#411 Publish with a Purpose: How to Publish on a Limited Income

Welcome to Kingdom Writers, where we help equip and empower Christian writers of all genres to share your unique gifts with the world. We're your hosts, C.J. and Shelley Hitz.

This podcast is filled with spiritual encouragement as well as prayers to help you overcome the resistance you face as a writer. Your story matters.

How do you self publish a book on a limited income? Hi, my name is Shelley Hitz and I help writers become authors and self publish their books in multiple formats using my publishing map and step by step system so you can write words that outlive you and self publish books that fulfill your calling. I promise to share at least one thing that will help you write, say self publish and market your books so the message of your books can impact lives. When writing a book, when you're disabled and on a limited fixed income, there are times that we all are more limited in our income. And yet that doesn't mean that publishing a book is out of your reach. Now I will say at least having some resources will help. But my very first book, Mirror Mirror and My Beautiful Little Looking Deeper to find your True Beauty, it's for teen girls and it was based upon a ministry to teen girls. And when you have a book that has a ministry component, you may be able to find people who would be willing to donate their time to help you. So the thing is, with self publishing, you can open up an account@kdp.Amazon.com that's Kindle Direct Publishing. It's it's free to open your account, it's free to upload files, but you have to get the files in the proper formats and you want to have a quality book. And so if you have some sort of topic that might be something that someone would be willing or interested in volunteering, you might find someone who's willing to volunteer their time to edit your book or to format your book or or to create the book cover. And actually I had people that volunteered to do all of those things for my first book. It was such a blessing. And to be honest, we give that book away more often than we sell it. The ebook version has been free on the website for years, and girls all over the world have come to know Christ because of that book. And so there are certain books that lend themselves well to finding people that may be willing to help you. Another option is to barter. So if you have some skills or you have some things that you could do, maybe it's even babysitting someone's kids and then they in turn help you to edit your book, or, you know, design a cover for you. I mean, there's different things that, that you can do. Or you might even find college students that would like to get experience and be able to say that they are a book cover designer, you know, because they've designed your book and then you give the credit on the copyright page with a link to their website or a link to their email address. So there might be a situation where you can barter. Either you do something for someone else or, you know, you. It's kind of like a barter because they're getting experience and you're giving them the opportunity to do that in exchange for them doing that service for you. Now, there are very affordable options too. So if you can see, save up a little bit of money here and there, over time, you can have enough money to publish your book. Now the most affordable way is through a Kindle ebook. And that's because you don't need to purchase an ISBN. Kindle will give you what's called an ASIN. So currently ISBNs cost $125. There's also an option where KDP will give you an ISBN and that's another option that you can look for, look at for print books if you're on a really, really tight budget. But I typically do recommend that you get your own ISBN if at all possible because it just gives you more control. But again, that's another option on a tight budget. But with a Kindle ebook, you only need the front cover. You don't need the spine or the back cover. It makes it cheaper, more affordable, and you can find really great designers that are really not, not that expensive online from even other countries and other things like that. And we give a lot of those examples and some of the people that we have used over the years in Christian Book Academy, and so we give you some of those, those references online as well. But a Kindle short Kindle ebook is a really affordable way. KDP also has free software called Kindle Create. Now I personally have never used it, but it's specifically to format a Kindle book. And you could learn that or, you know, you can use Microsoft Word, you can learn how to do that. There's many tutorials. We have a tutorial in Christian Book Academy on how to use Microsoft Word to format your book. So, you know, check what resources you have, you know, check what's available online. And there, there's ways to get things done. Like we have even recommendations for editors that are more affordable as well. So, you know, there are options, but you may have to save up a little bit over a period of time to be able to afford it. But I just want to tell you, also, pray big and ask God to provide. We've had people say before they wanted to join one of our programs and they didn't have the money. And I encouraged them, like, pray and ask God to provide. And it was amazing because God provided unexpected income, unexpected money that they then were able to use to sign up for the program. And so don't hold back. Ask God. Ask God to provide what you need. And you just never know what he's going to do. So I encourage you. There are ways to do it, but I do want to also encourage you. Don't skimp on cover design. Still hire somebody. And like I said, there are very affordable options, and we have several of those that we recommend. But one area you can save a lot of money is by learning the formatting yourself. So you want to make sure you have a quality product and that you're putting your best foot forward, that you're really allowing your book to shine. But know that you're not stuck. There are options. So I encourage you, like, even if you want to come into Christian Book Academy for one month, get the resources, get the things that you need, you can do that. And if you need a scholarship, contact us@supportristianbookacademy.com we sometimes offer partial scholarships, so contact us and maybe it might be a good fit. You can even just join for one month and see if you want to stay from there. But we are excited for you. We know that even on a very small budget that God can do amazing things.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Kingdom Writers. We believe that you, as a Christian writer, have a specific role to play in the kingdom of Heaven to impact lives for eternity.

And because of this, we choose to pour out our lives into encouraging writers like you to not only tell your stories, but to take the courageous step of self publishing your stories in books that will outlive you and leave behind a powerful legacy. This podcast is sponsored by Christian Book Academy, where we help you give birth to your books. We invite you to join our community of Kingdom writers.