In a previous article, I explained what self-publishing is and the pros and cons of self-publishing your own book. In this article, I will be giving you a brief breakdown of how self-publishing works and some of the steps a writer needs to take to self-publish a book.
How Self Publishing Works: Step-by-Step
STEP 1: Write the book
Most authors asking questions like ‘How to publish my own books’ or ‘how self-publishing a book works’ usually have a book that has been jingling in their head. The book may be a great book like J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series or it may not be.
But what is important is writing the book. You’ll never know if it is a great idea or a terrible idea until you write it. Plus when you write it, you can move into the real business of being an Author that sells books: Writing books to market, that is, writing books that meet reader’s genre expectations. But this will only happen if you write that first book and decide whether or not you like the business of self-publishing.
After writing that book, you need to get other eyes on it. You don’t have to pay for this, you can get beta readers, book critique partners that are also authors, or give your books out to colleagues so they can tell you what they think.
Don’t give that book to friends and family unless you’re sure they can be brutally honest with you.
STEP 2: Refine the book or prepare it for publication
If you’re a new author trying to understand how self-publishing works, you’re going to learn that your first stab at writing that book is only a first draft. And you don’t have a book until that first draft has been thoroughly revised and edited multiple times.
Refining a book involves editing the book and formatting it.
If you don’t refine your book after writing it, you will get very poor sales and bad reviews.
Nobody wants to read a poorly edited book but editing a book doesn’t have to cost you all your life savings either. What you need to do is to find a balance that produces top-quality books.
In the refining process of your book, your book may need to go through the following editing processes:
- Developmental or Structural Editing
- Beta Reading
- Plenty of Revisions to eliminate plot holes and address your structural editor or beta readers’ feedback
- Copy Editing
- Audio Editing
- Line Editing
- Proof Reading
- Formatting
Some of these you can do yourself but you’ll definitely need external help.
If you don’t have the money for a professional editor, here are some options to consider:
- Exchange edits with another author
- Get Critique Partners
- Get Beta Readers
- Get a friend, family member, or close colleague with superb editing/proofreading skills to edit your work.
STEP 3: Choose your Self-Publishing Platform
Where are you publishing your book? That’s the question you should answer while refining your book or after refining your book.
Here are some options:
1. Self-Publish only via Amazon KDP
Depending on your genre, you can find success in self-publishing solely on Amazon KDP (not advisable) by enrolling in their Kindle Select program which means that you cannot publish your books on sites other than Amazon.
You can also choose to use KDP expanded distribution for your Paperback books.
Learn more about self-publishing on Amazon here.
2. Self-publish on Amazon and other book retailers or stores
You can self-publish your ebooks wide on book retailers like Amazon KDP, Kobo Writing Life, Apple Books, Google Play Books, Scribd, Overdrive, etc.
And you can self-publish those same ebooks as paperbacks on the Amazon store (don’t select expanded distribution here) and physical bookstores using Ingram Spark’s Print-On-Demand services.
3. Self-publish using Aggregators
It can get exhausting to keep up with publishing on all the ebook retailers on the internet. One way to avoid the extra work is to publish using aggregators like Streetlib, Publishdrive, or Draft2Digital.
With aggregators, you have one dashboard to manage the publication of your book on many platforms such as Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play Books, etc.
4. You can also get your books into libraries like Mr. Eric Otis interviewed by Joanna Penn.
STEP 4: Package the book
Did anyone tell you that readers judge books by their contents?
Well, I’m here to tell you that’s a lie. Readers judge books by the packaging, specifically, the book covers and then the book description.
If you want to sell more books, you need to make sure that the book cover and description meet readers’ expectations for books in your genre.
For your Paperback, you should get the Author proof copy and read through it for any errors.
STEP 5: Don’t forget Pre-Publication Marketing Efforts
Other than the book packaging, there are also pre-publication marketing efforts you NEED to do if you want to sell your book.
For example, if you’re publishing on Amazon KDP, you need to carefully select your book’s title, subtitle, the seven Kindle keywords each book has, and your book categories. These things are key to your book’s discoverability on the Amazon bookstore.
You can also try putting the book on preorder (best for authors who have some kind of fanbase) and if your book doesn’t have a fanbase, you can do a lot of marketing to get it to sell.
Another example of pre-publication marketing efforts is researching the right price for your book based on readers’ price expectations. You can do research by looking at books that are sold in your genre or by reaching out to other published authors in your genre.
STEP 6: Publish and Start Marketing
Once you’re done with all the ‘how self-publishing works’ steps above, just click publish.
And then start marketing.
Use social media, go on book tours, create a book trailer, talk to Booktok or Bookstagram influencers and send your books to them for free.
Final Thoughts
Once you know how self-publishing a book works, you’ll realize that it is no big deal.
In fact, publishing your book on self-publishing platforms like Amazon KDP, Kobo Writing Life and other platforms is not the real issue, what can be a little daunting is writing the book, refining it until it’s as good as a traditionally published book, and then marketing the book so that it sells.
Once you have mastered the process of writing, refining your book to top quality, and marketing it, you can easily self-publish a book every month or every few months like many self-published Authors do.
