Summary: If you cannot see the audio controls, listen/download the audio file hereHow to Self-Publish from India: A Case StudyIt started when this reader from Chennai, India emailed me about one of my books being ripped off. He was just being honest about finding some books being given away for free. So I thanked him and gave him some more. Over a few years, we've been exchanging comments and books, helping each other out as we could. Recently, he told me he wanted to write and publish books - along the line of self-help and personal development. The trick to this was that he had no computer or home Internet. He was going out to an Internet kiosk So I made him a deal - I'd help set him up and he'd then help some others get set up. The main point is this: If a writer in India with only borrowed Internet access can get himself successfully self-published, then anyone can. I did the usual, which has streamlined even more as time goes on. Here's the short-hand notes on how to get started: How to Self-Publish in India (For only sweat equity.)Payment: Paypal + PAN card Book creation: LibreOffice + Gimp, Calibre Book publishing and sales: Lulu + Flipkart, Blogger + domain-name + Ganxy (later, + Gumroad), Facebook + Sellfy. Book Promotion: Podcasting = archive.org + iTunes + Stitcher, Social = IFTTT, LinkedIn YouTube. Let's take these apart - Payment:Paypal has become pretty conventional these days. In India, you have to have a PAN card as well, so that they can collect their taxes. That's the way it goes there. Book creation:LibreOffice is accepted and converted everywhere. It's now simplest to upload your native .odt file to Lulu and they'll create the ebook for you. LibreOffice also generates a upload-ready PDF, but you can get Lulu to do this as part of your hardcopy version. Then simply download the epub and PDF versions (as well as selling that PDF version directly on Lulu) - so you can upload these other places. GIMP is used to make your covers, if you don't get these made elsewhere. Calibre is used to store the meta-data (descriptions and tags) as well as keep all your versions of the book in one central location. It will also convert your epub to mobi so Kindle users can upload it. (Most people are now using their smartphones or tablets these days, so will use the epub or PDF file.) Book publishing and Sales:Lulu will publish your needed versions in both ebook and hardcopy versions. Flipkart is for India and the surrounding area. Blogger enables you to get sales directly, when you put a Ganxy script on your site. This also allows you to capture emails, which makes even MailChimp unnecessary to start with. You can email your customers directly. As well, it's possible to make a widget that only does email, and put this anywhere. You get blogger with a domain-name of it's own in order to get more respect. Blogger doesn't care how much money you make from it and takes care of all the backend support work. Yes, you're limited like anywhere else, but you can concentrate soley on creating more books, not on security updates, plug-in conflicts, etc. Ganxy allows you to import and export email lists (just follow their terms of service closely.) So you don't have to have an email client to start with. Ganxy also sells directly to your other distributors without having a person have to leave your blog. As you get experienced with this, you can then do the needed homework on Gumroad - which has some great tutorials and short courses you can take. Gumroad has extra features such as memberships and subscriptions so you can get more recurring income by selling courses, etc. Sellfy works with Facebook on a tab - so you can sell all your books in a bookstore setup. You'll need to upload your books to each of these (Ganxy, Gumroad, Sellfy) in order to enable direct sales. Book Promotion:Podcasting is hands down the fastest way for you to get traffic to your blog. Use archive.org for hosting, and generate the RSS feed with
