Get Your Book Into Print - Professional Formatting Course
- 5.5 hours on-demand video
- 9 articles
- 43 downloadable resources
- Full lifetime access
- Access on mobile and TV
- Certificate of Completion
Get your team access to 4,000+ top Udemy courses anytime, anywhere.
Try Udemy for Business- To increase your royalties by earning through print sales and increasing your Kindle sales due to the cost comparison with your print book
- In this course you will learn how to format your manuscript to CreateSpace's standards
- You will learn additional formatting tips that will make your finished book look very professional
- You will learn how to format your book's cover to CreateSpace's standards
- If you have your books formatted by other people, this course will enable you to check them and make alterations without messing up the formatting, line spacing, table of contents, etc.
- At the end of the course you will be able to produce a beautifully formatted, professional-looking book that can be live on Amazon (and linked to your Kindle version if you have one) within a week.
- Having your book in paperback can mean increased royalties - both from the paperback itself, and from increased Kindle sales as the Kindle version will be cheaper than the paperback and seem like a bargain!
- A computer running Microsoft Word or equivalent
- Internet access
- A Windows computer
LATEST: Guarantee - if you struggle to format your book, I will do it for you and show you how I did it. For less than the price of paying a professional formatter to do one book for you, you can join this course and learn how to format all your books.
Join over 600 authors on this course. Learn quickly, get your books in print, and your royalties could be double NEXT MONTH.
I am available for advice and support every step of the way. If you get stuck, holler!
Double your royalties - really?
I did. Well, actually, I more than doubled them. My print sales have overtaken my digital sales on some books. I was shocked - until I published this course and students reported that they were making more money - either by the presence of their print book stimulating sales of their Kindle book (because the print book looks inexpensive in comparison), or by great print sales.
You too can make more money from your Kindle books by getting them into print via CreateSpace. A print book can increase your royalties both by making sales itself and by increasing your Kindle sales due to the cost comparison.
Sales of eBooks have overtaken sales of paperback and hardback books combined. However, that doesn't mean that physical books don't sell anymore - they do. Amazon sell 118 eBooks for every 100 physical books. That's still a lot of physical books being sold! It depends on your genre, but many authors report that their print sales actually overtake their digital sales in December and August - holiday periods. We all seem to prefer real books on the beach and for use as gifts!
There's a lot less competition in the physical book arena as most of the Internet Marketers stick to Kindle books. Kindle eBooks are quick and easy to publish - formatting for paperback takes a bit more time. It's well worth it, though.
Having a paperback version of your eBook can help increase your royalties for a number of reasons.
- More Kindle sales - Your eBook sales can increase because the cost of the paperback is generally more, making the eBook look much better value
- A new source of royalties - You may find that you make a good number of paperback sales. People still like physical books. They are much better for reading in the bath! I recently had an illness that prevented me from looking at a screen (it hurt). It made me put away my Kindle for the first time in months and dig out a load of paperbacks. There are lots of people who prefer physical books, for various reasons.
- Increased credibility - Fewer Indie authors take the plunge into print so you will be part of a more select group. That raises your credibility and could lead to more opportunities, such as guest blogging, interviews on podcasts, etc.
- You need a physical book to schedule a Goodreads Giveaway. If you haven't heard of Goodreads, you might want to check it out, it's where passionate readers hang out. Giveaways are mini competitions that members enter to try to win free books. Even if you can only afford to buy one paperback version of your book, you can schedule a Giveaway and offer that. The beauty of them is that they attract an average of 825 entries each. That's 825 people seeing your book who may not otherwise have come across it - and all their Goodreads friends (and possibly their Facebook) will see it in their update feeds. That's how viral popularity starts. It worked for E.L. James with '50 Shades of Grey'; it worked for Ally Condie with 'Matched'; it could work for you too.
However, many authors confess to finding the formatting of their manuscript to CreateSpace's standards to be difficult. Who has the time to spend hours learning, fiddling, tweaking, proofing, and submitting?
This course can save you days and days of fumbling around trying to discover the best ways of formatting your manuscript yourself. It will enable you – once you have completed the course – to get a book into CreateSpace-ready format in around an hour. If you struggle at any point, I will do it for you and show you exactly what I did to get it right.
The course is packed with information, practical steps and activities, as well as tons of bonuses, such as PDF downloads and checklists to guide you along the way. It won't take you more than an hour or two to complete and the benefits will be with you forever. You can pick and mix to just study the bits you need, if you already know how to do the formatting but want to learn how to produce books that are professional enough to stand side-by-side with traditionally-published books.
The course has a full guarantee and will be accessible whenever you need to check back, in case you forget something. I will also keep it up-to-date and add new resources as time goes on.
You are welcome to ask questions, I'll support you all I can. You can find me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter if I don't respond quickly enough on Udemy! (They don't always send out announcements about new questions.)
NOTE: This course is currently mostly suitable for Windows users (due to the demise of my Mac!).
- Authors
- Udemy instructors who want to turn their course into a book
- Writers
- Anyone who wants to publish a book
- Kindle authors
- Kobo authors
Introduction
Hi! I'm Michelle and I'll be your host for the next couple of hours if you decide to join this course. I'm a former teacher & trainer, now a bestselling author.I spent days learning how to use CreateSpace for my own books and other people's, then more days for each book. Such a lot of time! I used CreateSpace templates, fussing for ages over page numbering and sections breaks – only to mush them all up with one keystroke (but be unable to find which one!).
Then I'd have to relearn it weeks or months later, next time I had a book to format. Nightmare. I decided to drill down into CreateSpace’s requirements, so I fully understood what was needed to format a manuscript that would be accepted by their picky (but helpful) Interior Reviewer. It was challenging but enjoyable.
I’ve created this course from that knowledge, in the hope that it will help other time-pressed authors. Formatting a manuscript for CreateSpace now takes me less than an hour. Time well spent when you consider the benefits of having your books available in paperback.
Not getting your eBooks into CreateSpace is like leaving money on the table. A paperback version of your book:
- Can help Kindle sales – the Kindle version looks like a bargain compared to the paperback (because of production costs).
- Can make sales of its own. Lots of people still like physical books (they’re better for reading in the bath!).
- Gives your readers an option – people like to have a choice.
- Puts you alongside authors who are traditionally-published, in the eyes of your readers.
- Gives you the chance to give your books a terrific boost by scheduling a giveaway on Goodreads (check out www.goodreads.com, it's a fantastic site for readers and authors). These are mini contests to win books and attract an average of 825 entries for each book - that's 825 people seeing your book who might otherwise never have come across it. Many of them will add it to their virtual shelves in Goodreads - which will be seen by their Goodreads friends and possibly their Facebook friends. That's how books can go viral. It's very exciting.
- Has a great feel-good factor. There’s nothing like holding your own books in your hands after all those months of work (and that’s just the CreateSpace formatting!).
I hope you decide to join this course. If you do, please feel free to ask questions, I’m here to help. Hopefully we can all benefit from each other’s experiences.
Michelle x
Introduction To Your Host
This is an optional one!First Steps on CreateSpace
There are only a few things you need to publish a book on CreateSpace - but some are rather more complicated than others!
- Your details - including real name, address, contact information, bank details, tax numbers.
- Your book's title and meta data.
- An ISBN for your book.
- Your formatted manuscript.
- Your book's cover.
ISBNs
ISBNs are essential on CreateSpace and you need to decide on one of their 4 options before you upload your manuscript. The choices are:- A free CreateSpace ISBN
- A $10 CreateSpace ISBN*
- A $99 universal ISBN from CreateSpace*
- Your own ISBN - purchased from the broker in your country
*Only available to US authors.
Professional Formatting
If you're a Mac user, here's a link to a video I put on YouTube about how to manage Styles on a Mac: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgqXZz_A3tE
Introduction To 'Making It Beautiful'
In the next few lectures we are going to look at the changes we can make to a manuscript that will really make it stand out and give it a professional slick. Our aim is to format it so beautifully that a professional reviewer won't be able to tell the difference between your manuscript and a traditionally-published book!A Neat Trick To Make Your Book Look Professionally-Published
This is something a bit different that you probably won't find anywhere else. I noticed, when studying the interior formatting of tons of professionally-published and Indie books, that there was one big thing that the professionals did that very, very few Indies did. That is what is contained in this lecture!Serif or Sans Serif Fonts?
Serifs are the little sticky-out bits on the edges of letters, they are what define a serif font. Sans Serif literally means 'without serif', so sans serif fonts are those with rounded, clear, simple lettering. But which do we choose for our printed books? Watch the video to find out.Image Quality
The CreateSpace Interior Reviewer is notoriously fussy. It demands that any images in books are at least 300dpi. Then it rejects images that you have included that you know are 300dpi! This lecture includes some tips and tricks to get around that problem.
Introduction To Covers
An overview of the three options for creating/uploading covers on CreateSpace.
UPDATE November 2013: CreateSpace have now introduced an option to choose a matte finish cover, instead of the glossy finish.
If your book is already published, you can change to matte if you wish. Go to DISTRIBUTE > COVER FINISH.
It's a good idea to chat to your cover designer about whether a matte or glossy finish would be best for your book.
Using The CreateSpace Cover Creator
The Cover Creator is a handy part of CreateSpace if you don't have a professionally-designed cover. It enables you to build one, using their templates.
They are easy to use - if a little fiddly - and you can produce some eye-catching and appealing results.
The biggest disadvantage to the Cover Creator is that you don't own the cover that you create with it. If you decide to publish outside of CreateSpace, you will have to have a cover created, you can't use the one you created using the Cover Creator.
The templates at the moment aren't allowing for spine designs. Up to a couple of weeks ago they were. This could be for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the templates were limited in what they did with spine design - they only allowed for writing, not images. Secondly, I suspect that they may have had trouble with them not lining up properly when they were printed.
If you don't mind not having a spine design and aren't thinking about publishing anywhere other than Amazon, then the Cover Creator is a good option for you.
How To Get The CreateSpace Design Team To Design Your Book's Cover
When you appoint a designer, you need to give them the dimensions of the cover. If you don't want to get into that sort of detail, appointing CreateSpace themselves to design your cover is a good option. They will produce a quality cover to the correct dimensions, saving time and hassle.
Calculate Book Jacket Dimensions
You can't finalize your book jacket until your manuscript is finished and you know the page count. Once you do, you can work out the dimensions - using the downloadable spreadsheet. Enter your trim size (book size) and page count and the spreadsheet will give you your spine width. Then you can send the dimensions to your designer, or create the jacket yourself.Even if you intend to commission a designer, it is a good idea to know how the dimensions are calculate, so you have some understanding when talking to the designer!
Creating Boxed Sets
Boxed sets of books are very popular right now. They always have been, actually. I got into one of my favorite authors, Mary Higgins Clark, thanks to the inclusion of one of her thrillers in a Readers Digest boxed set.
A boxed set is basically a number of books in one. Some traditional publishing houses produce them literally as a box with multiple books in it but the term has now extended to include one physical book with the content of multiple books inside it.
It's a good money-maker if you have written more than one book - preferably three. It's a way of selling more books and introducing yourself to new readers.
There are two ways of creating boxed sets: on your own, with all the books written by you; or with other authors. Creating them on your own is a great way to start and the royalties are less complicated!
This introduction talks about the reasons you might want to create a boxed set of your books.
Multiple TOCs
This lecture demonstrates, live, how to create multiple tables of content in one document - which you will need to create a beautiful boxed set.
I've uploaded the actual Word document I was working from in this lecture as an optional download, in both Word and PDF formats. I've added written instructions in the document to accompany what I'm explaining in the video.
Any questions or problems, please post a question here - I'm happy to help.
Royalties & Taxes - Update January 2015
This lecutre includes answers to these questions:
- How much am I going to earn?
- When will I get paid?
- What happens with taxes?
Please note that there is a new development since I recorded this lecture. The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act says authors who are not US-based no longer have to obtain an ITIN or EIN number. All we need to do is enter our own tax identification number (i.e. from our own country) into CreateSpace (and anywhere else we sell our books).
If you already have an ITIN or EIN, you don't need to do anything.
This is a quick video in answer to a question raised by someone who is creating books that contain blank pages (deliberately blank!). Marian wanted to know if I could think of a way to layout the blank pages. I originally suggested adding a page border to them but when I tried it, the CreateSpace Interior Reviewer rejected them as they went into the gutter area. The video shows the solution I came up with.
Industry Insight - Interview with Philip Ebiner
This is a recording of a special interview with Philip Ebiner.
Phil is a video professional, with a superb teaching site, Video School Online . He has recently turned his attention to eBooks, with his own eBook nearing completion. he decided to learn how to create stunning covers that catch the eye amongst all the other books in Amazon's search listings.
With the help of Amy, who trained him in book cover design, he has put together a terrific course, teaching authors how to create their own eBook covers. I asked him to do this session because the rules of eBook cover design are so similar to physical cover design - and in this interview he gives useful advice that I haven't seen elsewhere.
A look at a non-fiction history book
This is a beautifully-formatted book that is worthy of close examination!I had a request for a demo video showing how to format a novel - so here's the first part.
I made an error early on, saying that the default font for Microsoft Office is Cambria. It is Calibri, I was changing it to Cambria! Calibri is a sans serif font and Cambria is a serif font, which is more suitable for a printed book.
I taught this in a writing group last year and someone asked why I didn't leave the Normal style without the indent and create a new style with an indent. The reason is that I would have to go through every paragraph apart from initial paragraphs in chapters, changing them to the new style. It is quicker and easier to change everything to indented and then you only have to make initial paragraphs the new, non-indented style. I realize this means you also have to change headers and footers, as well as any front matter (legal pages, etc.) to non-indented, but it's still a whole lot quicker than going through the whole book making most of it indented. I hope that makes sense!
This is the second part of the novel format, where we add headers and footers, look at page numbering and add a dropped capital at the start of each chapter.
We also add a table of contents, which you don't see in all novels but there are some that have them - particularly those where the chapters have names rather than numbers.
Another thing we do is look at the document in Word's Outline view, which is good for zipping between chapters easily.