How to Self Publish Your Novel as a Hard Copy: KDP and Create Space

Ready to get your book published? Yeah?! Me too! Well I have thought for the last two years, “When I am ready to self-publish I will do Kindle publishing and also get my book purchase to print published through Create Space. Well, did you know that Amazon recently bought Create Space? No? Neither did I.

When I found this out, I sincerely thought it was going to be an easy process to get my book moving through one company. How hard could it be? Well, it’s proving to be a little less “piece of cake” and more like “piece of dry angel food cake without the strawberries and cool-whip”. That isn’t to say that KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) and Create Space aren’t amazing in what they have set up for authors, it’s more that it’s just ONE MORE THING that we as self publishers need to figure out.

First things first, you really need to decide what size book you want your published copy to be. And I mean REALLY need to do research. There are so many different sizes and types of formatting that this is incredibly crucial. I was in the mindset of, “Let’s wing it!” This was a bad idea. When asked about what size my book would be when in the process of trying to create my book cover, I thought, does it matter? Yes, YES IT DOES!!

The most important thing about getting your book published IS the size of the book. The feel of it in the readers hands and what is comfortable is something that you shouldn’t be careless about. I talked with a couple of my published friends and most of them have said they wished they had a slightly different size of book. I landed on the size 5.5 X 8.5 so we will see how that works out for Praetorian Rising.

Next, in working through your publishing process, you need to set up the formatting of your published book. Maybe I was a bit too naive, but literally, in downloading a template from KDP, I realized everything was all in Microsoft Word. How simple! They have the Title page, acknowledgments, the dedication, chapters, headers, and footers, and Table of Contents all prepped for you. All in all, even though it’s bloody time consuming, everything is laid out in a very simple way for you to format your book on your own.

I am currently in the process of working through this formatting and next I will be prepping it for KDP to ensure I have the work done prior to my publication date.

Next on the list….get my book cover completed. I am dreading this part to be honest. I have now gone through three artists and am on my fourth. Not sure if this is me being too picky, but I feel like I just haven’t found someone willing to put in the work to get the look I want. More than anything, I hear published authors saying, “Don’t make your own cover, let the professionals do it for you!” I don’t disagree with them, but I am close to my wits end and also far too close to my deadline. This is the last one, and then once again if I am forced to I will take this stead in my own hands in the direction I need it to go.

Wish me luck peeps, the adventures of Self Publishing continues!