Can you publish Kindle books without actually writing them? Yes, I did it earlier this week, let me tell you how…
I love Kindle books – both reading and creating them – but working part-time around young children means I don’t have much time to actually write books.
So it made sense for me to partner up with someone who has a lot of material for a book, but who doesn’t have the time to work through the Kindle publishing process.
Self publishing is far easier than it used to be, but physically publishing a Kindle book and publishing a Kindle book that people will actually buy are two different things!
So I partnered up with Becky Goddard-Hill of Baby Budgeting and Family Budgeting. Becky is an expert in budgeting and has a few books under belt now, so writing a book wasn’t a big challenge for her.
I took the same role as a traditional publisher: I did the proof-reading, editing, arranged a designer to do the cover, formatted the book, uploaded it to Amazon, sorted out the pricing and chose categories and keywords. Unlike a traditional publisher who does little or no marketing, I’m also helping to promote the book.
And here it is: 100 Easy Ways to be a Thrifty Family
It’s a great book – I know, I read it several times as I was editing and proof-reading it! 🙂
So the moral of this story is that you don’t have to do everything yourself as a mum with a business. You don’t even need a business partner in the traditional sense. You can partner up for a small project or even just part of a project.
If you’re struggling to work out what product or service to offer your customers, look first for a problem that they would like you to solve. But don’t assume you have to make or invent a product to solve that problem all by yourself, look at how you can compile, bring together, introduce, partner with someone or even outsource the answer to that problem. For example, I know people need to save money these days, but I don’t know enough about budgeting to help them personally. Becky does.
If you’re a mum who would love to be self employed but aren’t creative in the art, craft or design kind of way, don’t despair. You don’t need to be arty or a designer. Use your creativity to come up with a solution to a problem, then be the project manager, entrepreneur, networker, leader – or even the geek – instead.
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