Often, you may wish to use photos or graphics to illustrate your book. For a print book, your photos will need to be a minimum resolution of 300dpi or the illustration will be pixilated and fuzzy in print. You will need to use a quality photo-editing program to increase the resolution depth if the photo is less than 300dpi. This is not about the physical size of the photo, but is instead how close together the pixels are that create the image. This is likely one of the most challenging parts of self-publishing for the novice. I highly recommend seeking a crash course from someone you know who is adept at photo editing if you do not feel confident working on the images yourself. Continue reading

The beauty of self-publishing is that beyond your standard software, there is almost no overhead to publishing. At any point of the process, there are people who are perfectly willing to take your money to do what you can do yourself with a lot of patience and persistence. It takes time and there is a learning curve, but with a rudimentary knowledge of word and graphic processing, you can do it all yourself. Here are the basic programs and tools you will need: Continue reading