The Ubuntu Science Fiction Novel

An old post I wrote back in 2017 describing how I wrote and published a novel using Ubuntu Linux and entirely free software programs got picked up on Reddit and brought in a lot of traffic to my website.

The novel in question is SILENT ORDER: ECLIPSE HAND, and it’s currently available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited.

I have to admit in the four years since I wrote that blog post, I have started using more paid software. I made the current version of the book’s cover in Photoshop, and I used Vellum to format the ebook files.

But! I think the main point still holds true.  If you want to self-publish, there is no need to spend a lot of money, and you don’t have to spend a lot on expensive software programs.

You can do so, quite successfully, using entirely free software. I started self-publishing in 2011 and didn’t start using Vellum for ebook formatting until mid 2019. Between 2011 and 2019 I sold about 1.3 million ebooks that I formatted using the free programs Calibre and Sigil. I only learned to use Photoshop over the summer of 2020 because I wanted to broaden my skill set and make better images for Facebook ads and my short story covers.

So the more “premium” programs like Vellum and Photoshop are nice, but not necessary.

All you really need to self-publish is a laptop and an Internet connection.

-JM