By now, you should have heard of eBooks. It is pretty much an electronic book. In the past few years, eBooks are becoming more and more popular as everyone can write a book and publish it on the internet. Just have a look at Make Use Of’s eBook collection. The only downside with eBooks is that it is only available online in an electronic format. What happens if you want to publish it and have it in print? You are up for a lot of fees, printing, and publication costs. You need to get legal advice, find a publisher to publish your book and the list goes on.
Thankfully there is a solution where you can publish your own book, or sell it in a bookshop. The best thing is, you don’t even have to spend a cent. And here’s how.
Lulu.com allows you to sell your book in bookshops, online and allow buyers to purchase printed copies in a simple 5-step process. If you have created eBooks before, this is a service that you must use. You easily and cheaply get your book published in a printed format with its own ISBN number.
Before you start, it is a good idea to already have an eBook created. It is also advised that you thoroughly check it and make sure it has been proofread and edited. If in the future you do find mistakes, you can easily add a revision to the published book.
So lets publish our own first book. The first step is to select whether or not you want to have a hard cover and a paperback. There are advantages and disadvantages to both, but it is your book, so I’ll let you decide which option you want to take.
Once you have selected your type, you can now enter the title of the book. Remember that you can change the title later if you haven’t thought of one yet. Next, select how you want your book to be distributed. If you want your book to have an ISBN and sold in shops and online bookstores, choose the last option. With this, you may have to purchase a Distribution Package. This can cost around $75. If you don’t want any of these services, and have your book promoted to a global network, you can choose just to sell it on the Lulu Marketplace. 
The next step is to choose the size, binding, and colour of your book. It also gives you the manufacturing cost and this will be deducted from the total sale price of the book when it is sold in print. You may also want to check out the Book Pricing page which tells you how much cost is taken out of the book when someone purchases it.
If you have chosen to get an ISBN for your book, you can then choose one of the preferred options.
The next step is to upload the electronic version of your book. Simply click on browse and upload your file. Remember to ensure that your file does not have a cover page on it as this will be created later. Your upload may not be accepted by Lulu as well. Make sure it is in a format that they accept and the font the text is in is acceptable as well.
Now, the fun part – creating a cover for our book. There is a simple wizard that you can use to make the front cover and the back cover of the book. You can add images, write a blurb, change the theme or change the layout to the many different that options Lulu offer. Make sure you have a look at all the themes and layouts and choose one that you like.
Now that our book is complete and we have a front cover, it is time to give our book a description, put it in a category, give it some keywords and add a license to it. This is to ensure people can find it on the Lulu Marketplace, or other locations where it may be viewed (such as Google Books)
Since our book is ready to be published, the next step is to set a price. I have decided I want to make $10 profit from this book. If you want to offer a downloadable version of the book, make sure you select the option. When setting your price, decide between your acceptable profit margin and readership. So it may be worthwhile to have a lower price and allow more people to buy it. This can benefit you in a number of ways. Firstly, the more people that buy your book, the more publicity and exposure it receives. Secondly, people have a higher chance of buying the book at a lower price which means more sales and effectively making up the difference in price if you would have set a high price.
We are now done. All you have to do is to review your book, and to make sure that all the information is correct. Once done, click Save and Finish.
Congratulations. You have now published your first book. All you have to do is promote it and watch the royalties role in. A good way to promote something is on a blog. So if you want to learn Java Programming, why don’t you have a look at my published book on Lulu.com?
Have any of you, MakeUseOf readers published a book? Here’s your chance to share it.
Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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So when you get a new machine or you do a reformat what is the first thing you do? If you are not imaging your system, chances are you will need to install the pieces of software that enable your machine to be a tool instead of a big paper weight.
