“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” Arthur Ashe
As I’m working on rewrites for Book #2 in the Russia to Canada trilogy, I’ve revisited the process of publishing books from scratch.
So, I thought I’d write out the checklist I’m working on. My hope is that you’ll find this list helpful, especially if you’re working on your first book.
*Photo Credit: Created with Canva
Here’s a list to remember as you self-publish your book.
1. When you’ve finished writing your manuscript, it’s time for rewrites and editing.
As I learned during the rewrites of Book #1 – it takes awhile to get your story figured out so it flows. It’s difficult and a little unnerving to rewrite your story. For my first book and now again with this manuscript, rewriting is a mixture of pain and wonder. The magic comes in when you get another chance to write the story you originally wanted.
A good idea after you’ve finished your rewrites, is to have someone edit your work. It’s really helpful if you can get a professional editor. However, if the cost is too steep for you, at the very least ask a few Beta readers to read through your story. I’ve found that beta readers and critique partners offer a world of great tips and advice. They will catch details that you miss in your manuscript. It’s something I’ve found that can make your story so much better.
When the final draft is finished…
You need to add extra pages – like the copyright page, table of contents, copyright page, dedication page, the Author’s note and anything else that’s important to you. It’s important to include a call to action at the end of the book for people to sign up for your email newsletter and include your social media links and your website here. That way readers that love you book can find where you are and where they can buy your next book.
Don’t forget to write your back of the book blurb – your description of your story. This is what readers look at after they see your book cover, to decide if your story is interesting enough for them to buy. This needs to be done before you publish.
It’s a good idea to use a proof-reader to read through your manuscript, so that someone who has never read your book before, can go through it one more time with a fine tooth comb, to see if there are any last minute typos or punctuation issues that need to be fixed before publishing.
2. Choose your cover design for ebook and print book
A great book cover for your ebook and print book, is what the reader sees first. It’s important to get this looking as good as possible. If you can afford it, the best option would be to get a professional designer. This can run you anywhere from $200 to over $1000. If you are on a tight budget, you could try the do-it-yourself option. A great option for this is diybookcovers.com with Derek Murphy. He also had an amazing post here on how to create your own FREE book covers using MS Word.
3. Get Your Website up and running
There are ways to get your website up and running for free when you’re first starting out. I started with a free blogger website, but a free WordPress.com site is easy to navigate and another great option.
At some point, especially if you want to write as a career, it would be a good idea to go with a self-hosted website. That’s what I use for this website – lornafaith.com. I use BlueHost.com for hosting, which I’ve found helpful and very affordable. When you’re using a self-hosted website, you’re also able to insert a signup form to an external list service like Aweber – which is what I use. If you want to start out by using a free wordpress.com website, you can host the form for people to sign up on the service itself(like Aweber) and provide a re-direct. It’s not the easiest way to do this, but it works for a new author just starting out.
4. Publish on Amazon, Kobo and other estores
If you’ve just published your first book and you don’t have an existing platform, it could be worth your while to go with Amazon’s KDP Select for the first 90 days. It will allow more people to download your book which will allow your book to get noticed by more people.
After the 90 days is up, you’ll want to publish on Kobo and on Smashwords – which is a distribution store that will get your book up on places like iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, OverDrive, Flipkart, Indigo, Collins, Bookworld and many more.
In the beginning, when you first set up your profile, you’ll need to fill in the tax information. Non-US citizens will have 30% withholding tax applied unless you figure out your tax numbers. This is a great post from Catherine Ryan Howard and another post by Karen Inglis to help you sort that out.
Also remember to go to Author Central on Amazon and fill out your profile. This will help to get your books all linked together.
5. Get a Print Book Made
This is quite fun! I still remember holding my 1st book in my hands. I couldn’t believe I had written a book that had so many pages. The excitement of holding your first book in your hands, is enough reason right there to have a print book made of your book. Trust me, it feels so real when you can actually hold the physical copy in your hands!
Seeing the first books arrive on your doorsteps is so exciting!
I used Createspace.com to publish into print – with print on demand, and my friend Heather Morin and her team did the book cover design.
6. Choose How You Will Market Your Book
After you’ve written your book and published it in ebook and print format, you’ve still got one thing left to do. Get your book into readers hands.
Learning how to market your book is a bit of a learning curve, but something that is important for every author to learn. I’ve found these books helpful: Book Launch: How to Write, Market & Publish Your First Bestseller in Three Months or Less AND Use it to Start and Grow a Six Figure Business
Some steps that I’ve found helpful, which I hope you’ll find useful are:
- Set up your author profile on Amazon and add your book in different formats on Goodreads. Then, its a good idea to set up a print giveaway. You can do this on your blog or on You might be surprised at the new connections and readers you find there and the readers who review your book.
- Like I mentioned above, you could start out with some kind of FREE giveaway with KDP Select free 90 day period in order to ramp up your book in the Amazon algorithms.
- Choose something you like to do and do it once a day – or once a week. Like putting a picture of your book or something related to your book(research pics, a quote, etc.) up on Instagram or Pinterest for example.
This will help to get your book into the hands of more readers and will help to get your name out there as a new author.
7. Start to write the next book
Once you’ve done all of the above, the best thing you can do is write the next book. That’s really the best marketing for any author… is to continue to write books and improve your craft.
“So keep writing great books. Keep winning over one fan at a time. Keep improving your craft.” Hugh Howey
So that’s it. Those are the basic steps that I went through for my first book…. and a good reminder as I finish up the rewrites for Book #2.
What’s your checklist for publishing your book – would you add anything? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Lorna
A few years back I took upon the task of being an agent for a friend who wrote two books. Besides the web sites and ideas above, I also contacted a local radio station. I arranged for a short 15 minute talk with the host for my writer. It was a huge success. I also uploaded on YouTube a short video of her talking about her book, giving the premise of the book and reading an excerpt. It was then sent to everyone we both knew. It was a small following. My best feat was to get her into a well known book store for a book signing. Barnes and Knoble allowed us to do this. Now at this point I had already created her website, started her up on major social media web sites which all had links to other sites, the video and so on. The book signing was not a successful venture as she was unknown. We also had fliers set out on counters around the city that had anything to do with books, art, and the like. Unfortunately, the books did not sell well. My personal thought is it was a Horror / Christian topic. Rarely founded, talked about for five minutes, so to speak, and the content was not researched. In one scene she wrote about the heroine of the book taking a bath at the end of a long day, while sipping a red type of wine she had put into an ice bucket next to the tub. Everyone knows red wine is to be enjoyed at room temperature. I also proofread the book and corrected it. There where some sentences that didn’t make sense, so I added on the sideshow it should have been written. So my main question to you would be in your opinion, did I miss a step? She didn’t take my advice on the rewriting the sentences and as for the wine part she was blase` about it and left it the way it was written originally. Also too, the topic opinion the book was rare indeed. Any thoughts or ideas from you, I would really appreciate. Thanks, Lorna.
Wow it sounds like you did so many great things Deanne – like the 15 minute talk on the radio and the YouTube video and having a book signing.
Having her own website and being on social media are really important. So those are all great steps.
There are a few steps, that would really help increase sales:
1)Was the book available as an ebook? Most indie authors have most of their sales coming from ebook sales, not print.
2)Was the book cover professionally designed? Book buyers still shop with their eyes. If people make it to the book sales page and the cover is terrible, they will not click the buy button.
3) Was the book professionally edited so it reads well? There is so much value in great editing. I get it that they are pricey, but especially for new authors it’s important to learn how to edit and rewrite their book. I’ve found that after I’ve been editing my book for quite awhile, after a point I can’t see my own words because I know the story so well 🙂 If editing is too expensive a good group of critique partners works well too. But, it’s important not to publish the book if only the author, her best friend and or her family have read it. The book needs a bunch of eyes on it – it will really help the book become much better.
4)Like you mentioned Deanne, not everyone will like the book. But that’s the beauty of being able to put your book in a category on Amazon and other distributors. That way it will get into the hands of readers who will actually be interested in it. It means using categories, tags and keywords that are associated with the book. A Great book that talks about categories and Amazon algorithms is David Gaughran’s “Let’s Get Visible” http://amzn.to/1TBvk2Q.
5)Was the Amazon sales page optimized with a hook, quotes from reviews and other material? Basically the product description at the back of the book needs to be treated like a sales page. Check out this post on that: http://bit.ly/1K6c77X
6)Did you try pricing the book at different price points? For example if your ebook is priced at $11.99 it likely won’t sell. Most ebooks are under $9.99 and a lot of fiction is under $7.99 – with many indie books at under $5.00.
7)However the biggest thing is to write the next book for any author. Then the author’s name will start to get out there 🙂
8)The biggest thing – once an author has a website and has written her 1st book – is to have a signup on the back of her ebook and print book to direct readers back to her webpage where they can signup and be on the author’s email list. I’ve heard many indie bestselling authors say that their email list is one of the most important asset they have after writing their books. Also it some authors have said their biggest leaps in sales came from paid promotional sales on sites that market to Kindle readers: check out this post:http://bit.ly/1dZJvP8
9)Also if the author hasn’t asked for reviews of her book – that’s really important. Reviews give your sales page social proof – which is really important online. For every author out there, not everyone will like their book, so not everyone will leave a review…. but its a start.
So I hope those tips are helpful Deanne – I hope I answered your question ok – if not feel free to ask me anything else I might have missed 🙂