Introduction to Publishing
Switching gears, we’re going to talk about publishing. Today, we’ll go over the things you need to take care of in order to get your book and its launch prepared for your publication date. There’s a lot to consider and a lot to do, so getting started roughly six months in advance is generally a good idea, especially if you don’t have a lot of extra time to work on things. Let’s dive in.
Publishing Checklist
Item #1: Editing, Formatting, and Proofreading
So, you have your book written, but now what? Before you can publish it, assuming you want it to have its best chance at getting into the hands of your intended audience and doing well, you need to have it edited professionally.
Yes, professionally. Sure, you can self-edit, but here’s the thing. You’re not going to as good a job as someone else (assuming that person knows what they’re doing or is at the same level as you are). Why? Because while you can (and should) take the time to edit your own work, you will always have a certain level of blindness on your own work. As an editor myself, I can attest to this. Editing other people’s work not only takes less time but also goes better. I catch more because, even if I’m enjoying the story, I see all the problems too. The characters aren’t my characters, and the story isn’t my story. So I’m able to keep perspective. We’ll talk more about what you should expect to pay an editor and why you should be willing to pay those rates.
Second, in conjunction with professional editing, you want to either do the formatting yourself or pay someone to do it. If you’re not design oriented, you’ll want to hire someone to do it for the paperback at the very least. Ebook is stricter on what it does and doesn’t allow due to what the ereaders and their programs are able to read. I have an entire post dedicated to ebook formatting if you’re interested in doing it yourself. You can read it here.
Finally, do a last proofread, even if you had a professional editor go over it. This will help you ensure you caught as much as possible. If there were typos, spelling errors, or grammar mistakes, then this would be the time to catch them.
Checklist Item #2: Book Cover
Really, you can have this done whenever, but do know that in order to have the paperback cover copy done, you need to know your page count using the proper page size (based on the trim size you chose through your publishing platform). Hire a designer that has examples of work in your genre. Just because a designer can do a cover doesn’t mean you’ll get an eye-catching one. If they don’t do covers in your genre, then hiring them may not be the best option.
To have one made, make sure that you’ve done a few things.
First and foremost to know with this part of publishing. You need to make sure you have or make sure your designer uses images you have the license for. So no Unsplash, Pixabay, Pexels, or any other free and “creative commons zero” license sites. Yes, they’re free. But you’re highly likely to end up infringing on copyright because these sites do not vet their artists well.
People can post anything and claim it as theirs. There have been issues on these sites with stolen artwork. If the individual doesn’t own it, they don’t have a license. Ergo, neither do you. Even if they have a license, they can’t confer that on you if they’re not the original owner. The same thing goes for fonts, though those ones can be trickier because free for commercial use might not mean free for ebook and print covers (dumb, I know, but it is how it is).
If you insist on using sites that offer free fonts, images, and so on, then mitigate some of your risk by getting in touch with the artist and asking them to confirm ownership (on the image sites) and the rights you have to use it. That way, at least, you can say you did do your due diligence. With fonts, get in touch with the font creator and ask them what you’re allowed to use it for. Tell them what you want to use it for and ask if the license covers it. If not, sometimes they’re willing to negotiate a price for a license if you ask nicely.
Point is, never ever assume that sites with no fees and free images are actually okay to use. If you don’t want any risks, Envato Elements is a good option. It’s a year’s subscription for around 160-200 USD, and you can download as many images, fonts, and other things on their site as you need to. The only thing is, you need to license each download to a specific project, and you can’t keep any unused (or used) images after the subscription expires. Read the instructions for licensing the images carefully though. They’ve got some rules you need to follow to make sure they’re properly licensed for your use.
Checklist Item #3: ARC Team
Next up, you want to gather your ARC (Advanced Review Copy) team. These people, ideally, should be ones who are interested in your genre and have some or all of the characteristics of your ideal reader. When asking for ARC readers, you should make sure you provide the blurb of the book, links for them to go look at the book (if it’s available), and any information on who the intended audience is and what they can expect. Then ask those interested to get in touch if they’ve got questions or want to participate.
Be clear on when the review is due. Give readers enough time to go through the book (I’d give about a month if possible), but tell them the review needs to be in by the deadline agreed on. You can’t force them to review, but if you agree on a date that will work for each individual, you’ll get the reviews by that time most of the time. Even if not, you know when you should be following up with them if you need to. Sometimes this will be necessary. People forget or get behind, and they fail to communicate. So it’s best if you both agree on when you should follow up if there’s no review.
Checklist Item #4: Marketing
This one is one of the trickier parts of publishing, and I could discuss a lot of different options. But I’ll go over some marketing strategies and techniques in more detail in later posts. For now, you should know that you should be utilizing the various outlets available to you.
Social media and Pinterest are free exposure and should be used. It’s not an instant thing though. You need to be active on your social media and Pinterest accounts long before pushing your work . If you aren’t, you won’t have the connections you need with readers and other writers to really make marketing work.
When it comes to publishing, your connections with other writers and reviewers is key. Those you connect with are valuable resources at launch point. It’s a long road to launch, and it would be sad if the book failed from lacking exposure. Your connections give you people to go to when you need people to review the book, share it, and help you out with blog tours should you choose to do that.
Another area of marketing for your upcoming publication is to share it with your newsletter subscribers and on your own blog. Again, however, this only works well if you have an established readership on your blog and with your newsletter.
It does no good if it goes out to people who only subscribed for free stuff and then ditch as soon as you try to “sell” them anything. No matter how nicely you put it, if you’re trying to get them to consider buying something, they’re going to jump ship. However, if your readership is interested in your work, free or otherwise, then you’ll find more success here.
Checklist Item #5: Publishing
Finally, we’re to publishing. If you’re using Amazon, know that you will need to change your browse categories after it’s live (pre-order or actually live) on the site. The options in Amazon’s KDP setup for ebooks and paperbacks represent only 25% of the available categories. However, they’re the most competitive categories available. You’ll need to do research to figure out what categories are less competitive that your book can fit into.
To illustrate how important this is, your categories will make the difference between needing to sell thousands of copies a day to reach bestseller status and needing to sell somewhere between 30 and 40 a day to reach that. For doing this research, I recommend using Publisher Rocket’s free tool for calculating how many copies a day you need to make it into #1 Bestseller category as well as the article they have on changing categories.
Once you’ve gotten your browse categories fixed, it’s time to let people know that your book is available for sale and that your ARC readers can provide reviews any time they’re ready (as long as it’s before the agreed upon deadlines).
Make sure people know not to buy the book until you’ve gotten those categories updated. Any sales you make before go to the generic categories you chose and don’t help your rankings at all. So, make sure you let people know to wait on buying or reviewing until you have those updated if you want the reviews and sales to count.
Conclusion
That’s it for this post! I know it’s been quite long, but I hope it’s been useful. Feel free to ask questions if you have them. I’ll go more detail on some of these topics in the upcoming weeks. Thanks for reading!