If you are a musician who wishes to share your music with the world, then maybe self-publishing can be a good start for you. Learn some helpful tips and how to self publish sheet music.
Today's question has three answers. You're going to want to stick around because the third answer is a secret as to how you can be winning at self-publishing sheet music.
So let's get into it. Today's question that was sent in was, how to self publish sheet music? Now I completely can understand this.
Being somebody who played violin for 10 years and piano for 8 years and some other instruments. I played guitar on and off as well as flute and a couple of other things throughout the years. I can understand the desire to say, well I've got some music.
Maybe you've written some music yourself. Maybe you even wish to publish music, older music that was created hundreds of years ago that's no longer under copyright. So, this would also be something that you may be very well tempted to self-publish.
But then the question is, how do I do this? I don't understand this whole self-publishing sheet music. I'm sure there are lots of little rules and things that make it a lot more difficult than just a normal self-published book.
That is what we're going to answer today. But before we get into the answers, check out my absolutely free Self-Publishing Checklist to help you get started at self-publishing books or maybe sheet music.
It is free so you're definitely going to want to check that out. To make sure that you're making as much as possible off the books you're publishing by not skipping any of those critical secret steps.
Check out this related article: What Are The Steps To Self Publish A Book?
So, how to self publish sheet music? Let me tell you a little bit about my story. When I first got started, I have not ever self-published sheet music.
But I can say I have used some very powerful pieces of software to generate the sheet music itself in a format that was easy to use. Like putting the music in PDF format so that I could then use my iPad or my iPhone and play the music right off of the device itself.
But not everybody likes to use these sorts of pieces of the software. So we want to find a solution that people are really going to appreciate. So then, the question is what exactly is that correct solution?
To make sure that when people are playing their music, they are going to like it. Because some people like to do it digitally and some people like to do it on paper.
There are just so many different formats and so that is something. Even though I have never done published music, I have put it into these formatting programs and printed it out.
Jutoh Is The Answer Tool
But then how exactly do we get it into Amazon Kindle? Where we are making money and putting it into a marketplace. Where people can enjoy playing the music that we've put out onto the market.
So, how to self publish sheet music? Let me get directly into the answers here. So the first thing is you're going to be able to do this exactly as you do it on normal self-published books.
There's no difference at all. So now, there may be some preferences and ways in which we're going to do this. That will make it easier for people to play your music than others and that may include maybe the size.
Normally I use 6x9 but I don't know, maybe that would not be as easy to do it with normal sheet music but maybe it would be okay. The same goes for the iPad or when you're putting it into the Kindle format. You could theoretically stick with the normal format.
Check out this related article: What Is The Correct Format For Kindle Books?
You're going to need to test this out. That is the thing that we don't completely know until we've actually done it. So there are options like for example, you could download or buy books on Amazon Kindle.
And see exactly what format like sizewise that they are using. That would give us an idea but the second answer is maybe the most important one. It is that I like to use one tool to solve all of our self-publishing problems.
In other words, all of the formattings can be done with a tool called Jutoh. That is what I use for all of my books. Go to this single tool and it solves everything including pictures, animation books, and comic books.
These things are inside of this tool. It can handle it. When we're doing sheet music, we're just talking about if you did a comic book, it's no difference.
In fact, it's even easier because, with a comic book, there is no difference. It's even easier because, with comic books, we are using a grid display on the comics themselves. But ultimately it's just a picture we're going to have in the book.
So that makes this a lot easier when we're using a tool like Jutoh to solve our issues with this. Now, the question you are going to need to know is maybe the size. But you really won't know the answer to that one until you've just started the process.
That is the secret answer of the day, you need to just start using a tool like Jutoh. Just use it and putting your sheet music in a different tool. You could do it by hand but there is a lot of software out there that will give you the ability to create the sheet music itself.
Share Your Music With The World
Then we will use a screen, we'll export that to a PNG file, JPEG, GIF, or whatever the case might be. I think the ones I was liking was for Jutoh, it prefers the PNG files. It is the one that it prefers to use.
So I would export to a PNG then we are going to take those PNGs and stick it directly into Jutoh. Now you took it then spit out our Kindle version. It can spit out our EPUB version for Smashwords.
It can do the paperback version, PDF format that we can then use for KDP Print. We are going to put it on to Ingram Spark for the print there. And we are going to do a hardback version on Lulu.
Now we have our combination. We have it in all of these different tools and the only real question is the size format. You can play around with that a bit.
I still think 6x9 is probably the correct on the print version. Because it ensures it will be distributed in as many markets as humanly possible. We want people to find our sheet music when we've published it.
This is really the key to it. You are going to start with just getting it onto KDP and we'll play around with it. Download some other people's books and see exactly how their sheet music looks.
Check out this related article: Self Publishing Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing?
Because on KDP, you can put on an iPad. Just set the iPad sideways and they can put the music directly on there and they can play it. The beauty is we're not having to compete on some small market.
We are in the largest market of books so we are going to have a huge number of people who would possibly be interested in buying and practicing our music. What better way to share our music with the world than on the largest marketplaces on the planet?
In the formats people want to listen to, play the music that you've created, and you could even have like a freebie in the book to get people to sign up for your newsletter. Maybe you have music like a MIDI file or you have played this music on Youtube.
So they can actually go and see it or maybe they start on Youtube. You can send them right over to your book to purchase it. There are so many options, so many fun things to explore when you're getting started with publishing on Kindle using Amazon with your sheet music.
These are just a few of the thoughts that I have on this subject. So, how to self publish sheet music? What have you found?
Have you ever published anything? Go and let me know below in the comments. Help other readers to also find this out. Make sure to check out my other blogs and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.