Self-Publishing: What It's Really Like

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Self-publishing is a lot of steps, and my first attempt was a mess: an awful cover, formatting that made the ebook unreadable, and a point where I was ready to give up. Here is what self-publishing is really like, what went wrong, and what I do now.

What did my first self-publishing attempt look like?

The cover looked awful, and the formatting was black text on a blue background, impossible to read. That was my first attempt at self-publishing, in 2015, when I was living in Norway. I had written the book at a thousand words a day and run it through editing. It is a book about achieving your goals, and over the years thousands of copies have sold.

But as I tried to get it onto the market I realized there are an awful lot of steps, and for each step there are many tools. Which tools? In which order? Can you do steps in parallel? These questions are not obvious, and they make you want to give up. But I knew that if I didn’t make some choices I would never become a successful self-publisher. One goal was to crack the code of getting the book onto the market. The second code is marketing, which I find even more interesting: how do you get books to sell?

What went wrong with the cover and formatting?

I hired a cover designer on Fiverr, who asked what picture I wanted. I paid another site $40 for a picture, they threw some text on it, and it looked bad. Then I hired a “book formatter”, also on Fiverr. They hardcoded colors like black, blue and white into the files, so the book did not work when I put it on a Kindle, and my table of contents did not click to the right places. A terrible cover and a broken file were going to earn one-star reviews, and I felt hopeless. Bad hires are not always scams, but 3 self-publishing scams to watch out for shows the warning signs to check before you pay anyone.

I had been listening to podcasts and watching videos. They suggested 99designs for covers and Scrivener for formatting. I tested several options, including Upwork, Fiverr and 99designs for covers, and some of the advice I did not agree with. I broke the process into the simplest steps I could, and put it into my free 12-step self-publishing checklist, the path to getting your book self-published and selling.

What about formatting tools like Scrivener?

I bought Scrivener because many people praised it. When I tried to get my book into paperback format I could not find my table of contents, and when I asked, I was told to stick with the trial. Scrivener is designed to track characters and move chapters around, and I am sure it is fantastic for other writers. It did not work for my formatting. So I moved to Jutoh, the tool I used for formatting at the time, because it was much more straightforward. Today I recommend Atticus instead. Formatting needs to be perfect, not just okay, and I still work with clients on it regularly.

How do I get a cover that works?

I like ordering covers on 99designs, where several designers compete to get the cover right from your title, subtitle and author name and a short brief. At the time of writing it lists cover contests from US$299. After a lot of trial and error, a professional designer is what I use now.

What is the description for?

I thought a description was to describe the book. It isn’t. It is to sell the book, and the same goes for the table of contents and the author bio. A good description tells your target reader “this book is right for you.” I teach my clients to use some of the best descriptions on Amazon in their genre as a template to work from. I had a client session on exactly this the day before I recorded this. A strong description is also a big part of whether you can make money self-publishing at all.

Should I get help or figure it out alone?

Go through it with somebody. Find a coach or a program that breaks it down. Invest in yourself: one of my biggest lessons came from paying a business coach 200 a session, and you get what you pay for. Trying to figure it all out yourself costs time, and if your goal is to make money, you will make more when you invest in yourself.

Someone asked me just recently whether I would do self-publishing again, or go with a hybrid or traditional publisher. I only hear complaints from people who went the other route. Many of my clients have tried those companies first and are unhappy, and then we sit down for a free discovery call and map out a plan. The call isn’t about selling extra services. It is a chance to break your situation into bite-sized chunks, and most people leave with direction and motivation. If you can’t pay full price for help, start with the free resources: the checklist and the free discovery call. My goal is to help as many people as possible, and how to find success in self-publishing covers the habits that matter most.

What is it like day to day at the start?

You should not pay one more penny than you have to. When I started, I got paid during the month, set aside money for the business, and it ran out in the early days, so I had to wait until next month. That is what it is like on a thread, with a few dollars to play with every month until you crack the code. Once thousands of dollars come in each month, you can hire a team like I have. After publishing 230 books and running over 200 million ad views, I understand these frustrations.

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