Self-Publishing Checklist for Authors

To new and aspiring authors, self-publishing a book may seem like a difficult task if you’re not sure of the steps involved. I have self-published more than 13 books so I have been through the whole self-publishing process numerous times and have made a few mistakes along the way.

To help you get your book from a manuscript to a finished product, I have compiled a self-publishing checklist that I use to launch and promote my own books. Hopefully, by following this checklist, you will avoid the mistakes I made when I published my first book.

In today’s post, I will go through the following checklist to help you with self-publishing your first book:

Write a great book.
Edit and proofread your book.
Get feedback.
Rewrite your book.
Choose your self-publishing platform.
Format your book.
Design a book cover.
Upload your completed manuscript and book cover.
Launch your book.
Rum price promotions.
Advertise your book.
Check the progress of your marketing campaign.
Repeat the whole process for your next book.

Write a great book.

This first step to self-publishing is making sure that you write a book that people want to read. Decide on what kind of book you want to write, whether it is non-fiction, a novel, or a memoir.

Then you need to plan what you’re going to write. Depending on the type of book you want to write, you may have to research a topic, conduct interviews, get creative, and use your imagination.

You need to create an outline of your book so that you stay focused on what you’re writing and to keep your ideas organized. You may start with the first draft, but then you may write a second and third draft to ensure that your book is well written.

Edit and proofread your book.

People tend to use proofreading and editing interchangeably, but these two terms have different meanings. Editing begins when you have completed the first draft of your book and goes on toward the final draft. It is used to ensure that your book is of a publishable standard.

Therefore, it looks at sentence structure, character development, readability, and clarity of your book. Proofreading, on the other hand, is performed at the final stages of your book. Proofreading involves checking and correcting grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors. It can also ensure that your book is formatted correctly and is ready to be published.

Get feedback.

Before you submit your book to be published, it is always helpful to get feedback from family members, friends, other authors, or beta readers.

They will be able to tell you whether your book is written clearly that they understand, whether it makes sense, or if there is something that you need to change.

They can also tell you what they liked and disliked about your book. You can find beta readers through writing communities such as Facebook groups or on Goodreads.

Rewrite your book.

Based on the feedback you received from your readers, you may have to rewrite your book. You may have to rearrange chapters, remove one or two sections from your book that did not make sense, reduce or increase your word count, or change the tone of voice used in the book. You may find this frustrating, but you’ll be so glad that you made the effort to make changes to your book.

Choose your self-publishing platform.

After all the hard work in writing, editing, proofreading, and rewriting your book, it is now ready to be published. But first, you need to decide on a self-publishing company that will provide the services you need to make your book ready for publishing.

Some basic publishing services include book formatting, cover design, and marketing services. Some companies have their own online retail store whereas others may include distribution to other online retailers and libraries. Only companies that sell books through their own retail store are known as retailers. Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing is a retailer.

On the other hand, companies that offer to publish and sell your book in their retail store as well as distribute your book to other online retailers are known as aggregators. Draft2Digital is an aggregator. Here is a list of self-publishing platforms that you can use to self-publish your book:

Format your book.

Once you have chosen your self-publishing platform, you will need to follow their guidelines to format your book to a publishable standard. The way you’ll prepare your book for publishing depends on the format you choose.

For example, if you use Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), you can format your book to be published as a Kindle ebook, a paperback, or a hardcover. You may be allowed to upload a Word document if you plan to publish an eBook, or a PDF if it will be published as a paperback.

Design a book cover.

I would not recommend designing your own book cover unless you are a professional graphic artist. You can get a professionally designed book cover without having to pay the price of a professional designer. You can hire a designer to create your book cover through freelance sites such as Upwork and Fiverr.com.

Some self-publishing companies also offer free book cover design services such as KDP which provides a cover design tool that you can use to design your eBook cover and paperback cover. You need to read and follow the guidelines to ensure that your book cover is up to publishing standards.

Upload your completed manuscript and book cover.

Once you have formatted your book and designed your cover that meets the requirements of your chosen publishing platform, the next step is to upload your document and book cover image to be published.

You can preview your completed manuscript using the online previewer tool provided by the publishing company. This gives you the opportunity to check if you formatted your document correctly, if the images are showing clearly, and if each chapter starts on a new page.

If you find any mistakes, you can make the corrections to your original document and upload it again. Once you are satisfied with the way your manuscript looks on the preview page, you can then choose the price of your book and where it will be distributed once it is published. It may take up to 72 hours to publish an eBook and 3 to 5 business days to publish a paperback.

Launch your book.

Unfortunately, this is a step that I overlooked when I published previous books. But this is a very important step to take because it will help you to start making sales.

There are a couple of things that you can do to kick off your book launch. You can offer to give something away for free if customers buy your book by a particular date. You could give away a free report, a short instruction video, templates, or a checklist.

If you have an email list, you could send out a series of emails to your subscribers telling them about your new book. Include something that your subscribers can download or view for free in each email. It could be a free chapter of your new book, the information they can download and print, or videos about your new book.

You could also invite your readers to share your new book with their friends and family. Provide links that they can easily copy and paste into emails and on social media. Create images, quotes, cartoons, book trailers, and infographics that they can also share on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Use the ‘click to tweet’ tool on your website so that people can share quotes from your book on Twitter.

Run price promotions.

Running a price promotion is a great way to increase exposure to your new book. When you lower the price of your eBook and then promote it on various sites such as your website, blog, social networks, or book submission sites for a short period of time, this is what is known as a price promotion.

If you set the price of your eBook at $3.99 and then lowered it to $0.99 for 2-5 days, then this is an example of a price promotion. Some publishing companies offer free price promotions such as Amazon KDP. KDP offers a 5-day free book promotion and a book countdown deal.

Advertise your book.

To attract new readers and increase book sales, you may consider advertising your book. If done correctly, advertising can lead to hundreds or thousands of book sales. Advertising can also make you lose a lot of money if it is poorly done.

You can advertise your new book on social media sites like Facebook and Instagram. You can also use Amazon Ads to set up an advertising campaign.

Check the progress of your marketing campaign.

With all the marketing strategies you have used to promote your book, you want to ensure that each one is helping you to boost your book sales. But it’s not always easy to keep track of all the things you did to promote your book. You can check the progress of your marketing campaign in four ways:

Focus on one book and one marketing activity at a time. I wanted to see sales of all of my books so badly that I made the mistake of running price promotions and social media advertising for 3 of my books at the same time. As a result, they all made sales, but I wasn’t sure which marketing strategy worked better because I used two marketing activities together to promote 3 of my books.

Keep a record of each marketing method and the sales results. You can write it down in a notebook or create a table in an Excel file or Word document. For example, you can use the following headings in your table: Date, Marketing Method, Amazon Sales, Draft2Digital sales.

Study the results. Which marketing method worked and which one did not? Think about what changes you need to make to ensure that the next marketing method you use will work.

Repeat the whole process for your next book.

For your next book, go through each of the following steps of the self-publishing process from writing your book to uploading it to your chosen publishing platform to promoting it through various marketing activities. check on what works and what doesn’t. Use this self-publishing checklist when you publish your next book.

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