The Horned Lizard of Self Publishing says “eBook” but secretly loves print books more.

Trying to decide whether to self publish your book as a print book or an eBook?

Ebook.

And then …. take a long think about all of your potential readers. How many of them may be interested in buying a print book?  For instance, for my newsest book “When No One Else Would Fly“, the aviation history biography of Colonel C. J. Tippett, I chose to put out the print book first because the majority of my target market are older readers who may not be on board with ereaders – and will prefer a print book.

And because the retailers I have in mind for my niche marketing plan will need books to put on the shelves – of air museums, air show lobbies, and fly-in stands.

My next step is to put the book into eBook form, as I have already done with my first book “Just a Couple of Chickens“, available on Kindle and as an ePub.

You have to choose early on in your book production work because the formatting for each book is different enough that you have to split off into two versions. Although CreateSpace will helpfully offer you files from your print book to go plug into KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), those files will not likely make a useable eBook.

You will have to format the manuscript back at the MS Word stage – all as one document, starting from scratch with clean headers and links embedded. There are excellent tips on how to do this on the KDP site and at Smashwords – which is the ePub site. You have to format your ebook in one way for Kindle, and another way for ePub.

So, while the short answer to “Should I self publish my book as an eBook or Print Book” is eBook, there is another question in there – “Is there a market for your print book as well?”  And if the answer to that is no, then you can focus all your resources on your eBook.

But I am old enough to have some old-school in me, and I just love a print book. I think I will always have my books in print.