Alright, so I’ve been asked by dozens of people, “how did you self-publish your book?” Well, let me tell you, it was a process! So, I’ve decided to write this post for those of you who are curious and for anyone who is looking to self-publish, themselves.
I am also in the process of creating a video discussing the process on a deeper and more
detailed level! Follow me on Instagram or in my newsletter to get notified when it’s up!
I’m going to sort my self-publishing journey based on these categories:
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The process
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The cost
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What I wish I did differently/knew beforehand
I feel that this is the most concise way to depict my journey to you. I’ll try to include as much
detail/info as I can!
The Process
I’m going to list this in steps. Hopefully this will keep this post clean and concise, as well as
easy to follow.
Step one: Write the poems (duh)
All of the poems in my book come from 2014-present day. I’ve been writing poetry for years. So, naturally I’ve procured a decently sized collection. I didn’t have to spend any time writing poems for my book, meaning that I could just start putting it all together without the extra time.
Step two: Print poems and sort them
The first step for me actually began here. The only feasible way I could imagine putting this
book together was to be able to see all of my poems at once in order to sort through them. I printed them off months before I ever actually dived into the publishing process.
I have two documents for poetry: “manuscript” (which I consider my good poems) and “poems not as worthy” (which is exactly what it says).
I printed off both of these documents (front side only) and began sorting them, first, by the
quality of the poetry. That cut out about half of the poems. I seeded down further, sorting by category. I made piles of certain themes: dark, light, fear, religion, love, loss, etc.
I then went through these themes AGAIN, and sorted out the ones that still weren’t as
“worthy.” I found it easiest to print off my poems to sort them. I liked being able to physically move them around. It saved a lot of time. Though I won’t lie. This step took me days to finish.
Step three: Finalize manuscript order
This goes along with step two. Basically, once I had my poems sorted, I started putting them
together into a “sort of” manuscript. I began creating the story and building the poems around my main theme. The result was very similar to the book you see today!
Step four: Put the poems into a document
This step took a very long time as well. Essentially what I did was I opened up three different
tabs on my computer: “manuscript,” “poems not as worthy,” and “the Lights are on but nobody’s home,” and began to copy and paste.
I used ctrl F to find the poems amongst my other documents, copied them, and pasted them to the new document.
This also included formatting. So each time I copied and pasted, I would highlight the text and
set it as Times New Roman 11pt font.
This step took a decent amount of time as well. In total, I think it took about two weeks.
Step five: Contact my illustrator
While I was putting my poems into my main document, I contacted my illustrator. I’ve known Tessa McKenney for quite a few years now and I’ve always been a fan of her art. So, naturally, I reached out and asked if she would be interested in creating some art for my book.
(There is more info about my experience hiring an illustrator at the bottom of the page under the “what I wish I knew” category).
After contacting Tessa, she went to work creating beautiful illustrations for me and I continued working on my book.
Step six: Edit poems
While Tessa continued to work on the sketches for the book, I began to edit the poems. I chose to do this myself 1) because I knew I could without straining too much and 2) because it was cheaper than hiring an editor.
I edited my poems one at time by reading them aloud and fixing where necessary. Editing took quite a while as well. Thankfully, they were poems and were often very short. So I never felt too stressed going through them.
I read through each poem about 3-5 times. I read through the entire book about three times. It was a lot. But it was necessary and I’m glad I chose to do it myself so that I could preserve the style and craft of each poem.
Step seven: Put illustrations in document
Once Tessa had finished the illustrations and scanned them in for me, I began editing them and pasting them into my book. She sent me PDF versions of her scanned in art which provided more clarity and better quality for the images.
From there, I cut, cropped, edited, and pasted each image for my book. I used PicsArt, an app from the Apple store, to do most of the editing. The typical editing process included: making the background completely white, darkening the lines in the image, sharpening the image, and erasing any smudges that passed through scanning.
It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, as far as photo editing goes. And it was fairly simple to save each illustration and paste it into the document.
Step eight: Begin the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) set-up
I actually tackled this step somewhere in my poem sorting process. However, it couldn’t fully be set up until I had a working manuscript. Therefore, I began to actively use KDP around the time the illustrations were finishing up.
KDP is a very user friendly platform and I’ve enjoyed it a lot. It’s made creating my book very easy and straightforward. I definitely consider it a wonderful self-publishing platform.
I set up my account and began plugging in any information needed in regards to publishing the book!
Step nine: Cover creating!
This step right here might have been the most challenging and unrelenting part of the entire
process.
I came up with the title fairly quickly as I love to use idioms for titles and the phrase “the lights are on but nobody’s home” resonated well with my theme.
The tricky part was creating the cover. Gosh! This is certainly something I wish I had known
before (check out that section at the bottom of this post).
I spent a solid week, every minute of my free time, attempting to come up with a good cover. I tried so many things, spammed all of my friends and family, complained endlessly, until I finally found the right cover. And believe me, everybody was relieved when I did because they were getting fed up with my consistent frustration at finding the right cover.
I actually came up with the cover idea that you see today after going to a Half Price Book store. I happened by a particular book (whose name I can’t remember) that had a dark blue cover, and big white letters across the front. The cover included vines shaking down from the top, weaving in and out of the words. I knew as soon as I saw it that I wanted my cover to appeal to me the way this book appealed to me.
So, I started working with a dark blue cover as a color. The book in Half Price wasn’t in my target genre, however, I wanted my book to stand out amongst all of the black, white, and pastel poetry books standing today. Though I still wanted people to look at my book and go “that’s a poetry book.”
The lightbulbs in the top right corner are placed in a unique design that I created. Though the
light bulbs themselves are stickers from the app PicsArt (which I used to create my cover).
Step ten: Plug it all in
This is where you see the cover being the trickiest part of the whole process. I had a terrible time plugging in all of my content to KDP.
After a few mishaps, I found that in order to insert my manuscript so that it prints properly, I had to: turn it into a compatible docx. format, turn that into a PDF, fake print it to a paper size of 8” by 5.5”, save it to my computer, and THEN insert it into KDP. I ended up submitting and re-submitting my manuscript dozens of times. I’m pretty sure there are more than twenty documents on my computer from this step alone.
Not only was the document itself hard to plug in, but so was the cover.
Oh. My. Gosh.
wasn’t quite meeting. Once I had my image made, I had to send it to my computer, save as a PDF, and crop and resize (resolution, pixel, etc.) just to insert it into KDP so that it looked nice!
And it never worked.
I struggled so hard to figure it out. I didn’t much care for KDP’s Cover Creator. I felt it was restricting and lacked tools that were user friendly or provided me with the content necessary to make the cover how I envisioned it. So I settled for making my own cover in their alternative option. However, it was never the right size and it simply did not work out for me.
By a sheer miracle, I reverted back to Cover Creator as it was the only way to ensure the book met the proper guidelines and alignments. I was devastated. I didn’t want to have to change my cover. I worked so hard on it. At this point, I didn’t want to settle for uneven coloring, or awkward lettering.
And then Matt figured it out.
Somehow, I’m still not sure how, he cleared Cover Creator’s content fields so that I could just input my pre-made book cover into the slot and resize it there.
And it worked.
I wasted so many hours in the last two months trying to figure it out and it took him barely a minute. I wanted to be angry. But I couldn’t be. It finally worked!
Step eleven: Buy ISBN/ Finalize publication needs
While I was plugging in all of the content for the book, I purchased an ISBN. A lot of ISBN’s sell for $99-well over $100. I wasn’t particularly down for that.
I actually purchased my ISBN for $40.
It sounds sketchy right? Well, that’s what I thought too when I first stumbled across Michael
Dowell’s website, www.isbnagency.com. However, I checked numerous reviews and self-publications where his service was used and it was legit. There was nothing sketchy about it.
There were a number of videos on his site perfectly explaining how to download and input your isbn as well as how to build your own website for your book. I was very pleased with the service. It was professional and fast! The payment felt secure and safe. And his automated emails are pretty helpful.
I counted this step as a win.
Step Twelve: Publish
Once everything was finalized (price, print previewed, last edits, names, tags, etc.) I clicked
Publish.
My book was actually published for two days and I didn’t tell anyone. I ordered a copy for myself, unpublished the book, fixed some errors, worked on it for about an hour and a half more, and then finally re-published it to the version you see today.
I’ll explain the reason for this below. But essentially, it was published and that was the process! It was a lot of work…and money. Which is why I’m also going to break down the cost for you.
The Cost
KDP
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KDP was free to use, which saved a lot of money, however, it cost a lot of my time in order to get to publication. The formatting, editing, image inserting, copyrighting, cover creating, pricing, etc. was all done by me.
Illustrator
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I ended up deciding on $75 for the illustration fee. Tessa and I worked it out, and I would pay her for the job. We are both amateurs so this seemed like a reasonable price.
Library of Congress
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Copyrighting a book in the Library of Congress is a good way to ensure your book is protected for legal reasons so I didn’t hesitate to pay the fee to get my book put in their publication data.
ISBN
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I am so happy with the quality of service I received from isbnagency.com. Michael Dowell is amazing and very professional. Paying only $40 for an ISBN helped me out a ton. The ISBN is legit and the website was super informative on how to properly go about downloading an ISBN and using it for your self-published work.
Instagram promo
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This is something I tried the day of the launch of my book. I’m not sure I am completely satisfied with the service I received. I spent $30 for a five day promotion on my account. I gained a lot of followers, which I appreciate, but I didn’t get as many impressions/likes on the photo as I had hoped. I wish the outreach would have been greater. But at least it was a way to get the book out there.
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I will probably pay for additional marketing at a later date. As of right now, it’s not something in which I need to take immediate action. So I expect my overall “cost” to make my book will go up.
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In the near future, I will probably pay for an amazon promo. I have no idea how much I will end up paying, but I know it’s something to be considered.
Author copies
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Lastly, author copies. Through KDP, authors only have to pay for shipping and handling for their books. Therefore, my books are about $2.60 each for me, rather than the $9.99 they are for everyone else. It sucks that I still have to pay for my own book, but I get it. I decided to buy 10 copies (mostly for future giveaways (possibly), my immediate family members, myself, and as an example title for marketing).
What I wish I did differently/knew beforehand
Utilize Print Previewer for EVERY page
This was a big “oops” in the process for me. I don’t know why, but I didn’t click through every page on the print previewer (the preview option for KDP) and I goofed. I published the book without telling one, ordered a book for myself, and then had to unpublish the work. I chose to do this as prime shipping is two days and reviews mentioned author copied could take three weeks to send. I did not want to wait. But when I got my book, I noticed the printing was a tad off on five of the pages, near the end. This was my fault. So I had to go back and fix the error, redownload the manuscript to KDP, and republish my book.
Use Cover Creator (learn how to use)
I attempted to use the cover creator (KDP’s Cover cresting source) and I hated it. I felt like it was too restricting and didn’t offer me enough freedom to create the cover how I envisioned. I wasted a lot of time trying to use cover creator and moving on to create my own cover in their alternative option. I couldn’t configure the right resolution and format and this set me back a couple months. I wish I had stuck with the cover creator and messed around with it a bit more. I ended up using it anyway and the result is exactly the cover I had originally wanted.
Estimate costs better
I don’t know why, but I didn’t think self-publishing would be as pricey as it came out to be. It’s still much cheaper than traditional publishing, but i didn’t expect all of these costs up front. I wish I would have done more research and written down cost goals and plans before entering the publication process.
Work/plan with illustrator earlier (better)
Tessa and I were both amateurs starting out so neither of us were prepared. I didn’t give Tessa a solid deadline which in turn pushed back publishing because the illustrations couldn’t be produced fast enough. I should have written a stricter deadline for her, laying out days I wanted certain images done and on which poems, etc. There was a lot of miscommunication due to the non-existent contract I should have written up explaining payment, quality, and deadlines.
I hope this helped in some form or another for anyone who was curious about my publication process.
Self-publishing isn’t super easy but it’s satisfying, in the end, to know that all of your hard work paid off.
If you have any more questions you’d like me to cover, please leave them in the comments below!
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Disclaimer: All of the views and opinions in this post are solely my own and are not sponsored. This post includes affiliate links, meaning I earn a commission through links at no cost to you.