Chris A. Baird | July 8, 2021
Writing And Self Publishing A Book From Start To Finish

If you want to cross the finish line with self-publishing, then you must consider the self-publishing steps. Check out below what goes into writing and self publishing a book from start to finish that will help you make progress.

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 most important thing when it comes to crossing the finish line with self-publishing.

What we're going to discuss today is writing and self publishing a book from start to finish. Now, when you're first getting started, you look at the journey itself. And as you're looking at it, so far, there is so much to do.

Whether it comes from writing the entire book. Whether it comes to the self-publishing portion of it or whether it comes to the marketing of the book afterward. In fact, it's probably even longer than you would imagine because marketing is so important.

It is equally as important as the things that come before it. And if you were to be aware of it, it would make it even more frustrating when you're first getting started. Because you see that it is just so far that you're going to have to go if you wish to get this whole self-publishing thing in order.

But at the same time, whether you're thinking of writing a non-fiction book because you have some ideas you want to share with the world or perhaps just want to make some passive income. Or you have the fiction side and you've got a story that you want to tell and that you know people would love to hear.

It's an amazing story but how are you going to get it out into the world? Well, you're going to have to write the book. You're then going to have to publish the book or self-publish most likely. Since the vast majority that tries the traditional publishing route get rejected.

So the self-publishing route becomes a much more flexible way where you're able to maintain control. And also learn the entire process at the same time and that is what we're all about. That's what we're going to discuss in today's article.

Check out my free Checklist where you will find the secrets to getting your book published in a reasonable amount of time and selling with the correct marketing.

Now let's get into it. When I first got started self-publishing, I was completely overwhelmed when thinking about doing all of these tasks. I could see that the journey was long and there were a lot of mistakes that could be made.

What if I put the book out there and it's just embarrassing? That's another issue that a lot of people have. You're thinking that even if you do manage to get it out there, what if nobody likes the book?

What if there are errors in the book? And people are saying "oh look at you, you may have put this book out there but it's garbage and nobody cares about it". So you have a lot of these things going on there.

You feel that inside your head this is something you definitely cannot do. I like to call this the Everest effect or Everest problem because it's like looking at Mount Everest. Saying "well that's my goal but I need oxygen and I need a guide".

You have all these base camps and do I have the ability to get there? You start to doubt yourself and this doubting it's again 80-90% of the whole process of self-publishing. It is a mental game, it's getting your head in order.

So this doubting then undermines you and destroys your motivation as it did to me. But then what happened was I began to understand as a planner myself, I began to break down the whole process into simple steps. So what do we need to do to self-publish?

Well, first I'm going to need to write the book. I mean obviously, I'm going to need to write the book but it requires a bit of planning. And if we can break it down into one step at a time, then we will avoid that overwhelm.

For me, it was a thousand words a day. Can I write a thousand words a day? Now for you, it might be a certain amount of time that you can dedicate even if it's 5 minutes or 30 minutes.

I found a point where I had reached where I was making no progress. I hired an accountability coach just to ensure I was doing 5 minutes a day. The person didn't even need to know anything about self-publishing.

It just needed to be somebody I didn't know and somebody who would say "have you done your 5 minutes today?". That made a very huge impact overall on my self-publishing process. So the thing is that I then finished writing the book.

I took it through self-editing and an additional two rounds of editing. Because I understood I wanted the book to be perfect. Then I ordered the cover, I wrote the description and it was out, so exciting my first book on the market.

Good Starting Point

It took me months to get this thing out and then no major sales because I didn't understand the importance of marketing. Now, you've read my other articles on this subject on marketing I hope. If you haven't, go check them out.

But otherwise, I began to understand that marketing is more important than even the quality of the book. It's unbelievable but it is absolutely true. In terms of long-term sales, the quality of the book may matter more.

But nobody is going to read the book if you are doing poor marketing. So I didn't understand that even before I even wrote the book. Finding the right keywords that I'm going to be targeting on the book and figuring out what the cover should look like.

Seeing what the other experts and best sellers in my category, niche, genre, keywords are doing in terms of the reviews that they have. What their covers look like, what their readers are complaining about in their reviews of those books?

And also what they like about those books and then even looking into the table of contents of my competitor books. To see what exactly are they breaking down their books as if you go step by step through their chapters. What exactly are they promising?

Does my book also hit the same subjects? The important thing there was to understand that before I just start pounding into my book, maybe it would be good to figure out what my audience wants. How would I know what my ideal readers would want?

Well, that's very easy because they're already buying books from my competitors. They've told me what exactly they want by buying. They pull out their wallet, click the Buy Now button on Amazon, and tell Amazon this is what your readers want.

So, if you're writing Puppy Training books, you know I always get back to Puppy Training books. Then let's go to the Puppy Training books and see "oh look somebody's complaining because one of the top-sellers didn't include a chapter on what happens if my puppy doesn't sleep at night?".

You see, they spend all the time talking about how to get your puppy to eat? How much food you should feed them and how to get them from peeing in your house? But then when it came to sleeping at night, they left that out.

So when your Puppy Training book is coming on, you're going to include a chapter that's exactly covering the things that were missed in the previous books. And you'll notice the pattern here, it's that we're not fooling anybody.

Check out this related article: What You Need To Know About Covers

We're trying to come out with the best quality book that will meet the needs and the problems the person has. And you might be thinking that your fiction book doesn't have anything to do with that. But it does, you're meeting the boredom and such.

I've been currently reading for example The Bridge Over The River and I found that the characters are incredibly flat. The story is incredibly predictable and there's not even any sort of a hook or a swing until we get to 90% of the way in the book.

So one of the things is that it did not help the boredom problem. I was reading it because of some other issues. But the fact is I'm just not finding the book very exciting.

Whereas your book can be very exciting and it's going to help meet the problem of the border. Or maybe some other need that the person might have, who knows? But whatever the case is, the marketing side and understanding what your market needs and pushing a book that will do that.

That was a very key issue but that sort pulls us a little bit to a tangent on this particular subject. I just wanted to point out that a lot of authors underestimate that end of the journey. They would say "okay I'll do the marketing afterward".

But in reality, you should already start in the very beginning. Thinking about your key audience and what it is that it's going to take to motivate them to buy your book. If they don't buy your book, it doesn't matter how good your book is.

So let's get into it, writing and self publishing a book from start to finish. Here are the keys you need to know, first is you need to break it down into as small pieces as possible. You can see my checklist if you have no idea where to start.

This will give you a good starting point to work from. So we're going to go step by step through each of the pieces required to get your book onto the market. That's the first thing that we're going to be looking at.

You Need An Accountability

The second thing is we need to decide how much time per day you can dedicate. We're dealing with the subject of chunking so I suggest for you 30 minutes. Now for some of you might be able to do 5 hours and for some, you might think 5 minutes.

But try to get at least 30 minutes of butt in chair, BIC. Where you're sitting down in your chair and you're putting out this content daily. After we get through that step, then we learn the next step, do not jump ahead.

I can't tell you how many students I have who are asking me about marketing and running ads before they even have a book on the market. Get your book on the market, later on, we'll research keywords and all this stuff. Your next book will be even better.

But how will you even know if the book never hits the market? So just do yourself a favor, we've already broken it down in step one with the plan. Now we're chunking it out every day and we have the plan.

So we're seeing the path of the journey to where we're going to. We're starting from here and we're taking it on the journey. Then as we're taking this journey, we're saying "okay I've come this far and I've got this much more to go".

But we don't focus so much on the distance to go, we focus on "did I get today's work done?". And that's what I do, you know, even for the videos I'm producing and all of the hours that I use for this, I try to dedicate about 2 hours a day. To make sure that it's coming out, does that make sense?

When I'm putting together the content you're reading right now about 2 hours a day to make sure that is dedicated. Then on my other time, using it for self-publishing and a lot of other things. That's an important thing to do and what I'm doing right now is exactly this very technique.

But let's get to the secret answer of today, our third answer and it is that your "accountability" will help you reach your goal. Do you need a coach or accountability? If you do, you can check out my Coaching program.

I work with students one-on-one to help them follow through with the steps that are necessary to self-publish the book. I look at a whole series of options and we look at the one path that will be the most effective.

This gives you 10x results in comparison to what you get by just trying to go it alone. This was my number one mistake when I was getting started. Which was not hiring a coach or an accountability person to help ensure that I'm staying on track.

Even to this day, I have a business coach to help me exactly follow through with the steps that are necessary to win. And then the way that this would work is you just meet with me once a week. Whether through a Skype meeting or whatever means works best.

But we go through how far have we come. Then sort of daily accountability as well so you would be updating daily. "Well, what did you do today?". Then once a week we take a look, "here's how far you've come".

I go back and forth with people all the time regarding what needs they have and we can sort of look at your situation. We just go step by step, whether it's getting your ads started or writing your book, or marketing your book.

Or whether you're even dealing with just self-publishing, which tools you should use? These sorts of things can be very helpful. And also if you attempt to do it alone, you're going to fail. That was what I discovered.

I was ready to give up until I found hiring a coach changed everything for my business. It will change everything for your business as well. If it's not me, make it somebody else.

But find somebody who's published you know like me, 200 books is what I've published. Maybe somebody's published a thousand books, maybe they would even be better than me. But choose somebody who's done what you're trying to do and is continuing to do it to this very day.

Continuing to make progress and learning and growing. Somebody that you can learn from. That is the absolute best secret that I've found when it comes to writing and self publishing a book from start to finish.

So have you made it through the finish line with your book? If you have, write "Yes" below in the comments and if you haven't, write "No" below in the comments. And check out my other articles and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.

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