A curated collection of tools & resources to help you design, print, sell & distribute your next book.
You need to do this first, so that when you start designing, you can ensure your design conforms to the printing specs for your chosen book size.
Each printer supports a different range of print sizes and provides their own specifications for each print size they offer.
Here is a list of the standard print sizes provided by the major author-friendly printers:
You need to layout the interior of your book, so that it is easy to navigate & consume.
Here are some tools, templates and services that help you format the interior of your paperback book, and get it ready to self-publish.
If you have a budget, you can hire a professional to layout your book interior.
Here are some great places to find a good & affordable layout designer.
“Never judge a book by the cover,” they say because that's what readers do.
Smart marketers understand that your cover is your first impression-your opportunity to grab their attention and build an emotional connection with the reader.
When you have their attention, you must speak directly to the desires & needs they have, as they relate your book, to increase the chance that they might buy.
Depending on the budget you have, you can either attempt to design it yourself, purchase a template or hire a professional to design it for you.
Here are some resources we recommend, for all budgets:
Here are some of the best tools you can use today, to quickly design the cover of your paperback book.
Note: You'll need to layout your book first before designing the cover. You'll use the final page count to estimate the spine of your book, so you can design the cover with the correct dimensions for printing.
If you have a budget, you should hire a professional. Here are some great places to find a good & affordable book cover designer.
Now that you have a cover and a properly formatted interior, you need to print your book for marketing, distribution, and to sell directly to your readers.
They will print your book and ship it directly to your customer. This is good because you don’t have inventory costs or risks. The downside is the high printing cost of each book because you are always buying in low quantities.
The shipping time & cost is also usually significantly higher than your readers might like, which makes POD less attractive.
High volume printers are cheaper per book, but you have to handle warehousing, fulfilment, inventory risk, and distribution yourself, which can be complex for even the most established writers.
Selling your Paperback directly to your audience of readers, helps you make more money per sale of each book. You cut out the publisher, distributor and retailers, earning you 100% royalties from your books, when you sell directly (vs 5%-30% via distributors).
This shouldn't stop you from distributing your book via the traditional publishing channels amazon.com, bookstores, etc). You need both, to truly maximise the revenue from & the distribution of your books.
To sell your books, you need an online shop that you can connect to your social media and email marketing accounts, to sell your books directly to your readers.
Here are some of our favourite author-friendly e-commerce tools.
Distributors help you make your books available for sale on the big digital bookshops and marketplaces. Some of them also make your books available for physical bookshops to purchase.
They often help with printing, fulfilment & stock management so you can just sit back and take a royalty. For all of this work, the distributor takes a share per sale of your book.
