Self Publishing
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Confused about something. Say I get 250-500 books printed and I want to try selling them at street fairs or after an event at a local library (basically out of the back of my car). Do I need an ISBN?
I really, really liked that PrintNinja (one of the options I was looking at was like $3/book!) but I set up an account on Createspace just to see what that was and they had a section on ISBNs but I'm not sure I followed it--maybe it was needed because Amazon would be the seller/distributor?
Not really sure what that is for.
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@Chip-Valecek What a cool dad! Thanks for posting this query because I am interested in this too. Most of what I do will probably be for family and/or friends. I'll be interested in this conversation
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Chip and Matt, I am a new self-publish author and belong to an author's group. Write your book and get it formatted. To upload it to Kindle Children's Book Creator it needs to be in a mobi file. If you do not know how to do that, you can hire someone through Fiverr. If you want to email me let me know. For the paperback copy, CreateSpace only does paperbacks, I like CreateSpace. Then use Kindle KDP to market your book! Good luck!
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@mattramsey the ISBN is for selling purpose. According to createspace the free one they offer is for selling on Amazon only. If you want to sell in stores then you will have to purchase one. Overall I believe i am going to go with createspace for this book project. I can order 25 copies to start. Sell them at $10 a piece and then sell on amazon for $12. Selling on amazon will only profit $3 where selling them in person at $10 will profit $6. I do not tend to be a #1 seller lol it is just for fun and all money earned will be used to help pay for my son's dance classes (since it is his story).
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@Chip-Valecek said:
@mattramsey the ISBN is for selling purpose.
So I definitely need an ISBN even if I want to sell the books myself? Sorry for the confusion!
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@mattramsey I think if you are going to print and sell yourself you don't need one. But if you are going to take them to a store and have them sell them I think you do.
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For those who used create space, how do you get all of your files into one .pdf? I'm stuck on this one. I converted all the pages to pdf from jpeg but they only allow you to pick one file to send.
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@bdyanne I used the Adobe pdf programme to do it... You can get 1 month free trial, thank goodness as it's expensive to buy!
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I have self published on Createspace.com and have several friends that use them regularly for their self published books. It is free to publish with them and then you just order the number of copies you want. If you do need any of their services you can pay for those separately for each item like editing, cover design etc. Most of my friends set up their own books and just turn them in to them to publish. They are a Amazon company and very good.
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BTW: a word of caution about self publishing. No matter which company you decide to use, read the fine print on anything you have to agree to. You don't want to grant them rights to the work in any form.
