Thinking about ebook self-publishing? So am I

Happy new year. I have long argued that if writers wanted to publish themselves, they should go into business as publishers...assuming they have the business skills to succeed. 

Well, even publishers no longer seem to have those skills, and those who survive do so by bringing out only blockbuster authors. So I'm seriously thinking about creating my own ebooks, whether of my out-of-print novels or a couple of unpublished ones. Now I'm looking for publishers who will either adapt my manuscripts for Kindle, iBooks, etc., or for resources that will let me do this for myself.

So far I've found one or two promising options like Calibre, but I'd like to learn more before I commit. Your suggestions and experiences would be very welcome.

Comments

[Arconna]

I'd definitely consider purchasing good-looking, well-designed ebook editions of your backlist. I have some of your books in paperback, but there's plenty left to put in my collection :).

[R. Lynn Wilson]

I've had no experience with Book Baby, but I've seen quite a bit of internet chatter about them.

http://www.bookbaby.com/

[Author Bookshelf]

I had not heard of Calibre before. It looks like an excellent resource. Thanks. Here are a few more free promotion tools for self-published authors that I've found helpful:

- http://99cent-books.com/
- http://bookclubreading.com/
- http://signed-edition.com/

[Ronaldo Ferraz]

Hi, Crof! Long time no see :) Hope everything is going well.

One interesting options is Lulu [http://www.lulu.com]. They not only help you to format your book but they also have interesting options for selling online. Amazon will also allow you to sell your own books online, as far as I known.

Nowadays, even word processor already have options for automatically generate ePub or Mobipocket versions of files. I know that Word, Pages and OpenOffice do.

[Jphbr.wordpress.com]

Greetings, Crawford Kilian.

A while back I played with a free ebook software from the UK.

http://www.juliansmart.com/ecub

It's well designed (the same fellow developed the Writer's Café software suite).

There is also a fancier, paying version which I haven't tried.

Best wishes.

[DonnaBMcNicol]

I'm using WriteItNow and hoping it will pub to ebook format adequately. Otherwise I'll be searching for a solution as well.

[Carradee]

I use MS Word documents. If you follow the Smashwords style guide, it's pretty easy to modify it slightly for it to work for Kindle upload or PubIt upload. But I also have a PowerPC Mac and therefore don't have access to some of the best converters.

Sigil is a program that lets you manually edit and create EPUB files, which can then be converted to MOBI with Calibre.

I've heard Scrivener has great output for EPUB and MOBI formats.

[quentimus]

Do it! Start with Henderson's Tenants already! Unless it's out there and I haven't stumbled on the right place.

Or if you're still working on it and want some extra feedback, I am anxious to read it.

My question is how to get the benefits of the big boys, but still get the lion's share from MY efforts. Basically, if I sell it on my own through the net, I get most of the profit. If they sell it through their site or in print, I get the usual cut.