Do you have a Kindle book that is NOT available as a print book? If so, this episode is for you. I encourage you to join our Kindle to Print Challenge in Author Audience Academy.
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In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
- How to prepare to publish your Kindle book in print
- What you will need to have in place
- My four step process
- And more!
Enjoy the podcast! It’s my hope that these episodes are bringing you one step closer to reaching more people with your message.
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Godly Gain Segment:
Each week, I share a Godly Gain segment for entrepreneurs who want to keep Christ at the center of their business.
Today’s scripture: “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.” Revelation 12:11 (NKJV)
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You ROCK! I appreciate everyone of my podcast listeners. If you have a specific question for me, submit it here: www.shelleyhitz.com/ask
“Even the weakest light can hold back the darkness.” – Unknown
It’s time to let your light SHINE!
Can’t listen right now? Read the transcript below:
Today I’m rolling out the red carpet and inviting you to join me as I share all about the Kindle to Print challenge. Now, this came about because my members in Author Audience Academy often will publish Kindle books first, because that’s what I recommend. It tends to be an easier process, it’s more inexpensive, it’s just easier to learn. Then, there’s this interest, this need, this desire, to print an actual print book. So, I decided that this month our Take Action Workshop is going to be just this, the Kindle to Print challenge. I’d love for you to join us at AuthorAudienceAcademy.com, you’ll be able to get access to this training at any point that you join, but I believe you have a God given message to share with the world. The question is, are you ready to shine?
So it’s time for this week’s Center Stage Spotlight Training, this is where I share training and strategies to help you grown your business or ministry through writing and publishing books, marketing online, and creating products and services to sell on the back end. This is going to be all about books, because we’re going to be talking about taking a Kindle book that you already have and transforming it into a print book. So, then you’re going to have another version, another product, another way to reach your target audience with your message, and print books just open up so much for you. I know this is going to bring you one step closer to getting your message to more people, so be prepared to shine.
I’m going to take you through the steps of what I do. I’ve done this many, many times where I’ve first published a book as a Kindle book and decide that this book is selling well, that it would be a good book to have in print, and then I will later publish it in print. The very first thing I want you to think about is gathering what you already have. So, I’m assuming you already have a book published on Kindle; if not listen to the first five episodes of this podcast, it contains my training Procrastination to Publication and it will take you through the steps of publishing that Kindle book.
So, once you have that book published I want you to gather what you already have, and I love to organize my book folders in Dropbox in a way that helps me find things quickly and easily. What I normally do is, I normally create a folder for that book, and then I have a folder for the book interior file and a folder for the book cover. Then, I will have different folders for print and Kindle. That’s the way I organize it, you can organize it in the way that works best for you, but I recommend having a filing system. That way it’s going to be much easier for you to keep track of everything as you have more, different, formats. Maybe you decide to do an audio book next, then you can have another folder inside that book folder for audio book. Make sure you gather everything you have and organize the folder, if at all possible, in a way that makes sense for you.
You want to gather your book file, your original book file from Kindle, your book cover, and I also recommend that you have a document, either a text document, word document, something like that, where you have your book description, categories you used in Kindle, and your keywords. You’re going to be able to reuse the same description, and you may be able to even choose similar categories, so that will help you, and use similar keywords. So those are things that you’ve already done, you’ve already researched, you’ve already done it, and so I recommend just gathering those things and having them available.
What will you need to then transform your Kindle book into a print book? First of all, you’ll need to have the interior formatted for print. I recommend that you use a template, I use Book Design Templates, and you can find them at shelleyhitz.com/booktemplates. I love their templates because they just make everything look more professional, and yet it’s a very affordable way to get your book into print. You will also need a book cover for print that includes the back cover with a spine. You’ll also need an ISBN. Those are some of the things that you will need.
So step one is, I recommend you get your ISBN. If you’re using Create Space you’ll just be setting up a book in Create Space and I walk you through the step by step how to do this in AuthorAudienceAcademy.com in our Kindle to Print challenge. Basically you’ll start a new book project, and you’ll have an opportunity then to decide what type of ISBN you’ll want. I do not recommend that you use the Create Space free ISBN. I recommend at the very least purchasing the $10 ISBN and using your own publishing company name. Now, I’ve covered this in other episodes in the past, so I’m not going to go into detail about this, but one of the things you want to consider is possibly getting a universal ISBN. You can do so much more with the universal ISBN; it will give you a lot more opportunities with book stores, with other publishing opportunities. If you use the $10 Create Space ISBN, then you are limited to only using that on Create Space. So, you want to make sure you know what your options are with ISBN, and make that decision step one.
Step two is to then get the interior formatted for print. You need to decide on the size. Now six inches by nine inches is a very common size that you can use; also, eight and a half by five and a half inches. So, you just need to decide, “what size do I want?” You don’t need to use a traditional size, you can do all kinds of different sizes. You can have a designer do something custom for you. But if you’re using a template like you’ll find at shelleyhitz.com/booktemplates, you can go through their different templates, you can see what style you’d like for the interior, and then make sure you choose the size you want. That’s going to be very important for also getting your book cover designed. You can also hired someone to do this for you, you can find people very inexpensively in multiple places, but we give a lot of different recommendations for this in AuthorAudienceAcademy.com; we share the exact people we use, and you’ll get a lot of other information there.
Step three is now to format your cover for print. This is where you’ll need to know what size your interior is. So, if you chose six by nine, or eight and a half by five and a half, then that will also translate to the size of your cover. Create Space has a book cover calculator, so you can actually put in the number of pages you have and it will actually give you a little template that you can download and be able to use that, or send that to your designer so that they can use it. However, you need to know the number of pages in order to really get the book cover designed correctly with the spine. If you don’t know the number of pages, then you’re not going to be able to tell the book cover designer what size to make the spine, and that’s a very important part of your print book. So, you really do need to make sure that you have the book formatted, the interior first, so that you know how many pages it’s going to be, and then you’ll give the number of pages and the size based on your interior template, or your interior design. You’ll give all of that information as well as your back cover copy to your designer.
Now, you do want to make sure you have print quality pictures. So, this is where it can get a little tricky. If you’ve had a Kindle book cover created and you had it created in the size that was good for Kindle, you know, eBooks, you may not have purchased a big enough picture. You need to have a print quality picture, so it needs to be what they call 300 dpi. I know there is a lot of details and information, but basically whatever designer you work with, they can let you know if what you currently have will work. Now, if it will I’d recommend sticking with the same kind of design.
I always recommend when you’re working with a designer, to get the original Photoshop, or in design, files for your book cover. So, hopefully you have that form your Kindle book cover, because then your designer can then take that and expand it into a print version of your book cover. If for some reason your Kindle cover and your images are not print quality it may just be a good opportunity to update your book cover throughout. So, you could have a new cover design for the print book, and then use the front cover and have it cropped down to the size that’s needed for Kindle, and you can update your Kindle cover at the same time. So, no worries, it’s all going to work out, and you may actually end up with a better book cover in the end.
I really recommend that you keep the Kindle cover and the print cover the same so that if somebody is looking at your book on Amazon, and they switch over from the print version to the Kindle version it’s not a disconnect, it’s “oh yeah, this is the same book, just a different format.” So I do recommend that you keep it the same.
Finally, step four is you will publish your files on Create Space. You can also use IngramSpark, you can also use Vervante, and there are many other companies that you can use. I personally use and recommend Create Space, it’s a very easy, reliable, quality system to use. There are a couple times that you will want to consider IngramSpark. If your main goal is to get into book stores IngramSpark is the way to go, because many of the book owners, their biggest competitor is Amazon. If they see that you’ve published through Create Space, which is an Amazon company, they won’t even consider your book. How do I know that? Because I’ve tried with Barnes and Noble. They saw I had a Create Space published book, it wasn’t even an option, they wouldn’t even consider my book.
Now, if you are also an author overseas. If you’re in the UK, or Europe somewhere, you may also want to consider IngramSpark, because you tend to be able to make more on the royalties for those sales overseas. If you’re a US author I highly recommend going with Create Space, it’s easy, simple, there’s not any upfront cost, and they work very smoothly with Amazon, and have really low costs for purchasing copies of your book on your dashboard and in your back office.
So, basically, you’ll just upload your PDF file of the interior once it is formatted and finished you’ll export it and save it as a PDF. Then, you’ll upload a PDF of your book cover that should have been given to you from your book cover designer. You’ll add your description, your keywords, your categories, all of that, and you will click publish. I do highly recommend that you get a print proof. They do offer on Create Space, where you can just proof your book online, they give you a PDF and then also an online way to proof it, but I just really recommend taking a little bit of extra time and investing a little bit in the proof copy. You can use the proof copy as a giveaway, as something that you use later for a reviewer, you can give it to a reviewer. There is just something amazing about holding that print book in your hands. So, so amazing.
So, I’m going to take you step by step through every single part of this process, I’m going to be coaching you, answering all your questions, and we are going to take you through this Kindle to Print challenge. Are you in? Are you ready to do this? If so I recommend that you join us at AuthorAudienceAcademy.com, and if you join as a result of this podcast episode, just email me at Shelley@shelleyhitz.com and I have a special bonus for you. I will actually send you a coupon to one of these Book Design Templates that you can use to format your book, a $57 value, I will give that to you as a bonus for joining AuthorAudienceAcademy.com as a result of this podcast. So, just email me, let me know you heard this on the podcast, and I’d love to send you that extra bonus.
What I want to do is just recap. First you’ll need to gather everything you already have from your Kindle book, and step one is to get your ISBN. Step two is to format your interior for print. Step three is to format the cover for print. Step four is to publish on Create Space, or you can also use companies like IngramSpark or Vervante.
I also encourage you to get all the show notes and the resources from today’s episode at AuthorAudience.com/39. That way you have all this information, and you will be able to have it as a resource for now or for later.
Lights, camera, action, are you ready for this week’s Take Action Tip? If you are ready to get your book into print, I encourage you to go right now and gather everything you have, create a filing system that makes sense, and gather all your files so that you can take that next step. I encourage you to join us at AuthorAudienceAcademy.com for our Kindle to Print challenge. I am so excited to work with you and to help you give birth to a print book that you can hold in your hands, that you can do so much with. There are so many opportunities that having a print book opens up for you.
Before we end I want to give you a backstage pass in this week’s Godly Gain Segment, which is all about keeping Christ at the center of all we do. In the end it’s not about us, it’s all about him. Sometimes, when I talk about all these details and the different steps for publishing, sometimes it may want to overwhelm you. I want to tell you, it is a system, there is a process, and I would love to work with you, step by step, give you all the resources, give you all the things you need, show you step by step how to do this. One of the things that I believe God really impressed upon my heart the very first time I published a print book, this was in 2008, is the verse from Revelations 12:11, “And they overcame him” Satan, our enemy, “by the blood of the Lamb,” which is Jesus, “and by the word of their testimony”.
This is powerful, we overcome our enemy by the word of our testimony. Many times many of you are sharing your testimonies in your books, you’re sharing your stories, you’re sharing what God has done in your life, you’re sharing something in a way that is able to have an eternal impact. This is powerful, because it helps us, and God can use it to overcome the enemy. Obviously it’s through the blood of Jesus, it’s through his sacrifice, what he has done for us, but we have such an amazing opportunity to also share our testimony, not only in Kindle format, but in print! Print books can get passed around, there are so many ways that God can use a print book. So, if you don’t have your book in print yet, I highly recommend it, because God can use it in ways that you don’t even know is yet possible.
It’s my hope, and my goal, that these episodes are bringing you one step closer to being able to shine and reach more people with your message. I am so excited to hear the print books that are birthed out of this Kindle to Print challenge. Let me know if you take action on this episode, and I’d love to be able to see what you’ve done and the print books you’ve published, but also be able to cheer you on.
I encourage you to download a free copy of my book, “Self Publishing Books 101” it goes into detail and has tons and tons of resources about publishing, not only print books, but Kindle books and audio books. You can get that book for free at authoraudience.com/selfpublishing. If you have enjoyed this episode would you take just 30 seconds to rate and review this podcast on iTunes? This is kind of a way that you can leave me a tip, if you have enjoyed the training. It’s also a way that we can reach more people, and help others be able to get their message to more people. So, it means the world to me, thank you so much if you’ve already posted a rating and review, but if you haven’t, just take 30 seconds and leave that rating and review in my virtual tip jar. I will see you next time.
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