How To Get A Book Published

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There are four phases to getting a book published: research, writing, formatting and publishing, and marketing. Most authors skip the first one, and it is the one that decides whether the book sells. These come from my experience with 230 books. Here is how they worked for a children’s author who nearly gave up.

Why did Karen’s book end up a mess?

Karen writes children’s books in Illinois. She isn’t an illustrator, but she had stories she had told her children and wanted to turn into books, with a side income. She tried traditional publishing, found the process complex, and went with a hybrid company. They put it together, and the draft she got back was a mess: the formatting was off and the illustrations were low quality and not what she had pictured. She nearly gave up.

She asked me on Quora what the publishing steps were. I walked her through the four phases below. You can’t skip them and hire someone else to do everything. For the people to avoid, read self-publishing companies to avoid.

Phase 1: How do I research a market?

Check that people are already buying. Most books that don’t sell skipped this phase. Karen wrote a children’s book on a topic with no books on Amazon, and that meant no market. If nobody has thought of it, nobody is searching for it either. You can create new markets once you’re well established, but at the start, you need a genre or sub-niche with books already selling. Then go one layer deeper to be the only one with your exact type of book.

We don’t want to educate people or persuade them they have a need. We want to tap into a need they already have. Look for an underserved market, one where there are not many books. Read which genres sell best.

Phase 2: What should I know before I write?

Your research tells you what to write. From the best sellers you learn the average length, what the cover looks like, and for a children’s book what illustrations are expected and which are selling. Amazon shows you all of it.

Decide the title and subtitle now, not after. How do you know what to write if you don’t know what the book is about and which market it targets? This is why research is the most important phase. Your book lives or dies in it. Read how long a self-published book should be.

Phase 3: How do I format and publish?

Put it all together. Order the cover from a professional designer, for example on Upwork or 99designs. Then format the book. I recommend Atticus, where you pull in the cover and export the Kindle, paperback and hardcover versions. Read how to format your book for Amazon KDP.

Look at the best sellers to see what they have: title page, copyright page and so on. Follow that, with one exception: skip the preface. Long introductions kill sales, so keep the front short and go straight into the book. Then ask people to join your email list. Many authors don’t, but you should. Then upload to Amazon KDP: the ebook and paperback first, followed by the audiobook and hardcover. Later add IngramSpark for wider distribution.

Phase 4: How do I market the book?

Two ways. First, Amazon Ads, which tell you whether your cover and title are a good match, because you find out whether people click at all. Second, content marketing, which is a long game.

Don’t expect a home run on your first book. You wouldn’t expect to paint the Mona Lisa on your first try. In my experience, it takes about three to five years of several books to build an audience with trust, and most books flatline at first. Even students of mine who won prizes for their books flatlined, and their biggest challenge was reviews. Be kind to yourself. Give your books the best chance to win. I can’t promise a profit.

What happened to Karen?

She found out it was less difficult than she thought, but she was trying to do too many things at once and had picked the wrong market. She moved to a market where illustrated children’s books were selling. She found an illustrator on Upwork at a reasonable price, after seeing samples, and she is pulling the pages into Atticus. She isn’t finished, but she is much happier with the process.

Should I pay a company to publish my book for me?

Be careful with any company that asks you for money and still calls itself a traditional publisher. Writer Beware, which tracks publishing scams, wrote on 16-Oct-26 about a publisher whose program required authors to put up AU$6,000 and concluded: “Pay to play is pay to play.” You can do the four phases yourself or hire single services such as a cover designer. Karen’s story is why I say to see samples first.

Which step are you at? Tell me in the comments. For the steps in order, take my free 12-step checklist.

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