The Author’s Guide to Self-Publishing for Canadians: Books That Make Authors Smarter

THE AUTHOR’S GUIDE TO SELF PUBLISHING FOR CANADIANS

BARB DROZDOWICH

Copyright © 2022 by Barb Drozdowich

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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I would like to thank you for buying one of my books!

I tend to focus on the technical tasks that authors and bloggers need to learn. As of this publishing I have 27 books in print and several more in various stages of completion. I’m always looking to be helpful - often creating books around subjects that I get a lot of questions on from authors and bloggers just like you.

At the end of this book is the link join my group of readers and get some free help with the technical subjects.

On to the book - I hope you enjoy and learn lots!

CONTENTS

Introduction

I. Foundation Subjects

1. Foundations

2. What is Modern Publishing?

3. E-Readers

4. Structure of a Book

II. The Basics

5. Roadmap/Flowchart

6. Editing

7. ISBN

8. Cover Graphics

III. Getting the manuscript ready for publishing

9. Get the manuscript ready

10. File Formats

11. Structure details of a book

12. Formatting

IV. Where to sell your book

13. Where do you sell your book?

14. Book Retailers

15. Distributors & Aggregators

V. How to set up an account

16. How to set up an account

VI. Instructions for uploading

17. Instructions for uploading

VII. Strategies

18. Strategies

VIII. Audiobooks & Loose ends

19. Audiobooks

20. Loose ends

IX. Self-Publishing Services

21. About Self-Publishing services

22. Self-Publishing Services

Conclusion

X. Appendix

Glossary

Chart of Distributors

File Requirements

What do editors do?

Bibliography

Resources

Articles for Further Reading

YouTube videos

Writer’s Groups

Interested in getting more technical help?

About the Author

Also by Barb Drozdowich

Excerpt from Blogging for Authors

Excerpt from The Complete Mailing List ToolKit

INTRODUCTION

Self-publishing—or Indie publishing, as it is also known—is the publishing equalizer. Gate-keepers are removed and authors can publish a book they feel has merit. Along with the removal of many of the gate-keepers, in recent years much of the stigma has also been removed. Authors who choose to publish their own work are capable of having a respectable and successful career as published authors.

Because you picked up this book, I assume you are interested in learning about self-publishing. Do you use the term Self-Publishing or Indie-Publishing or Independent Publishing? In my mind all these phrases mean the same thing. They all refer to the act of publishing a book where you, the author, are the driver of the operation—you may ask for, and receive, help, but you make all the decisions.

I am the proud author of 27 self-published books, have sold thousands of copies and I am frequently answering questions about or dispelling myths about self-publishing. As a result, I decided to put fingers to keyboard and explain the process of self-publishing in Canada.

Why Canada? To start with, that’s where I live. My second reason is to outline the differences between self-publishing in Canada compared to other countries. There are quite a few books available that talk about self-publishing in the US or in the UK, but we Canadians have some distinct differences from other countries—advantages as well as disadvantages.

Is there a learning curve?

Yes!

I do feel the learning curve is reasonable, but in my experience, many well-meaning people scare authors off this path.

I approach the world of authors and publishing differently than most authors. My background is in teaching science and running the technical training department of a bank. I’m a stats geek and I tend to analyze things, to study things. I don’t think things work, I know they do and why they do. I read a lot and I research a lot. The origins for most of my books have been either a problem point that I discover or a subject that I get a lot of questions on.

There is no one way to publish a book.

Maybe that’s what creates confusion in many authors—the number of choices that exist. As you’ll see in this book, I view publishing as steps on a flow chart or as stops on a road map. Steps that are easily identified and described. They are all steps that the average author can carry out—perhaps with a bit of help—but they don’t require any special skill other than some patience and a little bit of stubbornness. There are a variety of choices available for most of the steps. We’ll talk about the choices available and talk about the pros and cons of each.

I think it’s important to let you know what you will learn from this book. We will start off talking about the various types of editing and how to find an editor for your project. We will talk about how to get a free ISBN from the government—one of the perks of being Canadian! We will talk about what all the various file formats are we will need to publish our book and how to either create them ourselves or how to find a professional formatter. We will learn all about cover graphics and how to find a graphic designer to help create the perfect cover for your book. We will learn how straightforward it is to publish a book to the various retailers where your book will be for sale. We will learn about e-readers and how straightforward they are to use. We will learn about the differences between all the retailers and learn how to get paid. Along the way, we’ll learn the meaning of all those words that published authors use that don’t seem to be part of the normal English language. We’ll learn a bunch of bits and pieces that make the whole thing much easier! And homework. I’ll be assigning homework, but it will be fun homework. Think reading a book kind of fun.

Lastly, I’ll give you lots and lots of help. At the end of this book, you’ll find a glossary, a list of resource articles, a list of helpful videos, an extensive list of writers’ groups and a few odds and ends of resource material that I just had to include!

Are you excited to begin? I hope so. Let’s end this introduction with a quote from a group that I will mention several times in this book—the Alliance of Independent Authors.

What self-publishing doesn’t do is absolve us of the responsibility of learning our craft and our art.

~ Alliance of Independent Authors

PART I

FOUNDATION SUBJECTS

1

FOUNDATIONS

In this chapter, we’re going to lay out the foundations for your understanding of the world and the process of self-publishing. Part of the foundation work involves us all speaking the same language. It also involves me helping you see things that you likely didn’t pay attention to previously.

You will realize as we progress through the various topics that I like to assign homework. Isn’t there a saying about taking the teacher out of the classroom? Regardless…in my experience, homework can be a good thing.

The homework that I assign will have a point to it. In some cases, it will encourage you to step outside of your comfort zone. You see, in my experience when most beginner authors picture their book for sale, they picture a paperback book. The reality, which we’ll talk about in a future chapter, is the vast majority of books sold are electronic, not paperback. We’ll come back to that topic.

Your first piece of homework relates to paperback books. We all read paperback books, but since we are going to be talking about actually creating one, we need to really look at a book.

To that end, grab some paperback books—perhaps from your personal bookshelves—and study some examples. Don’t read the books, study them. Look at the information that is in the front and the back of the book (called front and back matter respectively). Look at how the text is laid out on the pages. Look at the chapter starts. Look at the front and back cover. Take some notes about what you like and don’t like. Study the commonalities from book to book. Study the differences. We’ll come back to this information a bit later.

Before we get very far into the topic of Self-Publishing we need to define some terms and talk about what self-publishing is and what it isn’t. As I mentioned previously, as part of the foundations, we need to speak the same language. Over the years words or labels about publishing have been used as weapons by the opposite camp. A self-publishing guide that has been produced by the Alliance of Independent Authors, a group that I belong to, shared the following quote in their book:

Self-publishing evangelists compare traditional publishers to lumbering dinosaurs, incapable of adapting to a changing world. Self-publishing, they say, is the only worthwhile path to freedom and success. Traditional publishing evangelists characterize self-publishing as nothing more than a titanic slush pile, and declare that real credibility is reserved for books that carry the logo of a traditional publishing house. Neither of these views reflects reality, though each holds a grain of truth. In this contentious debate, it’s hard to find anyone who hasn’t taken a side—which can make things difficult for writers who are searching for unbiased information.

I wanted to share the above quote as I think that it honestly characterizes the current climate in publishing. In addition to the two deeply divided camps, there is the reality that authors who choose to self-publish are frequently taken advantage of by individuals/companies which count on beginner authors’ lack of understanding of the publishing world. We’ll talk more about that topic in one of the last chapters of this book, but for now, let’s talk about terminology, so that we are all speaking the same language going forward.

Self-publishing: As the dictionary would suggest, if we are going to use the word self we are suggesting that all actions are taken by self or by the author. This isn’t necessarily true, as often this phrase refers to publishing that is directed by the author, but the tasks are not literally done by the author.

Indie-Publishing or Independent Publishing: To go back to the dictionary, this would indicate a form of publishing that is done alone or without the support of a company or corporation to carry out many of the tasks. It can also refer to publishing that takes place outside of the old-school traditional realm. For example, many smaller presses are referred to as Independent Publishers as they are one-person enterprises or small shops.

As I’ve mentioned, I really don’t draw a difference between self-publishing and indie-publishing (independent publishing). Although they are likely the most common terms used to describe the type of publishing we will discuss in this book, the term that I actually prefer is Author-directed Publishing. I like to refer to myself as an Authorpreneur—a term that is gaining popularity in my publishing world.

Let’s define some terms that we will use going forward.

Manuscript - is the term that is used to refer to the book that is being worked on. This manuscript is typically in the form of a Microsoft Word document for most of the time this work is being done. Microsoft Word is the industry standard, but other programs can be used to create a manuscript. In fact a manuscript can be created on paper using a pen, but the basis of publishing in the modern era is an electronic file like Word, not paper.

Publishing - is the term that is used to refer to the set of actions that make a book available to the reader. In today’s modern era, publishing involves submitting an electronic file to a location where it will be available for sale or to a company that will share it with companies that will sell it to readers.

Let’s clarify that last statement a bit. Readers purchase books from Retailers. An example of a Retailer may be a bricks-and-mortar business like Chapters/Indigo, but it can also be an online company such as Amazon or Kobo.

Some retailers that sell our books allow authors to submit to them directly. Other retailers are accessed through a middleman. That middleman may be called an aggregator or a distributor.

We shouldn’t confuse the term publishing with printing. Publishing is the act of making a book available to be purchased by a reader via a retailer. Printing is the act of turning an electronic manuscript into a paper copy. In today’s modern era of publishing, as indie authors we can’t print a book and make it available for sale in bookstores (other than as a consignment item). We use Print on Demand services attached to retailers to make paper versions of our books available to readers.

As we’ll find out in one of the last chapters of this book, many authors see the act of creating physical books to be publishing. It is not. And there are many authors who end up with boxes of their paper books piled up in their home with few places to sell them.

The next word we will define in this section is Formatting. This is a term that is liberally thrown around the author world. It, in fact, can mean many things.