Wattpad 101: Your guide to the world of Wattpad

Self-Publishing On Amazon: Living the Dream

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Elementalcobalt.Wordpress.com

That's the wording I used. Officially, in the United States, this is sufficient. By all accounts, simply publishing your work implies copyright. The point of the copyright page is to provide people who have to deal with copyright (like a book reviewer) the information needed. That information SHOULD include a way to contact you.

How do they contact you? Do NOT give them your home address. Do NOT give them your phone number. I left my email (Omitted from the text above), but it isn't my main email, but one I created exactly for this purpose. A PO box wouldn't be a bad idea either if you're very serious about continuing on with self-publishing your work.

Any way you look at it... title page, copyright page, all of your writing properly page broke equals your manuscript.

Convert To a Proper File

Word documents just don't look like books. Books do all these fancy things. The chapter titles look big and cool. The page sizes are smaller. The first word in the first paragraph of each chapter usually is a giant fancy letter to start off your reading. It all just looks refined.

Now, you can pick your favorite book and you can make your word documents do that. It's perfectly possible to shrink the page sizes, create a title on the first page after each page break, even do the fancy lettering. You can make your book look like or close to the books you see already published. Do it... and then save your final publication as a pdf. Make sure to keep a doc copy for future edits.

However, if that sounds too much like a pain, Amazon has already released an App just for you. The Amazon Kindle Create will convert your word document into a novel. You can then do the changes you want, and seemingly with the click of a few buttons you can assign chapters, change fonts, and do other "novel-like" adjustments with ease.

I have to say, I found the program to be a buggy pain in the arse. However, Kindle Create probably isn't the only novel converter software, so I recommend you look around and find one you like. Remember, you can do it with Word, or you can do with some other software. Upon publishing Kindle Create you end up with some kind of obscure format that only works for uploading the novel to Kindle. Any other programs you use, I recommend the output you're looking for should be pdf. Pdf will give you what you want to see.

Make Sure the Novel is Polished

This should come without saying, but as a general rule, your novel should be pretty darned polished. And, as much as it might pain you, it needs to be polished as a novel, not as a chapter. So, it doesn't matter that you've been through each individual chapter a dozen times. The story isn't going to be read as a bunch of stand-alone chapters. The story is going to be read as a book.

That means you need to read that book from beginning to end. You need to take the whole story you're telling and be able to edit it as a whole. There shouldn't be a single squiggly line under any word when you're done. Even if you disagree with some of the things Microsoft Word has a problem with, you should then right-click and hit ignore. The document should be absolutely cleaned and every potential problem checked.

Word's grammar and spelling, sure... but also a run through Grammarly maybe, and a run through something else like Hemingway App wouldn't hurt either... and don't leave it just to those two. Find an editor if you can. Make sure you get their input and fixes. A polished book should be polished.

Don't desperately cling to a phrase you used. If it doesn't sound right, it doesn't sound right. If it even sounds weird to you the author's ears, how do you think others will feel? Delete the sentence and rewrite it.