How I Published My First E-book

Notice how the title isn’t How TO???  That’s because I know my way isn’t the only or best way.  It’s just how I personally did it.  Here's my experience: 

1.  Months ago I bought an e-book called FishMama’s Guide to Cooking With Kids because I’m always looking for things to cook and for the patience to cook with my kids.  It was nice to be able to save it to my computer so I could print it out later or refer to it when I needed to.

2.  Then an idea came to me when I was reading Writer’s Digest.  The short blurb was about writing short humor books that people buy at the checkout counter at bookstores.  I joked to my husband that I could do one on how to be a lazy mom.

 3.  The idea festered, so I looked online for e-book publishing info.  There was too much with not enough real information.  Everything seemed to lead to buying an expensive e-book about publishing an e-book AND buying expensive software.  It can’t be that hard, I thought.  Plus I’m broke, so I have to find a way to do this cheap.

 4.  Before I even had a few pages of the e-book written, I had a cover idea, so I whipped that up in PowerPoint, then starting working on page layouts.  I didn’t want to steal anyone else’s layout ideas, so I just kept it simple and colorful.

 5.  I talked to my husband, the Engineer.  He said it was easy to convert something to a PDF file from PowerPoint, that he has something called Primo PDF on his laptop.  This is something free you can download …

 6.  Decided to sell it for a measly 2 bucks since “2-buck e-book” sounds good.  The next will retail for $99 like many other e-books.  NOT.

 7.  Had to get down to the business of writing.  Was blowing off the e-book writing process when I got the opportunity to interview JA Konrath for my blogs.  He gets 1,000 hits per day on his blog, so I was hoping to have my e-book uploaded to Payloadz (I chose this seller because FishMama used them and there are too many other crappy ones out there*) by the time his interview hit my blogs.

 8.  Had about 2 days to finish the darn thing up and paste it into PowerPoint and format it.  I scoured pregnancy and baby-raising books for things I could make fun of or convert to the Lazy Mom’s way while simultaneously being a Walking Baby Oven and homeschooling my other sweet kids and caring for the toddler.

 9.  Converted the PowerPoint file to a PDF with the help of my husband (you just open the PowerPoint doc, then select Print, then Primo PDF, and it converts and renames for you), and uploaded it (the pdf file) to Payloadz.  Everything is still FREE at this point. 

 10.  There’s a bunch of stuff to fill out at the Payloadz site … book description, etc.  Make sure you have a PayPal account first, and know they’ll take a fee out for every e-book transaction).  I guessed on the “affiliate fee” stuff … I assumed that was the amount I’d give someone for selling my e-book on their site, so I just popped in 10 cents, but have since upped it to 75.  I now realize it someone is selling my book from their site, they should get close to half of what I’m getting.

 11.  Added the link (not the unhelpful code Payloadz gave me; instead I went to the Payloadz Store like I was going to buy my own book, then used THAT link) to my blogs and whipped up a blog post about the e-book.  Made sure the link worked in case anyone wants to buy the e-book.

 12.  Sold about a dozen.  Didn’t have the time to market it like crazy, but it’s never too late.

 *If an e-book seller web site has typos, looks unprofessional, gives you pop-ups and says they may NEVER get your book uploaded, close that page, friend.

Go out and publish your own e-book!  Have fun!