The 6 Steps to E-Publishing by Ally Nathaniel Book Review (Tomoson)

This book contains Amazon Affiliate Links and Images.




I read The 6 Steps Plan to e-Publishing: How To Publish in Kindle Format and Market Your Kindle Books with Amazon (The Ultimate e-Publishing Guide Book 1), in exchange for honest review from Tomoson.

I wanted to read the books because I have written nine books, but I lacked a plan.

Publishing a book is harder than it looks. You have to write the book, design covers (or hire someone), upload the books to CreateSpace or Lulu or Smashwords, whatever platform you desire.

With Amazon, whether CreateSpace or Kindle, even Smashwords, you have to format the book. You have to hyperlink chapters, if you want readers to jump from section to section. You have to have a title page, especially for Smashwords. You may have to hire an illustrator. You have to select keywords and genres to list the book in on Amazon, for example.

Or Maybe you want an audio book and Amazon's ACX (Audible) program takes more work than publishing all of my books in print and Kindle format. You have to decide if you want to narrate or hire a narrator. You have to decide how to split the royalties, such as 50/50 versus a different split.

You have to consider pricing (or be like me and choose the minimum price). I know from experience, changing a price on Kindle takes 24 hours or more to approve. You have to promote and market.

Ally Nathaniel lays out the basic steps to write the book. She discusses editing, which includes spelling, grammar, and punctuation. She also talks about research. Research background. Research your audience. You also need to analyze the market. Look for similar books in genre and topic to see what people are reading.

You also, like I said need to write the book and choose which format to write it in (paperback, hardback, audio, kindle). There are different formatting requirements for each type. I also recommend BACKING UP your work. When I first started writing Never Argue (2012 edition), I lost part of my work because I did not save it somewhere else, other than the pc. Now, I save all drafts on Google Docs. I have a copy on my external hard drive. I emailed my self a copy of the upcoming version. I don't want to lose my hard work and you don't either.

Next, Nathaniel discussed finding an illustrator.  I had a friend design one cover, while I designed the rest. I could not afford an illustrator. I had ideas for covers but some people was not feeling my vision. So I used publisher to create my covers. I also used Amazon's cover editor. I would love to one day redo the covers on all the other books. Maybe I can barter blogging services.

Finally, you need to upload the book, like I said, to Amazon, for example. Amazon and Smashwords have a system, where it will not publish your book until you fix any errors found. I also thought of for Kindle, you have to choose whether your book is enrolled in KDP Select, which has the book exclusive to Amazon. With KDP select, you get 5 free days on Amazon per quarter. You will get plenty of downloads (thanks to freebie book websites) but not a lot of reviews. If your book is found somewhere else online, Amazon will remove your book from KDP Select (this happened to me because I forgot I put the book on Smashwords).

and Don't forget to create your author profiles (my profile) on whatever site you upload your books to. Link your social media in the book and on your profiles. Add your blogs (if applicable) RSS feed, which Amazon does. You have to manually add your books so people can view your books and social media feeds from one page. Make sure to add a photo.

Nathaniel also recommends creating a trailer (which I have never done).

and before I leave this post, create your table of contents as you go along. What I have done is to create a TOC using Word's TOC tool. Use Heading 1s for chapter titles and heading 2s for subtitles and so forth. When you book is done, just hit update the entire table and viola, instant TOC and a hyperlinked book for E-books.

You can purchase her book on Amazon in Kindle format only.


I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.