- Do you format your own books?
I did for several years early on in the business
and it got me to thinking,
can I do it faster or better than the professionals?
But let's face it here, folks.
Time is irreplaceable.
We only have a finite amount of it.
So you got to ask yourself.
Do I spend some time and grind it out
and trying to figure out how to format this properly
as an ebook or print book?
Or do I save that time
and spend a little bit of money up front
and have somebody else do it for me?
That's why I issued a challenge to the folks
over@formattedbooks.com.
And I said, hey, who can do it better?
Can you be able to go faster?
And can you be able to provide quality?
And those of you that aren't in the know
about format of books,
here's what they say about themselves.
"We've helped 100s of authors just like you create
great looking custom design books
so you can reach a larger audience and maximize sales.
We are so confident you'll love our work
that we back it with 100% satisfaction guarantee."
Wow, that's a big promise.
So let's just kind of level the playing field here.
What we're gonna do is we're gonna start
with just a short manuscript.
Because you know, it's not gonna cost as much time or money
for either myself or the folks over formatted books.
Now, even though I'm gonna set a timer,
I'm just gonna stop when I feel like I'm done.
My aim is to beat their time,
but I also want to provide good quality
because we wanna make sure this is somewhat fair fight.
So you're gonna see a little bit of a time lapse
of formatted books working on it myself,
and also what I would be doing
if I just relied on formatted books.
Yeah, that's kind of a fun one.
So let's go ahead and let the competition begin right now.
Being an indie author has its share of responsibilities
and expenses and I know firsthand
what it's like to barely afford a cover designer.
You can imagine how I feel when it comes to hiring out
when you're a bit more strapped,
rest assure you don't have to grind it out
if you hired someone to do the work for you.
After all, would you rather be writing publishing more books
or even taking a much needed nap after a hard day's work?
My biggest issue when it comes to formatting
my own content is I have to format all the specs
and do my best to honor good type settings.
Sadly, I don't know how realistic it is
to expect perfect type setting
when you have remedial work tools and skills to suit that.
Will you produce a quality interior on your own?
Possibly.
Would your time be better spent in other areas
beyond a skill you don't already have?
Absolutely.
If you're a type a personality,
chances are likely you don't wanna relinquish the control,
but the more comfortable you get
with trusting a professional,
the easier you'll find the rest of the process
of being an indie author.
Am I saying you can't format your own terrier?
Not really.
What I'm saying is be prepared
to either settle for an interior book design
or spend years getting decent
or in my case, mediocre at formatting the book yourself.
And time, now, who do you think finished first?
Well, of course I did at about 59 minutes, 10 seconds.
I was able to do both the ebook and the print book versions,
but let's not be so fast to judge here
because formatted books finished shortly after it
about an hour and 13 minutes and 36 seconds.
But the question remains who had the better quality?
And I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder,
but I think we can clearly see a side-by-side picture here
of both books.
And you will see right away which one is DIY
and which one is 100% professional.
So you'll notice on mine here on the left-hand side
that type settings a little bit of an issue.
There was tons of weird layout issues.
I was having problems with the lists and bullet points,
and even like the text and picture
was becoming some serious problems at some point or another,
I just gave up and I said screw it.
We're just gonna go ahead and leave it as is.
And I think that's a struggle a lot of authors
have out there right now.
So my version was just kind of plain and unmemorable.
But if you look over here on the right hand side
at the formatted books version,
you notice they have an eye for detail.
They also do something called type setting,
meaning that they put the most visual,
aesthetically a pleasing layout for the readers.
So it's easier for them to read from top to bottom.
The issue I ran into was sometimes the headers
or the footers were colliding with some of the text,
there wasn't as much separation as I would've liked it to,
I could have probably spent easily another hour or two
trying to grind my way through that.
But to be honest with you, I was at my wit's end.
I was ready to go ahead and wrap up and call it a day.
And here's the really cool thing,
is they implemented the book cover,
that I had previously done through a Fiverr video,
and they took all of the elements of that
and really honored the layout,
they put it inside the title page,
they use the same text,
so that way the font was matching from the cover
to inside the book.
And of course, they delivered the ebook and the print book
and I have to say this,
I spent an hour of my time doing it myself
and came up with a decent looking interior.
However, working with formatted books,
they took about the same amount of time
and made something that was far more superior.
And just think if I would have just allowed them to do that,
I could have just been sleeping on my couch the entire time,
which kind of did but you get the idea.
And formatted books
actually did a little bit of extra credit.
They said, "Hey, look, we're starting to do book covers
as well.
Why don't you at least take a look
at what we have to offer?"
So here are actually two of the covers
that they actually put together,
they went through the entire process
that was easily another hour or two right there
of them having to work through that.
So big, kudos, thank you so much for going the extra mile
formatted books.
And folks,
if you want to take a look at formatted book services,
go over to my affiliate link
at dalelinks.com/formattedbooks.
And speaking of cover designs,
I actually did a full video where I hired 10 cover designers
over on Fiverr to see what they could put together for me.
I'll see you in this very next video right here.