As on-demand reading gains momentum, the new book author of the digital 2020s is the individual self-publisher and not necessarily a commissioned writer.
With the emergence of digital printing and print-on-demand, it is now possible for first-time authors to delay the financial risks that come with bulk printing—avoiding paper wastage, inventory/storage management and fees, as well as investment costs—at least until they know how well their book is really doing.
Credible and trademarked self-publishing that adheres to media and market laws has proven to be the way to go in the last few years, what with a plethora of indie authors having made it as self-published Amazon bestsellers across the globe.
From the runaway success of a Fifty Shades of Grey in the UK to the emergence of authors like Amish Tripathi and Ashwin Sanghi in India, the bestsellers of this millennium have been writers who initially self-published their books before becoming commissioned authors.
So if you’ve been bitten by the writer’s bug and an impatient draft of 25,000+ words sitting at the edge of your hard disk, what should you do next?
1. Create Two Print-Ready Files
Once you finish writing and getting your draft edited and proof-read, you will need to start designing your cover and paginating your book into a page-by-page layout.
Use templates from Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) app to format your cover and internal manuscript as per measurements provided. Your cover can be set using Photoshop or any photo-editing software, and you can typeset your pages on Word, InDesign, Vellum, or other standard writing software, depending on how complex the layout of your book is and what you and your editor are most comfortable with.
If you’re a photographer or illustrator, shoot or sketch your own image and set it on to the cover or hire someone talented to do so. Else, get free or purchasable stock images from online libraries such as Shutterstock or Clipart or Canva.
Choose from millions of free and paid fonts to give the right readability and visual effect to your book.
In order to go live with your book, export your cover and manuscript into two high-resolution, print-ready PDFs — one, of your cover, which should include the fully-formatted front, back, and spine design of the book, and another of your internal pagination, which should be a single file running from the first to the last page. These two print-ready PDFs can be uploaded on platforms like Amazon’s KDP, Google Books, and also shared with printing presses.
2. Get an International Standard Book Number
Once you know the title of your book, apply for an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) from isbn.gov.in and then generate and download a barcode from any barcode-generating site.
An ISBN is a unique identifier and will be traceable through catalogues around the world. ISBNs are issued by national government-approved agencies and are free in India, where they are issued by the Raja Rammohun Roy National Agency (RRRNA) for ISBNs. You can avail of as many ISBNs for your book as you want after uploading and submitting your relevant documents, but you are not allowed to re-use the same ISBN for more than one book or version or edition.
A faulty ISBN can be deleted or cancelled at any time. But once you are allotted an ISBN, you cannot change the title, language, cover format, and other aspects of your book without applying for a new ISBN for each variation. For instance, if you publish a paperback as well as a hardcover version of the same book, you will need separate ISBNs for each of them.
It takes anything between 10–30 days to receive an ISBN, so wait patiently. An ISBN is like a car’s licence plate number. Most platforms and stores won’t even accept your listing without an ISBN (or EAN code). And if you want to distribute your book through multiple platforms and maximise your reach and sales, ensure the ISBN is unique and registered in your own name and email address, not on any intermediary’s. Enter the full 13-digit or 16-digit code on the credits page inside the book and paste the correctly-sized barcode image at the bottom of your back cover (as per precise measurements provided on the online templates).
3. Tailor Your Book
The art of printing and binding a book is no less creative than designing a dress. Hire a professional book printer and select paper for the cover and inside pages. Natural shade paper is easy to read on, especially if you are publishing a novel or general non-fiction. But if you have colour images in your book, you may need white paper, so choose aptly.
Do a couple of rounds of sampling by printing trial or proof copies through a digital printing service first, in order to ensure the alignment is right everywhere and that there are no errors—in terms of colour, text, page numbering, pagination and binding quality—and especially before you plunge into a bulk-printing order on an offset machine.
Once you are satisfied and don’t need to make more corrections and improvements, get hold of the first few copies to share with people around you.
Below is a dummy list of specifications that you can define as parameters and provide to your printer (with options to select from wherever applicable):
Book size (length and width): 5x8 inches / 6x9 inches / Other
Number of pages (Printed back-to-back)
Interior design: Black & White / Full Colour / Selected Colour Pages
Binding: Paperback / Softback / Hardcover / Hardcover with Dust Jacket / Cloth-Bound Hardcover / Cloth-Bound Hardcover with Dust Jacket
Paper Options for Book Interior:
Paper thickness: 53 GSM / 60 GSM / 70 GSM / Other
Paper shade: Cream / Natural Shade / White / Off-White / Other
Texture: High-Bulk / Bulky / Low-Bulk / Art Paper / Other
Paper brand: Stora Enso / Seshasayee Paper and Boards / Holmen / Other
Paper Options for Paperback Cover (or Hardback Cover Dust Jacket):
Heaviness: 210 GSM / 230 GSM / 250 GSM / Other
Types: Art Matte / Art Paper / Gloss
Brands: Digi Art / PT Pindo / Bilt / Other
Softcover Lamination Styles: Gloss / Matte
4. Set the Market Rate Price (MRP)
Set local and international MRPs—on the basis of printing costs, platform fees, shipping fees that buyers may incur, as well as the net profit you wish to generate per copy.
Production costs will vary from country to country and printer to printer. The trick is to price your book in a way that is neither unprofitable for you nor too costly/unsaleable for each region or market. Avoid printing the MRP on your book, especially if you wish to change it later, depending on market demand, region, and fluctuating paper costs. Your current MRP will anyway be displayed on each online display link, and most retail/offline booksellers will write it with a light pencil on the first page.
Calculate your production cost and royalty profits with the help of the following formula on a per-copy basis:
Net Profit = MRP minus Production Cost minus Distributor’s Fee
or MRP = Production Cost + Distributor’s Fee + Net Profit
5. Start cataloging and selling
The idea is to get your book up on as many platforms as possible in order to create maximum visibility and discoverability. Great books that go out of stock on popular stores can get wiped from public memory, so ensure you stock and distribute economically, strategically, and smartly.
On Kindle Direct Publishing for International Sales:
Sign in to kdp.amazon.com and upload your print-ready PDFs, your bank account details, and follow the guidelines and instructions. Your book will become available on print-on-demand basis in the US, UK, Canada, Europe, Australia and Japan within 2 or 3 days, once it is approved by KDP.
Tick “Expanded Distribution” if you want your book to become eligible for distribution in US and UK bookstores and libraries through Ingram Distribution.
Currently, KDP’s print-on-demand service is not available in many countries and ordering copies of your KDP-printed book in India via amazon.com or amazon.co.uk is possible but too expensive for local buyers.
You may however order your own author copies from KDP to be delivered at any address around the world at production and shipping costs. But you will have to list and stock locally printed copies of your book on Amazon India and Flipkart separately through its seller portals to make it available and affordable here.
On Amazon India and Flipkart for non-KDP markets:
Create accounts on seller.flipkart.com and sellercentral.amazon.in, enter your bank details, and wait for them to verify your account and listing. Follow the “Help” link on Amazon and the “Contact Seller Support” button on Flipkart to get in touch with customer care personnel for assistance on selling and receiving royalties as well as instructions and information about labelling and enveloping your book copies as well as storage and dispatching.
Book royalties are exempt from GST, but you will have to sign and upload declarations stating you will sell only GST-exempt goods such as books until you get a GST number.
Keep stock ready with you if you are shipping from a local address via the “Fulfilled by Merchant” (FBM) option—Amazon will pick up each item and deliver it to the respective buyer. Alternatively, choose “Fulfilled by Amazon” (FBA) if you want to send bulk copies to Amazon’s inventories linked to your seller account, and Amazon will store and ship each piece to the buyer from its warehouses as orders come in. You can switch between FBM and FBA as often as you wish, but the main difference between the two is that shipping fees will be levied on the buyer if you choose FBM, whereas shipping fees as well as service and inventory fees will be deducted out of your royalty if you choose FBA.
On Flipkart, inventory/storage is available only to sellers who've sold 200 units in any one region. Storage will be provided only in those specific regions. Until then, you will have to self-ship each book.
On Google Books:
Upload your book on Google Books after signing in through https://play.google.com/books/publish. You will earn 70 percent royalty on eBook sales once your account clears the check and review. You can generate limited previews on Google Books and direct traffic to your Amazon or Flipkart paperback link.
Cataloging your book on Google Books (whether or not you sell it as an eBook) has multiple advantages, including how every word will be searchable and crawled by search engines, thus creating maximum discover-ability and transparency, especially if you utilise effective search engine optimisation (SEO) mechanisms while writing. It will also safeguard you from copyright violations and protect your work from plagiarisation under IPR laws, given how most anti-plagiarisation applications will detect any content theft anywhere that your work may become subject to.
At Retail and Offline Stores:
Finally, you can approach booksellers and distributors in Delhi or elsewhere to make your book available at bookstores. They will sell your book at the MRP set by you and pay you the balance after deducting commission (usually 55-60 percent) on each copy, on the condition that you will receive payments every four–five months and that all unsold books be returned to you.
Many of these offline/retail bookstores may also list your book at varying market prices through their own local seller accounts online on amazon.in and flipkart.com over and above displaying and selling physical copies of your book at their local shops.
So, if you don't want to go through the trouble of managing your own seller account on Amazon India or Flipkart, and if you want to skip handling online shipping, inventory and dispatch, you can simply leave it to them (as long as you can ensure that the metadata in their online catalogue remains accurate and does not infringe on your intellectual property rights).
You can also approach small bookstores in the US, UK, or other KDP and non-KDP markets where you can get your KDP-printed copies delivered at production and shipping costs.
6. Assert your copyright
Formally applying for copyright is not mandatory unless your work is under a legal dispute. This is because, as per the law and the copyright website, “acquisition of copyright is automatic and […] comes into existence as soon as a work is created.”
Infringements of your work as well as faulty catalogue details about your book can be pulled down instantly through a simple email to the offender and the cybercrime cell by quoting the global Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a 1998 US law that was implemented in India in 2018.
Visit dmca.com for information on how to issue a takedown. The Indian government’s copyright.gov.in department, however, continues to enforce the 1957 Copyright Act which serves as a formal record for the work.
7. Survey the market
The book publishing industry consists of authors, editors, illustrators, photographers, designers, journalists, reviewers, public relations and marketing consultants, author coaches, printers, suppliers, bookstore owners as well as literary festival directors. Do your research and network properly to reach your audience.
Testimonials
“In self-publishing, the writer has full authority but does everything herself. In commissioned publishing, the writer hands over the manuscript and everything else (from editing to proofreading to marketing) is done by the publishing house. The disadvantage is that commissioned writers earn very less, only around 8% of the sales.”
—Kavitha Yarlagadda, author of “Profound Thoughts: Poignant Poetry” and “When You Can Why Not? Insightful Short Stories”.
“There are way too many books coming in every day. We don’t have space to stock them all. But we are definitely interested in new voices and in self-published authors, and we try to select the best ones for our stores.”
—Mithilesh Singh, Manager, Bahrison’s Bookstore, Khan Market, Delhi.
“Our consultation fee is around ₹21,000. We help authors create seller accounts on Amazon and take them through the process of self-publishing through online tutorials and even manage stocks for them at an additional fee of ₹7,500 a year.”
—Vineet Gera, Hyderabad-Based Author Coach.
“We currently provide print-on-demand services to authors offline, but we are looking at how we can do so digitally and on e-commerce sites too.”
—Ajay Kumar, Manager - Operations & Sales (Digital Business),
Thomson Press, Delhi.
“With so many titles releasing every month, discover-ability and availability are keys to making it successful.”
—Preeti Chaturvedi, Founder and CEO, The Sunflower Seeds, a Gurgaon-based literary and brand consulting company.
“Today’s youth is really tech-savvy, especially with digital marketing. They know how to get the followers and eyeballs on Insta. I don’t think the name of a big publishing house would be as important to teens today as becoming a bestseller would. Earning royalty and becoming financially independent as young authors can also be an added incentive.”
—Palka Grover, President of the New Delhi Social Workers Association & Advisor at the Delhi Literature Festival
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