Does anyone here self publish and sell on Amazon?

taberdude2 · Oct 19, 2009

Hi all,

Was just curious if anyone here self publishes and sells their books on Amazon?

I am seriously looking into it for long term, residual money,

Just curious.

cruzer · Oct 19, 2009

My cousin did that a few years ago and hes still recieving royalties for his work. Selling books or ebooks is a great source for residual income while using Amazon because you do not have to promote it. Goodluck.

kanshu · Oct 19, 2009

I'm still working on my first book, but I plan to publish it using CreateSpace.com -- Amazon's print-on-demand service.

taberdude2 · Oct 19, 2009

I've got 2 ideas for books and I am working on writing them.It would be nice to have the residual income coming in.

@Kanshu- do you know about the book formatting at all- the only thing I'm hung up on is the formatting. I know the book itself is in pdf, but not sure if each page of the pdf has to be a page of the book? Hope that makes sense.

Anyway-I'm off to go research my question.

shm03 · Oct 19, 2009

Depends, I assume you are working in word/publishers/powerpoint. If you are you simply change the page size to the page size of the book you will be printing. Then when you export it to a pdf using whatever software you use it should remain the same size.

pigsnog · Oct 19, 2009

I'm thinking of doing this too. I checked out getting an ISBN number yesterday, costs about $200 for 10 ISBNs in the States, every edition has a new one, and every format does too. Interesting stuff.

kanshu · Oct 20, 2009

pigsnog said:
I'm thinking of doing this too. I checked out getting an ISBN number yesterday, costs about $200 for 10 ISBNs in the States, every edition has a new one, and every format does too. Interesting stuff.

If you publish through Amazon's CreateSpace.com, you'll get a free ISBN. However, you can only sell through amazon.com if you decide to avail of this free ISBN.

kanshu · Oct 20, 2009

taberdude2 said:
@Kanshu- do you know about the book formatting at all- the only thing I'm hung up on is the formatting.

To format your book, use related Styles in MS-Word--i.e., fonts and font sizes are coordinated. For example, Headers (Header 1, 2, 3, 4) may be a san serif font descending in size. Body Text (Body Text + First Indent, Body Text No Indent, etc.) may have a serif font with consistent spaces before and after paragraphs.

taberdude2 said:
I know the book itself is in pdf, but not sure if each page of the pdf has to be a page of the book? Hope that makes sense.

If you mean whether all pages come from one document, no. You can assemble the final PDF book from several PDFs, but you need Acrobat Professional for this.

biks · Oct 20, 2009

I'm still working on my first book, but I plan to publish it using CreateSpace.com -- Amazon's print-on-demand service.

Anyone compare prices of printing your own books on a short run...and using createspace? If you've got the dough to do a run, is it worth it? (as long as you can sell you stock)

kanshu · Oct 20, 2009

biks said:
Anyone compare prices of printing your own books on a short run...and using createspace? If you've got the dough to do a run, is it worth it? (as long as you can sell you stock)

Yup. You will definitely get more profits if you pay for the printing cost.

As for me, my primary objective of using CreateSpace is to get my first book published with the least hassle on my part. And since my book is about how first-time authors can write and publish their first book, CreateSpace is one of the solutions I'm recommending in my book.

safrank99 · Oct 20, 2009

My girlfriend in college ended up going this route and she still gets the occasional sale from time to time and it is nice to say potential employers that you could look my book up on Amazon or whatever. I was sort of surprised she got any sales to be honest she was a horrible writer, IMO.

kanshu · Oct 20, 2009

safrank99 said:
My girlfriend in college ended up going this route and she still gets the occasional sale from time to time and it is nice to say potential employers that you could look my book up on Amazon or whatever. I was sort of surprised she got any sales to be honest she was a horrible writer, IMO.

Exactly. I started a book-writing project to get myself listed as a published author in Amazon.com. Somehow, I want this piece of information in my resume or calling card. It's a credentials thing.

Does anyone here self publish and sell on Amazon?

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