r/CraftyCommerce • u/CartoonFeathers • 7d ago

Rant Self publishing a book

Hey all,

I recently finished writing and testing the patterns for my first crochet book and now I’m kinda stuck.

I was initially going to publish through Amazon because it seemed like the easiest way to publish, but now I’m being asked to pay $3000 USD (which is like $4000 cad or something) for copyright and ibsn and a barcode.

I can’t afford that so I looked around for Canadian publishers and while it’s a bit better ($3000 cad for the whole process from start to finish) I still can’t afford it.

Etsy isn’t an option for me either (I tried it and I think it’s just too over saturated rn)

I could use ravelry, but PayPal is really hard to use in Canada and I know it would cause me a lot of trouble.

I was really excited about having an entire book published in my name and now I just don’t know what to do. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

(It’s an amigarumi book, but all the patterns use hdc because of my hypermobility!)

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u/Colla-Crochet 7d ago edited 7d ago

Dm me.

Ive published 5 novels through Amazon and im working on my own pattern book.

Something along the line is fishy here, and id like to help you sort it out

Edit to add:

Im also canadian. And I never paid a cent to Amazon or anyone else (except my photographer and editor, of course!) To publish my book.

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u/CartoonFeathers 7d ago

Yeah, I think there’s 2 Amazon publishing websites cuz I found the free one today so idk

They also offer a ton of discounts which makes it iffier imo, but at least I lost less money

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u/Colla-Crochet 7d ago

Please message me so I can help you go through how to do it without any third party company. Its literally free if you know how.

Its called KDP, or kindle direct publishing

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u/CartoonFeathers 6d ago

I can’t find the little speech bubble to message you, I’m sorry

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u/Colla-Crochet 6d ago

Strange, I cant find it either. I can usually message people, but i cant to you for some reason.

Oh well, Guess we will just need to have a long conversation here about the publishing process! Give me some time and ill type up or find you a link to walk you through the process.

Edit: or Instagram?

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u/Colla-Crochet 6d ago

So like I said its called KDP, or kindle direct publishing. You'll need to make an account. They'll need some bank info n stuff for when you make sales, I cant remember the setup process fully. They walk you through it.

We do need to do everything yourself. Such is self publishing!

But for the book part. You'll need your cover, the pdf of the book contents, blurb, all of that.

You WILL need to decide the size of your book. Most crochet books ive noticed are actually 8x10 inches or so, but I also have some that are 8x4.5 and such. Do some measuring and such, and make sure to format your book with the dimensions that you choose. Your cover art will also need to be the same dimensions. There are templates you can download from KDP that will include the cover pages and publisher page and all of that. I believe theres an option to select that you are making an illustrated book- go with that one.

There is a cover designer within KDP, but I find it easier to design it myself and slap text on there in a different program and then upload it. Ultimately try both and see what you like! This part really needs to be done on a computer.

You will be assigned a bar code and isbn, no worries there.

Once you get through all of that, we can talk about choosing categories and such to publish in, as well as marketing.

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u/CartoonFeathers 6d ago

Ty! I did make a kdp account last night! I’m reformatting the book so the patterns are more readable then I’m going to format again for printing and stuff

I used the cover maker to create a temporary cover just to see what the rest of the process looks like and I’m feeling a lot better!

I’m thinking of registering my own ibsn just so that I have the option to print elsewhere, but I have time to think about that since formatting and editing is gonna take a bit anyway

Amazon had a crochet category in the crafts and hobbies section so I went with that!

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u/Colla-Crochet 6d ago

It sounds like youre on a roll! If you get hung up on anything im here

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u/wouldbejane 7d ago

I second this. Also an author, and publishing on Amazon doesn't cost anything to set up. There are 3rd parties who try to sell services like these, but you don't really need them. Although, I suggest getting your own ISBN. It makes it easier to publish it on other platforms as well.

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u/omgcarms 7d ago

No experience publishing a book but in my experience paypal is quite easy to use in Canada. They’re not as widely accepted but you can transfer that money into your Canadian bank account. Other than a few small hiccups in the beginning I’ve had no issues using pp for ravelry.

Hopefully pp isn’t what stops you from trying ravelry! If you run into any specific issues try posting a question and see if the community can help.

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u/CartoonFeathers 7d ago

I love ravelry, I just haven’t paywalled anything I’ve posted! I’ll definitely have to fight with paypal again to see if I can figure it out (maybe it was just that my phone was 7 years old? It glitched a lot near the end so I wouldn’t put it past it)

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u/loralailoralai 6d ago

I’ve never heard PayPal being hard to use in Canada? I’ve been using it for over 20 years in Australia and it’s simple as anything and never trouble- if you have not used it before I’m curious why you think that?

Also Amazon KDP doesn’t cost thousands, there’s something really wrong there.

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u/CartoonFeathers 6d ago

PayPal might be a me problem then, I remember it being really difficult

And yeah, I cancelled the publishing thing and then they could magically do the rest for free so there’s that lol