If you haven't published your books yet, then you are losing money or the possible sales that you could get out of it. So, here's a quick way to get your book out fast plus some tips to make self-publishing easier for you.
Today's article has three points and you're going to want to stick around for the third point. Because it is a secret as to the absolute most important thing you're going to want to keep in mind when getting your book onto the market fast.
The topic we're discussing today is here's a quick way to get your book out fast. Now, I know as a writer you've managed to get your book written which is fantastic. Just getting the book written at all is a huge feat that many writers never actually fully accomplish.
You're working on the book but now we want to get it onto the market. And we want to do this quickly but how exactly do we do that? There are so many steps involved in self-publishing and each one of them could cost us sales or maybe embarrass us if we put the book onto the market before it's fully ready.
Or maybe it's ready but the steps seem so slow and it seems like it's going to take us years to possibly get this book onto the market. The other option of course is to go with traditional publishing where these publishers would do a lot of the steps for you.
However, as many people who follow my Youtube channel know that can be a very painful route and require waiting years and years. In the meantime, you're depriving your readers. Those readers who are in the world who want to read your books but can't read them.
You're depriving them of your books and the quality content that you have in those books. And you're depriving yourself of the money and experience you would be getting by actually making sales. Getting in touch with those readers and ensuring that your books are going through the things.
Delivering that content and value to those people, then we get into this feedback loop with our readers. So getting the book onto the market fast can have many advantages. We've discussed previously the disadvantages but today we're going to look a little bit upon how exactly we go about doing just this.
Check out and grab a copy of my absolutely free Self-Publishing Checklist. You're going to want to have it to make sure you are not skipping any of the steps necessary to get your book onto the market and sell.
From my own story, I started writing a book and I was putting out a thousand words a day. That was the goal I highly recommend for you. Either set aside a certain amount of time that you're going to do every day for your self-publishing business or if you don't even have your very first book then decide how many words you're going to write per day.
It may only be 100 or it may be 500 words. For me, I found I could put out about a thousand words a day. And in no time at all, your book is complete. Well, at least the first draft of the book is complete.
I was trying to get the book onto the market relatively quickly. But it did not go according to plan. So what happened was I did multiple rounds of editing. I hired different people, different editors to go into the book and take a look.
Some of the comments that I've discussed previously with many of my viewers here, there are different types of courses of editing as you all have pointed out. And I'm just referring to can we just get the basic grammar and the flow of the book to be appropriate to be proper?
Now I do understand you can have people who are looking at the plot, the structure, the flow, and the grammar. You have so many different aspects and dimensions that you can do on this editing process here. And that's up to you to decide which ones you want but that would be the next thing.
I had multiple rounds of editing on my book. Then we had the ordering of different covers. I started with the basic cover and made so many mistakes on the cover.
I thought it looked wonderful and then I had people look at it and say this is a terrible cover. So then I ordered a really expensive cover that also didn't quite meet the needs. I went back and forth until I found something that worked and used a lot of time in the process.
Then I changed the titles when I realized the importance of keywords. When I started, I didn't even know keywords were even important. I know some of you out there you're thinking what is this keywords thing?
Well check out my 300 plus videos and you can see what exactly I'm talking about when I say the importance of keywords when it comes to your titles. But I tried to change the titles, I went back and forth with the descriptions and the formatting.
There were so many things I discovered that needed to be changed on the books over and over using up lots of time. The one thing we weren't doing was doing it fast. The thing is that it took me months and months and months to get the book onto the market.
Because I had set up huge barriers to making sure that everything was perfect. And as you know the good to a perfect problem which I've discussed previously can get in the way when it comes to getting our book onto the market as quickly as possible.
A lot of people still don't quite understand the value of speed but that is important to consider. It is the fact that if we can get our book onto the market quickly, we won't lose the motivation. Once it's on the market, our readers will start telling us what they think.
I have a goal which is three to five stars on the reviews when people leave reviews for the book. But you may be only wanting four to five stars so maybe by increasing the amount of editing you're going to be able to get there.
But if you're seeing yourself only getting one to two stars, you're going to need more editing. Because there's a mismatch between what you're promising and then you're under-delivering. We want to be overdelivering or at least delivering the value that we promise with our books.
That's the minimum requirement that I would establish for every book that I'm putting onto the market. I would highly recommend the same thing for you and the books that you're putting onto the market. You would make sure that you have that level of quality and on the speed front.
The faster you can get the book onto the market with that three to five-star target range, the better. Because then it means our readers are going to be able to give us feedback. Which we can then go back and fix the books and/or fix our future books.
To make sure that we're getting this good match between what our readers expect and what we're delivering. And as we practice like anything you begin to master. This mastery issue comes into gear and things get faster especially if you can build a system.
Hiring virtual assistants to help you with these processes. These are the things that I implemented into my flow when it comes to getting the books onto the market. That drastically increased just how fast I could get a book onto the market from the moment I start writing the book to get it onto the market.
Use A Free Tool
I discovered that at some point, I reached a point where I was able to determine starting with the title of the book what exactly I was promising to deliver. Placing the order for the cover and having a book onto the market within a single week.
I would order the audiobook version which would take approximately 2 to 4 weeks to have completed. I would stick that into the queue and then my audiobook would go live within 2 to 3 months. I'd have my paperback and the Kindle version of the book within a week on the market and already making sales.
I'd have the ads running immediately the second the Kindle hit the market and then we would go from there. Now, I know some of you may be thinking one week. Yes, that is exactly correct, a week.
Some people go even faster than this but that's just because they're taking shortcuts. When it comes to researching the keywords and ordering a cover. That's going to be high quality but a week is about as fast as I found I could do it.
I could design the cover using Canva and do all of the rest of the work. And even write the book again let's say we're talking more of a pamphlet type of book that would be 3000 words. Which would get us 24 pages necessary to make it a paperback book.
I could do the entire process in one day, that's right. I could get a paperback version, the Kindle version out. Have Amazon review it and within 24 hours, I have the book live on the market. I could do that even today, I tested this out about a year ago.
I was able also to get a book out in about a day though I wouldn't recommend this. I still think it's better to go with a better quality cover since that's what's going to sell. But Canva's covers, I can tell you something I've used their templates and you can even put them on the market.
Their templates are such high quality. You can even use their templates and get your Kindle cover on the market in a single day and then they will sell. This is the crazy part of it that I was completely unaware of, the covers are crazy important.
The titles matter and that's maybe what a lot of the research goes into. Figuring out this idea of where do I find the market. And the market can be found often with regards to using several tools as I mentioned before like KDSpy.
It's been a while since I've used it. It can help you in terms of figuring out which keywords are best for you. But let's get into it, here's a quick way to get your book out fast. Number one, once you've got your word document use a free tool like Calibre.
Somebody corrected me on the pronunciation of that since most people don't talk about it too much. But Calibre I use this program, by the way, all the time but not for formatting. I use Jutoh which takes a little more time to learn but is by far the best tool for taking your word document and formatting it.
I have a Book Formatting Course available. The Jutoh program that I use all the time is a fantastic amazing program. But we're talking about speed today so Calibre and Draft2Digital will take your word document put it into an EPUB format.
Check out this related article: The Secret Of Formatting Your Books Right
Fortunately, we don't even need to put it into a Mobi file because Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) will put your book into the correct format. And within Word, we can also put it into a PDF. I like 6x9 but 5x8 is an acceptable size.
But 6x9 will put it into more markets and then you can go from there. Now I will say that your table of contents isn't going to be looking good. That's why Jutoh is the correct tool and once you've learned the tool, you can go through it just as fast as you can.
But if we're looking for speed and without having to learn much, then these are the better ways of doing it. You can just go straight from your Word document, it'll put it into the correct formats. Now we have it formatted and we're ready both on the paperback and the Kindle version of our books.
We are ready to post on Amazon in less than an hour. We're good to go. Could be as little as less than five to ten minutes should be sufficient but you can test it out for yourself. The next step is we're going to order the cover through Fiverr.
Check that out and you'll find the cover designer that I use on Fiverr. This is the person, I used to do over 100 covers for me. Many of my students have gone to her and also found that she's incredibly good and very fast.
You'll have your cover in 3 days, make sure you get the premium quality cover. Premium cover that adds on a little bit more, you're going to pay $20. You're going to get a cover that's going to sell books for you.
Now if you want to pay $100 or $500, you can do this through other services. I've used Upwork and others to do it but in reality, I did not find an increase in sales of my books between my 100 covers and my 20 covers strangely enough.
Now I know you may not believe that but listen, you need to test this out for yourself. Just go ahead and see how exactly it works for you. You can figure it out but I would suggest looking for cover through the Fiverr person I have and give her a chance.
Let her show you what she can do with your book. And in at worst case, you wasted $20 I don't believe that's going to happen, she'll go back and forth with you. If you want, she can make additional revisions to your cover.
But she's fantastic. I don't recommend going to anybody else. By the way, if you are going to go to somebody else on Upwork or through the other, there is one suggestion that I have on making a choice. When it comes to hiring freelancers to do the work for you, sort by the number of projects they've done.
So we want somebody with a thousand projects behind them, they've done a thousand projects or Upwork. They've had nearly a million dollars moving through their sales on Upwork. This is a great way to do it with four to five stars.
I don't even need straight five stars, four to five stars with a thousand reviews. The same goes with books on Amazon books that have a thousand reviews, these are going to be real reviews. Now I can tell you even many of the top publishers that are on Amazon, have fake reviews that are on there.
That's just a fact, okay. They're hiring their friends, their family, virtual assistants, all sorts of people to get these reviews. Amazon's becoming a lot stricter with regards to this over the last several years.
So I would say be careful with the reviewing front but don't kid yourself. I mean I remember my wife even looking through some of the books and saying "oh look, look at these reviews, they're not even talking about the book". Of course, they're not talking about it.
These people are just getting reviews from whoever and wherever they need to because they understand reviews are so important. But when you have a thousand reviews between four and five stars, these are not fake reviews. Some of them may be fake but not all of them and it shows you these are people you can trust.
The Problem As An Indie Publishers
You're going to want to go through them and any cover designer you're going to find on Fiverr that has premium-level pictures that they're using. Not just the standard out-of-the-box pictures you can get for free on Pixabay or Pexels, but with the premium design pictures and images that you have.
And we're talking about people with a thousand reviews that are four to five stars. You will never be disappointed with it, that was actually how I found my cover designer. I also went to some other cover designers but this was the one that I found was the cheapest.
The one who was the most professional and guaranteed to get you that book cover that would look great. So I know we used a little bit of time discussing covers just now. But I just feel that is important because I have so many students asking me regularly who should I be going to get my cover.
Should I pay hundreds of dollars on these covers to get a perfect cover? And I'm saying no, you don't need to do that but you do need a good cover. Because it is the second most important thing. Your title is the most important that's where KDSpy comes in.
Then your second is getting a cover that's going to get your books selling. And if you think the covers don't matter, go and put a piece of garbage cover. Or go to Amazon, let them help you with their cover designer, I call it the cover failure program.
Because it's going to produce a terrible cover that will sell no copies. Now the best-sellers are the top authors that are on Amazon. Once they're a well-known name somebody knows you already, well then it doesn't matter which cover and that's a dirty little secret.
Which is their title doesn't matter, their cover doesn't matter. They're going to sell books regardless but our number one problem as indie publishers is that we're just getting discovered. Indie writers and authors you just need to be discovered, don't worry so much about a lot of this other stuff.
We want people to find us so make sure your cover matches with the top cover. So I take my cover designer Vikiana and I send her a copy. I say "look these are the best sellers in the category that I'm looking for, the niche category on Amazon".
"I want you to make me a cover that looks just like them". As a result, she sends me something back selling thousands of dollars a month in some of these books. It's amazing how much money flows through. But you'll have to test it out for yourself.
Let me move on to the secret answer of today, here's a quick way to get your book out fast. And the answer is you can fix the book later but you can't change the title. Even the cover can be a little bit of a challenge for you when you get the book and this is for the paperback version.
They're going to assign an ISBN and then your title is frozen in time. So you can't change it later and this will create a problem with linking your paperback to your Kindle book. I even have older books of mine that are still causing problems for me because of this exact issue.
So make sure the title is good and you use that KDSpy program. Look at my other videos on keyword checking to make sure that you're using the keywords that are going to find people who are searching on those keywords are going to find your book.
So if you're doing some shapeshift or romance book, make sure you have those keywords that you're going to find the best sellers in your niche. And also make sure there aren't too many books that have that same keyword that is ranking for it.
And that will tell you exactly whether or not there's a demand for the type of book that you're looking on putting on the market. So if it's Puppy Training which was a hot keyword I think I may even have a book on that subject.
It was a very very hot keyword many years ago and still selling copies today. That's something you may consider, know Puppy Training was a hot keyword and it worked great. I'm not too big into this but the Keto Diet was also a very hot keyword, not too many books at one time.
Now the book market is flooded with them but that was also a hotkey where there's a whole series of these hot keywords that are out there. The fact is that you find the underserved genre. I think there was a romance within Sci-Fi romance this was also one that was very hot.
Then you would mix two genres in order like Amish Sci-Fi romance. I'm not into these things but by finding this intersection of keywords and then making sure your title has in it. And sometimes for the non-fiction, making sure that the primary title of your book is the keyword itself.
So when your reader is looking for something to solve their thing like How To Grow Vertical Gardens or whatever the title of your book is, we're making the promise in the title itself. When they see the number of books showing up, we're not looking for a clever title.
Now if you're a famous author already and you have a gigantic following and tons of readers, well my first question is why are you even reading this article? This is a complete waste of your time.
Not really, I mean I actually will help you increase your sales as well. But in general, I'm dealing with people whose problem is being discovered. It's not a problem of "hey I'm going to be such a huge author" or you're amazed that it won't even matter what my covers and title are.
No, we want to help you build your audience. And after you have a gigantic audience, then you can start ignoring the best strategies, I wouldn't recommend that. You still should continue it. I don't even understand why some of these major authors are blowing off good covers.
But you know that's up to them and some of the traditional publishers even put out horrendous covers. I would just say that you're going to want to follow these steps if you're going to want to get your book onto the market. Going very very quickly and out fast and then you can fix it later.
That's the reason why I wanted to point that out. The biggest challenge you have is not so much "oh no it's not going to sell because it's terrible or something". Your biggest problem is you're not going to be discovered and so we want to get our audience as quickly and possible in touch with us.
They're telling us what is wrong with our books so we can fix it. By getting our book onto the market, again three to five stars are our target. If you're getting less than that, your books are too low of quality.
You're going to need to improve something on that so keep that in mind when doing this. We're not talking about putting garbage on the market, we're talking about putting stuff on the market that is good enough and how fast we can get it onto the market. So have you used too much time getting your book out?
If you feel you're using too much time then write "Yes" below in the comments and if you feel you aren't, write "no" below in the comments. Because I want to know whether or not you feel you're wasting too much time when it comes to your books. Check out my other articles and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.