Book Publishing Software Alternatives

This is a completely revised article on book publishing software. Not so many years ago, there was a half-dozen good software applications to select from. Over the past decade, however, the trend has shifted to online service providers to help self publish books. In light of that, this article is going to focus on online publishing sources.

Fellow publishers agree, the learning curve for online publishing requires much less effort, versus understanding all the nuances of a new software package, not to mention the broad service packages now available. With increased Internet speeds, it just makes sense to utilize this type of service.

Aspects of online publishing service providers we’ll cover include, technology, service packages, depth of a service provider’s methods, and support options. This is applicable to both traditional book publishing, and the ever-evolving digital rights format. We will also highlight one very popular digital rights service provider.

Introduction to Online Publishing Services

The one aspect of using online service providers rather than publishing software is the seamless transition from formatting your manuscript, to presenting it to various publishers. As you may already know, it can get exhausting hunting down the right contact at a particular publisher, only to not get any reply. This after you farted around with some software package, getting the format right, etc.

The technology behind the graphical interface you see online helps you go from formatting to print and publishing with ease. Another key benefit of such service providers is the ability to use print-on-demand (POD) services. This truly makes your publishing commitments less strenuous, and affordable. As you may already know, this technique eliminates large print runs, and costly storage space, which you find in more traditional publishing companies. Everybody wins with this setup.

As if this wasn’t enough already, you keep the rights to your manuscript! Before,if you were lucky enough to find a traditional publisher to read your manuscript, and discuss business points, you ended up having to give up at least some of your publishing rights of your book.

Utilizing online services does not mean a decrease in quality though. Your book will be published and bound using the same modern technology used by any traditional publishers.

As stated earlier, there are also digital rights publishing options available. Unlike the traditional publishing company, who are bound by contractual obligations with a limited distribution channel, publishing your work online opens additional channels of selling. Today’s POD publishers can easily promote your book through more than 25,000 different retailers.

In summary, self publishing becomes easier using online service providers, due to the increased accessibility to the publishing industry, a stronger selling base, and more affordable.

Online Publishing Considerations

Though we have provided a ton of benefits for using online service providers, it’s like everything else in life…you get what you pay for. With that in mind, we want to list a few considerations you should review when selecting your online publishing partner.

Publishing Services Offered: Services you should expect from an online publisher will include pre-publishing, print and publishing, and marketing services. Additionally, what package deals do they have available? Often, a package may include more than the main services mentioned above, such as website design, and review copies.

Also, look for the following extra services; most online publishers will not offer all services, so be selective, based on what you need. Copyediting, press release and related promotional services, writer creation service, website design, management assistance, copyright research and registration services, different levels of order timelines, such as expedited, and marketing campaign assistance services.

Selling Base Potential: What distribution channels are available to you? In addition to retail booksellers, who are the main retailers? Is there additional cost for wholesale channels?

Publisher Support: With basic packages offered, what type of support is offered? You should have access to similar support as other online vendors, such as email support ticketing, live chat, phone support, web conferencing.

Here is a look at Amazon’s Kindle service, which has been gaining speed. In 2010, sales of digital books actually surpassed traditional book sales in a given quarter.

Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)

Pending the breadth of your title, KDP has many avenues to promote your content. They make it easy to convert your book into digital content, and offer the following advantages.

• There is no sign-up fee, publishing fee, or fee of any kind…100% free to start
• For qualifying titles, you can choose their 70% royalty option
• Need only to publish your manuscript once
• Distributed automatically to such sources as Apple, Android-based, and Blackberry mobile products
• Support includes access to fellow publisher user forums

The KDP program also offers services for magazine and newspaper publishers to present their content in digital format as well.