Do you want to take a book that was published traditionally and transition it to a self-published book sold on Amazon KDP (formerly CreateSpace)? Here’s what you should consider.
Do you have the legal right to self publish the book?
Check your original contract with the traditional publisher. If they only had rights to the manuscript for a limited amount of time, after that time is up, you may be free to self-publish.
Recently I received an inquiry from a professor whose academic book had been traditionally published, but the rights of the publishing house were expiring in about a month’s time. He wanted to have his book ready to release on Amazon shortly after it ceased to be available through the publishing house. He told me right away that he had the rights to the book, so the next question I asked him was…
Do you have the digital book files?
You might be in possession of the actual final interior PDF that the publisher used to send your book to print. It’s rare, but you might even have the editable files (probably from Adobe InDesign). Or you may only have the original text files (from Word or another text-editing program) that you gave to the publisher for formatting. If your book designer has to reformat the interior of the book, this will be a bigger financial investment than if you just pay for pre-press adjustments to a PDF that is already formatted.
The best way to find out how best to transition your book files to Amazon is to show a book designer all the related digital files that you have — PDFs (high or low resolution, watermarked or not, password-protected or not), Word files, etc. (Remember, if you made changes to the book after the layout stage, those may not be reflected in your original manuscript files!)
Usually a republished book needs a new cover design; you can ask your book cover designer to come up with completely new cover concept, or use (for example) the same color scheme for the new cover to keep some continuity between the two editions of your book.
Books self-published through Amazon KDP are subject to Amazon’s limitations for paper quality, paper color, and cover (softcover only). Amazon KDP is not really ideal for books with a full-color interior; Amazon is best suited to books with a black-and-white interior.
Have you read this far and still think you’re ready to move your book onto the Amazon platform and sell it independently? Let’s talk and find out what it would take to get the files you have up for sale on Amazon. For the client I mentioned above, it just took a few weeks to get his book moved onto Amazon KDP.