Today I wanted to reveal my amazing new book cover and tell you a bit about the process of self-publishing.
This is the cover for the children’s book that I wrote. It will soon be published!!!
The title comes in two languages because the book is bilingual. I have written it in English and Spanish.
The book is about a star that loses its planets. Instead of being sad about it, the star decides to explore the galaxy to find more planets.
Self-publishing
Self-publishing isn’t as easy as it looks, even if you have a small manuscript.
Before it’s published you have to format the manuscript.
You have no idea of how many times I had to format my manuscript to get it right. It’s the first one I’m publishing so the second one it will be easier.
When I got my cover, which has been design by DC Cover Creations. Thank you David, I love the cover.
I thought, well I have my cover and my manuscript that’s it. I have finished. Wrong!
I’m self-publishing with KDP. If you have never self-published like me, there are some helpful tools with KDP university.
KDP has lots of videos and templates to help you format your manuscript. I’m glad they have all of that it is very useful. If you still don’t understand something or you are stuck, you can contact them. I have found them to be very helpful.
In the previewer that KDP has it tells you the errors you’ve made. So, when I got my cover, I launched the previewer. I had errors. I had to go back to Word and fix all my errors.
After uploading the new version, the illustrations weren’t right. They had too much blank space on the top.
I had to go back to Word to see what I had missed. I had changed the orientation of the pages, but I hadn’t checked the page size.
Always check everything!
I wrote down this checklist on my notepad to remember to check everything before uploading my manuscript.
7 Steps Checklist
1- Add page numbers (I, personally didn’t do this step. My book it’s for kids and I think the page numbers will distract them from the illustrations I made. But I will certainly put page numbers for my adult books.)
2-Indent paragraph.
3-Paragraph spacing.
4-Justify text.
5-Set page size.
6-Set margins, careful if you use bleed or not. If you are using bleed, you should leave at least 0.375 for your margin.
7-Save file as pdf (always export as pdf if you are using bleed).
There are a lot more things to format like the front matter, styles, headers and footers, chapter titles, creating a table of content, etc.
With the new page size correctly put, I decided to add a few shapes in some of the pages, moon, sun and stars. I also had to adjust the illustrations to the new page size.
I spent the whole Sunday formatting my manuscript.
Last step: pricing and royalties. That didn’t take long.
With KDP you can order a proof copy to make sure everything looks good. I’m waiting to see my proof copy before I publish.
I can’t wait!!!
So, my advice to you is that if you are self publishing:
Be patient
Take your time
Check everything before uploading the manuscript
And don’t get frustrated if you need to repeat this step a few times, it is worth it at the end.
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