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Johnathan Reid's avatar

You've done an excellent job here, Brian. This article summarises in 15 mins so many of the lessons and details which took me over a year to learn via webinars, software and service provider guides, and writer forums. The ISBN and distribution advice alone is rare to find within such a broad scope.

I hope you don't mind my adding a few complementary advice snippets:

1) For print dimensions take a ruler to what's on your own or a local bookstore's shelves as there are international market variations (eg US vs UK trade sizes).

2) Cultivate relationships with your local indie bookstores (and not forgetting bookshop.org). As you say they won't stock with a no-returns policy and low discount, and require up-front reader orders.

3) Ebook formatting is affected by the e-reader preferences set by its user. So any fonts, justification, etc are typically ignored. Also, use your authoring software to autogenerate a linked ToC.

4) Amazon can approve and push out an eBook quicker than your promoted launch date (eg 24hrs early) and so make syncing harder with the physical launch date.

5) It's unfair to ask a designer to create a cover without them knowing your book's page count / spine width. Use a book design tool to avoid a chicken and egg situation.

6) Some libraries (eg in the UK) pay authors for reader loans. Sign up to the relevant national scheme.

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Nick Winney's avatar

this is gold. thanks brian!

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