For many people, becoming self-published is one of their greatest dreams. It’s a sustainable venture and one that will leave a legacy behind. On top of it all, you can generate passive revenue from the book’s sales, making it one of the best business ventures out there. When people like your novel, they might ask for a sequel, too, creating an opportunity even to write more books.
But being self-published isn’t easy. Many challenges will come your way. But considering that the overall market size of books is reaching the $133 billion mark, having a part of that pie, even just a small percentage of it, can make overcoming any challenges worth it. There are many paths to being self-published. In this article, we will be talking about the most accessible path. But first, let’s talk about your book.
Finish Your Book
You can’t become a self-published author without finishing your book! If you’re still thinking of a particular genre for your book, you can never go wrong with romance, mystery, fantasy, and young adult genres. However, these genres tend to be oversaturated. Creating a niche for your book is much better because you can develop a cult following.
Before you start writing your book, it’s also crucial that you improve upon your given skills. You’ll have to improve your English grammar and writing skills if you want to publish your book in English. But if you’re more fluent in a particular language, you can publish it using that language instead. If it sells well enough, it’ll demand an English translation, and some publishing companies are willing to do that for you by then.
Remember, you can’t become self-published without finishing your book, so get on that immediately.
Steps in Publishing Your Book
Congratulations! You’ve finished writing your very first book. That’s already halfway through the journey. But you’re going to need to edit it first before anything else.
Editing
Certain books require a particular format, making editing crucial before publication. For example, some novels can have specific formats to give a unique look to them. Editing is doubly important if you’re planning to publish your book physically. You’ll need your text to fit in paperback without using too many pages, as that could drastically increase your book price.
By the end of the day, you might have to fully revise or remove some parts of your book. However, don’t be discouraged by that. If it’s your first time as a self-published author, doing this will save you money. It’ll also make your book more coherent. But keep those parts. You never know, people might demand them in the future.
Most self-published authors hire a professional editor to do their edits for them. If you have some money to do this, we highly encourage that you do so.
Book Cover
Once you’re done with the editing process, it’s time to have a cover for your book. You know the saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover?” Well, we somehow want you to forget about that because, for many self-published authors, the cover can easily define and dictate the sales of your book.
If you have some experience with digital art, you should consider doing the cover yourself. It will save you a lot of money, which you can then use for marketing. However, if you have little to no experience, you should hire an experienced cover artist to do it for you. They can be quite expensive, but they’re worth it. Also, don’t accept royalty deals from them. Those will suck you dry.
Upload Your Book
After all of the steps above are done, it’s time to upload your book to your chosen sites. There are many sites out there that openly accept self-published authors like Amazon Kindle. It’s a pretty competitive site, but it’s an excellent place to start your journey.
There are also some indie book publishing sites out there you should consider. They don’t have the same exposure as Kindle, but they’re great if you want to develop a niche for your book. You should never physically publish your book if it’s your first time. Physical publishing should only be done once there is a demand for it.
Market and Review Copies
Here comes the hard part, marketing your book. The best way to market your book is by giving review copies to established reviewers worldwide. This will help your book gain traction. But you can also give review copies to dedicated book reviewers on sites such as Goodreads. Again, this will help your book to be known to the general public.
Other forms of marketing include social media marketing and Google ads. All of these require some investment, so make sure you’ve saved up some money before venturing into the self-publishing world.
There you have it! The simplest way you can become a self-published author. Of course, there are many ways out there, each having its own intricate development cycles. But this is the simplest way out there, and anyone can do it.
