Most of the book-related posts on this site concern self publishing. Here, I present a roadmap to the materials available. There are tips for self publishing, tips for design and production of paperback and ebooks, book interior templates for the publishing program, Scribus, templates for the word processing program, LibreOffice, and posts about my two books, The Schnoz of the Rings (a parody) and Just Lorem Ipsum (my demonstration book).
Tips for Self Publishing
Book Interior Design: Tips to Avoid the Amateur Look – In this post, I show an example of bad book formatting, give tips on how to avoid the amateur look, and show a new, improved example with more professional formatting.
Twelve Tips: Reduce the Cost of Your Self-Published Book – People sometimes spend thousands of dollars to have someone format their book and get it up on Amazon. I published my demonstration book, both paperback and Kindle ebook, on Amazon for $39.50. I spent the money on an ISBN ($29.50) and on licensing the image that I modified for use on the front cover ($10.00). If you can provide your own graphics and want to use an Amazon number instead of an ISBN (not recommended) you can reduce the cost to zero.
Just Lorem Ipsum – A Demonstration Book
I had two purposes for publishing this book: I wanted to show how free software could be used to publish both paperback and ebooks and I wanted to explore self publishing as cheaply as possible. (See the posts above.) “Lorem ipsum” is filler text that is used in graphic design when you want to see how a page will look with its text blocks filled but you either do not have or do not want to be distracted by the actual text. Lorem ipsum is based on a 1st century BC Latin text by Cicero with words changed and scrambled to make it nonsensical, even in Latin. So I made a book of one hundred pages of filler text – Just Lorem Ipsum.
Just Lorem Ipsum – In this post I provide a link to download the complete interior of Just Lorem Ipsum. I also link to posts containing the Scribus templates that were used and other templates that I provide on this site. I will cover these templates in a separate section below.
Just Lorem Ipsum – Front Cover – Here I discuss my original cover idea and the subsequent development of the actual cover. This post covers just my mock-up of the front cover. The entire cover, front, back, and spine, is covered in the following post.
Just Lorem Ipsum – Final Cover – Here I tell how I made the final cover using Scribus, a free graphics design program. I also provide links to the Scribus file and the resulting .PDF file.
Just Lorem Ipsum – Final Files – This post contains links to the final .PDF files for the cover and the book interior of Just Lorem Ispum. It also contains links to the Scribus (.sla) files that I used to produce the .PDF files.
Just Lorem Ipsum Published! – This is the publication announcement. I compare the CreateSpace (Amazon) and IngramSpark (Barnes and Noble) paperbacks. I also give fourteen reasons to buy Just Lorem Ipsum (even though you can’t, you know, read it… ).
Book Templates
I am a proponent of Linux (a computer operating system) and free and open source software (FOSS). The important thing about FOSS is that the programs are free. This means that after you buy a computer, you can do everything you want on it and pay this much for software: $0.00 (yup, zero dollars). These posts are about book templates for two free programs, LibreOffice (an office suite) and Scribus (a graphics design program). Enjoy!
Simple Ebook Production with LibreOffice and calibre – This post describes my efforts to make a LibreOffice Writer template (LibreOffice Writer is a word processor much like Microsoft Office Word) that I could feed into another program, calibre, and produce ebook files such as .epub, .mobi, and .azw3.
Basic Book Template for Scribus – (9×6″ format) Scribus is a graphics design program that you can use for your book interior. In this post, I present a set of Scribus files that can be used to produce your book. They are simple: they use only two fonts.
Basic Book Template for LibreOffice – (9×6″ format) It is best not to format your book with a word processor. Scribus will do a much better job and your book can have a professional look. If you MUST use a word processor then do all you can to make your interior look like a real book (see Book Interior Design: Tips to Avoid the Amateur Look). Here I present LibreOffice files that will approximate the look of the Scribus files I presented in the post above.
New Book – New Template – Just Lorem Ipsum – (8×5 1/4″ format) I introduce my demonstration book, Just Lorem Ipsum, and post the Scribus templates that I used to make the book. The complete text of the book is presented in a later post, Just Lorem Ipsum.
Romance Novel Template for LibreOffice – (9.6″ format) This template uses a fancy script font for the chapter headings. This is the word-processor version. See the next entry for the Scribus version.
Romance Novel Template for Scribus – (9×6″ format) This post presents the Scibus version of the Romance Novel using the same fonts but achieving a more professional look.
The Schnoz of the Rings
The Schnoz of the Rings is the ring is my parody of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. It is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, for the Kindle, and free to read if you are a Kindle Unlimited subscriber.
How I used Linux (Mostly) to Self-Publish The Schnoz of the Rings – Subtitle: How I APEed the Schnoz. Guy Kawasaki and Shawn Welch, write a guide to self-publishing, APE Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur: How to Publish a Book. In this post, I compare what they did to publish their book to what I did to publish The Schnoz.
The Schnoz of the Rings Reviewed in the Mensa Bulletin – Caroline McCullagh, who writes the Page Turners column for the Mensa Bulletin, reviewed the Schnoz in her first column (the very first book, actually). Read the whole review.
Miscellaneous
Quotes for Writers – Dorothy Parker – Dorothy Parker is one of my favorites! The advice she gives for young writers is not to be missed!