If you've ever wanted to write your own books and publish them, Self-Publishing DECODED is for you. FREE apps (programs) are the only tools we need to make the most of the information in this book. Even if you are financially challenged, you can write, format, make your own front and back covers, and at no cost to you, upload your books and tunes to free publisher-distributors, set your own selling prices with the distributor, and place your print books and music CDs with American, British, and European bookstores as well as sell your print books, ebooks, audio books, digital music and CDs planet-wide! Today's authors are no longer restricted to traditional publishing houses where it's a matter of luck to even have the publisher lay eyeballs on your manuscript, let alone publish it. These days we have very powerful options. We can publish our own books and tunes through big publisher-distributors like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Create Space (print books and CDs), Apple iBooks (ebooks and digital music albums), Loudr, Bandcamp, Smashwords, Audible (audio books), Kobo, and more. Self-Publishing DECODED will give you all the information you'll need to walk your literary and audio creations through the upload gates of these publishers so your books will sail through their interfaces with a minimum of fuss. You will learn how to organize your ideas as you write, use voice recognition software, tap into your creative process, use easy page layout strategies, and master the grammar checker so you can edit your own books. You will learn how to convert your book to various formats like the Kindle format, the embedded font PDF format, the ePub format, the mp3 music format, and a step-by-step to layout the Smashwords ebook format from scratch. You will learn how to make a professional quality book cover. You will learn how to make interior illustrations. You will learn how to make audio books and music albums, you will learn the rules of dialogue so you can write a convincing novel, and you will learn the easiest way to get your audio creations to the major distributors, including Amazon (digital), Create Space (CDs), and iBooks (digital). You will learn the best way to build your own free website and how to sell your books from it. You will learn how to increase keyword density of your web pages to help place your website URL higher on the search engine rankings. You will learn the value of podcasts. You will learn how to leverage the cloud and where you can find all those free cloud apps like Dropbox, Google Drive and Sugar Sync. Writing and self-publishing is a cost-free venture if you know what apps to use and how to use them. If you are willing to put a little bit of time into your self-publishing efforts, you will be well rewarded. This book will show you the way to have fun with self-publishing, make money with it, or both. All you need is the proper information. And all that information is right here, in this book.
Dick Claassen has been writing since the age of 9. A whole lot of writin' was goin' on in Dick's young life as he gradually honed his craft. Eventually his writing was mature enough to catch the eye of the DES MOINES REGISTER, where he sold the paper a special piece about an Iowa company that made mountain dulcimer kits. From there he penned another article for the DES MOINES REGISTER about a miniature carnival titled, World's Biggest Little Carnival. And an article titled, How to Use the Pocket Calculator In the Darkroom was picked up by "Petersen's Photographic" magazine. Two more books that were published by educational textbook publishing giant Houghton-Mifflin followed. One was a book about pocket calculators that was aimed at the junior high level titled The Pocket Calculator In the Classroom. A second book titled, Math For Consumer Survival, a math text book, was written for the high school level. Claassen wrote well over a dozen sci fi, paranormal and contemporary romance novels, plus a chilling alien abduction trilogy including the titles, ta'Sara's Gift, Zeta's Child, and The Healers. All that story telling kept Dick very busy for quite some time. But eventually Dick found his way into writing music method books for the ukulele, Ukulele Finger Picking, the banjo, 5-String Banjo: Hot & Wild, and the Native American flute, (6 books covering every aspect of Native American flute music). Dick's music method books have proven to be wildly popular, so he plans to continue writing books in this genre. Claassen co-owned and co-operated Awe-Struck E-Books, a publisher of more than 400 original ebooks, from 1999 through 2009. He now gives all his time to his how-to books, as well as to PlayFolkInstruments.com, Dick's website about folk music.
