The world of eBook publishing has blown up over the past decade or so. My local library has gotten rid of many of its fiction sections, in favor of letting users rent books over applications like OverDrive. For me personally, the last several years I have rented digital versions of all my textbooks. It’s much easier to carry around my tablet with hundreds of books, than to carry around hundreds of books. A while back I attempted to write a children’s book, I got most of the story written out and, save for editing the book, was at the point I needed to publish it. How do I do that?

An article on Reedsyblog.com titled “How to publish an ebook” breaks down the topic in 9 easy to follow steps.

Step 1: Make sure your work is spotless

This is pretty self-explanatory. The last thing you want your published work to have its spelling and grammatical errors, or worse, a gaping plot hole in the story. I remember reading somewhere that the reason the fourth Harry Potter book is so long is that J.K. Rowling made a massive plot hole in the story that she spent the entire book covering up.

Step 2: Package your ebook with the perfect cover

The phrase “don’t judge a book by its cover” comes to mind, although for me, that’s how I pick the books I want to read. How interesting is the cover? The cover has to entice the reader to pick up the book and read the summary.

Step 3 & 4: Decide where you want to publish your book

There is a reason when you think of eBooks, the Kindle comes to mind. Unfortunately, this has kind of become a moot point with Amazon having so much of the eBook market on lock-down. Other options still do exist with Google Play Books, Apple iBooks, Kobo Writing Life, and Barnes & Noble.

The article goes with ways more technical steps, such as aggregating your book across multiple platforms, formatting, and metadata. Almost to the point where it gets a bit hard to follow, despite this, it’s still an excellent resource for anyone wanting to learn how to publish a book. For the time being my story will remain unpublished after reading this.

This chapter is a revised version of a blog post titled “How to Publish an eBook” on Edward’s Publishing Page.