Self publishing Sites that work with Storyist?

[dearamie]

I am teaching a class and am putting together a text book. I would like to use Storyist but need to know if there are any self publishing sites...like Lulu or Blurb that will work easily with the site. Has anyone used a self pub site successfully with Storyist? Any tips if so? Thanks, Amie

[Steve]

Hi Amie,

 

I am teaching a class and am putting together a text book. I would like to use Storyist but need to know if there are any self publishing sites...like Lulu or Blurb that will work easily with the site. Has anyone used a self pub site successfully with Storyist? Any tips if so? Thanks, Amie

 

A number of people here have published on Amazon and the iBookstore with good results. I think Joel has also used Smashwords (in addition to Amazon). Orren's "The Deviant" is also available for Nook, Google eBooks, and Smashwords.

 

I'll move this thread into the Mac area so more people will see it and can add their experiences.

 

-Steve

[jzarley]

Hi Amie-- to follow-up Steve's post, I can fill you in on some of my experiences with self-publishing with using Storyist as the authoring tool. (Although, I always try to make myself use the term "indie publishing" )

 

My last book ("eBook Publication for Training") I published to the Kindle store directly from within Storyist. It was amazingly easy. (There's a screencast on the Storyist home page that walks you through the process). I also published to the Nook store (using the B&N PubIt service) and Google Books using the ePub I generated out of Storyist. (That's not quite as integrated as the Storyist->Kindle workflow, but it's as simple as generating the ePub then uploading it to those sites.)

 

Smashwords is a completely different animal, unfortunately. They run your book through their conversion engine (which they call the "meat grinder") which converts it to several different formats. However, they require that you start with a Word .doc file (not even a .docx--a .doc!), and you have to strip out all of the formatting, etc. (They have a free, very detailed style guide which tells you everything that they're expecting from your Word DOC). So, I usually export my finished manuscript out of Storyist as an RTF, open the RTF in Word, then spend several hours "dumbing it down" to what the Meat Grinder will accept. It's not a pretty (or fun) process, but considering the reach of the Smashwords premium catalog aggregator distribution (iBooks, Kobo, Sony, Diesel, etc.) their distribution pipeline is too valuable not to put the effort into it.

 

For print books I use CreateSpace (owned by Amazon) and have been really happy with their quality. (Although, I may also try Lighting Source with my next title). For print versions I export an RTF of my manuscript from Storyist, then do the layout and final PDF generation in Adobe InDesign. (I do all my own layout, then just turn over a complete ready-to-print PDF to CreateSpace). I find this also to be a pretty simple process, and usually only takes a few hours (if that) to finalize the layout design in InDesign. (The manuscript from the Storyist RTF comes in beautifully to InDesign, retaining all style info, etc..)

 

The one important lesson I learned from my first book was NOT to leave Storyist until the manuscript is COMPLETELY finished, so that your manuscript in Storyist is actually your "master" copy of the content.

 

I'm sure others have their own variations of workflow that they can share, but now on my third book I've settled in to what works for me. (And, to be honest, the only part I find painful is Smashword's requirement to bring them a Word DOC...the rest of the process is very smooth.)

 

Best of luck with your project!

 

Joel