Self publish a book

Often when it comes to publishing a book it is a much more complicated task than writing the book itself. When you are writing the book you are thinking once this is done it’s just a matter of handing it over to a publishing house now that the major task is over, but those cases are far and few between.

Writer’s sometimes struggle with the publishing business because a writer is usually more of a creative person and suddenly their mind has to start working like a business. When you are brand new on the scene and nobody has heard of you it is a difficult thing walking into a publishing house and asking them to review your book, which you think is great, but what makes you think they will think the same thing. There are well-known people that don’t know how write a book, but their book will definitely be selected over yours. That is just par for the course.

Many people are going the route of self publishing. They would design, print and distribute on their own which can be an added task, but costs are kept down. The nice thing about self-publishing is that all the royalties are yours alone.

Plan

If you decide to self publish a book it is important to start planning beforehand. Look around and see what your competition is. See what people are reading. Look up the statistics. Write on what people want to read about. You should be doing your marketing before you actually write the book and not to run around after you have finished printing all your copies.

Look for a professional editor

You may have read over your manuscript many times. You have corrected numerous errors and think to yourself there can’t possibly be anything wrong with this now, but this is where you can severely suffer. Grammar and punctuation is the first thing some people look for so don’t underestimate it.

Have your book professionally formatted

This is another simple error that first time self publishers make a mistake by formatting their book themselves and it would usually be in the wrong format, not suitable for print. If you want to do everything yourself then you must learn about it beforehand without assuming anything because it will definitely save you a lot of hassles in the long run.

Copyrighting your book

It’s essential to make sure your book is copyrighted. There are text and photos being taken from the internet all the time and this is the same with books so this is just a warning to people.

Designing your cover

The cover is what attracts a person to your book so a lot of thought and care has to be taken into designing the front and back. You can decide whether you want to take it to a professional company or choose something yourself. Whatever you decide if you spend some extra money on this feature it will be beneficial in the long run.

There are ways you could learn how to self publish a book for free. One of those ways would be on amazon, which has been successful, but there is definitely competition.

The cost to self publish a book will obviously depend on how much you want to invest in to your book. Perhaps if it is your first book you might want to explore less expensive options. There are three aspects to consider when you are weighing up the the cost of this project.

Preparing the manuscript and the design of the book take up a chunk of the cost, especially when it comes to designing the cover. An editor can charge between $1.00 and $3.00 per page. Printing is the major cost to consider, especially if you are printing in color, otherwise black and white would not set you back that much.

This could start at $3 per book depending on various factors. The marketing part is up to you whether you want to go DIY and find out ways to do research yourself or to use professional companies.