You no longer have to rely on the whims of traditional publishers to become a published author. All you need to do is know how to publish your book online for free.
The e-book category is on an upward trend as more people read from their electronic device such as Kindle reader or mobile phone. According to a recent report, the global e-book market in 2019 was valued at $18.13 billion and is expected to reach $23.12 billion by the year 2025.
The recent Covid lockdowns across the country has led many people to read books online. According to The Guardian, e-book and audiobook sales are now at an all-time high.
The e-book market is growing quickly as e-book publishers have made publishing incredibly easy for all writers. Writing an e-book is the perfect medium to realize your goal of becoming a published author.
5 Great Sites for Free Publishing
1. Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)
Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is a free e-publishing site that allows you to publish your e-book without paying a dime.
To upload the e-book to the site, you may have to convert it to Amazon’s proprietary format which is super-easy. KDP converts Word docs, PDF and HTML to Kindle’s proprietary format automatically for you.
However, you can also use Calibre to easily convert the eBook to the required format. This is what author M.A. Marrissette did when launching her novel New Breed in a Kindle format. The awesome thing about Calibre is that it can rescale the font size of your e-book to ensure that it complies with Amazon’s specifications.
Check out our article on how to publish with KDP. Click here.
2. Barnes & Noble Press
Previously known as Nook Press, Barnes & Noble Press was launched in its current form in 2018. The Barnes & Noble Press website has gained popularity due to its ease of use and access to Barnes & Noble’s huge customer base.
If you are ready to publish your manuscript, it will take you less than 72 hours to set up an account and have your book show up in Barnes & Noble online bookstore for readers to see.
The platform is fast and free to use. If you are ready to take your manuscript to a print format, Barnes & Noble can help with that as well.
3. Smashwords
Smashwords is one of the pioneers of e-book publishing. You can publish your e-book with them for free. As of today, they have published over 560,000 books.
Using the online resources offered, you will be able to publish your e-book and offer it to stores everywhere.
However, with Smashwords, publishing your e-book takes a little do-it-yourself know-how. You have to first upload your e-book and a cover image using a tool on the website. The online tool will create an e-book in the needed format in just a few minutes.
You can sell and promote your e-book directly on Smashwords. They have a huge store! Additionally, you have the option of selling to Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble’s and many other major online stores. The online publisher also has relationships with third-party companies to distribute e-books to public libraries.
Smashwords does not support publishing the e-book to Amazon KDP. The two companies are at odds with one another and this does not appear to be changing any time soon.
4. Rakuten Kobo
Rakuten Kobo is another online seller for you to find prospective readers for your e-book. Like the Amazon Kindle, Kobo has its own e-reader and its library.
By selling through Kobo, you will have access to millions of readers. Just set up your account, create a description for your e-book, upload the content, choose your publishing rights, and select a price.
5. Apple eBook Store
Apple’s iBook store is a free self-publishing platform that enables you to sell to Apple customers.
In order to publish your e-book to iBooks, you have to convert the file to either ePub or iBooks format. This is easily done, however. You can use Calibre mentioned earlier to convert your manuscript to the necessary format.
Once you have published the e-book on Apple’s store, you will retain the rights to the content. However, if you distribute your e-book in the iBooks format, it will be subject to certain restrictions mentioned in Apple’s terms of the agreement.
Publishing your manuscript as an e-book is well worth it in the end. It can serve as an additional source of income that may one day be enough to replace your old job. But, most promising of all, is the opportunity for aspiring writers to realize their dream of becoming a published author.
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