5 ways to publish a book for free
5 Awesome Sites where you can Publish your eBook for Free
One of the technological revolutions of the 21st century is most definitely the eBooks. Isn’t it?
Well, technically the story of eBooks started in the previous century in 1971 when Michael Hart of the University of Illinois started Project Guttenberg. However, it has gained worldwide appeal only recently with the proliferation of internet enabled mobile devices.
According to an article published in Huffingpost, today about a quarter of all dollar sales is in the form of eBooks.. Also, Pricewaterhouse Coopers predicts that sales of digital format of the book are expected to exceed print by the year 2018.
The eBook marketing is growing at a rapid pace as eBook publishers have lowered the barriers to entry for all budding writers.
Whether you want to promote your business, or become the next millionaire author, eBook is the perfect medium to realize your goal.
You no longer have to be at the mercy of the publishers to gain entry in the literary field by becoming an author. All you need to do is to create an eBook and know the how to publish your eBook for free online.
1. Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)
However, you can also use Calibre or Mobipocket eBook Creator to easily convert the eBook to the required format without paying any additional amount. Using the free software you can convert from a large number of formats. What’s more, the conversion software can rescale the font size of the eBook to ensure that it complies with Amazon’s specifications.Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is a publishing site that allows you to publish your eBook without paying a single penny to the publisher.
To upload the eBook to the site, you may have to convert it to Amazon’s proprietary format. The website automatically converts word (Doc), Pdf, Html, and ePub format to Kindle’s proprietary format.
When you publish the eBook, you have the option of making it exclusive to Amazon’s Kindle store for a limited time period. In this way, your eBook will be included in the Kindle Owners' Lending Library allowing you to earn a certain percentage on sales. You can read more about the KDP Select program here.
2. BookRix
3. SmashwordsBookRix is another great resource where you can publish your eBook for free. The self-publishing company will distribute your eBook to major online stores and offers you royalty payment of 70% of the sales.
Some of the online stores where the third party online publishing company can publish your eBook include Amazon Kindle, Apple iBook, Google Play, Kobo, and many others.
You won’t have to pay a single penny to publish your digital book. The contract with the publishing company is also totally risk-free as you can also cancel it anytime.
BookRix Community consists of more than half a million avid readers and authors. You can create an author profile, and promote your eBook to potential customers in the community. In addition, you won’t have to worry about converting your eBook to the format of the publisher as the third party eBook publisher offers free eBook conversion.
4. Apple eBook StoreSmashwords is one of the pioneers of eBook publishing. It boasts off a large selection of published books containing works of more than 40,000 authors. You can also publish your eBook at the site without paying any money.
Using the online resource, you will be able to quickly publish your eBook to a wide variety of online stores in no time.
Publishing your eBook at Smashwords is more of a DIY task. You have to first upload your eBook and a cover image using the ‘Metagrinder’ tool at the site. The online tool will create an eBook in the required format within just a few minutes. And that’s it.
You can sell and promote the eBook directly on the self-publishing platform. Additionally, you have the option of selling the eBook to Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble’s eBookstore, Baker & Taylor’s Bilo, Kobo, and many other major online publishing platforms. The online publisher also has made deals with third party companies such as Axis360 owned by Baker & Taylors for having the eBooks distributed to public libraries.
At the moment, Smashwords does not support publishing the eBook to Amazon’s KDP. And it’s likely that this is not going to change anytime soon. Amazon does not allow automatic upload of Smashwords titles. So, it’s best you either upload the eBook directly to KDP or use another third party publishing platform.
Apple’s iBook store and iTunes U are two free self-publishing platforms that allow you to maximize exposure of your eBook. You can find out more about the publishing online platforms by clicking here. Both the online stores have different requirements for uploading digital books.
In order to publish your eBook to iBooks Store or iTune U, you have to convert the file to either ePub or iBooks format. You can use the free conversion tools mentioned previously to convert the books. For publishing in iTunes U, the file must be saved as either an.ePub file or as an .ibooks.
If you want to publish your work as a subscription product through iBook Store, you should use the iBook format. For maximum exposure of the eBook, however, you should consider uploading the eBook as ePub, PDF, or text file to have you digital work available for free on other platforms.
You can publish your eBook to iBook Store for free through iTunes Connect. This requires you to complete an online application. Once you have successfully registered to the site, you can download iTunes producer to sell the eBook on the iBook store. You can make your digital work available at the store for free or set a specific price of the eBook.
In order to publish your eBook on iTunes U, you should create an iTunes U site. Don’t worry; it’s easy to create the site by following a few simple steps. To create the website you should just visit this site here and then follow the onscreen instructions.
Once you have published the eBook on Apple’s store, you will retain complete rights to the eBook content. However, if you distribute the eBook in the iBooks format, the digital work will be subject to certain restrictions that are mentioned in the terms of agreement.
The royalty payment offered by Apple to eBook authors is similar to one that is offered to iPad and iPhone app developers. Publisher, author, or the eBook right holder will receive 35 to 70% of the sales proceeds. To receive the royalty payment, the price of the eBook must satisfy list price requirements. One of the pricing conditions includes that the list is about 20% below the lowest price set for a physical book. Moreover, the eBook title should be made available for all places where the publisher or the author has rights.
On a final note, the effort taken to get the eBooks published is well worth it in the end. For individuals, it can serve as an additional source of income. Businesses can benefit by publishing the eBook by not only boosting their income, but also promote their products and services online.
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