Episode Details

You are your own publishing house when you self-publish. There’s lots to do, and lots to think about, especially the first few times you publish a book. 

That’s why we’ve created this helpful, back-to-basics SPA Girls Podcast episode – to help you go from rough manuscript to published book, with our notes on what you need to plan for and schedule, and how to figure out what you’re going to need to actually do to get your book published on all the platforms. 

We haven’t given a specific order for these tasks to be done in – we know too many successful authors who get different aspects of the checklist done at different times. There are also tasks that can be done quickly and others that will take time. The important thing is to know what you need to do, to work out a schedule that suits you and your life, and then to actually do the tasks! 

To help out, we’ve also created a handy checklist for you to download; just click the links below!

SHOW NOTES:

I’ve finished the Manuscript, what now?

1. Take a break – it’s always good to give yourself a bit of time to get perspective on your manuscript.
2. Edits – once you’ve had a bit of time off, you can dive back into your edits with a fresh eye. We’re talking both self edits and then a professional edit.
3. Get a friend to read through or get beta readers to check it over. Sometimes it takes someone who is completely removed from the book to spot the little niggling errors.
4. Identify the genre, and where it sits on Amazon bookshelf, and find comparable books to yours. This will help with your marketing and to figure out what your blurb and cover should look like.
5. Blurb – look at other blurbs, know what’s right for the genre you’ve chosen, write it, get feedback. The blurb is often the hardest piece of writing for this whole project! Don’t be afraid to get feedback from author friends.
6. Cover – find a cover designer, or get a pre made cover that fits the genre.
7. Set up the business side of things – this includes taxes, bank account, postal address, sole trader vs company etc, and your author email.
8. Author nuts and bolts – this includes choosing a pen name, deciding on wide vs exclusive, setting up your social media, creating your newsletter and website, writing an author bio, and getting a headshot.
9. Uploading prep – this includes formatting, choosing your categories and keywords, setting up the various platform accounts, Author Central.
10. Press the go button, Good luck to you all!

PLEASE NOTE: There are a million other things that could be added to this list, but in the interests of avoiding overwhelm, we’ve kept it simple. We’ve also very specifically avoided talking about overt marketing (other than cover and blurb etc), because we have many other podcast episodes that cover marketing off separately.

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