no middleman to take a cut of the profits.

I have done several different promotions without spending anything out of pocket. I found success is giving a free download for a period of time, which has always been followed by sales.

I’ve had a very positive experience with self-publishing. I have more books in the works and plan on self-publishing them as well. I have paid nothing out of pocket, published my book, and made sales.

While I am a fan of self-publishing, you must still beware. If you have never heard of the company or you are not sure about them, check out Preditors & Editors at www.pre-ed.com or Absolute Write Water Cooler at www.absolutewrite.com . These are both good information sources.

I started with Amazon who owns Create Space, which is where you publish. You are always asked to proof your book once you’ve uploaded to make sure nothing has gone wrong during the conversion.

There is also another organization called Smashwords at www.smashwords.com. This is strictly epub. You can list your book anywhere from free to the dollar amount of your choice.

Another place to self-publish is on Lulu at www.lulu.com. I have tried Lulu; however, I found them to be a little pricey in their required costs for the print on demand.

I have had success with Amazon and Smashwords and will continue to use both of those avenues. So if you are thinking about self-publishing check out Amazon and Smashwords.

Have fun and keep writing.

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DJ Cameron is an author who lives in the Southwestern Desert.  When not writing she enjoys spending time with her family and horses.  She has always been interested the in paranormal.  Having had several experiences of her own, she decided to start writing on her two favorite subjects, paranormal and romance.  Her first novel  Echoes of the Past takes place in a 200 year old mansion in England where past meets present.  When two strangers are brought together under false pretenses they struggle with the concept of reincarnation and the fact that they could be reincarnated lovers. djcameron.writer@gmail.com, my web site is www.djcameron.org, and my blog is www.djcameron.org/blog2 . I am also on Facebook under D.J. Cameron and on twitter.