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Alright sharing some personal experiences on making your own books.
First of all there are a few ways of going about it. There’s the Do It Yourself method. It is the most cost effective option.
However if you feel like spending a bit of your own money you can also reach out to places like Fiverr… There’s many websites like Fiverr if Fiverr itself is not your cup of tea just do a quick internet search for “websites similar to Fiverr..” and you’ll get a lengthy list of places where you can pay someone to help you put together the book.
Amazon is the method I use for personal DIY… But you do not need to limit yourself to Amazon alone. I have also purchased ISBN’s for the ability to sell on other platforms that sell books. However I have not made use of this as of yet.
When making a book for Amazon sign up with Amazon KDP. It is all free and super simple. Both Amazon and IngramSpark will provide you with a free ISBN for selling on their platforms. So no purchases for ISBN’s are necessary if you decide to sell through Amazon.
Amazon also has a “Author Copy” feature. This allows you to purchase the books “At cost” that it takes Amazon to print and make them. This makes the physical copies of the book about half the price as ordering a physical copy directly through the website. However if you’re wishing to gift these copies for say Christmas presents. You must put your order in at about 2 months in advance as author copied are not on Amazon’s priority list.
When selling your digital book copies or physical copies on Amazon they have express rules. That you ABSOLUTELY MUST NOT UNDERSELL THEM… To sell on Amazon means that your price in selling any copies on either other platforms such as Goodreads must match what you are selling on Amazon. You can not undercut them and sell them for cheaper and make Amazon look bad essentially.
This is the same for if you wish to order many author copies of your book and sell them at book conventions. You can not undersell the book by any means. If you sell them at the convention you must match the same price you have it listed for on Amazon. Unless you want to risk potentially getting into legal troubles with them. However you are legally allowed to order author copies for selling or gifting.
When it comes to making the book on Amazon KDP you are given 3 types you can make. The digital copy, the paperback copy, and the hard cover copy. You are given choices for the physical copies of your book such as Matte or Glossy. I personally prefer the Matte book covers but you can research YouTube videos for comparisons on other peoples books to see what you are most interested in.
Formatting the size of your book to match the text is the most difficult part in my opinion so don’t ask me about it. I forget and have to relearn how to do it every time I make a new one…
However this process might be easier depending on how you’re going about creating your books text. I use Google docs and then save the file as a Microsoft word document. Other options such as using a Mac computer or Microsoft Word directly might be better for the formatting issues.
Book covers are fairly easy to upload. You can either design one yourself. Or hire someone to design it for you. Either artists in your personal life or again through places like Fiverr.
Hope at least some of this information helped.
