Self Publishing Basics

Lecture Notes

Link to the slide show

Mindset

Finishing your books is both the hardest and most important part of publishing. None of this will do you any good if you don’t finish. 
 
Brutal facts.
 
Where ever you are in the process, I’m going to need you to kick perfectionism in the face and keep writing forward. Stop revising unless you have an entire first draft in hand. You can revise as you go but that can be a slippery slope for most writers. You need to know how to limit it. 
 
It Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect.
 
It will never be perfect. Someone will always hate your work. 
 
But the great part is some people are going to love it. They’re going to become your crazy obsessed super fans who have you as auto-buy and sing your praises on social media.
 
A lot of people say self publishing has introduced a lot of crap to the market, but there is that old saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. 
 
I think Picasso’s paintings are butt ugly. A lot of people love them. 
 
I’ve read books I thought were crap. They sell better than me. Plenty of people love them.
 
People HATED 50 Shades of Grey. I thought we’d never hear the end of it! And plenty of people discovered a new love of reading because of it. EL James laughs all the way to the bank.
 
Produce the best book YOU can, at this time, and release it to the world for the ultimate judgment: do readers enjoy it. 
 
I don’t care if you hire the best editors money can buy, your first book will not be your greatest. You’ve got to learn to practice in public. And the great thing about being a writer, is we charge for our practice. 
 
That brings us to the assumptions of this talk. 
 
I’m giving this lecture as if you want to be a career writer. Maybe you just came to learn to publish one book, and that’s fine. We’ll cover the basics of what you need to get the job done. But I’m going to assume this is what you want to do with your life and that you’d like to make money at it. 

These are just some resources I think are important since almost every writer thinks they suck, and we all need to find ways to get past that.

Pursuit of Perfection by Kristine Katheryn Rusch 

Accompanying lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j68TKKEfrA

Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing by Dead Wesley Smith

Attitude of a Fiction Author Lecture  – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71Q8aw5jzrE

I think these are important, and I recommend them to everyone. They have played a big part in my writing and publishing decisions, and they’re a different perspective from what you usually hear.

Editing

This is probably the murkiest bit of this lecture, because to know what kind of editing you need, or want, you need to have a fairly objective grasp of where you are as a writer and you need to know what you want out of an editor.

Always remember that this is YOUR BOOK. No one elses. You want it as polished and professional as you can make it, within your budget, and within your creative vision.

If you want help with the story part, like the plot, whether the characters are believable and have growth through the story, or if it has a satisfying ending, go with a developmental editor. This is great for newer writers, again, if they want help in that area.

If you’re reading through your book, or someone else is, and you’re coming across sentences that just make no sense. You know what point you were trying to get across but somewhere between grammar and word choice you’re just missing the mark, you need a line editor. This is probably a step you can’t skip if you’re having this problem. If people can’t understand the point you’re trying to convey, they won’t enjoy your story.

Now, Depending on how comfortable you are with your writing a good beta reader or critique group might fit the bill here. It might not be as thorough as a developmental editor or a line editor, but it can be free, or a lot cheaper, and I learned a ton from my first critque group.

My only complaint is you risk writing by committee and changing your style to suit other people’s tastes, especially as a new writer you’re easily influenced. There’s a fine line between arrogance and doing what you want with your work.

You can find some good beta readers for about sixty dollars on Fiverr. You can find critique groups online or locally. Writers of the Purple Sage is our local writer’s group, if you want to take a flyer, we’re always open to doing critiques. We have a great group of writers, a lot of whom are former teachers.

You can also publish on places like WattPad, Reddit, Substack, and almost any other social media site. This has two excellent advantages. You get free feedback and you build your audience.

A lot of writers started their careers by posting for free in Facebook Groups, and because of that when they had something for readers to buy, their careers started out with a bang because people already loved their work and wanted to support them.

You do want a trusted first reader, whether it’s an editor, a group, or a beta reader. You need someone else’s eyes on your work to make sure it make sense. To you it might make perfect sense because you wrote it.

Then there’s copy editing and proof reading. The final steps of editing, and they have a lot of crossover depending on who you’re working with. It’s a pretty blurry line. But they’ll be the ones checking for grammar, correct word use, repeated words, continuity (his name was Jack but now its Jim).

You can find editor directories at: 

www.the-efa.org 

www.reedsy.com/editing/book-editor

You can also ask any writing groups you’re a part of on Facebook.

My personal process for polishing a book on a budget:

  • Finish the rough draft.
  • Flesh out the rough draft and fill in any scenes I skipped.
  • I do an audio read-through of the book using Natural Reader (https://www.naturalreaders.com/) so I can hear the story. You’ll hear repetitive words, typos, clunky sentences, and more! I have the premium subscription, but there is a free version if the voices aren’t grating to you. You can also read your manuscript aloud. 
  • Then, I use Grammarly and go through every suggestion. It does have some suggestions that aren’t just spelling and grammar, that they think “improve” your writing, but often don’t. I only use suggestions I think improve readability. If you don’t think it improves the book, ignore the suggestion. I hope this goes without saying, but NEVER blindly accept the changes, or it will turn your book into word salad.
  • Then I send it to a first reader or paid beta reader just to make sure the story is enjoyable, and everything makes sense. The best beta readers are your target audience and can be trusted to be honest with you. You can find a lot of people who are willing to read for about a $60 fee on Fiverr (depending on the length of the book). You can also find people in your life who will not charge you. 
  • If you can afford a copy editor, that step would go here. 
  • If not, and you’ve made any major changes based on beta reader feedback, you will want to use Grammarly again on those portions, and you may want to read over the book again (I usually do it on audio in Natural Reader) to make sure the things you’ve changed haven’t introduced any new continuity issues.

Covers

Questions to ask before you start:

Do you want to be in print? You’ll need to know your page count, and do a little additional research to find out the trim size commonly used in your genre. And for the final you’ll need your blurb done, which we’ll discuss next. 

(Confession – I usually don’t have my blurb done until after I’ve got a cover, because I get so excited about having the book done that I want my shiny new cover now! But if you can hold out, you might want the blurb done first, especially if your cover designer isn’t as flexible as mine.)

Do you want your books available on every platform like Barnes & Noble, Kobo, etc. or in Kindle Unlimited where you’re exclusive with Amazon? (Which we’ll talk about a little more in depth later)

Places to get great covers:

Getcovers.com

100Covers.com

Reedsy Marketplace https://reedsy.com/design/book-designer

Ask around in Facebook groups. There are a ton of wonderful cover artists, especially if you know how to brief them properly.

Researching covers overview:

  • You want your cover to match genre expectations. Find the best sellers in your genre (5 to 7), particularly ones you think your book is most similar to, and use those as examples to send your cover designer. 
    • Please note: How you want to publish will impact the covers your gather. If you want to be in Kindle Unlimited, gather the covers from successful KU authors. If you want to publish wide gather the covers from bestseller lists on other retailers (B&N, Kobo, Google Play)
  • When you get your cover back, if you like it, now you do some testing on it. 
    • Shrink it down to thumbnail size (like what would be on your phone while scrolling Amazon). 
      • Can you read your title? 
      • Can you read your author name? 
    • If not, you need to ask your cover artist to enlarge or change the font, or change the colors so it doesn’t blend into the design.
      If it passes that test take a screen capture of the cover, and paste it into a Word document and shrink it to thumbnail size. Take those best sellers you gathered earlier, paste and shrink them into the same document so your book is mixed in with 5 to 7 other books in your genre. 
      • Does it fit in? It should. 
      • The goal isn’t to stand out. The goal is to blend in so people think your book will be exactly what they like, because it looks like a book they already like.
  • Cover art has (almost) NOTHING to do with what you personally want in a cover. A cover is a marketing piece, not “your art”. Your art is inside. And with self publishing you can change the cover any time you want. If you keep your book in circulation, you’ll be changing it every 5 or so years as cover trends change. So don’t get married to it. However, you probably shouldn’t hate it either. Find a nice compromise. 

Resources:
For more details on this process, watch some or all of these videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeQqimp0qUIrXzwjl6mB0PTYLF16ZmjJj

Cover Research Template

Go into the main category you’re going to place your books in on Amazon or other retailers.

Analyze covers for:

Characters – (do they have people or not? Are they male, female, or couples? Is it more hands and chest, or are faces included? Count them up, don’t just go with what you THINK you’re seeing.)

Title Fonts – (2 fonts? 1 font? Readable, cursive, or otherwise inventive?)

Font Colors –

Dark/light – (are the majority of corners darker than the center?)

Illustration or Stock photo – (even most object photos are stock. We’re strictly looking for cartoons here)

Symbols – (if they aren’t character covers, what symbols are used?)

Backgrounds – (might overlap with symbols used. Are you seeing a lot of flowers or guns or handcuffs, etc.?)

Colors – (what colors pop out at you? Are they dark or light? Vibrant or muted?)

Books in a series need to clearly go together. They should be 70% identical. Fonts are always the same type and for the whole series. Keep all the things you researched the same. For example: If you’re doing shirtless men with no faces, don’t suddenly stick men with faces on the covers. Look at shared world series, they make it VERY obvious that books go together, since they all have different authors. Don’t put your subtitles on covers.

Formatting

You have a few options for formatting your book.

The two most popular programs are:

Atticus if you’re a Windows user (though they do support Mac users too)
Vellum if you’re on a Mac

These make formatting a book nearly effortless. All you do is make each chapter title a Header in Word, upload your manuscript and pick your favorite theme. Then you just need to check through it and make sure it looks good.

Free options:

Reedsy: https://reedsy.com/write-a-book – I’ve never used this, but I’ve heard good things.

*shudder* Buckling down and doing research so you can format in Word.
(This is how I did it back in like 2014. 0/10, would not recommend. I was so happy to find a program that keeps me from pulling out all my hair. I use Atticus, and it’s all I’ve ever used in my current forays into publishing. Just… trust me, it will save you a headache if you pick a program and don’t use Word.)

Anything you pick will have a learning curve unless you pay someone on Fiverr, but since you can do it so easily, unless you want sometime custom, it’s probably an unnecessary expense.

Blurbs Or Back Cover Copy

A blurb is your BEST chance to sell copies of your book after the cover. The cover reels people in, the blurb sells them.

Blurbs are not a summary of your book. This is a sales page. You’re enticing. Seducing. Making it so the reader HAS TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS without being so vague that the reader has no clue what is going on. It’s a really delicate balance that I am not an expert in. I’ve included a few book recommendations from people who are much better at it than I am:

Writing Killer Cover Copy by Elana Johnson

Fiction Blurbs: The Best Page Forward Way by Phoebe Ravencraft and Bryan Cohen

Also, if you copy down one blurb a day, by hand, from a best selling book for 30 days, your blurb skills will dramatically improve. This is a trick you can do to become a better writer too. There’s supposedly something about handwriting that activates a different part of your brain, and the copying part helps you get the rhythm of the prose.

I recommend researching blurbs a lot like you would cover art. Go into the top 100 of your category and go to the second page (50-100) and read the blurbs. Copy them down. See what you like and what you don’t. Analyze them based on the two books I mentioned.

Be aware that you can look at the first 1-50 best sellers, but these authors are usually established, with large followings. They can break all the rules, and people will still buy their books.

(And helpful hint: This is where AI can really shine if you’re not opposed to using it. BUT don’t think you can just plop in a summary of your book and it will spit out a winning blurb. You have to finesse it a lot, and you have to know what makes a blurb successful to make sure the prompting is right to get the results you want.)

ISBNs

  • Questions to ask before you drop $575 (or more) on ISBNs:

This is one of the places I’m not assuming you don’t want to be a career author, because when it comes to ISBNs you need to consider what your purpose as a writer is:

  • Are you publishing for fun or is this your career? Because an ISBN might not be needed if it’s just for fun.
  • Do you intend to publish more than one book? Do you only want your book available in e-book or do you want print too?
  • Are you going to do audiobooks or special editions. Each version of your book (e-book, audio, paperback, hardback, translations, things I can’t even think of) will require a new ISBN.
  • Make sure you’re buying from Bowker (myidentifiers.com). There are places that will offer you discount ISBNs, but when you publish
  • with those ISBNs the name of that site will be listed as the publisher instead of you. This shouldn’t cause any copyright disputes unless you buy from some place really shady, but it does look less professional.
  • This is one of the few things in self publishing that is hard to undo. You CAN definitely re-release your book with your own ISBN later, but Amazon probably won’t transfer your reviews over to the new listing, and you want those reviews (assuming they weren’t horrible).

ISBNs – Bottom Line: 

  • ISBNs are expensive, and if you intend to make publishing your career, you’ll need a lot of them. One for every version of your book. 
  • They’re not entirely necessary these days because the companies you publish with will provide their own versions if you don’t have them. 
  • HOWEVER if you want a career and to get into libraries, ISBNs look more professional and it streamlines people’s ability to search for you. So if you choose to publish someplace other than Amazon, the same book doesn’t show up multiple times when readers are searching for it, which would get confusing.

Distribution

Where will you sell your book?

Amazon is the easiest retailer to start with for building a career, as well as for instructions available, and ease of use. Everyone publishes on it so there’s an abundance of information and Amazon itself does a pretty good job of giving instructions. You can do e-books, paperback and hardback and audiobooks all within Amazon’s ecosystem, and they’re usually the biggest retailer for book sales in general. 

You can also take part in Kindle Unlimited, which means the e-book is exclusive with Amazon, and you get paid by page reads. It’s a great way to jump start a career because more people are willing to take a risk on your book since they pay a monthly fee to Amazon for unlimited reading.

However, there are some serious long term downsides to consider if you’re building a career. If Amazon shuts down your account, which they sometimes do when they get a wild hair up their you-know-what, you are just out the money. They will withhold all royalties owed until they restore your account… if they restore your account. 

There are ways you can (hopefully) get reinstated, but that’s still a dangerous way to live. You’re at Amazon’s mercy. It’s like having all your money in one stock. You might do well, but if that stock tanks suddenly (hello Enron) all your money is gone.

The favored strategy by many authors is to start in KU, build a back list, and when you’re ready and can take the temporary hit to your income, go wide, publishing direct on Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Google Play.

You can use an aggregator like Draft2Digital to publish on these platforms, but they take 10% of your royalties, so I save Draft2Digital for the smaller retail sites. The big dogs you’ll want to go direct with.

Also keep in mind if you’re in KU, Amazon only has rights to your e-books. You are allowed to put your print books anywhere you want. 

But I believe in starting as I mean to go on, so I just started publishing wide. A lot of Kindle Unlimited readers won’t follow you outside of KU. They like KU because it’s a nice budget friendly way to read. And they’re whale readers. They read a lot. 

Wide versus KU is something you’ll have to debate with yourself a lot. I’m still not sure I made the right choice, but it’s something you can change, so don’t think you’re stuck either way. 

Links to get started on Amazon:

KDP Jumpstart: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G202187740

KDP University: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200783400

Videos:

I, personally, would rather have a video walk through. Videos like these have to be updated often as the platform changes. It might be a good idea to search the Dale L. Roberts channel (or YouTube in general) for an updated tutorial if it’s long past October of 2024

Publishing on Amazon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnt33VibqSA

For the sake of brevity, I won’t go into other places to publish your books. I’ll let Dale do it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bb6235uI4VY). Be sure to check out the description of his video for links. 

If you want to be wide and get into libraries and potentially book stores, you can pick and choose which distributors are right for you and look up how to publish on them. 

Marketing

Marketing isn’t really a basics topic, and I’m far from an expert. (Or I’d be making six figures.)

But I can share some concepts with you that might change how you view your writing and your career, and maybe give you a little more focus in your marketing when you’re starting out.

You’re going to need to publish more than one book to have a career.

Every book is a lottery ticket, but it’s also a valuable building block in your career long-term. So, there’s this theory called 20 books to 50k. You need to publish 20 books to make $50,000 a year. Give or take a dozen—it’s not exact math. That’s just a ballpark figure and a fun (if not overwhelming) goal. The point of it is, you need more than one book to build a career.

The more books you have out, the more product you have. That means more opportunities for more people to buy and get introduced to your work. And if they love you? They go back and buy your whole backlist. 

Why are books lottery tickets? Because with every book you publish, you could break out and become the next Stephenie Meyer, Colleen Hoover, E.L. James, or J.K. Rowling. These days to achieve that kind of widespread exposure you usually need a lot of books published.

And if you never have a breakout? You can still build a solid midlist career. With every book you publish, your backlist grows—and your money grows with it.

So if you publish your first book and it doesn’t blow up—as most of them don’t (The reality is that most books sell less than a thousand copies over their lifetime) Just look at it as part of your long-term career. And if you do hit the lottery? Save your money. It might never happen again… or you might have several hits. Either way, make good financial choices.

So when they say the best marketing you can do is to write the next book, I agree… kinda. A lot of people take that advice and drop the ball everywhere else and wonder why they don’t sell.

So how are people going to find all these books you’re publishing? You’re going to need a traffic source.

This is the hardest part of marketing—unless you’re already a TikTok star, in which case it’s time to monetize your audience.

Traffic can come from:

  • Your own social media (any platform will do. Experiment and pick the one you like most, but heads up, TikTok is still the hot thing, so I’d try to like that one. I don’t make any sales if I’m not posting on TikTok, and yes that’s a big problem I’m trying to solve. But, I’ve never tried posting consistently on other platforms either.)
  • Advertising via Facebook or Amazon ads
  • Reaching out to influencers to promote your book

Some influencers will want to be paid. Some will be happy just to receive an ARC and review your book.

You can also partner with other authors to grow your newsletter. Offer something free—a short story, a novella, or book one in a series—and participate in newsletter swaps or free book deal newsletters (BookBub, Freebooksy, etc)

Pick a traffic source and master it.

If it’s social media—which is where a lot of people start because the lack the budget for ads and the network to get onto other authors newsletters—you’ll need to:

  • Post at least once a day (probably more depending on the platform)
  • Respond to comments
  • Build relationships

And you don’t have to talk about writing. Writers might be readers, but they’re not your primary audience. 

If you can find a topic you’re passionate about and connect it to your books, that’s great!

If you write thrillers and want to review the latest action movies or break them down—do that.

If you write romance novels and want to give dating advice, do that. 

It doesn’t have to be linear. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box when it comes to what you build your audience around. Pick the topic and platform that is fun for you.

And don’t forget—you can bootstrap without posting your own content.

Make friends with creators and other authors. Ask if they’d be willing to promote your book.

Some of them will say no. Some of them will become career-long partners.

Pick 100 people you like—from influencers to self-published authors—and start talking to them. Comment on their posts, like their content, and interact genuinely so they recognize your face and you’re not just another rando asking for a favor.

If you choose to run pay-per-click ads, choose a good course geared toward authors. There are a lot of ads courses, but books are a little unique. Broad knowledge won’t hurt, but it would be better if you picked a course more specialized.

Once you have people actually looking at your book, the next challenge is converting those views into sales. 

Here’s where the key components of your sales page come into play.

You need:

  • A great cover that matches your genre (we already talked about this. Your cover will also have a lot to do with driving traffic to your book.)
  • You need an excellent blurb, formatted properly. Don’t just throw up a giant ugly block of text. Formatting it doesn’t take THAT much effort, and in today’s low attention economy, it’s an immediate turn off to see a large wall of text.
  • If you can get traffic, but no sales, you likely have a blurb problem or even a problem with the book itself that is obvious from your sample pages.

And that’s the basics of marketing. Have plenty of product on the market, drive traffic to it through your newsletter, social media, and/or ads, and maximize traffic conversion by having an amazing blurb.

And finally, I’m going to bring us full circle. If you haven’t finished your book, ignore everything I just said and go finish it.

Nothing happens without that.

More Resources I Like

I can’t recommend Maria Secoy enough. She’s an amazing teacher and has a lot of paid and free resources. You can find her at All Write Well and her YouTube channel is also AllWriteWell. My method of cover research is pulled from her and The Courtney Project.

I’m a big fan of YouTube for researching any problems I come across. Another excellent channel not mentioned above is Kindlepreneur.

Facebook also has some fun groups to be a part of (just ignore the whining and read the posts that interest you). My favorites are 20booksto50K and Millionaire Author Mastermind, but there’s something out there for everyone.