As most of you know, I’m a pretty big fan of indie publishing. Traditional publishing has certainly enabled plenty of people to publish as well, but many problems plague the trad industry, from gatekeepers refusing to publish books by people of color, to rampant sexism and racism in the books that are published, to CEOs making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year while their authors only make cents per hour of labor. That said, the traditional industry is not all bad, but the rise of indie publishing has enabled many authors to not only evade the traditional gatekeepers, but make actual cash from their hard-spent hours.
Much of the critique of indie publishing, on the other hand, is opposite that of traditional publishing. For example, without gatekeepers, anything can get published, including things of poor quality—or things that are filled with rampant racism or sexism or ableism. Or perhaps you’ve heard the oft-cited statistic that the majority of indie authors make less than 10k a year.
However, I am a believer in free speech, and as such, I think that the rise of indie publishing is one of the best things that’s ever happened to benefit the first amendment.
I’ve been giving workshops on how to publish a book for the last six years, and I am just now writing it all down in a cohesive, coherent manner. The truth is, the process is relatively simple. The complexity comes because nearly every step of the process is optional, and which parts you choose will depend entirely on your situation and goals.
Ultimately, all you need to publish a book is three things:
A finished, polished manuscript
A representative image (like a cover)
A format
There are people that publish their work serially, a chapter per week on platforms like Wattpad. There are people that compose entire manuscripts entirely out of tweets. There are people that read their work aloud on Youtube. There are people that write a monthly blog instead of printing a book. There are people that only print paperbacks, or people that physically craft their own books by hand.
But I’m going to give a run-down of the most standard steps that people go through. Just keep in mind that many of these steps are optional, or can be approached from a non-traditional perspective. You can adapt and shift this process to what works for you.
The Self-Publishing Process
I like to organize the overall process of publishing a book into three main categories: Manuscript, Design, and Distribution. Below is a high-level list of the steps, to make it easy for you to follow along, and then I will go into the sub-steps and various options you have for each.
If you are still in the early stages and have yet to finish a manuscript, but you want to do something to prepare for the release of your first book, then there is one, very specific thing you can do that will help you more than pretty much anything else: save money.
Publishing a book costs money. Period. Costs range from printing costs to cover design costs to purchasing ISBNs to purchasing the rights to use images to copyediting and proofreading. And then, even if you manage to do that entire process without spending a cent, then comes the marketing.
I’d like to pause here for a moment and say that all of this really depends on your end goals. If you want a career or you want to make money from your work, you will need to spend money.
If you’re doing a smaller project, say for a historical society bookshop or something like that, you can definitely reduce costs to very little—but you will still likely end up spending money.
However, as I go through these steps, I am going to do so with the assumption that you either want a career as an author or want at least to make some money.
The other thing to note is that I have organized these steps in an order. However, you do not have to do them in this order. In fact, as you go through the process, you will likely find yourself doing multiple steps at the same time (for example, at this very moment I am both having a cover designed and completing final proofing edits on a manuscript, and finalizing the interior paperback design). Some steps even depend on each other for completion.
Here is my personal process checklist. You can click here to download the .docx version and customize it to your preferences.
Manuscript
Have a finished manuscript.
Revise manuscript.
Implement feedback from beta readers.
Hire a copy editor or proofreader or both.
Design
Acquire an ISBN.
Design book cover.
Design paperback interior.
Design e-book.
Distribution
Select primary paperback distributor.
Select e-book distributors.
Upload files.
Hit publish.
Manuscript
Have a finished manuscript.
I always feel a little dumb saying this at my workshops, but it’s true: in order to publish a book, you have to have a book to publish. I have met many writers that are dreaming about publishing, but who aren’t even close to finishing a manuscript. Dreaming is fine, but don’t feel pressured or worry too much about the ins and outs of publishing before you’re done with the manuscript.
Get to the end of the book—then you can worry about what comes next.
Revise manuscript.
I know I said that all of the steps are optional, but one of the biggest critiques of indie publishing is that there is a slew of books on the market that are crap. This is because publishing a book is pretty easy, and so there are people that just throw up book after book on Amazon without revising, editing, or making sure their book makes sense.
Please, please, please, do not throw a rough draft up on Amazon. It will be bad for your career, but it’s also bad for the rest of the indie publishing world, because it furthers the stigma that if you can’t get a traditional publisher, it means your work doesn’t have value.
Revision is a critical part of the process and I know it can take a while, but once you’ve made it through all of your self-editing and revisions…
Implement feedback from beta readers.
This is definitely optional, but I think extremely wise. For my first five books, I used between three and eight beta readers. I found it very helpful and it made me feel more confident about my work, that I was putting out a better manuscript than I could have alone. I also learned a ton about writing, story structure, characterization, and all that. However, in more recent years, I’ve cut back and now only have two betas and two editors read my work, and each one gives me a very specific type of feedback.
I think that as we evolve and change as writers, our needs also evolve. If you’re working on your first or second manuscript, I highly recommend getting someone else to read it.
Getting beta readers shouldn’t cost any money. You can join a local writers’ group and offer to read someone else’s work in exchange for them reading yours. You can take a class at a local writing center or community college. There are websites like Scribophile and Wattpad where strangers may offer to read for you. You could ask friends, family, or college or high school teachers for help. Consider posting on Facebook or Twitter and seeing who in your network might be interested.
A few things to consider when searching for beta readers:
It’s helpful to have a blurb or a concise description of your work so that your potential readers know what they’re getting into. Be sure to include any trigger warnings.
The best beta readers are the ones that are familiar with your genre. It’s all well and good to get a college friend to read your sci-fi novel, but if they only ever read memoir, their feedback is not likely to be super helpful.
Try to avoid people that you know are only going to stroke your ego. Getting feedback isn’t about being told that your book is wonderful and perfect. You need someone that is willing to point out the flaws. Most people recommend avoiding asking your mom or spouse to beta, but I would just say to make sure they are going to give you helpful feedback—and that you are going to be able to handle it when they do.
While it is great to get feedback from other writers, getting feedback from readers is just as helpful. So if you ask another writer to read your work, make sure they are also frequent readers. It might seem obvious, but I’ve met many writers that say they never have time to read. Choose betas who read.
Overall, it’s good to get enough eyes on your work to find most of the major structural flaws, but it’s also important to remember that you can have too many cooks in the kitchen. How many is too many is definitely up to you, but I personally found eight to be a bit much, but three or four easy to handle. Make sure to be clear about what your expectations are, ask for deadlines, and send them the manuscript and any comments in a timely manner. And don’t forget to say thank you.
One alternative to beta readers is to hire a developmental editor. This is not cheap, but a developmental edit is a good way to get the same (and often better) feedback as betas would give, focused around plot structure, characterization, dialogue, and other high-level things, without having to rely on random people you found on the internet.
One other note I want to make here is that no matter the approach or tone of the beta or dev editor’s comments, all of these notes are suggestions. Don’t feel like you have to change something if it doesn’t feel right. And if someone’s notes feel all off or wrong, disregard.
My favorite advice on this topic is from Neil Gaiman:
“Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”
This process may take a while, but it’s worth it.
Hire a copy editor or proofreader.
The number one critique of indie books is typos. Some books out there are riddled with errors. That’s not to say that traditionally published books are perfect—there are plenty of errors in those as well. But there have been some indie books that, well, take the cake.
A copy editor will help you avoid this. They will also help make your story better, much like a developmental editor or your betas. Their focus will be on errors, however. So, they will not only find errors, but also help you improve your dialogue and description, note any timeline errors, make sure your characters’ names are spelled right, and other helpful things.
Copy editors on average charge between $0.01 and $0.05 per word for a full-length manuscript. For children’s or shorter books, they may charge by the hour. Some editors charge per page. Generally speaking, you can expect to pay between $800 - $4000 for a copy edit on an 80k word manuscript.
A few things to note on copy editing. More expensive should mean better, but it doesn’t always. Make sure you have some sort of official, written arrangement with the editor. The arrangement should include a deadline, an ‘error’ policy, and a deposit. Pay the deposit through PayPal or a similar service, and do not pay more than six months in advance as PayPal will not refund you more than six months after the payment is made.
Most editors have a 95% error free policy. This means that if you have 100 errors in your manuscript, they guarantee they will catch 95 of them. Editors are people too and they do miss things. I’ve met authors who get irate over one missed comma, or a single misspelled word in a 100k word manuscript. Be a nice author, not a cranky one.
When you indie publish, the quality of your manuscript is up to you. I’ve seen authors publish books filled with errors, and then turn around and blame the editor to their fans and readers. Here’s a tip: your readers don’t care who your editor is. They don’t care if it’s ‘not your fault.’ All they care about is that they bought a book that was poor quality, and it’s unlikely that they will give you another chance after that.
If your editor doesn’t do a good job, it’s your responsibility to hire another one—not to publish a book riddled with errors. You don’t have to be an expert grammatician, but it’s important to at least put some safeguards into place. A few things you can do:
Hire an experienced editor with good ratings who comes recommended by other authors in your genre. Be willing to pay them for their time.
Use a software like Grammarly or Autocrit. Robots are not perfect when it comes to grammar, but they can help. I know a lot of writers who aren’t great at grammar use software first, and then hire an editor.
Read books on grammar. Study language. Practice copy editing on other things. Again, you don’t have to be perfect, but you should at least be able to recognize whether an editor did a good job or not. It’s okay if a few things sneak through—it’s not okay if your manuscript looks like trash.
Have one or two beta readers read the book after it’s been edited. This has a couple benefits. First of all, it can help you make sure that the edits you made from your previous betas and the edits you made from your copy editor make sense. Second, they can also help you determine the cleanliness of the manuscript.
Hire a proofreader after your copy editor is done. Proofreading is generally much cheaper than copy editing. A proofreader doesn’t dig into dialogue or description or anything like that. They focus purely on typos. They make sure you haven’t spelled anything wrong or left out any words and that you put your commas in the right place. Even if you don’t end up hiring a copy editor, I highly, highly recommend using a proofreader.
This part of the process is also where I suggest hiring a sensitivity reader. If you are writing characters that have different experiences than you, a sensitivity reader can help you ensure that you didn’t write anything insensitive, rude, or wrong by accident. For example, if you are white and wrote about black experience, you might want to hire a black person to read your work before you publish it. If you wrote a character with a disability, you might want to hire someone with a similar disability to read your work.
As a writer with any form of privilege (I say this from a position of privilege myself), you may want to represent a wide diversity of characters in your work. However, it can be difficult to truly understand the depth of experience of someone different than you, and I know that the last thing I would want is to be disrespectful or harmful to anyone or any group because of what I write.
Sensitivity readers are the perfect solution to this challenge. Most charge a flat fee to read your manuscript and tell you what they think. Some may also agree to read a single scene if that’s all that is necessary. Sensitivity reading requires a significant emotional investment on the part of the reader, as they might have to read about things that are extremely difficult or that trigger bad memories of terrible experiences. Not to mention, if something in the manuscript is harmful or disrespectful, they will have to tell you that and explain why, which can also be difficult. So please be willing to pay your sensitivity readers. Do not ask them to do this for free. Also, it’s best to send them the cleanest copy you can, so they don’t have to suffer through myriad typos, in addition to having to face potentially difficult subject matter.
How To Find An Editor, Proofreader, Or Sensitivity Reader
Before I move onto design, I wanted to put a few thoughts on how to find a professional editor, proofreader, or sensitivity reader to review your work.
Because I’m a step-by-step kind of person, I made you step-by-step process. I also apparently like to do things in 3s, so it has three steps:
Compile a list.
Vet them.
Reach out.
I tend to way overuse this process (as you will soon see), but that’s because it works.
Step 1: Make a list.
This is the easy part. Go on Facebook and ask for recommendations in writers’ groups, or read past posts of someone else asking for recommendations. Reach out to your writing colleagues. Use Google—there are tons of blog posts with lists upon lists of editors. I have used Mountains Wanted Publishing and Revision Division in the past.
As you’re making a list, keep track of the details. I use a spreadsheet for this. I write out the names of each, and then I look to see whether or not they offer a contract. What their prices are. Whether they have a website. How much of a sample edit they will provide. What genres they work in. Etc.
Step 2: Vet them. Eliminate, eliminate, eliminate. You want to come out of this process with only four or five left on your list AT MOST. Eliminate anyone you can’t afford. Eliminate anyone that doesn’t work with your genre. Eliminate anyone who’s tone on their website bugs you. You can eliminate editors for whatever reason you want. The key here is to find someone that you can work with, whose style you like, and who is going to be around for a while.
Step 3: Reach out. Ask them what their schedule looks like. Some editors or sensitivity readers are booked for months out. Others can fit you in next week. Ask for a sample edit or another sample of their work. Some provide a couple pages, others a full chapter—but whatever you do, always take them up on this so you can see their style of edits. Ask to take a look at their contract—do they offer 95% error free? What is their policy if they miss more than that? Will they redo it? Basically, initiate a conversation with a couple of the editors on your list and see if working with them is going to work for you. If not, move on to the next one on the list.
There are lots of horror stories out there about editors who did nothing and ran off with their clients’ money, editors who did a terrible job and refused to redo it, editors who did half a book and called it done, editors that just suddenly vanished without a trace.
But there are just as many stories out there of wonderful editors who provide great feedback, always meet deadlines, and give solid, clean edits. I’ve heard of writers who have worked with the same editors for years and years.
It might take a little time to find the perfect editor for you, but it’s worth the effort.
Design
This is the part of the process where writers tend to get a little scared. I think it’s because we’re all rather free-spirited and creative, and the design and distribution steps can feel so technical and overwhelming. But once you know what’s going on, you’ll see that the process isn’t all that difficult.
Acquire ISBN.
You don’t actually have to do this first. I just put it first because it can play a role in your design (placement and copyright page). There are two ways to get an ISBN in the US. If you are in another country, you may have to look up the guidelines for that based on where you live.
You can either buy the ISBN from Bowker, or you can have a free ISBN assigned to you by your distributor (for example, Amazon or Ingram Spark).
If you use the free one, the publisher listed when the barcode is scanned will be “self-published” or “Amazon.” If you purchase your own ISBN, then you can list yourself or your imprint as the publisher. More info here: https://selfpublishing.com/isbn-number-self-published-book/
Design the book cover.
Book cover design is a frequently discussed topic in author circles. The book cover can make or break a book. I’ve seen books that are terribly written with amazing covers that sell excellently; I’ve seen excellent books with terrible covers that sell like crap.
We’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but we all do it.
There are three ways to get a cover for your book:
Design it yourself.
Buy a premade cover.
Have a custom cover designed for you.
Regardless of which option you go with, the first step is actually to do research. Go to the library or a bookstore (in person or online) and browse their selection of books in your genre. Pay attention to things like whether or not there is a person on the cover, the styles of fonts they use, the color schemes, and other design elements.
If you want to, make a Pinterest board filled with book covers that you like, images that represent your book and your work, and other design elements that speak to you.
Think about colors, illustration styles, and graphics.
For example, a paranormal romance novel might have swirls and pinks and purples with swirling fonts, where as a book on business might be simply bold orange and white blocks with big block lettering.
The quality of the book design will impact not only whether a person will buy the book, but it will also impact how much they enjoy the book, because like it or not, a reader’s perception of the quality of the book as a whole will impact their perception of the story as well.
Designing Your Own Book Cover
I’m going to be honest with you, I don’t think this option is the best option, even for those who know how to use Photoshop. Book design is about more than just putting text and images together in a way that more or less represents the story inside.
When readers look at a book cover, they have expectations, and in order to create a good cover that will sell your book to the right readers, you have to understand all the trends and preferences of readers in that genre.
If you think you can do that, then by all means create your own cover. As with any other part of the process, I’ve seen stunning covers designed by the author of the book—but I’ve also seen terrible ones, not to mention a slew of mediocre ones.
I even grappled with designing my own covers when I first started out, but I’m going to be honest with you—switching to professional designers was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
How To Buy A Premade Cover
Some cover designers create what are called “premade” covers. These are book cover concepts that they envision and design with a fake title and author name, and then post on their website or on Facebook for authors to purchase. There are a couple general industry rules related to premades, which cannot be guaranteed, but if you buy from a trusted designer, you shouldn’t have any issues.
First of all, the premade cover should only be sold to one person. So if you buy a premade, you shouldn’t have to worry about seeing the same cover with a different title pop up on a book by a different author. Secondly, you should be able to make basic changes to the design—at very least the text, but some designers will also allow you to make minor design changes as well, for example, changing the eye color of the character. They may charge extra for this. Finally, most cover designers offer a wrap option, so if you need both an e-book and a paperback cover, they will add on the spine and back for an additional fee.
Premades are a great, affordable option. There are tons of covers available for purchase this way, ranging from $20 to $200. These are especially good for books that need a design with more common imagery and themes. There are tons of romance premades, for example, that could work on a wide range of books, even for sub-genres paranormal romance. Business, literary fiction, mystery, thriller, suspense—it certainly worth taking a look at what might be out there in your genre.
How To Get A Custom Book Cover Design
This is my checklist for hiring a new designer. You can click here to download a PDF of the checklist and a list of resources for the entire process of publishing a book.
The process for doing this is very similar to hiring an editor or proofreader. It’s the same three-step process: make a list, vet them, reach out. I did an entire post on this topic which you can click here to read.
Custom cover designs are a fantastic option if you can’t find exactly what you need. They range from $100 - $2000, depending on what you’re looking for. Some designers even throw in marketing images for you to use when setting up ads or commerce pages.
I think the most important thing to remember when you’re working with a designer is that this is their job. This is what they’re good at. Don’t cling too tightly to your idea of what you think the “right” cover should be. Let them do what they’re good at. Certainly, communicate with them all relevant details, thoughts, and preferences, but for the best results, make sure you’re giving them the space to really be creative. They are artists, just like we are.
Design the paperback interior.
There are two ways to get the interior of your book designed:
Do it yourself.
Hire someone else.
This is another place where I like to recommend visiting a library or a bookstore and taking a look at the designs of other books in your genre. Pay attention to page numbers, fonts, title pages, chapter headers, acknowledgements and dedication pages, charts, graphs, images, line spacing, etc. All of these will impact how your reader experiences the book.
I made the mistake with my first book of just formatting the pages to the right size, and then messing around with the chapter headers. When it ultimately came out in paperback, the lines were too close together, the font was a little too small, and it was annoying to read.
If you choose to do the design yourself, the most common software to use is InDesign. This gives you complete control over the flow of the text, moving around design elements, and all that jazz. You can also use MS Word (though it can be buggy and annoying), Microsoft Publisher, Quark, or other design software. Just Google “alternatives to inDesign,” and there are several options.
If you choose to hire someone to design your book, the process is again, similar to hiring a cover designer or editor: make a list, vet them, and reach out. I think the same concepts hold true here: choose someone familiar with your genre, who is reliable and recommended, and whose contract makes sense to you.
Choosing An Illustrator
I want to take a moment to talk about illustrators here. Illustrators are very important if you are doing a kids books, some middle grade books, or if you want custom drawings (this happens in fantasy or non-fiction sometimes).
Choosing an illustrator is a little more complicated than choosing a cover designer or an interior designer, simply because in an illustrated book, the illustrations tell the story just as much as the words. It can be hard to find someone whose illustrations you like, represent the story you want to tell, who has room in their schedule, and who you click with.
Many authors I’ve worked with have decided to use someone that they know to illustrate their books. This is definitely an option. My general process also works here: make a list, vet them, reach out. In this case, you would eliminate anyone whose style of art you don’t like right off the bat, before going through the other items on your vetting list.
Another thing to consider when hiring one is whether the artist is capable of creating the interior file of the book for you, or only doing the illustrations. Some have the capacity to place the art with the text (using InDesign or their preferred software) and can send you a final PDF file. Others do not have that skill set and will only send you the illustrations. This is important, because if you don’t have the design skills yourself, you’ll have to hire an additional person to actually put the book together.
There are a couple of ways to work with an illustrator: either pay them up front, or royalty share. Some may consider a combination of both: lower up-front rate plus royalty share. (Fun fact, this is the same as working with audio book narrators).
My recommendation is to pay them up front whenever possible. First of all, doing the illustrations for an entire book is a lot of work and very time consuming, and the artist certainly deserves to get paid for that. Secondly, in order to do royalty share, you will have to work up a complex contract that includes rights and payment clauses which will likely involve lawyers, not to mention you’ll have to be completely transparent about your sales and accounting for the indefinite future. Thirdly, if you purchase the illustrations, you’ll own them and be able to use them for things like marketing.
Regardless, many illustrators have their own policy, so it’s best to ask them how they like to work and what their contract looks like before entering into an arrangement.
Design the ebook.
I’m going to be honest here—I hate ebook design. It’s not difficult, at least for books that are primarily text, but I just find it plain old irritating.
There are dozens of ways you can make an ebook. Amazon and other distributors now offer an option to convert the PDF of your interior design into an ebook. Platforms like Draft2Digital make it super easy to take a Word doc or PDF and turn it into an e-book. You can also make your own e-book using software like Calibre, Vellum, or Sigil.
Typically, it’s a simple process. You take your manuscript, upload it to the software, and hit convert. Sometimes you might have to mess around with images. You may also have the occasional bug. But it’s an easy enough thing to do.
I have begun hiring someone to do my e-books. She does a fantastic job, it’s very affordable, and it’s one thing I don’t have to worry about any more. If you want to hire someone to do your e-books, the process is the same (I swear I’m trying not to beat the same process over the head with a stick lol): make a list, vet them, reach out.
Something to keep in mind with e-book design: certain e-book distributors charge you a fee per download of your book. The amount of the fee depends on the size of the file. My books tend to be between $0.04 and $0.07 per download (which is taken out of my profits), but I’ve seen authors whose fees are upwards of $0.25 per download. This will significantly affect your royalties, and if you can’t make the file size smaller, you should definitely raise your prices to reflect the download cost.
The Files You Need To Publish
At the end of the total design process, you should end up with five files:
A jpg of the book cover for the ebook. This should be a rectangle of only the front.
A PDF of the full wrap book cover, including the front, the spine, and the back. How wide the spine is will depend on the page length of the book and whether you choose cream or white pages for the book.
A PDF of interior of the book which includes every single page.
A .mobi ebook file (this is for Amazon).
A .epub ebook file (this is for everyone else, and if you email a copy of the book to someone).
Distribution
A lot of authors think that distribution is the scariest part of the process. It’s because distribution is a big, fancy, business word and nobody really wants to think about it. When I think of the word “distribution,” I think of big eighteen-wheeler trucks and warehouses with cement floors and fluorescent lights, and a bunch of people in a bad mood because they’re tired of carrying boxes. Also, forklifts. And lunch boxes. And hardhats.
Anyway, book distribution has nothing to do with any of that.
Distribution is simply the process of getting your book to the reader. That’s it.
You will need to decide who your primary paperback distributor is (they will probably also be printing your books) and you will have to select your e-book distributor/s as well.
Select primary paperback distributor.
Paperback distribution has completely changed in the last twenty years. It used be that if you didn’t have a publisher, you would either have to print your own books and bind them by hand or order them in giant quantities from a printer and end up with 5000 copies of your book sitting in your garage.
While these two options are still viable today (and I know different people who have chosen both of these paths), print on demand is the newest option which is used by the majority of independent authors.
Print on demand means that the printer only prints one book at a time. That means, if I go onto Amazon and order a copy of my book, it gets printed that day and shipped off to the customer. Hot off the presses—literally. If you order a copy, you can get it at-cost, meaning you can buy copies of your book at a lower cost than you list them for online. I sell my books for between $12 - $15 on Amazon, but when I buy them directly, it costs roughly $3 - $6 plus shipping.
This is insanely convenient, because it means we only have to order the number of copies that we think we can sell, and no more. The upfront investment is also significantly less—I spend $3 per book, instead of $3000 for an entire palette of books. You may spend more per book this way, but the risk is significantly lower, and you won’t end up with thousands of copies of a book that won’t sell. In addition, if your book takes off, you can always switch distribution methods.
I also don’t have to ship every single hard copy that I sell. A reader can go online, order a book, and somebody at a printer somewhere prints it and ships it. Just like magic.
That said, I can also order books for myself, so that if I want to, I can have signed copies at events or sell signed copies through my website.
Choosing your book printer.
There are two primary print-on-demand companies: Kindle Direct Publishing (used to be Createspace) and IngramSpark.
Some people like IngramSpark better, some people like Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). In terms of quality, some people swear that IngramSpark is better, other people swear by KDP. And some people use both.
The main difference is that Ingram Spark offers hardback printing and has an upfront cost.
KDP has no upfront costs and only does paperback printing.
Their royalties are also different. Click here to read a great explanation of the differences.
There are other distributors, of course, such as Lulu and LightningSource. Draft2Digital just announced the beta of their paperback printing option as well.
Which hard copy distributor you choose will depend entirely upon your goals and what’s important to you in your publishing journey.
Select your e-book distributors.
E-book distribution is even simpler.
The main e-book distributors are:
Amazon
Apple
Barnes&Noble
Kobo
GooglePlay
There are also innumerable smaller distributors, but I recommend starting with these five. Reedsy has an excellent guide on this, which I will link to here.
Essentially, you have two choices: you can go exclusive with Amazon, or you can go wide. This is on a book-by-book basis, meaning you can have one book exclusive with Amazon but another book wide. I currently have 5 books wide and the rest exclusive with Amazon. Different authors choose differently for various reasons.
Most authors make the majority of their royalty income through Amazon. If you go exclusive through Amazon, your book will be eligible to join Kindle Select, which means it will be available for reading through Kindle Unlimited, and you will be able to do five free promotion days or five days of a Kindle Countdown deal.
Going wide means that you can make your book available on all distributors at once. This gives you access to a much wider audience, and you have a range of other marketing tactics you can try with different platforms.
Another option you have is to use an aggregator such as Draft2Digital. With Draft2Digital, you can upload your book to their platform, and they distribute it to all of the other platforms on your behalf. They take a cut of profits, but it saves you a lot of time and effort.
Upload files.
Once you’ve selected your distributors, the next step is setting up accounts. Depending on what options you’ve chosen for distribution, you may have to do this with only one platform, or you may have to do it with many.
This is also an incredibly simple process. You will need to:
Set up a username and password.
Input your tax information.
Input your direct deposit information (so they can pay you when you make sales).
Input your payment information (so they can charge you for buying author copies or fees or whatever).
Set up a new book. For print books, this will include choices like:
The size of the book (6x9 vs 5x8, etc.)
The color of the ink (black&white vs color printing)
The color of the pages (white vs cream)
The type of cover (hardback, paperback, glossy, matte)
Input metadata (title, author name, series name & #, BISAC categories, keywords, etc.).
Upload files (the pdfs, jpgs, epub, mobi mentioned in the design section).
Wait for human review (a person basically checks to make sure you’ve followed the most basic requirements for production). This usually takes about a day.
Use digital reviewer. This enables you to look at a digital version of your book, complete with flipping pages and everything, before ordering anything.
Order a proof copy.
Approve proof.
Set up pricing.
This is ultimately a very simple, step-by-step process that the platforms walk you through. The platforms also have customer support. As with any customer support, I’ve heard good and bad stories, but at very least, someone will be there to help you when you need it.
All platforms allow you to order as many proof copies of the book as you need. I highly recommend doing this so you can make sure there are no weird formatting issues once the book is actually printed. It takes roughly 1 – 2 weeks for the proof copy to arrive, and you can order it at cost plus shipping. I usually budget between $6 - $8 for a proof copy.
Hit publish.
Once you’re happy with your final product, there’s a button that says, “Publish.”
Click it and voila! Within 24 – 72 hours your book will be live for purchase on whichever platforms you selected.
And now you officially have a book published! Bake a cake. Throw a party. Have a glass of your favorite beverage (I like orange juice, personally), and congratulate yourself for a job well done.
