I’ve published several books on CreateSpace and like it very much. However, if you plan to publish on demand there are a number of challenges. Here are some suggestions on how to get started:

0. (Editing Step) Get the larger portions of your book (chapters, poems, short stories, blogs, etc.) in the order you want them and put on an editor’s hat — look at it like you’d look at a book you bought at Amazon. Fix anything you don’t like before you start. Also, make sure your content belongs to you, do not use photos, text, etc. you have copied from websites or other writers. While a blogger may get away with that, the content in a book must be yours, or you must have permission from the owner to use it.

1. Cut and paste your work into one document, turn on “edit” mode so you see internal formatting like paragraph marks, extra spaces, etc., and clean up obvious typos, punctuation, etc. Do that in Microsoft Word or one of the other popular word processing software packages such as Open Office Writer, or even plain text. What you want is everything to be uniform so it will look like one manuscript. That means if some of your quotation marks are “plain quotes” and some are the curved “curly quotes” then you need to make them all the same. Same for all punctuation, (do you use an em dash or two hyphens, for example) line spacing, font size, etc. Get rid of any spaces used to indent, and make a hard return (the enter key) after every paragraph. You can clean up complex formatting (like the html code that you have on a website) by pasting it into a plain text document and then copying it out again and pasting it into your final document.

2. Run a spellchecker/grammar checker like the one that comes with Word.

3. Go on to CreateSpace.com and get an account. It’s free and there are a lot of resources there.

4. Make yourself a book following the step-by-step instructions. Do a dummy run with a short piece of content. Give it the title you want for your book, as that will stay the same, but you can put in content and then replace or change it later, as many times as you want.

5. In the content section, download one of the book templates. I’d suggest the 6X9 format for most purposes. Then you can practice flowing your text into it to see how it works. All the page formatting (the gutter, margins, etc.) is handled for you so you don’t have to do the page layout manually. Use the font and font size in the template and play with it a bit to see how it looks. There are headings, footers, etc. as part of the template, and you can set up paragraph indents.

6. If you are familiar with Word or Open Office Writer, then you will have an easier time on the next step. If not, you will need to use the help menu or Google how to do these things:

a. Set paragraph indents.
b. Set page breaks (this makes your next chapter or poem start at the top of the following page automatically. If you don’t use these, and later want to add something on page one, for example, then all the content will flow lower and you will have to manually adjust the text for all following pages.
c. Set a footer for page numbers.
d. Set a header. There are several options. You can choose to have no header, or a header that has your book title on odd pages and your name (or the chapter name) on even pages, etc.

7. Experiment with your Word processor and the CreateSpace template, until you get something you like.

8. Then you can select a cover template — some of those have artwork on you can upload your own art/photos onto a template or even design the entire cover yourself, which is much more difficult as you must deal with font sizes and types, spacing, etc. Make sure that any artwork you use is yours or that you have permission from the owner to use it for a book (don’t copy art, etc. as is common in a blog, for example.)

9 The rest of the steps are outlined in Creatspace, so you just follow the numbers and finish the steps.

10 Then you proof your book. There is an online proofing setup, or you can send for a proof copy. Make sure you proof it carefully and be sure you have the book exactly as you want it before you approve it. You can change out the content, etc. later on, but you will need to go through the proofing process again, A few days after your approval, it appears on Amazon.com. You decide the cost, sales plan, etc., and making it into a Kindle electronic book is just a matter of clicking a few links.

OK, there are 10 steps to publish a book. I used a lot of bad words figuring it out, and I still have some frustrating spots, but persist and you’ll have yourself a book! If you have questions you can email me at wehanson(a)aol.com