Periodically I’m asked for advice or instruction about how to be a published author. It’s straightforward but there are still many steps to complete. Fortunately, the tools make it much easier than in decades past. Self-publishing is more marathon than sprint. (Yes, I know, it is possible to publish a crappy Kindle book in a day.) Some people become consumed in mechanics and miss the larger picture. Others have clear ideas about what they’d like to happen but can’t get through the mechanics. The guidelines below can help you and will point you to other resources you’ll find helpful.
Key parts of the process:
- Know the Target Audience and Your Purpose for the Book
- Write and Edit the Manuscript
- Publish on Amazon.com with KDP service
- Launching Your Book
- Monitoring Sales and Reviews
- Engaging with Readers Over Time
Know the Target Audience and Your Purpose for the Book
Think carefully about your target audience – what benefits them? It’s not about you! Structure your content accordingly.
Why are you publishing this book? What do you hope to gain? Your answers will shape how you write the book, but especially how you’ll launch the book and use published copies. Common answers are some combination of these:
- I have great ideas I want to share
- A book will outlast me, and reach people I’ll never meet
- Being a published author enhances my credibility and expertise
- A book will make me more famous
- This book will be a lead-generator for new business
- This book complements my speaking and consulting business
- I want to earn royalties
Write and Edit the Manuscript
Write the book for your specific target audience. Create personas of readers or imagine writing to an individual person in your target audience.
I suggest you create a detailed outline – chapters and sub-parts you expect to include – before you start writing your text. This also means you can write in any part of the book, without worrying about the sequence. An increasing number of people are recording themselves talking, then getting a quick transcript using a service like temi.com. You still need to do cleanup and editing, but it can be easier to produce a first draft.
Don’t edit as your write. Writing and editing require different kinds of thinking. Write, write, write. Then come back to edit.
Create a plan to succeed. A systematic approach of producing a specific amount of text (e.g., 500-1000 words a day, or 2500 words every weekend) will help immensely. Set target dates to have each stage completed.
Graciously accept feedback and suggestions from people who read your manuscript. Writing is rewriting.
Ask someone else to proofread your manuscript for spelling errors and identify problems with grammar, preferably someone who is not an expert in your topic. You’ll be amazed at how many times your brain missed an error that others spot instantly.
Consider using some “good, but didn’t quite fit” material as bonus content in your book launch work.
Publish on Amazon.com with KDP service
The KDP service (kdp.amazon.com) has made self-publishing a straightforward exercise. [I say “straightforward,” not easy.] Setting up the account is free. You can publish in Kindle and/or paperback formats, and Amazon has just introduced hard-bound books. The quality of the paperbacks is good, and print-on-demand speed is fast. Amazon is not stockpiling your books in inventory; each order is fulfilled with a new print job.
What you need for Kindle publishing:
- A formatted manuscript in Word
- A cover image in the correct dimensions
- A description of your book which customers will see
- Information about you (and any other authors)
- Which 2 categories you want to list your book
- Pricing
Add this information for paperback publishing:
- Your choice of book dimensions and paper type
- A PDF formatted for the book interior layout
- A PDF cover image (including front, spine, and back) sized to match the interior # of pages
KDP shares all the technical details about sizing the interior and covers.
My suggestion: Hire out the work of formatting the book interior layout and the cover art unless you’re a graphic designer. There are hundreds of people on fiverr.com who do good work with fast turnaround (usually 48 hours) for modest fees. They know exactly how to set up dimensions for Amazon’s requirements. They’ll take your suggestions and work with you on revisions. I spent $106 plus tips for 2 gigs for the interior formatting and cover art for my Bold and Gentle book – the results look professional and are far better than I could have ever produced.
Book cover art is important for sales. Fiverr gigs are cheap enough that you can consider working with 2 or even 3 people on cover art to generate more ideas. Share different cover possibilities with people you know and get their feedback. The one I liked most has never been the one the majority of people thought was the best.
Amazon has an easy-to-use wizard for uploading your content and capturing all your decisions. The wizard will reject submissions which don’t match the technical requirements. It usually takes 24-72 hours for Amazon to review a book before it goes live on amazon.com.
Set up your Amazon Author page. This is a good place to share more information about yourself.
Amazon pays royalties to you as the author. Currently a $0.99 Kindle book generates a $0.35 royalty. Paperback royalties are calculated based on the size and type of layout. You’ll need to sell many books to earn “I can live on this” money.
Launching Your Book
It’s possible that a few people will see your newly published book on Amazon.com. You’re in good company – as of September 2022 there were about 20 million Kindle books available. One estimate I saw claimed there were at least 4 million self-published paperbacks.
Amazon has a ranking system for all books. Highly-ranked books are shown to browsing customers much more often. Their algorithm is secret and evolves, but clearly books with more (and better) reviews rank higher. More sales means better ranking. More people looking at your book probably helps ranking, too, even if they don’t buy. It’s better to rank high in narrow categories than to rank low in broad categories.
Therefore, you need to draw people’s attention to your book. You can take two approaches.
- Tell your family and friends, post about it on social media, and people you know. You’ll get a few sales this way but don’t have high expectations. In my experience I received many “That’s great!” messages but saw very few sales.
- Build a launch team. This is a group of people (20 or more is best) you ask to review the manuscript ahead of a launch date. You ask them to give an honest review on Amazon.com and share about the book on social media. These early readers of your manuscript can give you valuable feedback and suggestions. Generally, you’re going to give them a copy of the final book and some “insider” access to you. The launch team approach takes some work up front but brings much more attention to your book.
You should certainly explore ways to building anticipation for your book. Post a picture of the cover with a “coming soon” message. Give people information about why you wrote this book. “Behind the scenes” and personal content resonates with potential buyers.
Amazon allows authors purchase paperback copies at a discounted price, just above their production costs. These are called “Author Copies.” Most common uses:
- Gift to family, friends, colleagues, and people who helped you create/launch the book
- Give to prospects and customers for your business
- Use at speaking or conference events. Often you can work out a deal with the event organizer to give every participant a copy; you get paid for providing the copies, and the author copies let you offer the organizer a discount from the retail price. Or you can promote your book and sell them at a retail price at the event. People often like signed copies.
It’s useful to periodically post on social media channels about your book with a link to purchase. It’s rare for someone to see everything you’ve ever posted on a social media platform, so you’re hitting new audience members all the time.
You might want to add a link to your book as part of your email signature.
Something I’ve seen people do is to “re-launch” a book after a while. There are new audiences to reach. Sometimes people become interested later who passed on buying your book when you first published it. You can even publish an updated version of your book with edited or new content.
Monitoring Sales and Reviews
KDP has easy, extensive reporting on your book sales. You won’t get the names or contact information for the buyers (more on that below).
I have reminders set in my productivity software to remind me to check reviews and sales reports at least weekly. I check more often with brand-new books. Amazon does not notify you about book reviews.
Frankly, it’s difficult to understand some purchasing patterns. It would nice to know why you’re getting a sales spike but you might not always know. One author acquaintance does a Google search on his book titles every few weeks to find reviewers and anyone referencing his books. He makes a point of connecting with them, saying thanks, and addressing questions.
Engaging with Readers Over Time
Amazon (understandably) isn’t going to provide the contact information for people who buy your book. This is ideal for hermits who don’t want to interact with readers, but those people aren’t usually willing to do the work of writing and publishing a book.
An effective strategy is to set up a web site where you park bonus content (written, audio, video), tool or resource recommendations, maybe a discussion forum. In your book itself you steer people to the web site. I suggest you put information about the bonus content at the front and the end of the book so readers are more likely to act on it.
Here’s the trick: Get their email address in exchange for access to the content. This lets you build an email list you can contact in the future.
I won’t go into the mechanics of web sites, email acquisition and list management here – plenty of tools are available at modest prices today, and how-to information abounds.
Another approach to interact with readers is to publish an email contact in your book. Set up a special email address; don’t use your everyday account.
One important reason to email readers is to thank them for reading your book – in effect, reinforcing that they made a good decision.
Some people create Facebook Groups around a book to facilitate information sharing and community engagement. This is “free” except for your time. Keep in mind that Facebook owns the platform. If they change their rules, you might lose the community. I would not build a whole business on Facebook because it’s a risky point of failure.
Responding to Amazon reviews and comments on social media is another way to interact with buyers.
Go for it!
I encourage you to press ahead with any desire to publish a book. The world needs your ideas and inspiration! Make sure you consider all the aspects of publishing and get help to complement your skills and generate a professional-quality book.
Recommended Resources:
The Self-Publishing School has many good articles and resources.
My recommended writing tools are Scrivener (a learning curve, but designed for books) and Word
Temi.com for transcribing audio files
Fiverr.com for Gig work on book covers and interior formatting
How to set up your Amazon Author page
About building a book launch team
There are online communities of writers who share ideas and tactics for self-publishing. These can be a great source of information but avoid letting them be a distraction from the hard work of writing a good book and getting into the hands (and minds and hearts) of readers. Look for a community which is tailored to fiction or non-fiction, depending on what you publish.
