Okay, so you\u2019ve written a book. Okay, so you want the book published. Okay, you\u2019ve decided to independently publish your book. Okay, so you\u2019re ready to take the plunge. So what do you do?<\/p>\r\n
In a\u00a0recent blog post<\/a>, I discussed submitting to a commercial publisher. So you\u2019ve researched commercial publishers (large or small), and perhaps even submitted to a few and been rejected. And now you want to try your hand at publishing your book yourself. Are you really ready? Are you REALLY ready? REALLY?<\/p>\r\n As a reminder of the basic steps of publishing I mentioned in another blog post, here they are again. There are several basic stages to publishing:<\/p>\r\n You really can\u2019t forego any of the steps in the publishing \u201cprocess\u201d, even the \u201cacceptance and negotiation\u201d stage. You still have to \u201caccept\u201d that you want to be a publisher and \u201cnegotiate\u201d with yourself as to how much of the process you wish to take on yourself and how much you wish to contract out.<\/p>\r\n There are some steps you can take on yourself, so long as you\u2019re willing to put in the time and effort into learning those skill sets, and some money into getting the basic tools that you need to achieve those steps.<\/p>\r\n But there are some steps you can\u2019t really avoid contracting out unless you\u2019re willing to buy some very expensive equipment and networks and your rich widowed childless \u201cGreat\u2013Aunt Martha\u201d, whose husband \u201cGreat\u2013Uncle Arthur\u201d had the surname Rinehart, Packer or Hancock (on the list of Australia\u2019s wealthiest family names) or Vandebilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie, or Gates (on the list of America\u2019s wealthiest family names), left you bucket loads of cash that she\u2019d kept stuffed under her mattress.<\/p>\r\n I would never recommend that an author self edit their own work. There are always things that you will miss. An author will see what they think they\u2019ve written, not what they\u2019ve actually written, and you, the author, are the only person who can see what it is in your head that you think you\u2019ve written. It\u2019s happened to me. I\u2019ve seen it happen to other authors. And there are things that you just won\u2019t know about a subject and get wrong. This is where an editor should (and I say should cautiously, because even the greatest of editors will miss things) be able to pick up on an aspect and suggest to you \u201cthis doesn\u2019t work, you need to take some care here and rework it\u201d.<\/p>\r\n Printing is one of the things that you can\u2019t do solely by yourself\u2026 unless your \u201cGreat\u2013Aunt Martha\u201d left you bucket loads of cash. The machinery needed to print and bind a book professionally (so it looks like a book in the way readers expect books to look) costs tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of dollars.<\/p>\r\n And distributing a book is another of the things you can\u2019t do solely by yourself. Self\u2013distribution requires contacts with booksellers and time to promote to booksellers so that they buy your book so that they can sell your book to readers. But this doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t leverage some of your contacts that you have, to sell to friends and relatives, and seeking the assistance of friends and relatives to sell to their friends and relatives. (This is part of the publishing process where the distribution and sales and marketing can interact.)<\/p>\r\n The sales and marketing aspect of selling your book is one of the parts of the publishing process where an author can take on some of the task themselves. (And most, if not all, commercial publishers would expect an author to take on some responsibility in terms of sales and marketing.) An author can develop an \u201cauthor platform\u201d \u2013 a website, Facebook, Twitter, a blog, Google+ and the other \u201csocial media\u201d. If you\u2019ve decided you want to independently publish on your own, you\u2019ll need to take on these tasks. You can also engage a book publicist, or a book marketing firm, to help you with this. But you will have to educate yourself first and you\u2019ll need to decide what you want to take on yourself and what you want to contract out.<\/p>\r\n The design phase of a book is probably the only phase of the publication process where an author can leverage the \u201cmost bang for your buck\u201d and biggest cost saving\u2026 but only if an author is willing to put their time and effort, and emotion, into learning how to make a book look like a book and put it into a format that a printer can print. There are several high level tools and professional programs that are available to make a book look like a book. There are also lower cost programs, and even open source (free or low cost) programs available to assist indie authors to publish their books. But it you\u2019re not willing to put in the time or effort to learn these skills, hire a professional. If you know you couldn\u2019t design a book cover with more than stick figures on it, hire a professional.<\/p>\r\n Jonathan Gunson<\/a>, an author who\u00a0provides advice on selling and marketing books, suggests that\u00a0there are ways you can sabotage sales of your book. One of the things he suggests is that \u201cwriting more than one book really is essential if you want to succeed as an author\u201d. That\u2019s true\u2026 but it also applies if you\u2019re going to be a publisher, indie or otherwise. The \u201creal\u201d truth is that if you\u2019re an indie author, or an indie publisher, is that \u201cauthoring\u201d and \u201cpublishing\u201d is a business. And you have to look at indie publishing as a business and decide whether you want to go into the \u201cauthor\u201d business or the \u201cpublishing\u201d business.<\/p>\r\n Well written and edited books sell books. Covers sell books. Interiors that look like books should sell books. So\u2026 Are you ready to put your money where your book is? Are you ready to put your money where soul lies?<\/p>\r\n Okay, so you\u2019ve written a book. Okay, so you want the book published. Okay, you\u2019ve decided to independently publish your book. Okay, so you\u2019re ready to take the plunge. So what do you do? In a\u00a0recent blog post, I discussed submitting to a commercial publisher. So you\u2019ve researched commercial publishers (large or small), and perhaps … Continue reading “Anatomy of a Book\u2026 Deciding to independently publish a book\u2026 Part 1: DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU NEED TO DO?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":false,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[16],"tags":[131,132,129,133],"class_list":["post-2104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-publishing","tag-editing","tag-printing","tag-publishing","tag-sales"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\r\n
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Next up, the \u201creal\u201d cost of publishing\u2026<\/h3>\r\n\r\n