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Writer 101 [Public] / Re: Self-Publishing on a Shoestring
« Last post by Matthew on September 02, 2024, 11:39:13 PM »The trade off is that you have to spend more of your time learning how to do things because you cannot afford certain tools or professionals.
For ebooks, Sigil is useful for touching up a book, but as far as I can tell it's not good for trying to make your entire book in. Also requires understanding the underlying code (XHTML/CSS). Yes, there are some free online tools that you can import your document into. Reedsy will do it too.
For software on your computer, Calibre can make an epub from a document, but it's very barebones. LibreOffice Writer can be used both for writing your manuscript and creating an epub file from it. Basic formatting is kept (alignment, bold/italic/underline, paragraph indentation).
If you're willing to go Amazon exclusive, you can use Kindle Create as well.
I think cover art is the most difficult because you either need to be good at photography or drawing, and even then fonts are a separate issue. If you want to make a cover yourself I would look at licensing a font (some cheap ones can be found for $10 or less, especially on sale). Stock photos can be had for around $0.50-1.00 each, potentially less on sale as well. But while simple to put some text on a cover, you'll probably still need to spend the time and learn the skill of some photo editing so you can start combining multiple stock photos together, and better learn how to do typography.
While I'm sure some free fonts and photos exist, remember you have to contend with Amazon. Licensing gives you a higher degree of confidence that the seller really owns the rights, and that the rights are properly granted. I've definitely seen some "free" stock photos that were blatantly stolen from elsewhere, and I think this also might be why a lot of Canva-created covers have problems on Amazon lately. For fonts, you may be able to find something free directly from the Foundry that created it. That is what I would need to feel comfortable using it. (And still, check the license that you can use it commercially, and if it allows use in print or to be embedded in an ebook if that's what you're doing)
For print, I think your best bet would be doing it by hand in Scribus. You'll have a double whammy of a learning curve if you've never done print by hand before (e.g. in Adobe InDesign, Affinity Publisher) as well as trying to learn how to use Scribus itself. You could also try to more extensively format within LibreOffice Writer and export as PDF.
Again, if Amazon exclusive, Kindle Create can supposedly create files for print, but I've never used the tool to see how flexible it is or what the results look like.
For ebooks, Sigil is useful for touching up a book, but as far as I can tell it's not good for trying to make your entire book in. Also requires understanding the underlying code (XHTML/CSS). Yes, there are some free online tools that you can import your document into. Reedsy will do it too.
For software on your computer, Calibre can make an epub from a document, but it's very barebones. LibreOffice Writer can be used both for writing your manuscript and creating an epub file from it. Basic formatting is kept (alignment, bold/italic/underline, paragraph indentation).
If you're willing to go Amazon exclusive, you can use Kindle Create as well.
I think cover art is the most difficult because you either need to be good at photography or drawing, and even then fonts are a separate issue. If you want to make a cover yourself I would look at licensing a font (some cheap ones can be found for $10 or less, especially on sale). Stock photos can be had for around $0.50-1.00 each, potentially less on sale as well. But while simple to put some text on a cover, you'll probably still need to spend the time and learn the skill of some photo editing so you can start combining multiple stock photos together, and better learn how to do typography.
While I'm sure some free fonts and photos exist, remember you have to contend with Amazon. Licensing gives you a higher degree of confidence that the seller really owns the rights, and that the rights are properly granted. I've definitely seen some "free" stock photos that were blatantly stolen from elsewhere, and I think this also might be why a lot of Canva-created covers have problems on Amazon lately. For fonts, you may be able to find something free directly from the Foundry that created it. That is what I would need to feel comfortable using it. (And still, check the license that you can use it commercially, and if it allows use in print or to be embedded in an ebook if that's what you're doing)
For print, I think your best bet would be doing it by hand in Scribus. You'll have a double whammy of a learning curve if you've never done print by hand before (e.g. in Adobe InDesign, Affinity Publisher) as well as trying to learn how to use Scribus itself. You could also try to more extensively format within LibreOffice Writer and export as PDF.
Again, if Amazon exclusive, Kindle Create can supposedly create files for print, but I've never used the tool to see how flexible it is or what the results look like.