How to Self-Publish a Book

a step-by-step guide to editing, formatting, self-publishing & marketing your book

Are you wondering how to self-publish a book? Have you finished writing and have absolutely no idea what to do now? Or maybe you’ve been trying to navigate Amazon KDP or formatting in MS Word and you’re about to stab your own eyeballs out with that pencil sitting on your desk? Fret not! My complete guide to self-publishing is here to walk you through each and every part of the process, one step at a time.

I’ve broken down the major steps below, and along with each one you can find a guide to the specific blog posts that will help you get it done! I’m still in the process of building out all this content, so if there’s a particular part you’re having trouble with, just drop me a line and I’ll make that post a top priority!

Step 1: editStep 2: cover designStep 3: author copyStep 4: author websiteStep 5: social mediaStep 6: marketing imagesStep 7: typesettingStep 8: ebook formattingStep 9: KDP account & proofingStep 10: PUBLISH!

step 1: edit

Many people aren’t aware of all the different types of editing. So, depending on where your book is, you’re going to need different levels, all of which I am happy to provide. If you’d like a professional editor (me) to take a look at your book, just let me know. Unforunately, I can’t provide a quote until I’ve seen where your manuscript is at. Some books need 20 hours of editing, others need 100.

Your book is unfinished, has plot holes, or just needs a lot of work. Maybe you aren’t really sure of your direction. Maybe you’ve written a whole bunch but you’re not sure where you’re going. Maybe you think what you wrote is great, but you’re in for a nasty surprise (sorry!) Developmental editing means restructuring things, rewriting whole paragraphs and pages, updating the story, the characters, so many things. We won’t know how much work your book needs until I can read it. If you want, I can rewrite things for you. Or I can give you notes for you to rewrite yourself. Either way, we don’t stop working until your book is perfectly written and highly marketable.

This is for a book that has great bones, but still needs a good amount of work with sentence structure, clarity, tone, and style. You will still see a lot of redlining of your document after a substantive edit, but at the end your voice will truly shine through!

Copyediting, also referred to as line editing, is more minor tweaks to sentence structure and flow, fixing grammatical issues, verb-subject agreement, dangling modifiers, and adhering to style standards for punctuation and capitalization (the go-to for full-length manuscripts is the Chicago Manual of Style). It will also include improvements to structure, clarity, and tone, but this is a manuscript that is getting dangerously close to done!

This is reserved only for completely finished manuscripts. In fact, the final proofread won’t even take place until after we’ve laid out your book in paperback. This is only for minor typos, misplaced periods, and the like. If your book is full of facts or figures or quotes or anything else, these will also need to be checked for accuracy. No matter how good of an editor you are, a book ALWAYS needs a separate proofread. Many people are unaware that this is a fully separate part of the process, and it leads many people to publish books with unsightly typos! Don’t be that guy!

step 2: cover design

The cover is the first thing people see. It is a make-or-break moment for your book, and if it looks even midly unprofessional or sends the wrong message, potential readers will pass your book by without a second thought.

And dear lord, whatever you do, DON’T use Amazon’s built-in Kindle Cover Creator. These terrible covers are noticible from a mile away and I doubt a single person who used one ever had a bestseller on their hands.

If you’re struggling to perfect your cover in Photoshop, Canva, or things just don’t look right in Amazon, hopefully there is a blog post here that can help! Otherwise, I’m happy to troubleshoot your issues, just drop me a line!

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step 3: write author copy

Copywriting is a crucial part of your book launch process. You need a book blurb for the back of your book, a short author bio for Amazon as well as a long author bio for your website, a headline for any Facebook ads or posts, and some great sales copy with your value proposition for potential readers. The book blurb on the back of your book won’t necessarily be the same as your Amazon description, since the latter needs to be keyword optimized. I will handle ALL of this while consulting with you on the vibe and tone you’re going for. Just the book blurb alone is something I charge professional publishing companies over $300 for.

Copywriting is something we want to get done as soon as we have your cover design so we can start creating your author site and social media accounts well before your publication date.

step 4: build author website

With cover design and copy ready to go, it’s time to build your author site! I will make you a simple and beautiful author website including your photo, book cover, and email signup form to get you started. I will help you write whatever copy you need for your “About Me” page and anything else. Writing copy is an extremely expensive skill (usually about $75-$150 an hour) and having a website designed is usually a $2000-$5000 item, so there is a LOT of value in this single step.

Your author site should be up and running a couple months before you’re ready to publish so that you can start building a fan base and create momentum around your launch date!

step 5: create social media and author accounts

As an author, it’s crucial to have a social media presence in order to build a following of loyal readers who can’t wait to hear about your next book! In this step I will create ALL of the pages you need: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, GoodReads, BookBub, Amazon Author Central, and a MailChimp account for your email marketing (or as many as you’d like to have).

step 6: marketing images

With all of your various sites and marketing initiatives, it’s critical to have a cohesive brand presence. As soon as we are settled on cover design and copy, you can start teasing your book launch to the world!

There are a LOT of images involved here including your Facebook cover photo featuring your book cover design, FIVE Facebook posts including teasing your book launch as well as for launch and post-launch, two ad creatives to A/B test on BookBub ads, and a welcome email design for those who sign up on your website. This is another $1000+ part of the package!

step 7: typesetting

Once we finish editing your book, it is time to begin my favorite part: typesetting!

Typesetting is the age-old art of laying out books to be printed in a printing press. Named for the painstaking work of taking each little letter and setting them into the composing sticks that were part of the original printing presses, it’s much easier (and all digital) nowadays!

Here is where I take your hideous (or not-so-hideous) manuscript in any shape, and turn it into a beeeeaaauuutiful, professional paperback layout in InDesign. I will include font choice, chapter flourishes, page numbers, running heads (the name of the book or chapter at the top of the page)—whatever your heart desires. This step also includes adding front matter such as the table of contents, copyright, and dedication and back matter like an index or author’s note.

Typesetting is easily the most important step that far too many first-time authors overlook. Everyone knows cover design is important, but the inside is equally as important to the success of your book. Most writers I work with think once their book is written in MS Word, they can just upload it to Amazon and POOF! While technically you can do this, a poorly-laid-out book is destined to die in the Amazon rankings.

Whether or not you realize it, your eyeballs instinctively know when margins are too small, when there are too many words per line on a page, or when the page numbers are in the wrong place. You know this because you have been reading professionally-typeset books your entire life. A poorly typeset book can stop a reader from being able to read your book, literally. If the words aren’t properly spaced, the brain can get distracted and focus more on why the page feels wrong than the words that are being read!

So don’t be that guy with text running into the gutters that you have to pull the book apart to read. Don’t be that guy with even page numbers on the right side of the spread. And definitely don’t be that guy who uploads an MS Word document directly to Amazon without having it checked by a professional.

step 8: ebook formatting

I will turn your beautiful paperback book into an equally lovely eBook, with all the little things like image spacing and wonky margins and metadata that probably also have been driving you crazy.

eBook formatting can be easy, but it can also be incredibly complex for certain things. A basic understanding of CSS and HTML is necessary to make sure your book looks good. If there are any images, bulleted lists, fancy chapter headings, drop caps, or anything like that, some coding and testing will need to be done across devices.

This step can take 3-5 hours for a relatively basic project, or dozens of hours if you have a lot of images, fonts, and other items that need to be manually coded.

We will be sure to finish the final proofreading BEFORE we format the ebook to make sure we don’t have to make edits in two places going forward!

step 9: KDP account setup & proofing

I will create an Amazon account for you (or log into one you have already created) and upload your beautiful unicorn of a book, erasing all the errors that have had you pulling your hair out for weeks with a single wave of my magic wand.

Once your book is uploaded and ready, I will send you a proof of your paperback book for you to review. I will also send myself a proof and will do the final proofreading at this stage. This will catch any of the last, sneakiest typos that somehow always seem to make it through. This is why proofreading is always the final step before publication.

BONUS: I will do Amazon category research to find the best categories to help your book get to #1! This is a very specific skillset that involves digging through hundreds of obscure categories to find the ones you’re more likely to rank for.

In addition, I will do keyword research to align your seven Amazon keywords with the best target market for you using the Publisher Rocket keyword tool, which costs $97 on its own.

STEP 10: RELEASE YOUR BOOK!

After months of editing and building your social media presence, the big day is finally here!

Once your book is live on Amazon, I will schedule all of the ads for your post-launch promo, and monitor keywords on Amazon as well.

What should you be doing? Telling everyone you know about your book! Post on your social media page, join author groups on Facebook, talk to your local bookstore…anything you can think of! The more people know about your book, the better. So get out there!