Self-Publishing 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Self-Publishing & Everything You Need To Know About It
Self-publishing has shaken the publishing world to its core.
It is a golden opportunity for you to make money, from the comfort of your own home without going the arduous and daunting route of traditional publishing. But, just what is self-publishing?
Self-publishing is the publication of media by its author without the involvement of an established publisher. The term refers to written media, like books and magazines, either as an eBook or as a physical copy using POD (print on demand) technology. A popular belief is that the concept of self-publishing emerged when traditional publishing began to fumble in handling many manuscripts that were coming their way.
Landing an agent, then finding a publisher to accept your manuscript, is a very competitive and lengthy process, sometimes with no guarantees. Luckily, waiting for someone to give your book a chance is is a thing of the past. Self-publishing gives way to a plethora of opportunities and is a way to get your books out there, and maximise the sales of your content without any compromises. Self-publishing today is widely known as the new wave in the publishing industry.
In these harsh times, especially where many people are looking to supplement their incomes, self-publishing emerges as a steady way to earn additional money every month. The best part about it is: you don’t need any kind of experience to get started. The costs for self-publishing are minimal, nearly free if you do everything on your own. According to Amazon's 2019 review of its Kindle sales, there are now thousands of self-published authors taking home royalties of over $50,000, while more than a thousand hit six-figure salaries from their book sales last year. So, what’s stopping you from building your very own self-publishing business?
Whether you've always had a passion for writing, or you're not the most avid writer at all, there’s no need to feel overwhelmed as a self-publishing newbie. In this article, we feature tried and tested ways to clear your doubts and get you started. So, let’s get into it!
Table of contents:
Is Self-Publishing Right For You?: Pros and Cons to Keep in Mind
- Pros of Self-Publishing:
1. Absolute Creative Control
In the traditional publishing industry, publishing companies are more concerned with the book’s marketability than the author’s vision and interpretation of their work. This leads to the misinterpretation and generalisation of the author’s work as the main aim is to gain sales, resulting in the loss of the author’s originality. Authors are often forced to revise their manuscripts as many times as is required to suit the publisher’s taste. A lot of authors wouldn’t want to go through this ordeal and see their book manhandled.
Self-publishers retain full creative control over their content and can publish it in its truest form that is not based on saleability and latest trends. As an independent author you can present your work in whatever way you like!
2. Higher Royalties
Since less people are involved in the self-publishing process, more profit can go to the author. In traditional publishing generally the royalty rates are 6-15% for the author. In self-publishing however the royalties that the author gets to keep per book sale is 35% up to a whopping 70%. Of course, 35% is more common and gives you freedoms that a larger royalty will not. There is a lot of fine print associated with those numbers, but you can get the general idea. If you can market your work well, which we recommend you do regardless of which route you take, self-publishing may be more profitable.
3. A Great Opportunity for Niche Publishing
Since saleability is a publisher’s main concern it may get difficult to find book deals if your content does not fall into the mainstream category. This definitely isn’t the case with self-publishing. As an independent author you can publish your content without any qualms and there are no exceptions, no matter how seemingly unpopular or out there it is. In fact, many self-published authors earn their bread and butter on by catering to various niche genres and sub-categories.
4. Choice of Who You Work With
As a self-publisher you have the authority to choose your team of ghostwriters, editors, book cover designers, formatters etc. It gives you control over what kind of work you require to shape your final book draft. You can even choose to forgo hiring out the work, and do the writing yourself.
For those who are less inclined in that area, hire a ghostwriter. The rest of the work, you can choose a la carte. If you're skilled with Canva, In-Design or Photoshop, you can design your own cover. Rather get a professional help? A cover designer can create one for you. You can choose to hire a professional designer to create your book cover, and order a professional description, and do the rest of the work yourself. The final decision is yours to make. You’re the boss! Then all you have to do after that is upload your manuscript and cover to your chosen publishing company (ex. KDP, Ingramspark, Draft2Digital etc)
5. Faster Publishing Process
Books published through a traditional publisher might take 2-3 years or more to see the shelves. On the other hand, as an independent author, you can publish your work as soon as your book is ready. Editing and production could take time, but after that, your book can be submitted within 48 hours or less.
6. No Fear of Rejection / No Gatekeepers
Before obtaining a book deal, traditionally published authors can spend years going through rejections. As we all know, rejection is disheartening and leads to a dip in our confidence.
As a self-publisher you can publish what you want, when you want with next to no exceptions. There are no gatekeepers, no one stands in the way of your book and getting published.
7. Regular Payments
As a traditionally published author you might only receive your royalty payment twice a year. Self-publishers however can earn monthly royalties.
8. You Maintain Your Rights
Self-published authors do not have to sign away their rights therefore they do not have to worry about being abandoned by a traditional publisher.
9. ZERO Deadlines
Traditionally published authors have strict deadlines they need to adhere to. That is not the case in self-publishing. You can set your own deadlines and change them whenever you want.
- Cons of Self-publishing
1. Less Visibility
An established publisher may offer more prestige and a bigger platform for their writers. Resources and visibility provided by big publishing houses leads to a quicker path toward critical acclaim, which can be harder to achieve through self-publishing.
2. Potential of Higher Initial Cost
As a self-published author the responsibility of hiring out publishing services that comprise proofreaders, editors, book cover designers, formatters etc, falls on your shoulders. Depending on your budget and the services you choose, this initial investment can cost you. Whereas, publishing deals come with book deals and monetary advances. There is no advance money for self-published authors.
The Costs of Self-Publishing
Now let's breakdown some of the costs of self-publishing.
- The cost to publish a book depends on several factors.
1. The level of quality you want.
As we stated before, the cost of self-publishing can be free, especially if you choose to do all of the writing, editing, proofreading, formatting, cover design etc. on your own. However, it’s not rare for self-publishers to invest a few hundreds to thousands of dollars for professional self-publishing services for their books if they want to scale their publishing business — this includes ghostwriting, editing, cover design, formatting, narration for audiobook format and marketing services.
2. The length of the book
If you choose to go the route of using professional writing services, the price will depend on the length of your manuscript. Typically, the more lengthy your book, the more expensive it will be to ghostwrite it, proofread, edit etc.
Though they can be a larger initial investment, longform books are generally more profitable in the long run, than low content books for example. This is due to the number of formats they can be published in like Ebook, paperback and audiobook formats.
3. How fast and how much you want to want to scale your self-publishing business
Unless you are a prolific and fast writer yourself, writing and publishing a large catalog of high quality books is a bit unrealistic. This would take you a lot of time, and if you do come out with many books in a short amount of time, there are high chances that the quality will suffer. If most writers take several months to a year to write one book, building up your catalog of high quality books will take a while, and as a result, it may take a longer time to see your earnings drastically increase through royalties.
Choosing to go with professional writing services makes it so that you can get high quality books out fast. This leads to a much faster increase of income. The more money you make, the more you can re-invest into your self-publishing business to turn it into a self-publishing empire.
How to publish a book: A step by step guide
There are two ways to go about this, you can either write the book yourself, or hire a professional ghostwriter to do it for you. Obviously, doing it yourself is the more cost-efficient method. Hiring a writer can cost you anywhere from a few hundred to thousands of dollars depending on the length, and service.
2. Book editing
There are different types of editing and each serves an important purpose for the manuscript.
3. Manuscript critique
This step includes getting beta readers to go through your first draft, so they can tell you the positive and negative points of your book. Beta readers are essential for pointing out things like inconsistencies or plot holes that you may have missed, letting you know whether your book is engaging or falls flat at certain points. Their feedback is great for helping you to see how your book would be received by its intended audience.
4. Copyediting
At this stage you, or whoever you hire will go over your manuscript and make necessary edits to improve the flow, sentence structure, grammar etc. of your work.
5. Proofreading
Not to be confused with copyediting, this is the final read through of your work. You will check your work for errors one final time before it's ready for publishing.
6. Book Design
There are two main steps in book design process. Designing the interior of your book, and the exterior or cover of your book.
a) Interior book design
Depending on whether you are publishing an ebook or a print book, the way you format your book will be different. For print books you will need to know the physical size of your book. For example: 6" x 9" inches, 7" x 10" inches, 8.5 x 11" inches. Your book file in the writing program you use will have to be congruent with the print size so the text is aligned properly on the page. Ebooks won't be printed and most of the time feature reflowable text, or text that isn't fixed on the page, so physical size is irrelevant. Of course there are some advanced formatting techniques for both Ebooks and Print books, to make your interiors look stunning, but it is not always necessary. There are programs and services available to format your books.
b) Book cover design
Your book cover along with your book title carry the most weight when it comes selling to a potential customer. We are visual creatures and despite the old adage, we can't help but judge books by their covers. So it is important that yours looks good, appeals to your audience and stands out. As stated before, if you have some experience with graphic design and you're pretty thrifty, you can do it yourself. But for those with a larger budget, seriously consider professional services for this. Why? Because they are good at what they do. Professional book cover designers design covers for bestselling books for a living. Most often, they are familiar with the types of book covers that te top selling books have and will make sure that your book appeals to your target market.
7. Book metadata This consists of:
a) Book title
Many authors struggle with how to title their book. Along with the cover of your book, a book's title makes a huge difference in whether a customer can discover your book or not (say, on Amazon), and whether it will appeal to a potential customer or not. Often times self-publishers who are not established names in the industry must use their title in order to be discovered.
Keep this in mind for your non-fiction, and fiction books. For non-fiction, this may prove a bit easier. 30 Easy Vegetarian Crockpot Recipes quite easily appeals to someone who is searching for it. For a novel, this might not be so easy. So placing certain keywords in the subtitle may help. Bloody Rose, may not immediately reveal to a potential buyer what your book is about. But if the subtitle reads: A standalone vampire romance, you are much more likely to be found by a reader searching for vampire romance stories.
In this way, a good title is often a combination of sales copy and keywords.
Keep this in mind especially if you are publisihing throrugh Amazon KDP. Amazon is a search engine first, so your book title is what customers will use to find you. Apart from being appealing, your book title should always include keywords that also improve your searchability.
b) Book description
After your book cover and title, your book description is the biggest factor that will effect your sales conversions. Your book description isn't just a collection of keywords for metadata however, nor is it just what your book is about, it is your book’s sales pitch to the reader. This will be a combination of sales copy, keywords and all around compelling writing. A great book description will hook your reader, speak to your audience's pain points, tell your reader why they need your book, how they will benefit and lastly make the potential buyer want more, and make that purchase.
You are given a limited amount of characters to captivate a browsing customer and turn them into your buyer of your work, even a loyal reader, and fan. Don’t waste this opportunity, and make every word count.
You can definitely write your book description on your own, but if you have the budget for it, consider getting the expertise of a professional copywriter and having it professionally written. Studies show that a high quality description will drastically improve sales conversions to the tune of upwards of 50 percent.
Our Publish pages’ copywriters specialize in writing book descriptions that will help you maximize your book sales. Our copywriters have written book descriptions for a combined hundreds of bestselling titles. Feel free to check out our services here: https://www.publishpagesservices.com/products/professional-book-description
c) ISBN
ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number. It is an internationally recognized identification number. Your ISBN counts as more meta-data for your book.
Many publishing platforms offer free ISBNs, but you can also purchase your own.
d) BISAC codes
BISAC codes essentially identify what your book is about – the primary genre(s), topic(s), and theme(s). While a reader might not be trained to search for books based on a BISAC code, retailers and booksellers will use your BISAC code to determine in which category to place your book on their website, or where to shelve it in their bookstore
8. Publishing
Publishing can be done through various self-publishing companies and websites. More on this in the next section
b) Marketing
Getting your book out there and seen is important, and though you may see some sales without marketing, you can 10x or more your monthly book sales by advertising your book. There is never a reason to leave money on the table. As a self-published author, you can make use of Amazon ads, Facebook ads, a mailing list, and many other means to get their books in front of their audience.
c) Author website and social media
Avoid just being a published author on Amazon KDP, or Ingramspark. We always reccommend you have your own platform where your customers can reach you, or discover you, follow you and keep up to date with your upcoming books. You should always have an author website, and corresponding social medias. Ths is also a way to join your Niche community.
d) ARCs
ARCs or Advanced Readers Copies are copies of your book that are given to select readers in advance to generate buzz for your book. You can send physical ARCs to a bookseller to inquire about stocking copies for the release date, you can also send physical or digital copies to book reviewers to gain reviews for your book before your publication date.
Where Should You Publish Your Book?
Here is a list of some of the most popular self-publishing platforms, they all have their benefits and drawbacks. We have another article where we discuss some these publishing platforms in detail. So if you want to know more about which one may be the best choice for you, check it out here.
1) KDP Kindle Direct publishing
2) Barnes & Noble Press
3) Rakuten Kobo (Kobo Writing Life)
4) IngramSpark
5) Google Play Books
6) Apple Books
7) Smashwords
8) Draft2Digital
9) PublishDrive
