Many people dream of publishing a book someday. Today, that dream is easier than ever to achieve as you can self-publish an ebook for the rest of the world to enjoy. To learn how to do this I found Reedsyblog’s post of “How to Publish an Ebook (in 9 Easy-to-Follow Steps)“. They point out that people spent over $75 million on ebooks in January of 2020 alone. This is a huge market for published works, but you need to follow certain steps to make sure you are ready to publish.

First, make sure that your book is ready to go. Make certain that it is well written with no errors and that the plot is easy to follow. To do this you may need to hire a professional editor. Everyone has read an ebook with grammar and spelling errors that made you put the book down and not finish it. Hiring an editor will keep this from being your book.

Next, find the perfect cover. Again you will probably need professional help to do this. Hire a designer to design your cover. Your book cover is your book’s calling card. It is the first thing anyone will know about your book so it needs to look good to compete in today’s crowded marketplace.

Next, you need to decide on your relationship with Amazon. As of now, they have 67% of all ebooks sold so, you certainly want to be on Amazon. The trick is deciding if you want to be exclusive to Amazon. This exclusivity comes with some perks like being able to be on Kindle Unlimited. So, it is certainly worth a look if you want to be exclusive with Amazon for your ebook.

If you decide not to be exclusive with Amazon, some of your other options are Barnes and Noble, Apple, and Google Play Books. While none of them is as large a platform as Amazon, they are all good choices for publishing your book.

The next thing you’ll need to do is get your metadata together. This includes keywords about your book, a summary of your book, and the genre of your book. The better you can do these tasks, the easier your potential readers will be able to find you.

Now is the time to format your book for uploading. While Amazon will let you upload a PDF or word document, other publishers will not. You will need to change it to an EPUB file type. You can do this on any number of websites including the Reedsey book editor.

You are finally ready to upload your ebook. Be sure to give it enough time to upload and have a separate file for the book cover.

Now it’s time to set your price. Most ebooks are sold from between $2.99-$9.99 and royalties on Amazon are usually 70%. Prices falling outside this range will net you only 35% royalties.

Now you are ready to hit publish and share your book with the world. Best of luck with the success of your book.

This chapter is a revised version of a blog post titled “How to Publish an eBook” on Lianne Learns Publishing.