There was a time in the past that to have your book published was a major feat in itself. We heard the stories of how many times a struggling author has been rejected by publishers. Digital or e-publishing has done away with that! Now you can publish your e-books in less than an hour, with your fingers doing the work. It’s as simple as that. After finishing your e-book, here are eight simple steps to the digital or e-publishing process.

Choose the platform that suits your needs and register an account. There are many sites that offer different packages to writers. To name just a few, we have Kindle from Amazon, iBook from Apple, Barnes and Noble’s Nook, and Ingram Publishing. There are also other platforms worth looking into. Look around or ask other writers. Registering on any of these platforms is very simple. They usually have step-by-step instructions that you can easily follow. And the best thing, it’s free.

Study each package from these different platforms with the following factors in mind: size of the market, readability of the platform in different devices, royalty fees, and other services and tools they provide.

You will be asked to provide the following: title, description of the book and language. Make the title catchy, something that would catch the attention of the buyer. Sometimes, it’s the title that sells. Then you need to give a short description of the book. This is important. Take time to describe the book in a very appealing way. Write what the reader would gain from buying your book. And lastly is the language that you use.

Write a short description of yourself as the author. You can include some of the previous books you have written. If you have co-authors, you must also include a description of each of them.

Decide on your publishing rights. You have two options: if it is a public domain or not. It would be wise to choose the latter so that as the author of the book, you hold all the rights to it. There is the digital rights management (DRM) too. You need to enable this. This is to prevent other people from sending your file anywhere they want.

Provide ISBN. This is usually free on some platforms. If not, you can avail of this yourself and you pay around $99. You can buy 1, 10 or 100. The more you buy, the cheaper it is.

Remember other small but important matters like choosing keywords and the category of your book.

Start uploading. The first one is the book cover image. Again, this should be attractive. Seek professional help if you must. And then after this, upload the digital file of the text.

Name your price. Remember your price is not only for buyers but for your royalties too. Kindle has 70% royalties for e-books that cost $2.99 and above. You may want to consider that. However, if you are just new, remember that most buyers usually test the waters first and buy only books that cost less than that.