I recently published my first book. Here is a summary of what I learned along the way.
Publishers
One of the first decisions will be what type of publishing you will do. There are a few types of publishers: traditional publishers, indie publishers, self-publishers, and hybrid publishers are among the main categories.
Traditional publishers are probably the first thing you think of. From what I understand, when you sign a book contract, they typically pay you a sum up front. They then own your book and usually have final say on the cover, title, and content. They will provide a certain degree of project management, editing, distribution, etc. Nevertheless, I’ve heard that they still expect the author to do most of the marketing work unless the author is already famous. While a publisher will pay an author up front, from what I understand, this works more like a loan. Say an author is paid $10K. An author should receive “royalties” which is a percentage of sales. An author won’t see any royalties from sales until their royalty amount is greater than the $10K they were initially paid.
Traditional publishers are generally very difficult to get a deal with. They rarely accept unsolicited manuscripts. Instead, about the only way of potentially getting a deal is through a literary agent. However, it can be difficult to get an agent because they also frequently don’t accept unsolicited inquiries. An author will have to search for and keep an eye out for if and when an agent opens up for new submissions. Agents are a key point of contact with publishers. If the take an author on as a client, they will use the relationships with publishers which they already have in order to sell your book. They will also help with contracts—an important service for novice authors. One thing to note: from what I understand, publishers and agents generally expect reasonably well developed manuscripts for fiction works. However, for non-fiction, they often except mere idea pitches.
Presently, there are five major publishing conglomerates which collectively own many imprints. Beside this, there are other independent publishers which are smaller and have accordingly less resources and reach. The latter can potentially be easier to get a deal with, even without an agent, but may have little to nothing they offer the author.
On the other end of the spectrum is self-publishing. Virtually anyone can upload a book and make it available for sale. When self-publishing, all of the responsibilities of managing the project are on the author. They much not only write the book, but find and contract editors, designers, etc. They have to figure out what to put on the cover, copyright registration, where and how to publish, when to launch, what to charge, etc. There are some benefits to self-publishing. The author owns their book and retains full control. They also earn all net income from sales.
In between traditional and fully self-published are hybrid publishers. In a nutshell, they will provide some of the services of a traditional publisher for a fee. While this may be a good choice depending on several factors, an author should be cautious here. Some hybrid publishers are consider “vanity presses”. They will publish anything they are paid for, and often don’t provide quality services. They are called “vanity” because they allow a person to say they have published a book, but they provide little else. Beside these, there are more legitimate hybrid publishers. They will probably have some degree of review and a quality bar a book must meet for them to agree to publish. They should also provide better service. A word of caution: hybrid publishers can be expensive. One which I received a quote from had an overall price of around four times greater than the upper end of what self-publishing typically cost. And a hybrid publisher will take a percentage of sales too. So a hybrid publisher can make sense for a person who barely has time to write a book and who has a significant amount they are willing to spend to have the publishing done for them.
Self-Publishing
Next, it’s very beneficial to start considering marketing as early as possible. First of all, one must have a grasp of what genre of book they are writing and the general audience they are writing for. Genre is most important for fiction. For non-fiction, it will be helpful to have a good grasp on the audience, message, and subsequently how to “sell” the book to them. From a purely marketing perspective, one would do market research, determine what kind of message is in demand, then have a book written to that. However, authors usually have something they want to say. Part of the challenge in marketing is in figuring out how to bridge the gap between what the author wants to write and what people want to read. Understanding these things will help guide questions which come during the writing and editing processes.
Part of the reason I bring marketing up so early is that most typical marketing seems to be about getting reviews and building an audience 3-6 months before the book launches. There is a lot which needs to happen between the author writing the book and publication.
Another thing to start relatively early is the book cover design. In order to get a cover, an author needs to know their title, subtitle, genre, the blurb for the back cover, etc. These should be influenced at least to a certain degree by marketing. (My subtitle and blurb were done in collaboration with my marketing agent for example.) It’s best to have the cover relatively early in order to help obtain early reviews. It took me around 6 months to get my final cover design, which is probably longer than it should have taken. But understand, many things will take longer than a new author likely expects
Editing
It was a good year after my final draft before my book was ready for release. The next stage is editing. There are a few types or stages of editing:
- Development/Content/Structural edit – This stage is about the big picture, ensuring the book works overall. Larger sections may be added, removed, or moved around.
- Line Edit – Narrowing in a bit, this type of edit looks more at wording. (In some cases such as on Reedsy, this is considered part of copy editing.)
- Copy edit – This edit is about technical correctness: grammar, punctuation, etc.
- Proofread – Should be the final pass before the manuscript is considered completely finished. Intended to catch anything which slipped through the copy edit.
If an author wants to publish a quality book, they should almost always work with one or more editors. No matter how good the author is, it helps to have a second set of eyes with a fresh, outside perspective. In practice, editing isn’t always clearly broken up into these discrete stages. An editor may suggest what can be considered line edits while doing a developmental edit. Or often the line and copy editing may be done together. It’s also not uncommon to hear of a comprehensive edit which combines multiple steps. Each editing stage can take a month or two depending on the timeline of the editor and author.
There are a handful of steps to take around the time a manuscript is finalized. An author needs to determine what formats they want to publish in (paperback, hard cover, ebook, audio book). They probably wants/needs to acquire ISBNs. They should register their work with the Library of Congress. They need to figure out what needs to go on the copyright page as well as any other supplemental content such as acknowledgments and the author’s bio.
One of the last steps in the production of the book is interior formatting. For many books which contain only text, this shouldn’t be difficult. There are tools available which allow authors to do their own interior formatting. Nevertheless, it may be best for a new author to hire someone experienced with this. It’s most common to have hiccups in any kind of project. One of these for me was that it took around six months for me to receive a correct, final interior design (which delayed my launch).
Finally, one needs to determine where to publish (Amazon KDP, Ingram, etc.), to set up those accounts, and to upload the book and related information.
Marketing and Reviews
As mentioned earlier, the standard marketing approach begins 3-6 months before the release of a book, even before some of the last stages of production just mentioned. When an author has a final manuscript, or potentially one which isn’t even completely edited (though it should be past the development edit stage), a good next step is to upload it to some sites as ARCs—Advanced Reader Copies. The goal is to get reviews before the book is launched. There are a couple of categories of review: editorial reviews are those done by someone at a media agency or otherwise representing a company or organization—a professional book reviewer. Second are trade reviews which are those published for the industry such as bookstores and libraries. Finally, there are individual consumer reviews published on sites such as Goodreads and Amazon.
Also well before the book release, the standard marketing playbook is for an author to build an email list if they do not already have one. This is a good time for an author to set up a website for themselves (as an author) and for the book if they do not have these. It can be used as the means for people to sign up for the email list. It will also be a good time to set up social media accounts if one does not already have them. They can also set up author profiles on Amazon and GoodReads, etc. Additionally, the author may want to plan a release event. If an author hopes to have their book carried in local bookstores, it’s best to build the relationships before the book is launched. A local bookstore will likely appreciate having the book available to sell before it’s available online, and to have potential customers directed to the store.
After the book launch, or even shortly before, an author can run ads, post on social media, email their list, do interviews on blogs and podcasts, etc.
One thing I learned after publishing my book is that there is a whole “industry” of book spam/scams. Ever since the day my book was published, I receive an email or two everyday at any email address publicly associated with me. These almost all come from Gmail addresses and are supposedly from book clubs or professionals offering service. The body of the email is usually clearly AI generated as it may be fairly lengthy. They praise the book and attempt to sound like they are engaging with it, though again, no doubt this is generated by AI based on the book’s title and description. I assume if one ever responded, they would request you to pay for something they will never provide.