Watch Me Self Publish #4 Author Central and CreateSpace
I wrote this last week and then forgot to post it – a bit submerged in doctors and things…also in sending out reminders to the reviewers…anyway…
What You Can Do At Author Central
OMG this is so cool!
1. Link to your blog – you just copy over your blog address and add /feed/ on the end eg https://carlabillinghurst.com/feed/ and Amazon posts your blog posts as an RSS feed
2. Add up to 8 photos
3. Create a link to the author page that you can add to everywhere, wordpress, facebook, dammit now I’ll have to re-print my business cards…mine is: amazon.com/author/carlabillinghurst
4. Add an Author Biography. Of course, they say “be interesting. tell anecdotes” and then link to Frank McCourt as an example and it’s really dull! And I think mine’s too conceptual…I might add some theatre pictures…I might not…
CreateSpace
Ooh! This is good. I decided that now I have some time on my hands – I’ve done everything that’s needed for Kindle – I’d have a look at Print On Demand. Once again, Amazon have worked to make this really easy.
1. I’m in the process of reformatting the document – they provide templates and advice.
2. They give you a free CreateSpace ISBN – it probably means that booksellers can only order copies through CreateSpace but that’s ok because I’m not printing it anywhere else.
3. Once the print version is available, my market expands. Mwah ha ha.
4. There’s an audio option too…
Some other things:
1. Tax Stuff – I re-did the Tax Interview for CreateSpace and it’s clearer now – either from repetition or because it’s been made easier since I did it last year. It’s really straightforward – just 2 screens of questions. Then I re-did it for KDP and now the tax on royalties is 5%. Wheee! So, at $2.99 I’ll make 70% royalties ($2.09) which is taxed 5% (10 cents) so I make $1.99. I don’t get any payment until the royalties add up to $100 plus Amazon deduct the cost of writing and sending the cheque (don’t seem to do EFT to Australia or Paypal). This is still better than commercial publishing and I have Total Control which I am happy with.
2. As described in the last post, I hit “submit for pre-order” without really knowing what was going to happen and I’m glad I did. Now I can see the online published version of the book details etc and tweak it. It does take a few hours for changes to register. I just noticed I’ve put the age range as 8-18. I meant 8-80.
3. And I’ve asked people if it’s ok to quote them. I’m leaving the quotes in the book details anyway; everything people said was either a public comment on a blog or part of my survey which people knew was being used for marketing. I have emailed to ask for permission to use their quotes and will take things down if people don’t want them there.
