The Self-Publishing Toolkit: How Exactly Do You Self-Publish Your Book?

You’ve heard that self-publishing your book makes more commercial sense than giving it to a traditional publisher.

You can order copies of your book at cost for workshops you’re running, for example, or when you’re giving a speech, or simply to give away to would-be clients.

So you’re ready to take charge of your destiny and to self publish your book.

But how? How EXACTLY do you self-publish your book?

Well, in big-picture terms it’s simply a case of project management.

By the way, if you would prefer to watch this as a 3-minute video, take a look at this. It was recorded at the livestream Q&A session recently.

EXACTLY HOW TO SELF-PUBLISH YOUR BOOK

Basically, self-publishing your book boils down to three stages.

First, there’s the preliminary creation phase.

And this involves generating and crystallising your idea.

Now this can be a relatively short phase, but it’s intense.

The raw idea has come to you in a flash of inspiration, perhaps, and you just need to knock off the rough edges.

Or perhaps you’ve always known what kind of book you want to write, but now you’re committing to it… so you want to make sure it’s the best it can be possibly be.

That’s immediately followed by the research and writing phase, which is an extension of the creation phase.

This gives you your draft manuscript.

Secondly, there is a review phase.

This is where you’re editing your draft manuscript, refining it, polishing it, perhaps getting other people’s feedback.

Then finally there’s the publishing phase, which involves typesetting the manuscript, designing the look of your book, the cover, and then actually getting it into the hands of your readers.

So three steps, CREATION – including idea development, research and the writing.

Then the REVIEW phase, where you edit and polish your manuscript.

And then the PUBLISHING phases where you turn your manuscript into a book ready for distribution to your readers.

So that’s at the big picture level.

But what I’ve come to realize over the years is that some people want way more detail than that before they embark on the process.

And I understand that.

So we’ve put together some free resources to help you get a grip on exactly how to self-publish your book.

TOOL 1: ARE YOU BOOK READY?

Click here to take the Book Ready Scorecard

We’re experimenting with a Book Ready Scorecard, to help you assess whether you’re actually ready to write your book yet.

In just two minutes you’ll get an assessment of whether you have the infrastructure in place to help you write your book.

And we’ll give you some insights into the state of your intellectual property, your IP. ?

Finally, we’ll help you assess how prepared you are to write a book with confidence and ease.

Go here to complete the Book Ready Scorecard. You’ll have the answer in just 2 minutes.

Take the Book Ready Scorecard

TOOL 2: THE BOOK IDEA AUDIT

Click here for your Book Idea Audit

For the idea phase we have something called a Book Idea Audit. This is where we help you refine and focus on your single best idea.

You’re probably not surprised to hear that most people seem to have more than one idea for a book.

Well, we can help you decide which is the one you should focus on first.

The last thing you want is to be researching and writing your book only to discover – six months later – that you’re working on the wrong topic.

So in your Book Idea Audit Jacqueline Moore, my wife and business partner, and I will drill into your idea and help you identify its strong points and its weaknesses.

We’ll even help you develop a title, and a rough outline so you can start work immediately after the audit.

Click here to schedule your Book Idea Audit.

TOOL 3: BOOK LAUNCH BLUEPRINT

Click here for your free copy of the Book Launch Blueprint.

Once you’re started down the track of researching and writing you need to keep track of where you are.

So we’ve created a complete checklist for you. It’s called the Book Launch Blueprint, and it lists everything you need to do, broken down into the 12 stages we spoke about earlier in the newsletter.

It’s the checklist we use ourselves because it reminds us exactly what steps we need to go through every single time we write and publish a book.

You can be sure this is bang up-to-date because we update it and amend it when things change.

You can keep it as a digital document if you wish – it’s a PDF.

But I like to write on the documents that I have. I’m an inveterate scribbler, with notes in the margin, Post-It notes everywhere.

Click here for your free copy of the Book Launch Blueprint.

TOOL 4: AUTHORS GRID APP

Click here to get the free Authors Grid App.

If you are new school (and not old school like me) then we've got another thing for you.

It’s an app, a software app, that’s completely free to use.

It’s called the Author’s Grid and it’s basically a giant Gantt chart that tells you where you are in the process of self-publishing your book.

‘This is what you should be doing in stage one. This is what you should be doing in stage two...’

And you tick off each one of those things.

The App also opens up to show you what things you need to be doing. There are little videos from me and from Jacqueline Moore, my wife and business partner, that explain to you exactly what you need to be doing in this phase.

And you can tick those off as you work through.

You can also customize the Authors Grid. So if there’s something you don’t wanna do – if you don’t want to publish an ebook, or a Kindle book, say – you can just delete those rows from the Grid.

Click here to get the free Authors Grid App.

THE MISSING MANUAL: YOU SHOULD WRITE A BOOK

Click here to get the digital edition of 'You Should Write a Book'

So why is the Authors Grid – and all these tools – completely free.

Well, we want to share our knowledge with you so that you don’t make the same mistakes that we did when we started out.

It took us ages to refine exactly how to self-publish properly. How to do it well.

So all of these resources are yours, with our compliments. Let us know how you get on.

Of course, there is also the PDF edition of our latest book called, cunningly, You should write a book. Also with our compliments.

It has interviews with the likes of Professors Linda Gratton, Peter Lorange and Marshall Goldsmith among many others.

And I love the title of his most famous and million-selling book: What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There. What an absolutely killer title.

If you don’t have a copy of You Should Write a Book, then please grab the PDF edition, with our compliments.

Click here to get the digital edition of You Should Write a Book

And let us know how you get on writing and self-publishing your book.

We promise to write the first Amazon review for you when your book is published.

THE STORY SO FAR

1) Self publishing your book is the best commercial strategy for entrepreneurial authors

• You can get copies at cost for workshops and conferences
• You can get copies at cost to give away to potential clients

2) There are three phases to self-publishing your book

• The Creation phase – ideas, research and writing
• The Review phase – editing and comments from reviewers
• The Publishing phase – typesetting, publishing and distribution

3) There are free tools to help you along way

• The Book Ready Scorecard – to help you assess whether you are ready to write your book
• The Book Idea Audit – to help you polish and hone your book idea
• The Book Launch Blueprint – a checklist to help you keep on track during self-publishing
• The Authors Grid – a free app to help you keep on track and to coach you through the process
• You Should Write a Book – a complimentary copy of our book, featuring interviews with Karen Dillon, Editor of Harvard Business Review, and million-seller Marshall Goldsmith, among many others.

NEXT TIME ON THE NEWSLETTER: Is writing a book REALLY worth it?

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For transparency, this article first appeared on our blog at Authors Channel