Nearly every author dreams of writing a bestselling book, but for decades, achieving this without the help of a traditional publishing company has been almost impossible.
Getting the attention of a big publishing company isn’t easy. It means sending out manuscripts, nervously waiting for a response that might never come, and staying positive in the face of rejection. For the few lucky enough to move past this stage, there are still months of negotiations over the creative direction of your work and your cut of the profits.
Working with publishers is far from a dream come true, but what if you could skip the process altogether? What if you could write, edit, publish, and sell your book—all without having to answer to the whims of gatekeepers?
In today’s creator economy, you can. Self-publishing tools are more widely available now than ever before. You need to know how to use them.
Entrepreneurs use market research to validate product ideas. This process involves closely examining competing products, evaluating their strengths and weaknesses, unearthing untapped niches, and establishing their ideal customer.
An author might scoff at the idea of performing market research, but the “author-premier” knows that understanding their audience early will make it easier to sell their book down the road.
You might already have books written, have a few book proposals, or be starting from scratch. Either way, using these methods of evaluating the market potential of your book before you begin the self-publishing process for the first time will help you establish a plan of action around marketing your book.
If you already have a written manuscript in mind for self-publishing, consider its market potential before moving on to the next steps. You can easily identify what sets your book apart, or you may want to make some revisions.
Either way, understanding your book’s audience will help make future marketing decisions a lot easier.
Self-publishers will have to compete in the same stores and marketplaces as traditional publishing companies, meaning your book needs to look just as refined and polished as it would coming from a major publishing house.
You might not have the vast well of editors a large publisher has, but that doesn’t mean you can’t create a product that can compete.
Before handing your first draft off to anyone else, read it yourself, start to finish, as though you’re a member of your intended audience. It’s easy to get lost during the writing process, and a start-to-finish read-through will help you understand how your book translates as a whole.
Once you have a manuscript ready for another set of eyes, put your entrepreneurial hat back on and start getting feedback from prospective fans.
During the product development process, entrepreneurs polish their products by getting feedback from target audiences, to improve the usability of the product. This is important for self-published books as well.
Before sending the book off to a professional editor, provide copies to people and have them give you feedback. The feedback you get must come from the intended audience of your book.
Browse message boards about your genre, send your manuscript to friends and family (if they fit your target audience), and get as much feedback as possible about your manuscript. The point of this stage isn’t to fix mechanical errors or typos but to get an overall read on the book’s marketability.
Copy editing is a meticulous process involving the line-by-line revision of a manuscript to improve readability and ensure the piece is free of grammatical and factual errors.
While you should do your copy edit before passing your manuscript along, it’s essential to have a professional take a look and gain an outside perspective on your book’s content. It can sometimes be difficult for writers to recognize issues with the readability of their work.
Hiring a freelance editor lets self-publishers work with a professional editor within the confines of their budget. There are several places where you can hire freelance editors to help edit your work. Freelancing sites have a wide variety of freelancers with varying costs and degrees of experience:
Once you have a freelance editor, you can have them professionally edit your piece. From there, you will have a completed, professional manuscript. Next, you’ll need to move on to cover design.
You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but most people will. Your cover is your book’s primary visual aid to users browsing online retailers, marketplaces, your online store, and just about every other place your book will be sold.
Crafting a memorable and eye-catching book cover often requires the expertise of book printing services. These professionals excel in design, color selection, and ensuring top-notch quality, ensuring your book stands out amidst the sea of options.
Author-preneurs wear many hats, and graphic designer is often one of them. Designing your cover will take a bit of time, but it can also save much money. The answer to this question depends entirely on how experienced you are with the task.
Whether you design the cover yourself or hire a freelancer, you’ll need to think like a marketer when evaluating your cover design. Here are some things to keep in mind:
If you’re looking to hire a designer, you can use the freelance services above that you used to hire an editor also to hire a designer:
If you have design experience and want to try your hand at designing your cover, here are some free design tools you might consider using:
At this point, you should have a well-edited manuscript and a robust cover design, but there are still more steps to bringing all those elements together to create a physical product.
A self-publishing platform is a tool used to turn all the elements of your book into a physical product and distribute it to buyers and retailers. The self-publishing company you use will affect your distribution channels, so it’s important to start thinking about how you want to sell books online.
Print-on-demand is a fulfillment method wherein your books are printed and shipped at the point of sale. This means that you don’t need to print copies of your book, hold them as stock, and ship them yourself.
Print-on-demand books are perfect for self-publishers because it’s low-cost and saves time by letting you outsource the manufacturing and distribution of your products.
Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is Amazon’s self-publishing platform that allows users to print their books on demand at the point of sale. Amazon accounts for about 50% of the printed book market. Readers are used to Amazon’s interface, making navigating and finding your book easy.
On top of this, Amazon will suggest your book to readers who its algorithm thinks might be interested. Although KDP will directly upload your book to Amazon, you don’t necessarily need to use it to sell printed books.
How much does it cost to use KDP?
Since KDP uses print-on-demand fulfillment, charges for using KDP are only incurred once you’ve sold a book. Paperbacks sold on Amazon marketplaces using KDP are subject to a 60% royalty rate, meaning you earn 60% of the listed price.
That said, printing costs (which can vary based on your paper type and number of pages) are also deducted from your total. Thankfully, Amazon has a handy printing cost and royalty calculator that will estimate the total amount of royalties you can expect to receive.
One downside to note about KDP is the exclusivity clause: if you sell ebooks on Amazon using KDP, you won’t be able to sell the same ebooks elsewhere. However, physical books sold through KDP can still be sold on other platforms.
Lulu is a self-publishing platform that provides tools for printing and distributing your books and ebooks. Lulu offers a wide variety of sizes, bindings, and page types that give you many options for developing your manuscript and cover into a physical product.
What makes Lulu advantageous is the Lulu Direct Shopify app, which easily integrates with your Shopify store. Using the Lulu app on your Shopify store, you can have books printed and shipped at the point of purchase, automating the process of logistics.
There are several self-publishing companies that allow users to create physical copies of their books and sell them via major retailers. Most have a print-on-demand option for selling on Amazon, but this might not be available for in-store of sale.
If you decide to use a self-publishing platform other than Lulu, you’ll need copies of your book printed, stored, and shipped traditionally, meaning there might be more overhead costs than with a print-on-demand service.
At the formatting stage of self-publishing, you’ll be putting the finishing touches on your product, ensuring it has all of the accouterment of a professionally published book.
The formatting step comes after the find a self-publisher step because self-publishing platforms typically have their own built-in layout and formatting features. The tools you use might vary depending on your platform, but the end product is the same.
Self-publishing platforms like KDP require users to upload two distinct files. The first is the manuscript file, which includes all of the book’s interior pages and the second is the cover file, which contains the outside of your book: the front cover, spine, and back cover.
Though your manuscript may be written and edited to perfection, there are still a few formatting choices to make as you begin to prepare it for publication.
Set your trim and margins. Your trim is the height and width of your pages. Self-publishing platforms typically have several page sizes to choose from, but you still need to set margin sizes.
Front matter
A book’s front matter is all of the pages that come before the start of your manuscript. Books typically have five types of front-matter pages:
A book’s front matter is all of the pages that come before the start of your manuscript. Books typically have five types of front-matter pages:
Body matter
A book’s body matter contains all the text of your chapters. Body matter pages start with the first chapter on a right-facing page.
Back matter
Your book’s back matter will include all of the pages that come after the chapters of your book. Here are the back matter pages to include:
The last element your book will need to have is an International Standard Book Number (ISBN).
What is an ISBN?
An ISBN is a 13-digit code that uniquely identifies each published edition of your book, along with its publisher and physical properties.
They’re useful because they provide a universal reference number for your book that will work across many different platforms, libraries, and marketplaces. They also act as proof of ownership over the content of your book, so they’re important for self-publishers to have.
How do I get an ISBN number?
Most self-publishing platforms, including Kindle Direct Publishing, will provide you with a free ISBN number for your book when using their platform to publish. If your self-publishing platform does not, you can acquire a universal ISBN via myidentifiers.com.
If you want to set yourself up for success, your next task will be to plan a product launch. You may not have the experience of a professional publishing house, but you’ve prepped for marketing by creating a book that has an audience you know inside and out.
There’s a lot to consider before a book launch. Let’s go over some important steps:
Once your book is formatted and your sales channels are set up, users will be able to purchase your book. Now it’s time to show them how.
You’ve written and edited your book like a pro. You’ve tested all your sales channels and everything functions seamlessly. You’ve got a great looking website and a great looking book, but how do you find customers?
Social media provides a huge marketing opportunity to small businesses, and self-publishing authors are no exception. Social media offers low-cost access to huge audiences, and having a good social media marketing strategy will help build an engaged audience that can boost book sales and help widen the reach of awareness of your book.
Growing your social media following should be an ongoing process, something you’re doing on a consistent basis alongside writing, editing, and publishing your works. For self-publishing, here are a few good ideas for social media content you might try to promote your book:
Growing your audience on social media takes some time, but as more and more audience members become familiarized with your work, your online book sales will grow.
Self-publishing authors must act as both authors and entrepreneurs. In the early stages of a business, with fewer employees and a lower budget, entrepreneurs tend to wear many hats.
At times, they must act as marketing strategists, social media managers, web designers, product developers, shipping coordinators, customer service representatives, and everything in between.
For self-published authors, the journey is the same.
Don’t be discouraged if your first launch doesn’t skyrocket you to the New York Times bestseller list. Few authors, whether self-published or not, reach the height of their success after publishing their first book.
Continue boosting your social media presence and building your audience. Each interaction on social media will help build up your online profile a little more. With each book you release, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of your audience and become more accustomed to the self-publishing process.
