7 Steps To Self-Publish Your Book – From Inception To Shelf

Every time you go to sleep, the chances of a dream encounter are very likely. A hypothetical writer exists in our thoughts, and keeps coming out time and again. That is the time we jump out of our train of thought and reach out to a pen and a paper to jot down the ideas. This fragment that we bring from the dream to our story holds an extremely crucial step in transforming our thoughts into workable stories, sometimes poems.

A very important aspect that remains if you decide to pursue writing, is publishing. You can either self-publish your book or seek help from external sources. This blog post will talk about the former, to give you a little curtain raiser of what’s in store with regards to self-publishing your work.

Writing is a passion that comes from within. People say that writing a book requires a lot of qualities. Not essentially. It’s true that writing a book requires perseverance, patience and a flair for the language. But these are not the only metric that decides the merit of the writer.

It’s interesting how people tend to get stuck on how to write a book by being overwhelmed by the sheer vastness of the work. That being said, now let’s take a look at these seven simple steps on how to self-publish your book:

#1 Find an online publishing platform that suits your needs. If you don’t mind spending a decent amount of money, then NotionPress and Partridge Publishing offer good deals and packages to publish a book.  Their packages range from 25k to 90k INR. However, if you’re restricted to a budget, then go for Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). I would specifically mention the usage of KDP since it is easier and the process is relatively cashless.

#2 Step two requires you to upload the manuscript in the KDP portal after you log in with an Amazon account.  The manuscript needs to be edited beforehand. Ensure you have edited at least once before uploading in this portal. It is advisable to hire an editor before getting to this step of the process.

#3 Now comes the steps of getting an ISBN number for the book. The option exists for the book to be registered on the website itself. That is the unique code, somewhat like a fingerprint. It ensures that you alone have the rights to the book and should anyone replicate your book, you can sue them for good!

#4 The usual works of adding an excerpt from the book along with the story. Now you get to decide on your heading/title for the book along with the back cover text and the Authors’ note. Name it carefully since it will be on the cover of the book.

#5 Once the basic aspects of the book are done, you are now ready to design the cover. You can either design it yourself and upload or choose to use one of their templates. This is the face of your book. So, it is again advisable to hire a designer who can enhance the look of your work. Ensure it is designed in resonance with the theme of the book. If it is a happy theme, then make it vibrant and so on. The sky is the limit and creativity knows no bounds!

#6 The final steps include filing a tax form to get an EIN that ensures that tax will be deducted once the sale of your book happens. You get to set the price of your book, and this will show how much royalty you will get as well. Talking in pure money terms! This thread on the KDP forum addresses doubts on the Tax filing process for the same:

#7 The final step is to verify that you have read their agreements and validate the originality of your work. Then you submit and wait for them to respond. Once submitted, Amazon will verify and put your book on the market on your preferred domain. It is not possible to get a paperback on Amazon.in since it is still not permitted. You can find your book on Amazon.com/.uk and it will be available across these domains for sale.

The last additional step, which goes without saying is the self-promotion of your book across all social media platforms you are active in. All these efforts will culminate in good publicity for your book and will give you an innate sense of satisfaction like no other. I’ve known that for a fact when a close friend of mine, published his set of poems as a book through KDP. If he can do it, so can you!

Voila! We are done learning ropes to self-publishing your book. So what are you waiting for? Put on those thinking caps and let the ideas flow. Who knows, your story might be picked up for the next movie adaptation!

Did you know you could compare prices of books and other products across leading e-commerce sites and save huge with our ‘Compare and Buy’ tool? Check it here.