So you’ve received only form letters, telling you that either the agent is not accepting new clients, or that the publisher is not interested in your novel at this time. What a bummer.
Maybe you’ve simply gotten overwhelmed with the amount of work involved in sending out all those inquiries to the publishing gatekeepers, and wondered if you could do just as well on your own…
Chances are, no you can’t, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. There are plenty of authors who give the self-publishing route a try, and actually make a decent living. Here at LightMinded arts, I’ve made self-publishing my main goal. I even have my own imprint called Blue House Publishing, which I use for my books.
I’ve studied this out, and while there are many ways of going about self-publishing your novels, I’ll share with you the route that I currently am using for my book publishing.
How to Self-Publish Your Book
Like I said, there are multiple ways to self-publish your book, and I’m sure that many of them are just as good, if not better, but this is my process, and you can find your own way, or copy mine, it’s up to you.
My Process:
- Start getting your book cover made. This will take some time, especially if you do it right. Can you trust it to AI or a friend? Sure, but I recommend using an artist who has done book covers in the past. Not only are they good at what they do, but they can also format it in a way that is more likely to sell your book.
You’ll want at least 2-3 different styles of art for your book. One will be the actual cover image, with decorative extensions to wrap around the spine and back of the cover. The front cover will also be the main image that you use for advertising. The second format, will be a perfectly square image. This is what you’ll use for your e-book thumbnail.
- Once I’m done editing my book, I start organizing it from my word processing program into a book formatting program. For this, I use Adobe InDesign. If you’ve never used InDesign before, you’ll want to hop onto YouTube and learn a little about it, as it is not like any word processor you’ve ever worked with, and it would take me several articles to walk you through the steps of turning your manuscript into a book.
So I usually do 2 InDesign book formats. One for my physical book layout, and one for my e-book layout. All the while, you need to keep in mind that certain fonts are not free, and if you choose one that is copyright protected, you might need to pay for it, or find a free one.
While formatting the book, I find it helpful to read through the design formatting instructions for whichever platform is going to host your book printing and distribution. For me, I use IngramSpark.
IngramSpark does both printing on demand, bulk printing, distribution of print and e-books, and their reach is pretty much all book sellers globally. That means that Barnes and Noble, Kindle, some mom and pop shop in New Zealand, or anything in between should be able to find your book in their catalogue.
- Once I have my book formatted, I get an ISBN number for it. If you’re publishing through Amazon Kindle, and likely some of the other platforms out there, they may provide this for you, but I don’t use them, so I got an account at Bowker, and in their “My Identifier” portion of their website, you can buy bulk ISBN numbers.
You’ll need more than one, since each format of your book requires a unique ISBN number. So a hardback, a paperback, an ebook, and an audiobook will all need separate ISBN’s. Also if you do a later addition in the future, that will require another ISBN number.
This number will go on your copyright page. Just look at any traditionally published book, and you can get a good idea of what a copyright page should look like. You’ll want to put one of these in your book.
- Speaking of copyright pages, I save a pdf version of the book, and send it off to the U.S. Copyright Office. This isn’t necessary, but I like the added comfort of having that letter from them, stating that they have your book in their record as belonging to you.
- Next, I apply for a Library of Congress Number. This one is pretty important, and it can take a few days to a few weeks, so give it some time. It’s mostly done online, by filling out some forms. After that, you’ll wait until they send you the number. This can then be put into your copyright page as well.
Do you need to do this step? No, but it is helpful, since it is one of the major ways that book sellers and libraries identify your book. So I would never skip it personally. Keep in mind, that if you want to stay on the Library of Congress’s good side, you’ll need to send them two copies of your completed book, once it’s actually in print.
- Once you have all this done, and your copyright page is finally filled out completely, then you can use InDesign to finish formatting your Epub book and your Print book.
- By this time, you hopefully also have your cover art back. Fill out the cover template generator on IngramSpark, now that you know the size and page count of your book. Take your cover art into photoshop and use the template they send you to size your cover art perfectly. Then you can write your description on the back, include any advertising quotes you may have collected from your marketing work, and then, hopefully, you have a professional looking cover.
- Submit this all to IngramSpark. They will verify that your files meet their criteria. If there are any issues, they’ll either help you fix them if they can, or they’ll tell you to fix them. Once the book is accepted, then you can schedule release dates, pay for some catalog advertising if you choose, and you can print advance copies for yourself or for beta readers. Congrats, your book is published.
- One other thing I would recommend in todays world, if your book is the type that could be turned into an audiobook, definitely do this. Audiobooks are growing so quickly, and even cannibalizing a lot of the print market, that you can’t afford to ignore this growing segment.
To get your book available as an audiobook, you’ll want to begin as quickly as possible. I’d start on that at the same time you try to get your cover art made.
To do this, you can look up freelance voiceover artists. They either charge by royalty or by fee. If you’re likely to be a big hit, they might want a royalty. If not, they’ll charge a simple fee. As a self-publisher, I recommend the simple fee anyway, since then, you don’t have to keep track of book sales and royalty payments. That’s just another layer of ongoing headache I’d rather not deal with.
Then once you have your audio files back from them, you can find a place to publish them. At the time of this writing, IngramSpark doesn’t do audiobook. So after doing my research, I’ve settled on Findaway Voices, by Spotify. They seem to have the best reach that I have found. They promise to get your book into all the major distributers, including Audible by Amazon.
Alternatives
There are other ways you can distribute your books. Some have advantages, so you need to weigh your options. The route I’ve taken gets me as close to having the best, most professional distribution that I can possibly find at this time, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the best for you.
For example, if you stay entirely in Amazon’s publishing world, you can get better deals and feature your books in multiple advantageous ways, that alleviate some of your marketing obligations. There are advantages to going with several of the other self-publishing platforms out there also, but you’ll want to weigh your options and choose which works best for you.
Going my route means that your book will be available almost everywhere, but you’ll probably need to know more about marketing to find it an audience. In a future article, we’ll need to discuss marketing, though that topic might be multiple articles, because marketing is a huge topic, and your book will need it in order to succeed.
If you’d like to see my YouTube video on today’s topic, you can watch it at: https://youtu.be/bXJXhF9fsB8
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