Things You Might Not Know About Self-Publishing
So, you’ve completed a story! Congrats! That’s an amazing accomplishment and I’m sure you feel fantastic about it. You’ve given it to some friends to read, and they love it! “You should publish this,” they say, “that would be awesome!”
Then the thoughts of putting it out into the world start to creep into your head. They slowly cement themselves in your brain, popping up at all hours of the night. The idea grows and transforms until it’s all you can think about, and finally you decide to take the leap into the world of self-publishing.
At least that’s how it worked for me. I finished a story and after receiving a fair amount of good feedback, I decided to jump down the rabbit hole of getting it out there. Along the way, I ran into a few things that I didn’t have any idea would be needed or even considered, and for the sake of anyone else that might be in this position, I thought I’d write up something for you.
The Cover
The first thing I didn’t fully consider was needing to build a cover for the story. We’re writers, not graphic designers, but as we all know we judge books by their covers all the time, despite the old adage. As I looked into this, it turned out there were a few options that seemed like they could work.
Fiverr —
Fiverr is a good source of freelance services. One thing you can find is someone willing to create a cover for you. Personally, this was not the route I chose but I’ve heard many good things about others use of the service. A ton of people, especially now, are looking to make a little extra money on the side, and a lot of them are extremely talented. If this sounds like a good idea, check them out here:
Canva —
Canva is a fun little graphics website that lets you create all kinds of things from templates they have freely available. In the end, this was the choice I went with, as I have a bit of an artistic side and enjoy the process of coming up with designs. It also couldn’t have been easier to throw together a simple cover image and then export it to whatever file type I needed. It takes a bit of time to get used to how the editor works but once you grasp it, you can create pretty intricate designs. If this sounds like the route for you, check them out:
Photoshop —
This one is pretty obvious but I thought I’d include it on the list. If you are even more artistically inclined, and Canva seems too simple for you, try and throw together a cover yourself in Photoshop! If you know how to use the tool correctly, you can make an even more impressive graphic there.
One thing to be aware of in regards to covers that I never considered is that they are all based from the format of publication and the length of the story. Adding, removing, or editing even the smallest thing can cause the cover to shift in size and may require you to recreate it. I went through 4 or 5 iterations of graphics because I was editing my story as I was working on the cover and each time I changed something, I had to resize the image. Another thing you may either be provided with from the publisher or may want to find online is a cover template, as the cover image will need to be slightly larger than the cover itself to account for things such as bleed and edging. I’m not going to go in depth about this here, this is just a simple guideline.
Typesetting
This is another area that I had almost zero idea about when I first started looking into self-publishing. I had this idea that I would upload the word document of my story, magic would happen, and then out the other end would come a fully formatted book. Sadly, this was not the case. However, I was able to find a very nice resource for this stage of the process.
Reedsy is actually a fantastically useful service for all things writing. They offer the ability to hire all types of editors, from content editing to proofreading/line editing. They also have cover designers, marketers, and basically anyone you would need to help you out in your publishing process. Along with that, they have an online text editor that gives you tools to write the story as well! Best of all, once the story is in the text editor, you can export it to a typeset PDF document, or an eBook ready format. They even have different options for how you’d like the format to look, and the font you’d want to use. Overall, they are an incredible resource for anyone looking to write and possibly publish a story.
Marketing
Finally, you’ve got a fantastic cover, it’s typeset perfectly and you’re ready to hit publish! You’ve done it. Your story is going out into the world for everyone to see. Then you realize, besides the friends and family that you’ve told about it, how will anyone actually see it? This is where the final hurdle of self-publishing comes about. Marketing. Advertisement. And as a writer — a notoriously introverted and anti-social bunch that we are — it’s the hardest thing to do. Luckily, there are a few easy ways to go about it.
So far, I’ve been keen to not mention publishing on a specific platform, but if you’re talking self-publishing, you’re most likely talking Amazon KDP. In this case, they have an easy system to create ads for your book, do promotions (either free for some time or a discounted price), and the ability to build an author page to collect all your works in one place. Along with that, you also have Facebook ads, GoodReads (which is also a platform to create an author hub and get involved with a community of writers and readers), and of course the big social media giants, Twitter and Instagram. Marketing is something I still struggle with, especially trying to do everything on my own, but a well marketed product will soar above and beyond something amazing that no one knows about. If nothing else, look into Reedsy for someone to help with marketing for you.
And there we have it, the random things you may not think about when deciding to self-publish a book. Hopefully this helps someone looking for a quick list of what they might be forgetting.
