#8 Top tips for would-be self-publishers

In the latest Earn Learn Thrive LinkedIn Live, ‘Self-publishing successfully as an educator’ I was chatting with Walton Burns , publishing consultant and owner of Alphabet Publishing.

The barriers to self-publishing have considerably lowered in recent years, and the so-called stigma has pretty much disappeared. Gone are the days when it meant paying a ‘vanity publisher’ and then stacking boxes of books in your garage.

Nowadays the would-be self publisher can relatively easily self-publish an e-book on Amazon or other platforms, or even produce a paperback or hardback that will be printed on demand (whenever a copy is ordered)

I say relatively easily because, while it’s a much simpler process than it used to be, there are still some barriers. Some of these are practical ones around formatting the book correctly. As Walton mentioned there are software programmes that can help with this. I am currently writing my third book for self-publication, working title perhaps unsurprisingly, The Confident ELT Freelancer, and I’m using a programme called Atticus. There is an equivalent (and cheaper) programme for Mac, called Vellum.

This isn’t essential as an editor can format it for you- or you can learn how to do it yourself- but it definitely helps.

That doesn’t mean that you don’t need an editor though. Speaking as a many times traditionally published author, as well as a self-publisher, I think it’s essential. It’s almost impossible to edit your own work because the eye sees what it expects to see.

Last year I self-published what’s known as a low content book on Amazon, The Earn Learn Thrive Productivity Planner. Apart from the introduction and how to pages, the rest of the book is a repetition of the same set of pages, so I figured I didn’t actually need an editor for that bit.

And guess what… I somehow managed to miss out a whole chunk of pages, meaning that the planner did not last the 48 weeks I had promised that it would. I had to withdraw it and re-publish.

Walton’s company will work with you to go through the publishing process if you feel you need a hand, or do it for you if it’s something that the company feels would do well. Or you can find an editor to give comprehensive or lighter touch feedback. Of course, there are costs involved in this, probably in the region of a few hundred pounds at least.

Another thing to consider is the cover. Canva makes it pretty easy to design a cover, but you do need to think carefully about layout, clarity, and whether it ‘says’ the right things about what type of book it is and who it’s for. So this is something else you might want to pay someone to help you with.

That said the Amazon KDP platform will give you quite a lot of guidance about things such as sizing, costs and how much you’ll make on each copy. Depending on the price you sell the book at and the cost of printing it (colour is super expensive) you can make 30-70% of the sale price, which is actually pretty good.

So much for the process of creating and publishing a book. What about actually selling it once you’ve done so?

There comes the REAL challenge.

The reality is that most self-published books do not make much money (most traditionally published books don’t either, come to that, or not for their authors, anyway.) However, there are exceptions, and there are also other reasons to publish a book- not least that it can establish you as more of an expert in your field. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to give your clients a copy of your own book to work from?

But if you do want to make some money from your book, there are some things you can do to improve your chances.

1. Make sure that your book is actually something that a lot of people will want/need. Of course what constitutes a lot of people for you might well be what a traditional publisher would consider not worth doing. That’s one of the beauties of self-publishing. But clearly you don’t want to get TOO niche when you’re likely to be only making a few pounds per book.

2. When you list the book make sure it’s listed in the right categories and that the title and the description use the right keywords that people who would want your book will be searching for. This isn’t always easy, but it’s really important if you want people to find your book by themselves.

3. Already have a large audience or following who are the people who would want/need the book and create an effective marketing campaign around it. This makes a huge difference, especially when a book is first launched. You need to create a buzz about it, and ideally get it to the top of the chosen categories at least for a few days.

4. Get some great reviews (genuine ones obviously), especially in the first few weeks.

5. Keep promoting it consistently in different ways and different places. For example, have you considered promoting your book on TikTok? BookTok, as it's known, is working brilliantly for some authors at the moment.

If you’d like to watch the live I’ve been referring to in this newsletter, where we discuss these and other points, here’s the link

https://www.dhirubhai.net/video/event/urn:li:ugcPost:7022130050741202944/

Many thanks to @Walton Burns for a great conversation. Please do check out his websites:

https://www.waltonburns.com/

https://www.alphabetpublishingbooks.com/

The next Earn Learn Thrive LinkedIn Live will be on Friday 17th February at 10.00am UK time. I’ll be talking to Jim Fuller of Sponge Chats about setting up and running a (video) podcast. If that’s something you’ve thought about doing, you won’t want to miss this.