SDN Academic Press

About SDN Academic Press

As part of our nonprofit mission to provide educational resources, the Student Doctor Network developed SDN Academic Press.  Initially created as a publishing indicia, SDN Academic Press now serves exclusively as an incubator offering select services for authors interested in self-publishing to the student and healthcare professional markets.

How we help authors

With the advent of print-on-demand books and electronic books (eBooks), authors can now edit, publish, distribute and market their works in all platforms easily and profitably.
Following the guidance here, you’ll be able to take your work to press quickly and retain 100% of the profit.
For select works, SDN can assist with publication costs with grants, no-interest loans, or author stipends.  Those works must directly benefit our membership and we request some elements of the content would be made available to our membership at no charge.

Step One (Planning and Initial Review):

• Does your book work for your intended audience?  SDN Academic Press offers authors the opportunity to have their work reviewed by students, residents, faculty or practicing doctors in nearly all fields of medicine.
• During this stage, select works may be chosen to receive funding from SDN for production costs.

Step Two (Editing):

• Good books have good editors that are familiar with the subject.  SDN Academic Press offers specialized editing services geared to the medical audience.

Step Three (Layout):

• eBooks:
  • We currently recommend Publish Green and Ingram Digital CoreSource for conversion of MS Word files to ePUB and Kindle formatting.
  • Or, do it yourself with Calibre: http://calibre-ebook.com/
• Traditional Books:
  • For those authors who wish to publish in traditional paper format, we recommend Mill City Press – they can handle interior and cover layout
  • If you’d like to do the layout yourself, consider using MS Word utilizing built-in indexing and table of content features.  For Cover Design:  SDN Academic Press offers cover design services for DIY authors.

Step Four (Distribution):

• If  you’re using Publish Green or Ingram Digital CoreSource, they will handle the distribution for you.  For DIY eBook authors, we recommend uploading using one of these three options:
  • Kindle: https://kdp.amazon.com/
  • Nook: http://pubit.barnesandnoble.com/
  • Apple: https://itunesconnect.apple.com/WebObjects/iTunesConnect.woa/wa/apply
• If you’re DIY printing in traditional format, we recommend using either Amazon CreateSpace or Ingram’s Lightning Source

Step Five (Marketing):

• Getting your book into the distribution catalogs is just the first step.  The next step is getting it noticed.  There are a number of options that we recommend:
  • Google AdWords:  AdWords is the cheapest and fastest method to get your book to a wide audience – including on the SDN website.
  • Promote on SDN.  For books that would be appropriate for our membership, contact us and one of our writers may contact you for a featured interview.  To advertise directly to our membership, contact our sponsorship team.
  • Comprehensive marketing effort: Mill City Press offers a full package of marketing options.

Please contact us for more information on how SDN Academic Press can help you bring your book from idea to reality!  (Submit a Help Desk request taking care to select “SDN Academic Press” under “Help Desk Topic.”)