You might be worried about what step you need to take when it comes to self-publishing. Check out below and learn about the right steps to self publishing.
Today's question has three answers. The third answer is a secret you're going to want to stick around for. Because it will tell you which step is the most difficult in self-publishing.
So let's get into it. The question that was sent into me today was, what are the steps to self publishing? Now, this is an excellent question.
Because if you're considering self-publishing, you're going to want to know exactly where you should start. How much work you can expect? What exactly the step by step you're going to need to do to get started with self-publishing?
Before we get into the answers, check out my free Self-Publishing Steps Checklist. So, what are the steps to self publishing? Let me hit my story.
When I first started self-publishing, I discovered that I initially thought when I was going to be writing the book, that was going to be the really hard part.
Trying to get my ideas down on into the computer. That's when I started going that route. I put my first book out but then I discovered "Wait, I need to have a cover for it and a description".
I need a bunch of other things that were involved in the entire process. Some of these things are more confusing than other aspects when it comes to self-publishing. I managed to get those things out.
The description needed to be in HTML. Then which keywords was I going to use? The cover, the content, and getting it formatted correctly then marketing afterward.
There was a whole series of things for which some of the things I understand correctly. And some of the things I didn't understand correctly. But I did understand the need for a checklist.
To keep track of exactly how far I had come. Continuing in the process and when I started producing 170 plus books, I was not doing one book at a time.
I was doing multiple books at a time. I needed to keep track of where exactly in the process for the different books was I at. That required tools to figure that all out.
Also, to make sure that I wasn't skipping important steps. To make sure that I wasn't including steps that were not important into the whole thing. So what are the steps to self publishing?
Well, the answer is that you can break it down into three phases. You've got your writing phase and that is pretty straightforward which would be you're sitting down on the computer. You're writing on a daily basis.
For me, it would be a thousand words a day. You would be writing out until you complete the manuscript. The manuscript can be as few words as 3,000 up to 30,000 depending upon the genre.
Do The Formatting
You find out what other people in the same genre are writing. What best seller books are. Then you make sure that your number of books is along those lines.
But just experimenting, you may find that shorter books also work for you, which is what I had found also. Then you come to the next phase which would be formatting.
In formatting, we are finding out our keywords that we're going to be dealing with. Even before writing, you have your research phase. To make sure that figuring out what exactly you're going to even write about.
That's another phase I hadn't even thought about. But then the formatting, you have your cover. You've got to be putting the book into using the correct tools.
I used Jutoh to do the formatting both for paperback and for your Kindle version of your ebooks. Besides, you're going to have your keywords. You're going to have your description, the title of the book, and then we're going to get this all put together.
We're going to then put that out onto the platforms. Then finally just when we thought we were finished and this is the mistake that most authors do. Either they skip the research phase, they're selling books that nobody wants or they skip the marketing phase.
The result is the average self-published author making a thousand dollars a year which is pretty low. So our goal is to see if we can increase that amount. And that comes in through the marketing phase.
Check out this related article: Is Self Publishing A Good Idea?
So, the research phase is incredibly important. To make sure you're selling to a hungry market. The marketing phase is to make sure that you're finding your readers.
These two phases together become incredibly important. Maybe more important than some of the other aspects of it. The next would be maybe the cover itself is important.
But back to the marketing phase, that's where we're going to be running ads against our book. We're going to maybe be doing content marketing which is something I highly recommend.
But that moves on to the second answer. You get better with each step over time and should not allow perfectionism to get in your way. This is something that many authors do when they're starting.
They're going through step by step the different steps. They're looking for it to be an absolutely perfect book. With absolutely perfect editing and everything like that before they get the book onto the market.
Whereas, if you get the book on the market and starts doing poorly, then you can figure out what mistakes you've made. You can then fix those mistakes. Your readers will help you with the process here.
Get High Reviews
What's funny is that a high-quality book doesn't necessarily have to have no grammatical errors in it. You can have mistakes in the book.
People will forgive it if the content of the book is useful. It's helping people with their lives, hobbies, or work. Whatever else they're using that particular book for.
It can also be for entertainment and for that matter, it doesn't have to be perfect to reach the goal. Our goal is that when people read your book, they're just not going to give it low reviews.
It needs to be good enough. That it's going to be getting average or high reviews. If you're trying to get perfect on everything, you're going to be very disappointed.
But that brings us to the secret question of the day regarding the steps I promised you in the beginning. I would tell you which step is the most difficult. And the answer is most people think that it would be the writing phase that would be the hardest.
Check out this related article: What Vanity Publisher Definition?
But that is not correct, the writing may be one of the easier phases. It's going to be the formatting and marketing that is more challenging. In particular, the formatting, you can also break that down step by step to make it very simple.
However, at the end of the day for many authors, once you finally have written your first book and you're getting ready to get to the formatting, you start getting lost in the complexities of the formatting.
It is because you're using the wrong tools when you go to marketing. You're simply not getting the right information. That is where the location of a video, podcast, or blog.
As you're reading right now can be very helpful in pulling you through this process to simplify things. Using the Checklist that I give away for free. It's an excellent way of finding out more about how you can keep this process simple.
We can move through these steps to get you not only a book onto the market but a book that's going to sell. That's ultimately what exactly the goal here is at selfpublishingmadeeasynow.com.
So what are the steps to self publishing? What have you found? Go ahead and let me know below in the comments. I would love to hear from you.
What exactly have you found to be the biggest challenge in your self-publishing journey and some things that I maybe didn't mention? Maybe steps that I did leave out.
Because sometimes we find that there are very important things. Those things that we overlook as we move forward in our self-publishing journey. So go ahead and let me know and check out my other blogs and videos to answer your self-publishing questions.