You have the perfect story. You've spent months editing, re-editing, illustrating, and finalizing what will be your first children's book. It's your masterpiece, a piece of you that, at the end of the day, was worth the late nights, stress and anguish. It's a little piece of you to share with the world and the ones you love. The only thing stopping you is a giant ravine of mystery that comes with the publishing world. You've heard the debate between traditional publishing and self-publishing, the horror stories of trying to get someone to just give you a chance.
Take a deep breath, stay positive and step forward.
The publishing world is changing
Self-publishing has come a long way over the last 15 years with enhancements to user-friendly SEO marketing, affordable website management and a slew of successful social media sites to market your book. Kelly Bain, a self-published author using CreateSpace, has taken advantage of this steadily growing industry.
Partnered with Amazon, CreateSpace gives step by step guidelines to help novice to expert authors get their books out in the field. Now that you have your children's book ready to go, we can go over a quick overview of how to use this site and gain from its services.
A quick walk-through
It is important to note that CreateSpace is just one of the many options available for authors for publishing purposes.
CreateSpace, like many self-publishers, will help you layout and format your book with the option to do it free of charge. Once the setup and review of your book is complete, they will print it on demand, as it's ordered, and give you a royalty portion of the revenue. This royalty can, and will, change depending on the size, color, finish and price point.
First, create an account. This will allow you take care of a lot of the information needed to publish your book as well as providing information on royalty payments you will receive. Upon completing your account, you will be asked whether or not you would like a quick, expert, book setup, or the step by step setup. Don't let the excitement take over, for your first book you should definitely do the longer version, if for no other reason than to see all the intricacies of publishing the book.
What follows will be a literal step by step creation of your children's book in which you will get to choose from a multitude of options to format and finalize everything from the illustrations, to the wording, to the cover. Along the way, there are points where you can get professional help with parts of your book, just keep in mind that there are costs for this feature.
As mentioned before, the process on CreateSpace can be completely free; they will even provide you a free ISBN number for your book as long as you commit to their terms of service, which I highly recommend you read. This ISBN sets your book apart in the industry and aides in its protection. In addition, you will be asked what you would like to sell your book for.
This is a major factor in the royalty you will receive, and you will need to find that happy place between market demand and personal gain.
When you are satisfied with your book and it is completely formatted and uploaded, you will be able to send it in for a review to make sure it will print successfully. During this time you can also order a proof copy of your work so that you can look it over yourself. Again, this is a must. Even if you have to make edits or adjustments, it's great having a working copy of your book as a memento. After it is approved by CreateSpace, and after you've fine-tuned it to your liking, you can approve the book to go live and it will be on Amazon the next day.
