You've finished your story, had it critiqued, and proof read it forwards and backwards. Now you want to self-publish.

If you're studying the Self-Pub Path of Mastering Word for Fiction Writers, you'll recognize most of the concepts taught in this course from the Layout & Convert to Ebook course. The Layout & Design A Print Book course goes in-depth with those concepts.

What Self-Publish Really Means

YOU are the publisher, the boss, the ultimate decision maker.

YOU decide the:

1. Cover artist
2. Formatter
3. Release date
4. Selling price
5. Distributors, e.g., CreateSpace, IngramSpark
6. Distribution, e.g., Amazon, libraries, book stores, global or local.
7. Marketing.

In short, everything that's related to your book. It's a daunting responsibility, but there's plenty of help available.

Where to Turn for Advice

There are so many websites and blogs and articles out there that you could get hopelessly confused. Some are good, some aren't. Through personal experience, I highly recommend:

The Alliance of Independent Authors, a Non-profit Association for Self-Publishing Authors. Their Watchdog service is especially valuable.

The Book Designer, Practical Advice to Build Better Books. Tons of information about book layout.

The Creative Penn... where you will find resources to help you write, publish and market your book.

Romance Writers of America. If you don't write romance, join as an associate member for access to the savviest writers on the planet. Yes, I'm a member. ;)

Your Print Book Files

Before loading to vendors, you'll need two files, an interior pdf and a cover pdf.

These files are sized to make a pair; that is a 6"x 9" interior page size will have a 6" x 9" cover. The cover will have a front, a spine, and a back to wrap the pages. The spine width is determined by how many pages are in the book. The interior is always formatted before the cover; you can't do the spine without the page count. And, no, there is no way to estimate the number of pages for your cover designer. Tried that. You MUST complete the interior before starting the cover. So build that time into your release date.

In this course, you'll finesse the Word document from where you left off and then export it to a pdf format.

PDF stands for Portable Document Format and was invented by Adobe.Learn more here.

The prerequisite for this course is Mastering Word for Fiction Writers: Write & Draft.

If you also purchased Mastering Word for Fiction Writers: Layout & Convert an Ebook do that course before this one; learning will be easier.

Support is a Comment Away

Join the private Facebook group @MasteringWord to chat with Joan and other students and get your questions answered.

You may also add a question to the comment section at the end of each lecture.