Aim to simultaneously publish paperback, ebook

Writers sometimes wonder which version of their book they should print first – the paperback or the ebook. Ideally, both would come out at about the same time. After all, you are selling one product – your book – and you want all the different platforms that it can appear in to be available as soon as you tell everyone you’ve released your title.

Currently, though, if using the two most popular print on demand services – CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing – there is some lag time between these versions. Still, that can be limited to within a 24-hour period.

As your ebook for the Kindle version can go through the self-publishing process faster than the paperback, to get both to come out at the same time, you’ll probably want to start working on your paperback first (This presumes that you’re submitting a version of your manuscript to Kindle Direct Publishing separate from your paperback to CreateSpace.). This occurs because the vetting process for a paperback is more involved than for an ebook.

If you instead decided to use your published paperback version via CreateSpace for your ebook, once you approve the paperback for publication, your Kindle ebook usually can be available for sale within a day. However, using this process often requires that you tweak your submitted manuscript, creating more lag time than a day. Typically, this tweaking involves fixing the lines you tweaked to make the paperback look right. For example, any forced hyphenation you did in your paperback will show up as a word with a hyphen in the middle of it in your ebook. Sometimes tabs won’t convert either.

Because of this, you may want to consider going the previously mentioned route of creating two formatted versions of your book – one for the paperback and one for the ebook.

The formatted version for your ebook can eliminate all of these tweaking problems. Further, if done to Smashwords’ formatted standards, this ebook version for your Kindle then can be used to submit your ebook to Nook, iBook, Kobo, Sony Reader and various other formats (though you may need to add a copyright note on your title page to these non-Kindle ebooks). As the vetting process for your Smashwords book can be as lengthy as for your paperback, this formatted version will allow you to more quickly get your book for sale in a variety of ebook platforms.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like New York, New York, or a small town like Bantam, Connecticut, I can provide that second eye.