h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Minorvogonpoet, how are things going with your book? More sales yet? I am intending to publish a book in this way as well ... can you perhaps answer a few questions for me please?

Hi Willem, I'll help if I can.

To be honest, I don't think I've sold more than a dozen copies of Dreaming in Stone. I've done a bit of publicising but I haven't got the self-confidence to tell the world how wonderful it is!

Well I think it's great that you had sales already! I do hope they pick up from here.

So ... first of all I would like to know how the payments work. Have you an online account into which the money for the sales goes?

First, you have to fill in a tax form, saying you're not a US citizen.

You can choose to be paid by cheque, but there is a minimum amount which you have to earn in royalties before you get your cheque. I think it was quite a large amount and there was also a charge for the cheque service.

Or you can get the money paid into your bank account, in which case you need to provide the IBAN number and the Bank Identification Code. (This should be on your bank statement.)

Thanks Minorvogonpoet! It sounds like it just might be possible for me to do it. Because of my being officially unemployed, I can't get a credit card account ... but it sounds like I will be able to get the money in my savings account.

Next question ... I have my text as a Word document. Does it have to be formatted a certain way before I 'publish' it or can I format it right on the site?

Createspace provides a selection of templates, so all I did was to change the size of my page in Word until it fitted one of their templates. Createspace sizes are in inches, so I had to find the nearest centimetre equivalent. I then exported my Word document as a PDF and loaded it onto Createspace's File Review. The nice thing about Createspace is that it's quite forgiving. If your PDF isn't right, you just go back to your original Word document, make changes and turn it back into a PDF.
My book was just text, so it was relatively easy to format.(Though it took me a while to realise it should be right-justified) I'm not sure how you would manage if you have lots of illustrations. However, there are lots of notes and articles on Createspace you can use.

Hi again and thanks very much Minorvogonpoet! I know I can learn all this by trial and error by working on the site ... but I'm extremely stressed out about the idea of doing this and need to just calm down and having an idea what it would entail and confidence that I'll be able to do it, before I start the real work! So it helps me very much being able to talk with you and to 'visualize' what I'll have to do.

The first book doesn't have illustrations (yet!) except for the cover picture. But if the first one works, I'll want to do a book with some of my wildlife art.

Thanks for that ... it sounds like it won't be a hassle. I can format the text as a PDF before putting it on the site.

I'm not very technically minded so, if I can do it, I'm sure you can too!

Thanks again for your help! I'll see about getting started with this in the coming week, I feel much more hopeful now.

Let me know if you get your book published!