Anyone who is a writer dreams of becoming an author of a best-selling book, but for quite some time, this has been difficult due to traditional publishers and their working processes.
It can be really hard to get the attention of a big book publishing company because they have a very delicate process which includes sending out manuscripts, waiting for them to look at your book and evaluating if they want to publish it or not. On top of it, the uncertainty of your book being accepted by them is highly worrying sometimes.
If you are one of the lucky ones and your book does get selected, there are still months of negotiations over the creative direction of your book and the percentage of the profits.
Working with these types of book publishing companies can be really tiresome at times, and you can be forced to drop the idea of becoming an author. But what if you could write, edit, publish, and sell your book without answering anyone? Wouldn’t that be great?
Working with these types of book publishing companies can be really tiresome at times, and you can be forced to drop the idea of becoming an author. But what if you could write, edit, publish, and sell your book without answering anyone? Wouldn’t that be great?
Self-publishing your own book is the option you are looking at. It can be extremely great for your book and your journey as a writer. Moreover, today, self-publishing tools are more available than ever before, and all you need to know is how to use them.
Following are 7 steps that you need to follow when self-publishing a book:
Write Your Book
Authors need to know that they write a book that is perfect in every sense. You need to be sure what you will write about, what genre you will explore, and what will be your target audience. You need to understand the dynamics of the market, such as the interests of people and what they want to read at the moment. If you can craft a book that the masses want, there is a good chance that more people will buy it to read it.
When writing a book in a specific genre, you need to look at your competitors and evaluate how you can stand out from your competitors, and this can be through the book cover, the title, or the synopsis pitch.
You need to ensure that your writing is immaculate and nothing is missing from your book. You need to make sure that you know how you can set your book apart and identify its market potential before you move on to the next steps. Once you understand your book's audience, making future marketing decisions will be much easier.
Edit Your Book
Your book will be competing against books that traditional publishing companies and other self-publishers publish. Therefore you need to be sure that your book is refined and polished, just like a book that a major publishing company publishes.
First, you need to edit the manuscript by yourself. Read the draft from start to finish, just like someone from your target audience. This will help you understand how your book pans out and what you can do to improve it.
Once you are done with it, share it with someone you know who is a fan of the genre and get their feedback on it. You need to share it with people who can provide you with feedback on the overall reading of your book. Once you are done with it, you can share your manuscript with a professional.
The professional editor will ensure that your book is error-free and has no grammatical mistakes. The professional editor will ensure that your book's readability is perfect, as the writer can overlook this during the writing process.
You can get your book line edited by freelance editors or by a company with professional book editors. Bellevue Publishers is one such company with editors and proofreaders known for perfecting books of up-and-coming authors.
Once the editing is completed, you can move on to the next step, which is the cover design of your book.
Designing The Perfect Book Cover
Regardless of what anyone says, the first thing people will look at is the cover of your book. Your book cover will act as your book's primary visual aid to readers browsing online on the different marketplaces on which your book will be published.
You need to get the help of a professional designer and make sure that they get the idea behind your book and design something that resonates with the book and simultaneously attracts readers of the genre. Your book cover has to be perfect; therefore, you must find a designer who you think will be best for your book.
You need to review the portfolios of designers and check if they have experience designing book covers of the same genre as yours. Once you are sure of a designer, you provide him with all the relevant details and ask them to design a book cover that is perfect when looked at online and in physical form.
Select Your Self-Publishing Platform
To turn all the elements of your book into a physical product and distribute it to buyers and retailers, self-publishing is the best tool you can use. At this point, you must start thinking about how you can sell your book online with the help of the self-publishing companyyou will hire.
You can also start a print-on-demand setup for your book, where your books will be printed and shipped once a sale is made. You won't have to print copies of your book, stock them, and wait for sales. Print-on-demand is perfect for self-publishers because it is low-cost and allows you to save a lot of time.
For self-publishers, platforms such as Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Lulu and Shopify are there for you to easily self-publish your books.Most readers are used to Amazon, making it easy for them to search and find your book. Amazon will also suggest your book to readers who are interested in the genre your book is written with the help of its algorithm. KDP will upload your book directly on Amazon; therefore, you won't need it to sell printed books.
KDP Amazon will give you a 60% royalty rate, deducting the printing cost from your total earnings. Amazon has a great printing cost and royalty calculator that will give you an idea of how much you will earn from the royalties you will receive.
Book Formatting
Once you reach the formatting stage of self-publishing, you will finalize your product and ensure that it has all the things that are required in a book that is expertly published. Now the reason book formatting comes after the self-publishing step is mainly because, usually, self-publishing platforms have their own formatting features. The formatting tools can vary based on the platform, but the result will be the same.
You can begin your book formatting by setting your trim and margin sizes. You need to ensure that your book's front, body and back matter is perfect, as it will ensure it is formatted according to publishing standards.
After that, you get an ISBN, a 13-digit code that uniquely identifies each published edition of your book with its publisher and all physical properties. They are essential because they provide a universal reference number that will work across various platforms, libraries and other marketplaces on which your book is sold.
Launch Your Book In The Best Way
The next important thing you will have to do is plan a book launch. You might not have the experience equivalent to professional book publishing companies, but you have prepped for marketing by crafting a book whose target audience you are familiar with.
You need to consider a lot of important things before your book launch. You need to make sure that your Amazon sales channel is working. You need to set up an author website with an online checkout, and your book must have a home base for all your sales channels. You also need to make sure that you develop a way to capture visitor email addresses and install an analytics tool that will help you see the behavior of your visitors and assist you in improving your online store.
Market Your Book & Yourself On Social Media
Now at the last stage of your journey, after testing all your sales channels and functions and developing an exceptional website and the perfect book, the question arises how do you find the customers?
The answer to this is social media, as it provides a great marketing opportunity to small businesses and self-publishing authors who are just breaking the scene. Social media can be the best option for up-and-coming authors as it will help you in growing your audience.
You can share pieces of your writing on your social media and encourage user reviews on Amazon that will increase your visibility on Amazon. You can also collaborate with social media influencers which will allow you to build awareness of your book. You can incorporate other tactics once your book is published to easily reach your target audience and improve your chances of being noticed.
All in All
We can confidently say that if you follow all these self-publishing steps perfectly, you can quickly increase the chances of your book being noticed by your target audience. You can always take help from self-publishing companies such as Bellevue Publishers when you are stuck somewhere. Still, other than that, it is a relatively easy process that upcoming writers are comfortable with.
