Why Self-Publish a Book
✓ There are several reasons why you would self publish including the following:
- Increase Authority
- Grow your audience
- Increase your income
- Create a career
✓ Being a stellar writer isn’t the most important skill you need to have to be a successful self-published author
✓ Your main job is to put your invaluable advice or storytelling to work—get it on paper
✓ You can hire an editor to smooth out the rough places, make it flow better and fix your grammar mistakes
✓ You can even hire a ghostwriter to do all the work for you if you’re not confident enough to write it on your own
Planning your Book
✓ Before you even get the first word down onto paper, you need to participate in some brainstorming, do some research and make some decisions
✓ The first step is to decide what topic you are going to write on
✓ Here are some tips to help you decide what to write about
- Write what you love
- Do the research
- Poll your readers for suggestions
- Look at trends
To Outline or Not
✓ Now that you have your topic, it’s time to decide how to get started writing
✓ If you talk to authors, you’ll get different opinions on if outlining is the best way to go or not
✓ There are benefits to both outlining and not outlining (often referred to as pantsing)
✓ Pantsing allows you the freedom to let the topic take you into the flow of writing
✓ When you outline, you typically have less revision to make, and it doesn’t take as long to write the book
✓ Most authors use a combination of pantsing and plotting
Marketing Your Book
✓ Successful self-published authors will tell you that the time to market is now—before you write the book
✓ Marketing starts when you come up with ideas for the title, cover art, and synopsis
✓ Here are a few things to think about to get you started marketing your book
- Keywords and categories
- What’s in a title
- Description
- oStart your author’s platform
- Book formats
✓ There are three things you need to avoid scrimping on if you want your book to be a successful earner
- o Book Covers
- o Editing
- o Formatting
Writing your book
✓ One of the biggest challenges to getting a book self-published is finding the time to write
✓ Here are some down and dirty reminders. If you are serious about publishing that book, you need to:
- o Schedule time to write
- o Stay motivated
- o Commit to a session
- o Let go of self-doubt
- o Use “hidden” time to write
- o Just write
Promoting Your Book
✓ As with your book marketing, you will want to begin promoting your book before it’s finished
✓ Some things you will want to do before the release
- o Pre-orders
- o Blog
- o Social Media
- o Paid Ads
✓ Some things you will want to do at or after the release
- o Launch Party
- o Book Blog Tour
- o Write more books
- o Make YouTube videos
- o Release multiple media formats
- o Run a Goodreads giveaway
- o Run a KDP Free or Countdown Deal
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