Many authors out there are afraid their self-published book might be laughed at. Let me tell you some very helpful tips on how you can have a self-published book you can be proud of!
Today's article has three points and you're going to want to stick around for the third point. It is a secret as to the one thing that is most important when it comes to having a book you can be proud of.
The topic for today is, have a self-published book you can be proud of! And this is a topic that many writers are very interested in. Because our goal after all is not to come out with a book we're going to be ashamed of.
We are not going to come with a book that people are going to laugh at but something that we can stand behind. Something for which we can say, "I wrote that book right there. That's the one that I wrote, I'm very proud of it."
But how do we get to that point? What is necessary? What are the steps that make the difference between a book we're proud of and a book that we're ashamed of? That is what we're going to discuss in today's article.
But before we get into the answers, check out my free Self-Publishing Secrets Checklist. To make sure that you are not skipping any of the steps necessary. To win at not just self-publishing your book but also in getting it to sell.
So let's get into it from my own story. When I had my very first book, I wasn't sure how the result was going to be. It was my very first book after all and I hadn't done this whole self-publishing thing before.
I hadn't done any publishing for that matter so it was my very first experience. I was very concerned with what would be the outcome of the first book. Well, I ordered the cover, I was following some of the strategies I heard like you should pay to get a premium cover or design or something.
Check out this related article: Here's A Quick Way to Get Your Book Out Fast
Then after that, you pay somebody on Fiverr to put it together. With the graphical, they have some sort of a program that they would put it into like a Photoshop type of thing. Then put the text on it and the result was absolute garbage.
It looked terrible. It was embarrassing because I thought it looked okay when I first looked at it. I don't have a background in graphic design, so what do I know about it? The reality is, it was not a great cover, it was a terrible cover.
So what I did was I went through multiple rounds of editing. That was the second thing because this was the second challenge. I took the manuscript and when I sent it to several editors, every time they did an edit, they found a whole pile of things that needed to be changed.
Huge mistakes here and things there and not really spelling problems. But in terms of the structure and how things fit together, there were just too many things that needed to be fixed with my manuscript. And that brought a lot of frustration as well.
I was trying to figure out what exactly needed to be done. Should I do another round of editing? This left me wondering a little bit also, "Is this going to work out?". I finally did end up ordering a high-quality cover.
I called it quits on the editing at a certain point. I understood that I could continue this editing process but only at the cost in terms of time and additional money. It didn't seem clear to me at the time that I was going to even get a return on my investment.
I wanted to get the book onto the market so I did get my high-quality cover. I did it through Upwork and I paid about a hundred dollars for the cover. The thing is when I ordered the paperback version of the book and I held the book in my hands, I realized that I had achieved my goal.
It is kind of funny since my very first book was to Achieve Your Goals Now With Power Lists. And my goal was to get a book on the market. There I was with a book I could hold in my hands and I could flip through the pages.
Start Writing Your Interests
I was surprised at the quality of the Print On Demand that CreateSpace was able to produce from the work that I had done for this particular book. I was like, "Wow! this whole self-publishing thing is a really good deal". You actually can take your ideas and you can get them into print.
You can format it all together. You can order the covers and the result looks like something you could find in a bookstore, not very far off from that. I had previously thought this whole self-publishing or if you want to go vanity publishing, you're just going to end up with some piece of garbage.
You're not going to want to put your name on it and that was a mistake on my part. I did not understand that you in fact can come up with high-quality writings that people are going to want to read if you market it correctly, you've done the right editing and making sure that things look okay.
The thing is I still needed to learn how to get the book to sell. That was something I've discussed in other articles but at least in terms of getting the book onto the market. That was the thing, I had a sense of pride, "wow this was amazing yeah I got this book onto the market".
So have a self-published book you can be proud of. The first thing you need to remember is you should write about something you're excited about. That is we shouldn't be writing things that we're not enthusiastic about the very thing we're writing.
Well, then how can we expect our readers to be enthusiastic also? The best and absolute most powerful form of marketing is to keep on coming out with more books. It should be in the same niche I was telling a Coaching client recently on this exact subject.
It is important to make sure that for what you're focusing on in your writings, it's the same thing over and over. I know it gets boring sometimes but in reality, this is how we build an audience.
We're saying, "look I'm focused on this one topic here like for example, I'm focused on Self-Publishing and this is the reason why I want to help you get your books onto the market". I'm not focused on Puppy Training or anything else, just one single thing I'm very excited about.
It's one of my favorite topics and this is the reason I want to share. I've had so much fun and success with self-publishing, I think you can as well. So by working together, we're able to come to all sorts of learning and growing in the process.
It makes us better people and after all, as hobbies go, it's a fantastic one. It can turn into an entire full-time business for you as well. It just depends upon how much time you want to put into it.
But you should choose a topic or a story that you are excited about. How are you going to be proud of this book if you're not even excited about what you're writing on? So make sure that you do, even if you think you found a profitable niche or keyword you simply should not do it.
You can pay a ghostwriter but that's a different subject, that's not talking about a book you've personally written and that you're proud of. Number two, get a high-quality cover and pay for editing. I've told you before that when it comes to your covers, you can order them off Fiverr.
I have the person on Fiverr that I use to do covers. But I've also paid on Upwork other people for even higher-end covers. I heard 99designs is a popular one as well where people can compete to do.
If you want to pay about a hundred dollars for a specific cover for your book, that's also a completely acceptable fantastic way to go about getting a cover order. But I would just go to the Fiverr route. You could even order a couple of covers and see which one you like best.
But the cover is so important and it needs to be something you're proud of. So if you don't like the cover, you think something looks wrong, then ask you the designer to go back and change the cover to something that you would be proud of.
That's another key aspect that we're going to want to keep track of. When we're first getting started with self-publishing and we want a book that we're going to be proud of.
Discover What's Good For You
Then you want to pay for the editing to be done on that. You can find someone on Fiverr or Upwork to do the editing. You're going to want somebody native English or whatever language your book is in who has a background in editing. You need like a professional editor you're paying thousands of dollars to.
There are other ways, you can get high school teachers who have been editing papers and things like that. Those people are available on Fiverr if that's what you're interested in. They're going to find simple mistakes that you've made within your writing or certain things that you've written down and it could be better.
You can find other people who are much more advanced than Upwork as well. Who will charge you a lot more money but you'll get a better service. It's up to you to decide but the thing is that it's not one size fits all.
You need to figure out what works for you to get the book out that you're going to be proud of. That's very important. If it's not a book you're proud of, how do you expect to sell this to anybody else? I think that's something that we really should focus on.
But the secret answer of the day and our third point is that you are going to mess things up. So I know we want to be proud of the book but you're going to be making a lot of mistakes in your very first book. You just need to learn from the mistakes and continue to move on.
You can fix parts of the book, you can fix the cover, the title may be. Not the paperback title since the ISBN has that frozen. But in terms of the Kindle version and some of the others, you can change a lot of things about the book around.
You can add additional sections, you can take away irrelevant things. You can fix grammar mistakes if people are complaining about stuff like that in the reviews you're getting. Which is another reason you want to get this book onto the market.
So that people can give you feedback on what you're doing like, "We love this part but we found this part confusing" something like that. This can help you as a writer, as an author to find the mistakes and the things that you need to fix.
You can be not just proud of your book but proud and know that other people are getting value out of what you've produced. And when we get into this loop of books you're proud of, your readers are excited to read them. We keep on putting out new books, this is a winning combination for you and your readers.
I can't tell you how excited I am when Hail Mary, the latest Andy Weir book, the weird book came out onto the market. So I was like, "wow this is going to be great". You know this is a win-win for everybody, he gets paid and I get an amazing story.
It's just something you really should consider when you're getting into self-publishing. It is that you want to put something out like you can have a self-published book you can be proud of! That's the key to winning this game here.
I have a question for you today. Have you written a book that you're proud of? I want to know, write "Yes" below in the comments if you have and write "No" if you haven't.
Because I need to know where you're coming from. So I can best help you. And check out my other articles and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.