{"id":30086,"date":"2018-09-19T12:47:09","date_gmt":"2018-09-19T11:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ourtour.co.uk\/home\/?p=30086"},"modified":"2019-03-03T11:34:49","modified_gmt":"2019-03-03T11:34:49","slug":"publishing-a-book-has-never-been-easier-folks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ourtour.co.uk\/home\/publishing-a-book-has-never-been-easier-folks\/","title":{"rendered":"Publishing a Book Has Never Been Easier Folks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We’re currently working on self-publishing our fifth book through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) system. This post gives a brief overview of how we’ve done it and, should you want to, how you can do it too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of our books – Motorhome Morocco – available worldwide through Amazon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If you’ve a burning desire to publish a book, I’ve good news for you – it’s never been as easy, in all of history, than it is now to get your book out to a worldwide audience. Even if you want to create a printed book (as opposed to only publishing in eBook format), you don’t need to buy an ISBN, pay for a print run, store and sell the books, package or post them. And no, you don’t need to persuade a publisher to accept your book either. Amazon will take care of all of this for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A proof copy of The Motorhome Touring Handbook – to be published through Amazon in September (or maybe October – the editing’s a big job!)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Yes, you will need to put in the work to write the book content, and I won’t kid you, it is hard graft. A common question we get when we mention book writing is whether it’s financially worth it. We usually answer by saying this: if you’re going to do it, do it more for the fun than the money. If you happen to hit on a big seller, fantastic, but our experience is we sell a few hundred books, maybe a thousand over time for our most popular ones, and we really couldn’t make anything like a decent living writing books. The level of work involved in book writing is just too high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using self-publishing has one big downside: Amazon take a fairly big cut in return for doing all the logistical stuff for you. To make more money, you’d need to use a more traditional print run process, but that involves much more risk, which isn’t something we’re personally interested in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Tools We’re Using to Self-Publish a Book Through Amazon<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

OK, these are the tools we’re currently using to publish The Motorhome Touring Handbook, all of which are free except for Word and Powerpoint, which are part of Microsoft Office:<\/p>\n\n\n\n