Book Information

Book ID Asin: B00GK5NKGU
Book Title: Createspace and Kindle Self-Publishing Masterclass - Second Edition: The Step-by-Step Author's Guide to Writing, Publishing and Marketing Your Books on Amazon
Book Author: Rick Smith,Self-Publishing Masterclass
Book Format and Price:
Book Format Name: Kindle
Book Format Price: $0.00
Book Format Name: Paperback
Book Format Price: $9.54
Book Price: $5.51
Book Category: Kindle Store, Kindle eBooks, Arts & Photography and unknown
Book Rating: 601 ratings

Book Product Detail

• Best Sellers Rank: #443,267 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
  • #36 in Graphic Design of Books
  • #463 in Authorship
  • #512 in Book Design

• Customer Reviews:
  4.6 out of 5 stars 601 ratings

unknown

Book Review

Name: MDLION
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Very Encouraging
Date: Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2015
Review: I have been thinking for quite a period of time about creating a book for CreateSpace and then Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). But I have a number of obstacles. One, I'm not only not a computer wiz, but I'm probably a bit below average in my computer skills. Two, I'd like to write the book on a Mac. This in of itself isn't a huge obstacle, but I would also like to use the simpler Mariner Write word processor for Mac. Three, I have some data to retrieve from a defunct early 90s stand alone word processor for conversion to a Mac. Because of these obstacles and others, I've been procrastinating. At times a bit more pessimistic than others I've found myself thinking, "There's no way I can do this. I don't have the ability. This is a pipe dream that'll never happen."

But I saw this book and decided to buy it. When I received it I went to chapters 7 and 8 on CreateSpace Publishing (P.108) and Kindle Publishing ( P. 149). With my modest computer skills, I found pessimism kicking in again. "Oh my goodness, this is too daunting."

But then I did a smart thing. I started reading the book from the beginning and found that Mr. Smith seems to have a gift for encouragement.
This kept me going. A big mistake I was making was thinking I have to do everything myself. The people at CreateSpace will help you. It may cost some, but if you're driven, it's possible. I can save my work in RTF-Word file on Mariner Write and this will make a CreateSpace document possible. Here are some of the encouraging words from the book:

"Amazon now makes it easier than ever for new authors to publish (P.11) ...the process of publishing on Kindle is well within the reach of everyone, irrespective of their computer skills level. (P.21) ... If you can do basic word processing and use a web browser, you can easily publish via CreateSpace and Kindle. ... they have designed a system which does all the hard work in terms of formatting (P.24) ... CreateSpace is not as daunting as it looks (P.33) ... Amazon's platform will automatically publish your CreateSpace manuscript on Kindle, for no added cost, and usually with no additional work! ( P. 34)

There's also encouragement for Mac users:

"Everything you need to create a great manuscript is included in Pages, and there's also a compatible mini-version for iPad. Pages documents are also interchangeable with Microsoft Word." (P.49)

How exciting it is to live in an age when your work can be available to people around the world without the financial backing of the big publishing houses. I know there are tough days ahead for me in writing a book and e-book, but if I'm discouraged I'll quit for the day and come back tomorrow. Or maybe I'll come back Monday after the weekend. From time to time I'll probably use some of the down time to review some of the encouraging passages in this book.

I'll end with a Scripture I like on encouragement:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and God of all encouragement, who encourages us in our every affliction, so that we may be able to encourage those who are in any affliction with the encouragement with which we ourselves are encouraged by God. For as Christ's sufferings overflow to us, so through Christ does our encouragement also overflow. If we are afflicted, it is for your encouragement and salvation; if we are encouraged, it is for your encouragement, which enables you to endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is firm, for we know that as you share in the sufferings, you also share in the encouragement."
-2 Cor 1:3-7

Name: Lucian
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A Practical and Well Written Guide
Date: Reviewed in the United States on June 22, 2014
Review: This is for beginners who have no knowledge of or wish to use html code. Rick’s advice is aimed at finding a niche market and getting a financial return for your writing efforts. As a non-US publisher, I found the instructions explaining how to avoid 30% US withholding tax excellent, although I did use my accountant to help the IRS jargon. He has much sound advice on how to choose keywords to make you book appear early in searches on Amazon and on software to create an effective cover design. His emphasis on a quality product appears constantly, although on my Kindle boxes appear on the left containing ? that should contain numerals. Unfortunately this is common when there are so many different types of ereaders.

I was about to launch into an ebook, but Rick said it was easier to start with a print-on-demand book which I did. This advice really only applies to novels, as non-fiction print books can be very tricky to format if you are not familiar with using styles and handling hyperlinks etc. This only partially worked for me, as the print book was too complex for CreateSpace to automatically convert it to an ebook, although the cover went straight through to KDP. Rick discusses several common word processors. I ended up dumping Word and using OpenOffice Writer because it is faster, able to present verso and recto pages correctly side by side on the screen and produce a single PDF file as opposed to multiple files from Word that required later joining. I followed his instructions so much that at times I had my Kindle beside me as I filled out boxes in CreateSpace and KPD on the laptop screen; it was like having a helper beside me and was, for me as a learner publisher, one of the most useful parts of the book. I had no trouble uploading the cover which I basically did myself with an artist suppling the image. The interior required several attempts because some lines on one page extended beyond the print area. I fixed this after I discovered the actual pages that were unacceptable were indicated on screen. If I had read Rick’s ebook more carefully he had actually told me where to look. I think the hardest part of publishing a book is eliminating typos and grammatical errors. Do get a proof print from CreateSpace. The rest is easy of you follow Rick’s instructions.

I found the Kindle publishing part took less time overall, but was more frustrating. I rebuilt the book from scratch to eliminate any unnecessary formatting code. This took time because there were about 200 footnotes. At this stage do make the non-printable characters visible to show where you have put in a new paragraph by pressing “enter”. Where you do not want a blank line on an ereader press “shift-enter”. As Rick suggested I used the downloadable Kindle Previewer. For some unknown reason the previewer readers made some font sizes so small they could hardly be read and there was no normal relativity between 11, 12 or 13 point fonts. After days trying to work this out, I decided to just upload the html file (using the KDP instructions) and see how it looked using the onscreen viewer. This allows you to view your work on the ipad etc and it works brilliantly. The relative font sizes were perfect! My advice is to ignore the downloadable Kindle Previewer, upload your files and then check them. It is faster and more accurate. I suspect that this may be a new feature since Smith wrote his book. My last step before publishing was to adjust a couple of lines of html code to center the two images and their captions.

Rick, thank you for writing this book.

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