It’s reedpeace here. I put together a shorter practical guide based on some fieldwork I’d been doing, more of a hands-on handbook than an academic text, and decided to self-publish it as an eBook rather than shopping it around to publishers. This is my writeup of how that went with Scopus Journal Publications’ eBook publishing service.
I’d never done an eBook before, so this whole thing was new territory for me. I write up my experiences with services like this mostly so other people considering the same thing have something more detailed than a two-line testimonial to go on.
Why eBook and Not Print First
I went eBook-first mainly for speed and because the audience I had in mind, other people in my field who wanted something practical rather than a textbook, mostly reads on a tablet or laptop anyway. Print was something I figured I’d look into later if there was demand.
The problem was I had zero idea how eBook formatting actually works. I assumed it was just exporting a Word doc to PDF, which apparently is exactly the wrong way to do it if you want something that reads properly on a Kindle or reflows correctly on different screen sizes.
Getting In Touch
I found Scopus Journal Publications through a search for eBook formatting services and messaged them through their site chat, asking if eBook formatting and distribution was something they handled separately from print. Got a reply the same afternoon confirming it was, and they asked me to send over the manuscript along with any images or tables I wanted included.
One thing I flagged early was that my manuscript had a handful of tables and one diagram, and I specifically asked how that gets handled in an eBook since I know tables can look broken on smaller screens. They explained upfront that some tables would need to be simplified or converted to images to display properly across devices, which honestly I hadn’t even thought about until they brought it up.
The Actual Formatting Process
This part took longer than I expected, not because anything went wrong, but because eBook formatting has more moving pieces than I realized. The manuscript got converted into EPUB and MOBI formats, with a working table of contents that actually links to each chapter, which sounds basic but I’d seen self-published eBook Publishing Services where that’s broken or missing entirely.
They also cleaned up my heading structure, since I’d been inconsistent about how I formatted subheadings throughout the manuscript, and fixed a couple of spots where my line spacing would’ve looked fine in Word but odd once reflowed on an actual eReader.
The one table that couldn’t be cleanly reformatted got converted into an image instead, which they mentioned before doing rather than just changing it without telling me.
ISBN and the Distribution Side
They handled the ISBN registration for the digital edition, which is apparently separate from any print ISBN if I ever do a print version later. I didn’t fully understand why that mattered until they explained it, each format technically needs its own.
For distribution, the file went out to Amazon Kindle along with a few other platforms. What I found genuinely useful here was the metadata and category setup. I would have picked whatever category seemed closest and called it done. They actually looked at where similar practical guides in my field were categorized and picked something more specific, which apparently matters a lot for whether anyone stumbles onto the book at all.
Cover and Author Page
I opted for a simple cover since this wasn’t meant to look like a novel, more like something credible and practical. Went through two rounds of revisions on the typography before landing on something I was happy with. Nothing dramatic here, it did what I needed it to do.
They also set up an author webpage as part of the package, which I wasn’t expecting to actually use much but ended up linking on my department’s site, so that was a nice bonus I hadn’t asked for specifically.
Timeline and a Small Hiccup
Start to finish this took about three and a half weeks, which lines up with what I was quoted at the start, maybe a few days over. There was one point where a file conversion had to be redone because the table-to-image swap looked slightly off on a smaller screen size during testing, and they caught that themselves before sending it to me rather than me having to point it out.
Not going to pretend it was flawless start to finish, since that hiccup happened, but it got fixed before I ever saw a broken version, which is really what matters.
Final Word From reedpeace
If you’ve got a manuscript sitting around and are thinking about self-publishing as an eBook rather than going through a traditional publisher, my take after going through this with Scopus Journal Publications is that the formatting and distribution knowledge is where the actual value is. Anyone can convert a file. Getting it to display properly across devices and actually be findable once it’s live is the part that’s harder to do yourself.
That’s it from me on this one. If people want a third post on the print side if I ever get around to it, let me know in the comments and I’ll follow up whenever that happens.
Leave a Reply