A Quick Guide To Self-Publishing

Using my second book as an example

There has never been a better time than now to self-publish your book. Trust me. I know. In June 2019, I self-published my first book. It did well, even broke into the Amazon Best-Sellers list for a few days. But this isn’t 100% about me, it's about you.

I want to help you self-publish your first book.

No, I’m not offering to coach you for some obscene amount of money. No, I am not going to sell you a course. And no, I don’t have a book all about it to sell you either.

I honestly, just want to help you.

Want to know why? Because I believe it is the perfect time for you to self-publish a book. It may not be cheap. And it won’t be easy. But it is completely worth doing.

The other thing I can’t promise you is that you will make a ton of money doing it either. My first book actually cost me more than I made. But that is another story, and the truth is, that loss provided me with so much more.

Let’s Take A Look At Lessons From My First Book

In the spring of 2019, I set out to write my first book, Productivity Success. At the time, I wasn’t sure what I would call it or how hard it would be. But, I had an outline and my story.

Over the next 30 days, I got up at 4 AM and worked on that book. At the end of that time, I had completed the first draft of my manuscript. The following 30 days, I spent revising it myself and sending it to an editor which I found on Fiverr.

After I had a completely edited manuscript, I began formatting it myself and hired a cover designer. I also started promoting my book, though, I did not do this as well as I had hoped.

Finally, launch day came, I put it on Amazon and offered it for free for the first 48 hours. It hit the bestseller list for free books in several productivity categories and I moved a few hundred books.

Then, I switched it to ‘paid’ at just $0.99. Sales dropped fast, but I still moved about another 100 copies. Since then, I have sold a few books a month. From this experience, I learned some valuable lessons for launching my next book.

#1 — No More Free Books

While this tactic might have been useful to get more downloads and try to ramp up the algorithm with Amazon, I moved more than 3/4 of my books all time because it was free. To this day, I have made less on my book than I spent to produce it.

While I understand why this was suggested, it turned out to create a massive pitfall in earnings because all the books I moved at the beginning didn’t get me anything at all.

What I will do differently: Start out cheap, even if I don’t make much, to encourage bestseller status with the algorithm in paid categories because I believe this will take me further in promotion via Amazon.

#2 — I’m Not Asking Friends To Buy My Book

Okay, that’s not completely true either. Last time around, I asked everyone I knew to download the free copy to help me over books. This worked well because a lot of people did download the book.

The problem though was that most people I know don’t read productivity, self-help books. So, they downloaded it and then Amazon tries to show my book to others like them, but that was a lost cause because others like my friends don’t want self-help books.

What I will do differently: I will only ask friends I know who read my genre to consider joining my launch team and purchase the early $0.99 version. This way, when Amazon sees that they purchased my book, it will be pushed out to others like my friends who ACTUALLY read my genre.

#3 — Continually Promote My Book

Last time, I was so discouraged by the severe drop-off of purchases after the first week that I gave up on active promotion by the end of the month. It was such a punch to the gut that I just gave up.

This is why the book sales dropped even lower. Had I not shared it with people at work, it probably would have gone completely flat at zero sales. Yet, I know that several people at my job buy my book for new employees because it helps a ton. Otherwise, I stopped sharing my book along time ago.

What I will do differently: This time around, I will create a sales funnel that pushes this book, keep it promoted on my website, and once a quarter create a promotion for it until I publish my next book after this one. This way, it never really goes away like my first book.

Here Is What You Wanted: A Guide To Self-Publishing

The rest of this post is going to give you an outline of self-publishing. It is not going to be super in-depth, but it will give you the bones for what you will need to do in order to write, edit, design, and publish a book.

#1 — Decide What Your Book Will Be About

There are a lot of different ways to find out what topic to write about. Typically though, the best books that I have read from self-published authors are books based on experience and learning.

My first book was written based on my experience of almost being fired for how bad I was at being productive with my day job. Everything I share in the book was lessons learned and techniques that helped me turn things around.

If you are writing already, look through your work where you share personal stories of triumph or lessons learned and see if you have a lot of content for these stories.

If you aren’t writing already, what is something that you are good at which others are always asking you for help. This is a good place to start if you want to figure out what your book will be about.

#2 — Outline Your Book

The best way to do this is to start with mind mapping your book. Then, order out everything that you put into that mind mapping exercise into parts, chapters, and sections. This way you will be able to easily work your way through your book.

I did this with my first book and then did this with my second book. Though for my book I am working on now, it was outlined for me because it follows a book of the Bible.

The key is to figure out what will go into your book first. This way you can organize those ideas and write them out easily and quickly to finish your first draft.

#3 — Write Your First Draft

My true first draft has always been written here on Medium or on my blog. I take my outline and write through each chapter or section as independent posts between the places that I publish content.

This has served me well because I get valuable feedback while I write. This way, I can go deeper into things when I put the manuscript together, or leave some things out.

What I have found is it helps me work out my thoughts in a shorter form than in a complete manuscript. This saved me a lot of time for the editing process later on for both books.

#4 — Compile Your Manuscript (2nd Draft)

After writing all of the parts of your book out in blog form (be sure to keep a log of where all of these pieces are so you can easily copy and paste them into one single document), you can put them all together.

Compiling my manuscript is the first draft of the book.

What I do at this step is get everything in one spot, then I write my transitions and re-write sections that fell flat or needed further explanation in order for it to make better sense.

#5 — Self Edit (Create 3rd Draft)

After I have completed my main manuscript, I go through a process of self-editing. There are two main things I do when I do this so that I can be as thorough as possible on my end before sending it to an editor.

First, I run it through the Grammarly App. I use the free version, but it still helps me get rid of any grammatical errors which occur regularly. It has a decent technical review as well that is good enough for me.

Then, I read the entire manuscript out loud. While I do this, I update anything that doesn’t make sense or needs to change because of the wrong usage of a word here and there.

Once I have completed these two steps, it's time to choose an editor.

#6 — Choose An Editor and Edit (4th Draft)

This can be a very difficult process. However, I found that you can find an editor on Fiverr who will do the entire manuscript for you for a couple of hundred dollars.

This is how I edited my first book. We spent three weeks going through the book and it turned out very well. I was happy that I spent the money on the editor (even though it was my major cost) because I had a lot of things that needed changing.

If you don’t have the money for an editor like this, reach out to a technically minded writer friend. We all know someone who can see the errors in our posts and others. See if they will help you for free or for a smaller fee.

Nevertheless, you need to have another set of eyes on your manuscript in order to clean it up and complete your 4th draft.

#5 — Formatting Your Manuscript For Publishing

Two things to note on this particular step. Formatting is really important because it helps your reader work through the book easily. The key to formatting is to make it look professional and to make it easy to read.

You can do it yourself. I did. It was really hard and really frustrating doing it the first time. However, I found out that I really enjoyed doing it. So, you can do it this way with Microsoft Word or a Google Doc, but it can be very tedious.

If you don’t want to do it yourself, you can hire someone to do it for you. You can do this via Fiverr or some other site on the web. Most people who format books can do it very quickly.

Since working on my second book, I have really enjoyed formatting. I think since it isn’t brand new to me now, I have gotten better at it and it is easier. Because of this, I would like to offer my service to format your book. Reach out in a private message and we can discuss more.

#6 — Designing Your Cover

This is another one of those steps where you can do it yourself or you can hire out to do it. In my first book, I hired out and I was really happy with what came back. It took a little work, but I found someone who was a real pro.

With my next book, I designed the cover because I couldn’t find a designer who could capture my vision for it. I think if I would have done things differently, I would have tried designing my first cover and then changed things up for the second one. But that’s just me.

The key to cover design is that it will pop on the webpage. When you upload it to Amazon, does the cover look good on the screen and grab your attention. If you can make a cover do this, then you increase your chances of selling books.

#7 — Choose Your Publishing Platform

Honestly, I have found that Amazon KDP is the best way to publish books for the self-published author. I say this because you can publish both Kindle books and print books through the Amazon KDP website.

The platform is easy to use and if you are trying to simply publish your first book or get a grasp of how to do it, this is a good place to start.

However, there are other platforms that you can use to publish hardcover, softcover, and digital books across several selling platforms. However, some of these sites may cost a little money where Amazon KDP is free.

#8 — Put It Together (Proof Draft)

Once you have chosen your publishing platform, you have your final draft of your manuscript, and you have your cover design it is time to upload it to the publishing platform.

With KDP, this is very easy. You simply upload your cover, upload your manuscript, and you can order the proof of your book. This is my favorite part aside from hitting the publishing button.

Once you have your proof in hand, you can see how the cover looks, and how you did with formatting. You can review this all digitally of course, but having a printed version really makes a difference to me.

In my first book, I only ordered one proof. On my last one, I have three different proofs because I had more changes to make each time. Once it is all in order, you are nearly to launch day!

#9 — Build Your Launch Team

This is honestly the hardest part for me. Well, it was for the first time around. This second time around it has been a little easier. The key here is to find people to share your book with that will buy it on launch day, leave a review, and then share your book with others.

These can be friends, but beware that this can mess things up (see Lessons Learned section). Nevertheless, it is important to try and find at least 10 people to help you.

They will be the ones who will be initial buyers, reviewers, and social media sharers. They will be the ones to help you kick the book out the door and share it with the world.

Pro Tip: I’m giving you a pro tip on this one because it is really important. I always share a completed digital draft with my launch team. This way they can read it or at least skim it before they buy, review, and share.

#10 — Hit Publish And Promote

It is important to note that with Amazon KDP, it typically takes 24–48 hours from the time you hit publish to the time your book goes live. My first book, I gave it 48 hours and it published in ten hours, go figure, this messed up my timeline.

So, I would say hit publish the day before and the moment you see it go live start pushing it out to your launch team, social media, and anyone else you want to make sure can help you purchase it.

Promote like crazy the first week. But don’t give up if it goes slow. The key is consistency at this point and celebrating that you are now a published author! Be sure to share your book in everything you write after that and with anyone you think might actually be interested in it.

Bonus Tips To Self-Publishing

Alright, so we just went from deciding on what to write to publishing your book. While it took us ten steps to get there, I wanted to share with you a few other things that I have learned that might be useful to you.

#1 — Setting A Price

Honestly, this is the hardest part for me. Partly because I never want to undercut the value of the information I have put in a book, but I also don’t want to discourage people from buying it because of the cost.

However, I have learned a couple of things that I have found helpful.

For print, if your book is more than 100 pages, you can probably offer your book at a price from $7.99 to $12.99. My first book goes for $9.99 in print and it is the one that actually sells a few a month.

For digital, this can be harder. What I see with self-published authors is that the digital version is typically a lot less than the print version. I did this with my book, I offer the digital version at $2.99. I would suggest being at least half the price of your print version though.

As always, the best way to gauge this is by researching what other self-published authors in your genre are doing on Amazon as well.

#2 — Research The Process

While this may seem straightforward, with my first book I failed to look into other ways of publishing, launching, and producing my book. I used one method and realized that I missed out on some things in the process.

This time around, I have read countless articles, books, and reviewed a ton of resources to launch my next book.

I have learned two valuable lessons. First, most of these resources share the same information. Second, it is the nuances to publishing and launching that make up the difference. This is why it is important to check out multiple sources.

#3 — Hope For The Best, Prepare For The Worst

This is the last thing I want to share with you. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. When I launched my first book, things went well. But, not as well as I had hoped. I wasn’t prepared for the letdown I would feel.

While I sold a few hundred books right away, I was still disappointed.

Part of this came from reading all these amazing stories where authors had launched their book to thousands of copies sold and thousands of dollars made. However, that did not play out.

It is important that we hope for the best situation and we work hard for that situation. But, we also need to set some expectations. The reality for many first-time authors is that we won’t sell many books, typically less than 100.

So, prepare for the worst. This way you don’t get discouraged and you keep going for it.

Final Thought On Self-Publishing

Thanks for sticking with me on this one. This is probably one of my longest posts yet. But, I felt it was important to share as much of my story with the steps that I have taken to self-publish books.

I want to share this information because I think the time is ripe for many writers to step into their dreams to become authors.

Years ago, the idea of self-publishing was looked down on. Yet, we live in a time when it has never been easier to publish a book. If you are one of the hundreds of thousands of people who have always wanted to write a book, now is your time to do it.

Don’t wait for a gatekeeper. Don’t wait for permission.

Start today. Write out your first draft. Or complete the one you have been working on for years. Get it off to an editor and start making it happen. I can tell you from my experience, there is nothing more satisfying than holding that book in your hand and seeing it pop up on Amazon.

So, start today.

One last thing…

I am launching my latest book on March 30th. If you would be interested in checking it out, sign up for my Transformed Faith Newsletter and you will be notified the moment it hits Amazon.

If you want to check out my first book, find Productivity Success on Amazon.

Please note: There are affiliate links in this post. If you use the link to purchase one of these items, I will make a small commission on the purchase.