How to Publish Low and No Content Books like Journals, Sketchbooks and Workbooks

1. Skillshare LowContentIntro FINAL: Hi, I'm Ronnie Walter. I'm an artist, a writer and also a business coach for creatives. And I love teaching artists new things. I discovered self publishing a few years ago when I published my first book called License to Draw Ah, Book about how to make money with your art. Since then, I've published over 14 books, including journals. I Got It, sketchbook, coloring books and also a mystery novel because I figured, Why not? Let's write a mystery novel and publish it. But today I want to talk to you about publishing low and no content books and what I mean by that. Our books like journals, workbooks, sometimes coloring books, guided sketchbooks and all the kinds of books that don't require a ton of text but are really useful for any number of ways in your business or just for fun. I'm going to talk to you about why you might want to publish your book, what kinds of books you can publish and also how to publish them the various ways you can publish them. So I'm really excited to help you do this. The project, of course, is for you to publish your own low or no content book. I will walk you through everything. It's not that scary and I can't wait to get started. So let's just do that. Thank you. 2. Watch this Annoucement!: Hey, I have a quick announcement for you. Since I first published this class, create space has been merged into Amazon's other publishing platform, which is called KDP or Kindle. Direct publishing, in other words, creates based no longer exists. Now I think the name Kindle Direct Publishing, or KDP, is very confusing because we've always associated kindle with E books and create space with print books. But they're all the same now. KDP is the print book and e book arm off Amazon, and that is the method in which I have published all my self published books. Since I published this class, that change has been made. I have re edited this class to reflect that change. It's not scary. In fact, I have found that the KDP platform is actually easier to negotiate and manage, then create space waas. So that is a good thing. And if indeed you have published a book for Creates Base, you would have gotten a notice to transfer it over to KDP, and for me, with my 18 or so books, it was a very seamless transition. So don't be afraid. It'll be fine, and I hope that I've caught all the instances were, I say creates base in this class and turned it into KDP so on with the class. 3. Lesson 1 Why Publish a Low or No Content Book?: So the first question to ask is, Why would you publish a low or no content book? Well, if you spent more than five minutes in a coffee shop, you've seen people using low and no content books. But they're only no content until the user makes it their very own, whether by filling it full of sketches, pouring out their hearts at the end of the day or making notes for their epic novel. Or they're just reading a grocery list. And despite the use of note taking APS on smartphones, many people love having an actual book that documents their thoughts and feelings. And some of us creative types even love the sound it makes when pencil or pen meets paper and you can't get that from a nap. And these kinds of books can be great for your business. Let's explore that a bit. One of the reasons why you might want to publish a low or no content book as an additional item to sell whether you're an artist or a crafter and you possibly have an Etsy shop, you could put it in your empty shop as another item that you can ship to your customers. You could use it as a companion piece at, say, an art or craft fitter. It's just a fun little item that people can afford, and you can sell a lot of those as opposed to your $1500 painting. It's a really great way to complement other things that you are doing. You can also sell it on your website if you have a online shop. And sometimes the low or no content book can be used because of something else that you are doing. If you're teaching a class, it's great to have a workbook for people to follow along, or just a note taking item that they could have. It's a nice little give away If you're teaching a class, it can also be used as a journal or workbook for a larger book that you have written and published. So it again it's an additional item that you can sell along with your other book, and they can use that it's very functional to help them understand the material in your bigger book. You can also use your book as maybe a promotional item, a giveaway or a premium if they buy something out of your shop. Do they get a free journal? Something like that. It can be used as an expanded business card. I have done this myself. They are relatively inexpensive, not as cheap is a business card, but for key clients or someone who you really want them to remember who you are. You just hand them one of your cute little journals. And what a great way to remember who you are. More cool reasons to publish your book is to expand your brand. You have just become, if not on offer, you have become a publisher. There's another way of looking at who you are in what you do is a business, and it's a great way to practice for a bigger book concept. It's a way to really learn the process of how to do this, so that if you do want to write a book, it will be the same process to publish a 300 page novel as it is to publish a 75 page journal. Except there's a lot more writing in the epic novel, and the last reason to do this which to me is good enough is because it's really fun Teoh have a little book that you made that you're writing in it and you can give it a gifts, and it's just fun to have around, and it's just a really great, very inexpensive way to have a really fun product. 4. Lesson 2 What Kinds of Books To Publish: So let's talk about what kind of books you can publish. So here's a list of books you can publish. There's a lot of them. This list is intended to show you all the options that you might have to develop a book for yourself like lines, journals, illustrated journals, guided journals, sketchbooks, simple how to books, workbooks, activity, books and coloring books, notebooks for lectures or speeches and planners and calendars. You might have other ideas, and I totally encourage that. Let me go through some examples of some of the books that I have done. This is an example of an illustrated journal. This is what I mean, as I mentioned, I have done how 17 coloring books and I end up with a lot of artwork. So I put together a couple of small illustrated journals, two versions of this, that I took some of my artwork and put it on the pages with just simple lines for people to use as a journal. They can also color it. These are small books there, about five by eight and there on Amazon, and I sell a couple of these every single day, and they have been on the market for several years. There really a nice little They're just a nice little moneymaker, actually. And one of the simplest low content books you can make are lined journals. Super simple. You can change out the covers. You could have 20 of these on Amazon if you wanted to, and you can use the same interior. So I just have simple lines. And I have used several different covers thes air, really super fun for me to do. And so I want to just continue to come out with lying journals. Plus, I really like using them. This is a little book that I did. It's smaller than the other ones. It's about six inches by six inches, so it's very cute. I wanted to do a promotional journal that I could give as a business card or as a premium to my customers. On the Left page is a really sweet illustration and an uplifting, inspirational saying, and then on the right hand page is just a place to write your thought. This is a book that I would consider a hybrid book, because in this book I wanted to write a book about how to generate ideas how toe work through creative blocks, which is why it's called Conquer Your Blank Page. And I think the first almost 30 pages is text where I'm talking about those concepts and how I get myself out of creative blocks. But the majority of the book, it's a guy that sketchbook there are prompts their little inspirational quotes. And then I've divided some of the pages. So it really is a hybrid between text and a low content book. But it's a great example of how you could do a workbook where you could have the 1st 10 pages explaining your concept, explaining what the book is about and then place for people to write. It's a really great kind of product if you're a teacher or a writer to help people understand your concepts, and this sample shows the planner that I designed. It's called The Next Planner, and it is specifically designed for creative people, and I designed it mostly for myself, is a good example of how you can do one interior. And once I had the format of the book down, then I just repeat those pages over and over. It's a six month planner but most of the pages are repeated for every week within the planner, but I decided to offer my customers multiple covers so they could choose which one feels more like them. And as time goes on, if I wanted to add new covers with same interiors, I could certainly do that. So there's a lot of flexibility as you start to design some of the products that you will publish. 5. Lesson 3 Examples of Low Content Books: Hi. I just wanted to take a moment to show you some of the actual books that I have published. I talked a little bit about this one called Cup of Cute. And this is a very small little book. This is the one I sell several copies of every single day over the course of the last several years. And this is a book that is really a coloring journal. So it has really simple dotted line pages with places, small things to color. So this is a really cute little idea T to use some of your line art as well as making it a cute little journal. I also want to show you in this one I mentioned in the class about when you're planning your pages, sometimes you want to have a note. So in this one, this is a note from Iranian. I'm telling them, you know, welcome to the book. Enjoy this book. This is who what I'm about. Here's my website and also kind of what materials to use on these kinds of pages like, Don't you sharpies on. And if you do put a slip sheet in between, you want to know that anyway, so this is an idea of that. So that's the cup of cute. And its companion book is called Cup of Calm. And that's the same idea is just more every day he designs uplifting sayings, things like that. So again, this is just a really sweet little book that I sell all the time and is a great companion book to my bigger coloring books. Okay, this is like super easy. This is the one I show in the class. That's when I said so. It's just I mean, talk about a simple, low content book. This is simply a line journal, and this one's a little thicker, and I put this cute binding on it. I have my branding on the back, so this is just a really sweet little book. I use these all the time, and this is six by nine. And then I did one in a seven by 10. I have many thoughts because I have many thoughts. Eso this again simple. I'd made this more like a dot journal or people could use it as a bullet journal and very simple, simple, simple I could have done. This is lines, but I like the dots because I love grids and dots. So again, this is seven by 10 and it has my branding on the back. Easy, easy. This is an example of a planner, This planner I did. It's called the next planner for the creative and active mind, and I would call this. I mean, this took a lot of time and thought and development because I'm really concerned about everyone getting their projects done. So I really built this for artists, but it really I would call it a low content because once they get their content done, many, many, many of the pages repeat. So it's not like I've written an entire book on time management, which is in my wheelhouse, but not right now. So any way you can do a planner that is simply pages and pages of grids that someone could start planning their life from. And the cool thing about this is I did it with three different covers. So depending on your mood, depending when you you know, summer morph Emmys lens a little more masculine, so you can do the same interior. So I did the same interior of this book in three different with three different covers. So that's a cool thing to dio this book. I would call a hybrid book because it is. Yes, it's a low content book would have about the first 20 pages because it's about conquering your blank page. It's about learning how to develop ideas, and it's, ah, prompts and all kinds of things to help you generate more and more ideas as a creative person. So the first chunk of it is about that and teaching people to do that. But then the rest of the book, I divided the pages in different ways so that somewhere grids, I added a quote. Everyone smile. But this is what I mean when you have to have something on your page, you could do something as simple. It's just a line around the edge, and these were all hand drawn lines, because that's what I do. And so, you know, I broke up some of the pages so a person could draw some patterns inside there. So that's what I mean. When I talk about a little or no content book, it could have as much content as this, or it could be just lines like the simple line journals. So I hope that helps you visualize what your project could look like. So back to the lessons. 6. Lesson 4 Publishing Options: Now let's talk about the various options you have for publishing your low or no content book. One option is to make handmade books, so, for instance, you could staple them. He could have folded paper and stapled. You could take them to an office center and have them spiral bounder coil bound. You could do a hand binding that is very time honored and traditional. A second way that you could publish your books is through a traditional publisher, And that means you would have your designs, concept, ID and position so that you can present them to a traditional publisher, a traditional publisher, meaning someone would manufacture them and probably give you a royalty on the other side. Or the third option, which to me is the one that I have chosen and you convey, be up and running in the shortest amount of time is print on demand, and that would include places like creates base or other print on demand companies that will do exactly as they say. You will send them the artwork, and they will print them on demand, meaning when someone orders what So those air basically the three ways that you could publish your own books. So let's look at the pros and cones of each of these methods. If you decided to a handmade book, the pro off, that is, you could have a really equality artisan product. You could use imaginative bindings and different paper selection. It would be probably the most creative option at your fingertips. The cons are it is very labor intensive. You have to do all of the manufacturing yourself. It will probably end up being fairly expensive for your customer. Depending on how you do it, you have to be conscious of your expenses to make sure that you are making a profit on that kind of a product. And then the third Khan is distribution. You have to be able to get them into the hands of your customer. And whether you do that through craft shows and art shows or online stores like etc or something on your own website, you have to make sure that you are able to get them into the hands of your customers, which is difficult at times, and distribution can really be the thing that can determine whether or not you're going to make money or not. And here are the pros and cons of working with a traditional publisher. Now, if you go with the traditional publisher, more than likely their quality is going to be better than what you can do yourself or using a print on demand company. Because they will have lots of binding and paper options, they might have spiral binding. They might have an elastic band that goes around ribbon bookmarks, all kinds of interesting covers with die cuts and all kinds of really great processes that you do not have access to as a self publisher. They also will have some sort of distribution system already set up there, probably in retail. They would be in Barnes and Noble and target in places like that, and you would get a fair amount of exposure by being in those kinds of markets. The concert traditional publishing, of course, are there's a lot of front and work on your part for pitching your ideas, getting them in front of the right People waiting for people toe make the decision and finding the right publisher. That is a long time to get a deal, and it's a lot of effort on your part to secure that deal. And once you do get a deal, there is a long schedule from the time that you sign that contract to when your book might get to market. So that could be six months to a year until you might see royalties on the other side, your profit goes. It could be a relatively small royalty percentage on the other side. It might be worth it because of their distribution, but you don't know that going in. And like I said, it could be six months to a year after you secure that contract. Before you know how much money you're going to make. It's not an impossible thing. People do it all the time, But just know that those are the pros and cons of being your low or no content book in print. This is one way to G O, but it's not the only way to go. And now the pros and cons of print on demand. The pro, of course, is you're able to get your product on the market very quickly once you know what you're doing. With the print on demand companies, you can theoretically have a product on the market within a week or a couple of weeks, depending on how proficient you are at design and understanding, how to upload things and all of the things that it takes that we will go over in more detail. But you can get to market fairly quickly. They're relatively easy to produce, particularly if you have design skills or access to design skills. They are fairly easy to produce, like I showed you in the samples and earlier in the class. You know, once you get the hang of it, you can continually put out new product because you've Do you understand how to do it? And also, if you're going with a print on demand, particularly with create space, which is where we're going to go into some deep detail in the next lesson, your royalties are higher per unit. So, for instance, with a traditional publisher, if you're getting a royalty with the traditional publisher, it might be around 10% royalty of the wholesale price. But if print on demand, particularly with create space, your royalty can be as high as 70% of that retail price, so you can see how you can make more per unit with print on demand. But again, it's a distribution issue. Which brings us to the cons. With a company like Create space or other print on demand companies. You are very limited on the kinds of paper you can use and how it's bound almost all of the print on demand books or a soft cover with what they call a perfect binding. It's It's just a just a folded book. It has a spine, depending on how thick your book is, but it's really a folded book. You don't get a lot of fancy options like elastic rap or ribbon or lock or anything like that. That just is not on the table. And, of course, the con to doing it yourself is your distribution. Distribution is always an issue. You always have to remember that. Yes, you can do this, but how are you going to get it into your hands to your customers in a big enough way that you can make money on it if that is your intent, So distribution needs to be something that you think about. But if you already have a built in audience, say you are an author and you want to provide a workbook that goes with your book like we talked about earlier, Or say you decide to do a little companion journal to your popular comics that you've been posting on Instagram. You already know who your market issue already know who to talk to. You already know who to show those two. So distribution is the part that a lot of people forget. Yes, you can make a book, but you gotta sell it to somebody and you got to get it distributed to those customers. So you have to think about that when you're evaluating which direction you might want to go in your production and one final thought about deciding which direction you're going to go in as far as your low and no content books is no matter which way you go, marketing will be primarily your responsibility. Even if you go with the traditional publisher, yes, they'll promote them up to a point. But the expectation will be that you need to be pushing these out in front of your clients . You want to get the news out to your friends and family that they're out there and they are wonderful and all of those things, and it will be your responsibility to promote them as much as possible. And that will maximize your sales. And we will talk about marketing later on in the class in little more detail. Just know that that's always going to be your job. Pretty much any time you're in business, marketing is always your job. That's just a little bonus tip, so I will talk to you in the next lesson. 7. Lesson 5 A Book by Next Week: Okay, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking Ronnie. Really a book by next week. Well, I'm just going to tell you it's possible. It would be a lot of work, but you are going to get to a point in this process if you do several books that you're going to get really fast at understanding the technology and moving thes former, and it is possible to publish a book in a week. So let's go into a little more detail on that. So before you start, you wanna have a game plan, you want to have some idea of where you were heading and a plan to get there. Obviously, the first part is you are going to decide what your books purposes and whether you're going to use it for yourself and whether you're going to sell it as a product, say, on Amazon or your own website. Maybe you're teaching a class, and you would like a workbook to go along with it. It's a work book or journal that goes along with the book that you have written. Those are some of the decisions that you should make early on. You probably already know that at least in the framework of what this class is about, but have that idea in mind so that you're not floundering around later trying to figure out what this thing really is. Once you understand that to make a really basic plan and outline for your content, some journals, particularly like a guided journal, will have some sort of letter from the Creator, some sort of encouraging words. Or this is how to use this book. Or here's some suggestions. So think about whether you're going to have some sort of opening text in the book or if you're just gonna give them the book and let them do what they will with it. Go through thinking about Page one might have your legal information. Your copyright Page two might have a dedication. Page three might be blank. Page four is your letter to your user ahead of time so that when you do sit down to start pulling your design together and point where you can upload it, you have a plan in place and make a very tight to do list so you know what your steps are going to be when you need to design your cover when you're going to do your interior, all of those decisions that you're gonna make, you're gonna have to write a bio. And you're going to write a about page about the book so that you can put that on your website or when you upload it to Amazon, if that is how you're choosing to sell it. So make those marks of what things you need to get done in order to move this thing forward . And I am a firm believer in putting timelines on things working backwards. If today is February 28th which it is, and you decide you want this done by June 1st work backwards. How many weeks do you think it won't be to do your design work? How much time do you need to design your cover? Put some timelines on there so that you can get this thing done because, as we all know, particularly on personal projects, if we don't put timelines to them, they never get done. You start to lose interest or you start overthinking the process. So put some timelines on their works for me. Hopefully it'll work for you, and you're gonna have to make a few decisions, and frankly, none of these decisions air super Earth shattering. Some of them can change as you go along. You want to have a pretty clear picture of where you're going, But some of the things that you should probably look at early and I'm going to walk you through this process like we talked about before, decide what kind of book you want. I really suggest unless you have a specific need for, like, a workbook or some other companion piece to something else you're already doing, I highly suggest starting with something like a line journal. Because once you have done that, once you've walked yourself through that process, then you can publish any kind of book you want. I mean, that is great training ground. So that might be just a fun one. Just to say I'm going to go into a journal and see what happens. You will want to decide on the size. That's just gonna make life easier for you. As you start your design work, stay with standard sizes and we're gonna walk through that a little tighter as well. And frankly, one of the ways that I figure out What I want my book to look like is I walk around my house and look at the books that I have with a ruler and say, Oh, that feels right. This kind of journal or notebook, I like that size. It fits in a bag or whatever your criteria is, think about those measure. Feel them, think about the page count and just get your head around What that might look like then, you're going to design your interior pages If you are gonna have lines, how are you going to make your lines? If you are going to have a guide, A journal? Have you written all your questions and how are you going to put them in? Is it going to be hand drawn? Is it going to be typeset? Whatever you are going to dio, you're going to use a personal font. Have that decision made as you go forward. Eventually, you're going to design the cover, have that in your head about what you want your cover toe look like Sometimes journals are just pattern. Sometimes they're very highly designed on my slide, it says upload to create space. But this is where you're going to choose how you're going to publish your book. And just so you understand, I have no connection to create space. Accept the fact that it has worked really well for me to publish the books that I have published. This is not an affiliate or anything like that. I just have found their customer service is really great, unhappy with the product. And once you get the hang of it, it's very easy to published a book. So if you have decided to use create space, I'm gonna walk you through in the next lesson. The very specifics on how to do this. Not every single thing you need to do because you'll be listening to me for that for hours . And I know you don't want to do that. You want to get the information that move on and publish your book. But anyway, here's the basic starting point. If you're going to use create space, you're going to open an account with them, and that is free. You are going to determine the size, your page count and the price and royalty amount that you are going to earn. That can change later. That's not a big decision you have to make early on. But you can see how much money you can make. If you're doing that in the process, I'm going to show you in a moment and then you're going to start designing your book. And that is the fun part, that is for sure. The fun part. In the next lesson, I'm going to walk you through what the creates base platform looks like and how you can get some information easily and quickly so you can get started. 8. Lesson 6 Preparing Your Cover and Interior: in this lesson, we're going to go over how to prepare your cover using a template that super easy and your interior manuscript. So this is what a template looks like, and you can just bring this into photo shop or whatever program you are using to design your cover. It's super easy to use. It shows you everything, and the spine is based on the width of your book, which is determined by the number of pages in your book. Use the template whenever you can, because then you know you're gonna be spot on for when you upload it to KDP. This is one of my covers for one of the books that I did. It's just a simple lines journal called That's What I said. What you're seeing is if the book, as if the book were flattened out, so you see the front, the back and here's the spine. These yellow dots indicate where my spine is those air, the two folds, and those coincide with the marks that you saw on the template in the previous slide. This is my own U P C code and my barcode, so that's why that's yellow and says you PC, So that's indicating where that landed. And when you buy your own you PC, they send that to you as either a PdF or an A P. S file. That's up to you. And then you just play set in there. I have my branding on the back home. I believe you should put that on the back of your book in some way. So this is This is what the pdf looks like that I am going to upload to Katie P when I'm happy with it and it's ready to go. So now let's talk about the interior. I is in design to build my interior, but again, whatever designed program that you want to use that you could end up with a multi page document is up to you. Some people use word and they look fine. But if you have in designer anything comparable to that, you want to use that because it's just going to be easier to make your multi page document . If you are using any black and white art like I showed you earlier in the class, I did some coloring journals that had some Leinart make sure your art is a nice, solid black, because when you publish with a print on demand company like KDP, it's not offset printing. It's like a hike. Super high quality copy, basically, And so it's not gonna be that solid, solid blacks. You want to make sure that your art really is a solid as possible because there will be some graying down of that. Because if you think about it as like a really high quality copier, as opposed to offset printing, you're not going to get that super solid black. So just make sure that your blacks are black. When you're designing your book, make sure on your interior whether or not you're going to use bleed and make sure that that is accommodated for in your files and bleed is when your art or your lines just flow off the page. There's no border if you will. Usually, journals don't have bleed, but that again is a personal decision. Depending on your artwork, it's a little advanced, I would say for your first book. So yeah, maybe don't do that. And again, your final document must be a PdF. Ah, high quality. PDF. When you are using a print on demand company. Like KDP, there is no such thing as a blank page. Their equipment will read a blank page as nothing, and we'll skip that page until it comes to one with print on it. So if you decide you want to do a completely blank book, they will not accept that it has to have some line on it. Some word. Some type something black on your page in order to make a blank book. Otherwise, they'll reject your pdf because they'll think there's nothing in your book. What you should do is even if you want, like you don't want lines on your journal. You want it to be Aziz Blancas possible for that person or if they want to use it as a sketchbook, at least put a little signature. Ah, little Daisy. I mean, some sort of indicator that there is print on that book, A page number, a light, you know, a thin frame around the page, something like that. Otherwise your book will be rejected, so make sure you have you have to have something on your pages or they will not. They won't print it 9. Lesson 7 Preparing to Publish: Okay, Now we're getting somewhere. We're going to get your book started. Finally, you're thinking, Yes, You've done a ton of work so far, but we're gonna move this into where it's actually going to become a book. So so far, you have finished your interior manuscript and saved it as a high quality. Pdf, you've also finished your front and back cover, and you've saved that as a quality Pdf as well. And then you're going to go to Kindle Direct publishing, which is k d p dot amazon dot com If you don't have an Amazon account, if you do, you can just use your regular Amazon account. Or, if you don't, you can sign up here, and that will launch your platform for Kindle direct publishing. That will be your account. Make sure you have your interior manuscript, your final cover copy and you've signed up for an Amazon account. And then we're gonna go into the details on where to go from here. This is the opening page of Kindle Direct Publishing. This is my actual account. You can see my name. Veronica's account up here. Veronica. That's my real name. So you can see from this is gonna scroll these air on my book so you can see that these air once that are already published, its in journal, some coloring books. There's several things. Actually, this one is still in process. I haven't finished this cover yet, so that's in the continues set up stage. But I can go in there any time and finish that, but we're going to start a new book. And I have, um, new cover and a new journal interior. So we're gonna do this where I'm gonna walk you through this exactly the way I am putting a book together so you can just follow along and you will be doing these exact steps. When it's time for you to upload your book. Thio, Katie P or Kindle direct publishing. In this case, we're doing a paperback. Publishing a Kindle E book is very similar. You will figure that out for the sake of this class. We're going with the paperback because we're doing low content books. I'm gonna click on paperback. A new screen will come up, and this is where I'm going to start my entire book. Okay. So language for me, it's English. My book title is you? Our brave enough a journal? Here's a tip for you. I said just putting the word journal in your title because it makes it more searchable. Okay. Ah, Subtitle. I do not have one, but you might have a subtitle. Is this a Siris? In my case. No, it is not. Is there in addition number? No, it is not. And you can see that they're going to tell you. They give you a little lessons all the way along here. How do you know all the everything you need to know? They're going to tell you on here. So it's pretty simple to do this. The author, the prefix. I'm not using a prefix. My first name. My writing name is Ronnie. I have no middle name. And my last name is Walter. And you only need to put the prefects, your middle name and your Suffolk's in There is, if that's important to you when the book is published, it's not to me. Plus, I don't have a middle lane, so I'm just running. Walter. Contributor. I am the author. Um, sometimes there are other things that you might call yourself, but normally its author um And then you can add another if if it's of collaborative, but it's just me. So I'm just the author, and I'm going to remove that. Okay, so I'm the author. This is the description, and this is the little spot where you're going to put in your books description. This is what's going to appear on your Amazon detail page. So I just added a quick little description, and in the description, I'm saying you know who I am. I'm an author, illustrator in our business coach. I'm also the creator and illustrator of a series of adult coloring books. So it's telling them I have other things that they could look for and that I license my work on all kinds of products. So if they love me and love my work, they're gonna go look for other things. And then just a nice thing about what the Journal is good for. You can also use this opportunity to put in keywords without being obvious about adding key words. But that's a good place to do that publishing rights. I own the copyright, and I hold unnecessary publishing rights. Yes, I do. Its not public domain. Then I can put seven key words to describe the book, So I'm gonna put in journal. I'll put in a notebook diary. I will write in journaling, maybe dreams. Um oh, let's just have brave, because that is in the title. Okay, then you're going to go in and choose categories. So these are all your categories that are going to pop up fiction Nonfiction. I've already clicked on non fixed Someone put art in general, which is not great, but we will put that in and you can choose up to two categories, so it's a little bit weird. Some of these just don't really jive with crafting hobbies. I'm going to put in general again. Now, your journal might be about, you know, might be educational. It might be about cooking or are very specific hobby. And so you're just gonna be drill down into once that you feel are the best categories for that. Sometimes they're not great, but you'll get the point. So you're going to save that. Okay, Adult content contains language, situations. No mind does not. And I don't know what happens if you say yes. But you're on your own there, so save and continue Okay. With KDP, you have to fill all of that out in order to get to the next to start this. So you have to have those details sorted out before you start. In this case, I'm going to get a free I ESPN, which is the standard, um, book number. That is the unique number assigned to your book. And in this case now, I own a lot of my own I s B ends, but I don't use them for the journals. So I'm going to say yes, I'll take one and a sign I ESPN Now, when you do that, here is my number. So I am going to want to copy, and I'm gonna pace that just into a document, because that is the number that will always be associated with my book. So I'm gonna keep that in a safe place, because when I do my interior, I'm going to want to put that into on my copyright page. You need to have your eye ESPN number on your copyright page, which I will show you later. Okay, so that's done. Publication date. Your live on Amazon date will be used, so they're just going to say today is October 23rd here is gonna put that in there, but it will be determined based on the day you upload, which actually will be today. Now we come into the print options for most things you're probably gonna want to do a black and white interior with white paper. I have not done the cream paper because I like bright white paper. But that is up to you. If you decided to color, these are going to change. Sometimes I think that the cream paper it changes the thickness of your book. But I've just done the black and white interior of plain paper and white paper, and that will be fine for your first book. Now we go into trim size. I have chosen to go with a six by nine inch book because I like that size for a journal, but you can choose whatever you like. Here's select a different size and hear all the sizes that here's the most popular here. A standard trim sizes, and if you want, you can have your own trim size. So if you want some unique size, go ahead and give that a world. I think they will. If you get too funky, they'll reject it. But there's lots of options here, and this is where that advice I told you to go around and look at books that you already own, start to measure them and start to get the feel for them. Okay, bleeds settings. Now bleed is when your images or type bleed off the page, and you can certainly do that if you like. If that's the look that you are after, you just have to know that going in, because you have to set up the artwork in the correct way to have bleed come off in this book. In particular, I have no bleed, so that's no big deal. And then you have a choice between Matt and glossy, and it's a personal preference, and you really don't know which one you're going toe like until you actually order the book . I am not a fan of their matte finish. It feels a little slimy to me. I'm not exactly sure how to describe that, but I've always gone with glossy because it's classy. Well, that was a lot of information. I know it seems like a lot, but it's very logical. And if you run into any trouble is you're doing this, just rerun this video and we'll walk you through again. No big deal. In our next video, I'm gonna walk you through how to upload your interior, your paperback manuscript as well as your cover. So take a break. You can even get your book up to this point and then go to the upload. And I'm just gonna make sure that you have the book that you really want. That is my goal for this class, so I'll see you in the next video. 10. Lesson 8 Upload Your Book: Okay, so now you have given them all kinds of information. So the next thing you're going to do is you're actually going to upload your paper back manuscript. Okay, now, there's lots of information on here about learn more about manuscript or you can download a template for your preferred trim size. You can feel free to do that. I suggest it if you are not completely proficient in in design or some people do their books inward. All of this is very easy to understand. Just go in there and read it. So you understand. So now I'm going to upload my paperback manuscript. That is my interior. OK, I wanted to show you my in design document to show you how I laid out the pages. Now you're gonna have to figure this out on your own because this would be a giant discussion on how in design works and that's not remain to this class. That's a whole other class by someone smarter than me. But anyway, this is how I set up my interior. So I just think it's cute to have a little title page. This is when you first open the cover this is the first page. You see the title page, and I just have a little This journal belongs to in a little pattern on their inside the first spread and I have added a copyright of Ronnie Walter. I'm calling it brave enough slash journal. And then here is where I put that I ISBN number. So that that is, even though that's going to end up on the back cover of the book, it's also in the interior of the book, so those things are always linked. Okay, So, as you can see, I've just put together this whole document. In this case, it is 152 pages, ending with my last page just having my copyright and my website on there. So that's just simple. And then I'm going to save that as, ah, higher rez. Pdf because you're going to upload a pdf. Okay, so we're back to KDP, and I'm going to upload that manuscript that I just showed you in in design. So I'm gonna upload, we're gonna go to their Ah, let's see. Should have this little clean. But anyway, here is my brave enough bullet interior. KDP, That is my file. Okay, that's my interior. So it's up loading and you can see that my manuscript, Same file R W Brave enough. Bullet interior. KDP uploaded successfully and its processing my file. So it's just doing its thing over there. OK, now we're going to upload the book cover. They have a cover creator that you can use. I have not used this because I am a designer. You can certainly use this or you can get right here. It says downloaded KDP template. So when you download that template, it's really cool. Their template is super easy to use. It shows you all your bleed. It shows your spine based on your page count, it's I used them constantly. So every time you do a book, download a new template because your page count may or may not change. But now that I'm doing these journals, they all pretty much have the same interior, so I can use the same template. But these air awesome templates. Okay, so you can either use their cover creator or you upload a cover you already have. So this is where I'm going to upload the pdf of my cover. Okay, so I'm gonna click on that so I will click on upload your cover file. I'm back into my journals, and this is the brave enough journal cover. We're going to click on that. It's uploading, and my cover is uploaded successfully again, processing my file. So to do a little work in the background. So that wasn't that hard, was it? This is what's cool about KDP. As soon as these things two things air up, you can launch the pre viewer. So click on launch the pre viewer paring my files. Remember I said this was alive for me. Anyway, so this is going to take a couple of minutes. I'm gonna turn off the recordings. You don't just sit and watch a spinning dial. Okay, So once you have uploaded your cover and asked for the print preview, our it has popped up. Now, that took a little while. It took about 10 to 15 minutes for them. Teoh populate the interior and the cover together in this print reviewer. So don't freak out if it takes longer than a few minutes to do that. So here we have the print preview er and it's showing me you can see these black and white lines here. It's showing me where the spine is and that the color that I have used for my spine is nice and equal across these two things. It has added the barcode with that I ESPN number that they assigned to me, and I have checked to make sure that my image looks good on the front. I've used this little word, a journal here, and then it indicates the trim the red is the trim line, and the white is the bleed lines. Do you want to make sure that your imagery is inside those lines? And then you see, when I hover over here, we're getting this arrow, which means we can look in the book. We pop that over. There is our title page. Keep going through the book. That's where I put any ice bien. You saw that when I showed you that's inside the cover page and then my dot pages. Now I am fully aware of what this book looks like because I've already done this interior, but you should go through your entire book like this to make sure that everything's fine is particularly if you have pages that aren't the same all the way through. If it's a workbook or a coloring journal or something, you want to make sure that you are within. You know that there's nothing funky going on there. Okay, so once you go through your whole book, which I am quite happy with, I can also look at it. And here's the two page view I can look at. It is thumbnail view where I can see everything and of course, minor. All the same. What's going on here? Something some Neil view and then you're gonna go down and this is my last page. But if you do have any issues, it's going to show up over here, and it will pretty much tell you exactly what you need to dio. Or if you're looking at your manuscript in print preview er and you don't like what you see , then you just go backwards and you upload a new interior or a new cover, adjusting for whatever your problems were to begin with. So at this stage, you can just keep going back and forth, and frankly, the first few books I did, I had to upload a lot of things again, where you just find things that you didn't anticipate. So this is the place to spend a little time. If you don't like it, just uploaded again. Just fix it and uploaded. It's no big deal. Okay, so I'm perfectly happy with this. And I'm just going to say a proof right down here and it's approved. So it's up here. We've given the details. That's complete content is complete. So in the next lesson, I am going to walk you through the paperback rights and pricing so you can get going on that. Oh, my gosh, that was a lot of information. So go grab a cold drink or something and relax. The next section won't be. It's hard, but it's coming right up. 11. Lesson 9 Pricing and Distribution: So you've made it this far. And as reward, here's a picture of my dog Larry. Really? You've earned it this lesson. We're gonna talk about pricing a distribution and I will try to make it as interesting as possible. I have signed back into my Kindle direct publishing account and you can see we have started my journal. You are brave enough, and we're going to continue set up. Like I said in the previous video, you can always stop, Do what you need to do and come back to your file. So we're going to continue set up. OK, As we said, we've completed our paperback details, all the information they need to know. Once you have approved your paperback content, you have uploaded your interior, uploaded your cover and you hit the approved button at the end. You're going to once That's all done. You are going to hit at the very bottom of that screen. You will save and continue when you do that. That generates this little box down here. Before, you could only see the launch pre viewer. But now they pop this summary box up here and it gives you all the details that you already put in there. We know our page count. And it says that at this place that my printing cost is $2.67. That is how much Amazon is going to charge me to print this book. And now it pops up that I can go to this final section here, the paperback rights and pricing. So you go a simple or you can get really complicated in here. But I am basically going to tell them all territories. Sure. Also this book all over the world. I'm good with that. If you wanted to get more individual or if it's really super specific to a region, you could go with your home country. And that would be fine because I already know that that book is going to cost me $2.67. I think a good list price is $7.99. I'm always looking for the most competitive price that I could make a little money on. But it's not gonna price me out of the market, or price is so low that I don't make any money. Low prices don't necessarily matter. It depends on what you are looking for. So I think 7 99 is fine for a journal, and I've done some research around other similar books, but that's where I price it. You can go up or down from there. It's really your choice, or it depends on what kind of book it is. It's like a really complicated workbook, and it's for you know, it's It's more than just a blank book. Then that might be 10 99 or 12 99. It really depends, but do your research around similar books and determine your price. So for the sake of this class right now, we're gonna say it's $7.99. Every time someone buys this book, I will get $2.12. I also want to go and do expanded distribution and every time it's expanded and I was going to show me the mark the markets. When I'm in expanded distribution, it will go. I will get a royalty of 52 cents and then if you pop that six other marketplace down, it will show me all the different countries that it will be sold in and how much I will get in that currency. This is just telling me that will take approximately 72 hours to be available for purchase on Amazon. Although just between you and me, it is often shorter than that. If you want a proof copy, you can purchase this through your Amazon cart. That gives you an actual hard copy of your books. You can see what exactly it looks like, and I suggest for your first book, you might want to do that, particularly of Amazon Prime, cause it'll come fairly quickly if you don't. It's going to take a while, maybe up to 10 days. I don't get a proof copy anymore personally, because I know what they look like, and I'm pretty secure of what they're gonna look like. You can always a risk it. Hey, I'm up for that, but it's really good for your 1st 1 at least to get that proof copy before you launch into the world and realize there's a misspelling in it or something that you missed. Or it's just the thrill of seeing it in your hands. Okay, this point, I'm going to say, Let's publish my paperback book or you can say what is a draft. If you're not sure of some of these things, you want to do more research, but we're going to publish our book. So it is saving Save the successful and look at that. My paperback has been submitted. There's my journal. There's the price they'll review the book. And if there's anything funky they're going to tell me, and then I have an opportunity to fix it. No big deal. And then they're asking, If you want to do it is Kindle We're going to say no in this case, but in your case, you might do it. So I'm gonna close that. And we have just published a book. Isn't that cool? And then what happens is they're going to send you an email to say, Hey, your book is on Amazon, and then you can start the ball rolling in your marketing. So that was super cool, wasn't it? If you have any questions about anything that we have done, please put it in the comments below. I know this is a ton of information, but if you could hear it in my bless, it is really a cool thing To do is to publish your own book 12. Lesson 10 Marketing and Final Thoughts: So let's talk a little bit about marketing and some final thoughts on your new project. As we know, marketing is one of the hardest parts of any parts of our business. There's the balance between telling everyone you know, your families and friends about what you are doing and how exciting it is and driving them crazy because you feel like you're doing a sales pitch all the time. But people want to know this is fun. This is exciting for them. Do you want to use social media? You want to show your book inaction. Tell a story about it. Have people take a picture of themselves with it? All of those kind of things people want to know and want to support you on this at networking events that you might attend in your hometown or through your industry, have one in your bag. Make sure people know you go. Hey, I publish this cool little journal. People will be interested in that and want one. I totally believe in always keeping a supply of your books in your bag or in your car. So if someone says, How do I buy one? You can say well, you could give me a dollar sport right now, so always have them available to you. And we didn't cover that. Just a little parentheses. You can buy your book at a reduced cost through creates base. Anyway, that's just parentheses. But you can, and that's where you can. If you hold Salem in your shop, you're going to buy them at the reduced cost for the author. You can also have your book as an impromptu gift. That is a great marketing idea. Give it to people they have showed their friends. Oh, look at my friend Did business ical journal. She wants to buy one. He wants to buy one. It's very fun if you have a newsletter for your business or in your blogged announce it, show people give it away as a prize. They're all kinds of ways for you to market this little book that you're doing and just have fun with it because it is a fun little project. Obviously, if you're doing it as a strategy for a class you're teaching or as a companion piece to a book you're writing, you want to make sure you market it just like you do your book in your class. If you sign up for my class, you get this workbook. If you're buying my book, make sure you look at the work book because that's going to help you work through the material. Just make sure you market it because, frankly, there's so much content on Amazon that it's not necessarily going to sell itself, even though it's super fabulous. So you probably guessed this, but your project for this class is to publish a fun and simple journal. Don't overthink it. Use this as, ah, testing grounds as your laboratory to learn how to publish a low content book. It might lead to more low and no content books, and that becomes your thing or it's a great teaching opportunity. If you really want to write a book, you'll know how to do this. You have already worked through that. You don't need the stress of that on top of writing your book. It's a very cool thing to Dio, and I want you to post the link so we can all see it because how exciting is that to see what you have done with your own project? And here are my final thoughts. The first book you're going to do is the hardest one. The process is very forgiving. So in other words, do not panic. Do not panic. There is help available. Teoh Google everything you can or ask me in the comments. We can figure anything out together. Don't worry about that. And I just want you to know that these low and no content books can be a wonderful compliment to everything else that you are doing. It will support all your other fun ideas, and it's a great way to make a little money, and it's very satisfying. I wish you all the best of this process. Feel free to leave questions and comments below, and I can't wait to see your low and no content books, so have fun.