How to self-publish a book in 2024: a complete guide to self-publishing
How to self-publish a book? Finding publishers for your book is extreme business, especially as a new author. You’ll have to find an agent who likes your book, and then publishers who think your book is worth the investment no matter how good it is. This process might take a few days or years.
Even the greatest authors struggled with finding publishers. Best-selling author JK Rowling got rejected 12 times before finding a publisher for Harry Potter, despite it potentially being the best-selling book in the world.
Where does that leave you and me?
Well, if you have the resources, you don’t have to get rejected 100 times before publishing. You can self-publish your book and get it across to the world before finding publishers who would do the job for you. You can even bypass publishers as a whole.
Wondering how to publish a book by yourself? Don’t worry, we got you. In this article, we’ll be giving a detailed guide to help you get from writing a book to publishing it all by yourself.
Let’s get into it!
1. Write an amazing book
The first step to successfully publishing a book is writing a great one. This is the most interesting part. The part that makes writers what they are. And it is where the magic happens.
However, a lot goes into this process. But these are just a few.
Gather your thoughts and ideas.
To start, you have to gather your thoughts, goals, and ideas for your book. What you want to write about, what you want to achieve with your book, and how you’re going to get there. The goal is to make sure you’ve properly planned before you get into the meat of your work.
It might take some time, but don’t rush. Take your time. When you have an idea of the path you want to take, make sure you write it down. This will bring those ideas out of your head and into reality. It will also help you make sure you don’t forget what you want to do.
However, you don’t have to have all the ideas down in one go. You can get more inspiration as you write further.
Do your research
You could conduct research before or after you get your ideas down. Whichever one suits your style. But you must do research. This will help you get up-to-date and accurate information, which will come in handy if you’re writing nonfiction.
What if you’re writing fiction? Do you still need research?
Yes, you do.
Research into things like history, folklore, myths, or pantheons could help you if you’re writing fantasy. Looking into human psychology, true crime, or criminal cases could help you write a thriller. Learning about people and their romantic relationships could help you write a proper romance.
Create an outline
When you have the details and information you need, you should focus on creating an outline. This will guide your steps as you write your book. Especially if you’re writing fiction.
However, writing an outline is boring and a lot of work. Most writers would rather wing it and get into the job itself. But you’ll thank yourself for making one. Especially if you’re a first-time author.
Start writing
Now that you’ve made all the preparations, you have to start writing. You have to do the work that will take you from nothing to something. To put those ideas on paper and make your dreams a reality.
Writing a first draft is daunting. There’s so much to do and so much time to be invested. Looking at it from the outside feels like looking at a mountain of work. How do you go from a few words to hundreds of pages?
This is the part where you don’t think of it and just write. The pages won’t run out. You have the time. Write as best as you can, for as long as you can. It’s easy to fall into imposter syndrome, thinking you’re not good enough for the project. But keep in mind that the best writers are the ones who don’t stop writing. So make sure you finish.
2. Pre-publish a book
You completed the first draft! You wrote a book! That should be celebrated. Technically speaking, writing the first draft means you’ve successfully written a book. But the job’s not done yet.
If your goal is to get your book out in the market, then you have to make sure it’s ready for the competition. Publishing a book is a lot of work, and you wouldn’t want to do all of that for nothing. This is why the pre-publishing stage is important.
The pre-publishing stage is where you prepare your book to be published. Where you prepare it for the market.
In the writing stage, your only concern was telling a complete story, but now you want to make sure your book can be published and marketed. And here’s how:
Write a second draft
After you’re done with the first draft, the next thing to do is to write a second. I know what you’re thinking. This is tough. Having to go through all of that again. But, in reality, you wouldn’t actually be doing the first draft again.
When writing a second draft, you already know what happens in the story. The plot is clear to you, and there’s a lot less research to be done. You have the chance to add a better structure to your book in a lot less time and with a lot less effort.
In different circumstances, you might go directly into editing instead of redrafting, but rewriting the book makes editing a lot easier.
Edit and format
After writing a second draft, you’ll have a cleaner manuscript that could be easily edited and formatted. Here you want to make sure you go through all the types and stages of editing to make sure there aren’t any mistakes and to make sure that the manuscript is formatted properly.
This process can be very confusing. If this is your first time, you may not know the best way to edit and format your manuscript. But don’t worry. We are here to help.
Get an ISBN
An ISBN (International Standard Book Number) is a 13-digit number that is essentially used as a product identifier by publishers, booksellers, libraries, and internet retailers for ordering, listing, sales record, and stock control purposes.
It’s a number that identifies your book with you as its author, the edition, and the format. This helps with easy identification and marketing of your book once it’s fully published.
How do you get an ISBN?
That will depend on the country that you’re publishing from. You could check the libraries or ISBN agencies to see what they have in store for you. Or you could take a look at Bowker myidentifiers to see what paid packages they have for an ISBN.
Make a professional book cover
Making a book cover is one of the most fun and interesting parts of making a book. It’s also an important marketing strategy.
Readers like to judge books by their cover, which is a normal thing to do. When people go into the library, or when they scroll through Kindle, they’d naturally find something that looks attractive with a good enough description.
Think of the cover as your book’s first line of attraction.
However, it’s not easy to get a great book cover. You’ll have someone with experience to help you with that. Lucky for you, we have just the service you need.
3. Publishing
There are many ways to do this. You don’t have to be limited.
When self-publishing, you have to consider your desired audience and the best way to get your book across to them. A lot of people can reach their target audience through Amazon. Well, even if you can’t, there’s definitely an audience for you there.
Amazon KDP is a simple platform to publish and market your book. If you’re thinking of publishing there, then all you have to do is create an account, upload your details and content, update your pricing, and get live.
A firm congratulations to you if you get this far. And another to you for starting the self-publishing process. It is daunting, exhausting, and overwhelming, but keep at it. You’ll get there eventually.
