Publishing 101: How To Launch Your Book without breaking the Bank (Or, More Importantly, Your Soul 😊)
Have you ever googled for publishing advice and been flooded with an overwhelming amount of blogs, YouTube videos, and FB posts?
The current number of search results for publishing a book is 1,740,000,000.
The current number of search results for publishing a book is 1,740,000,000.
That means if you spent 1 minute browsing every article it would take not only your entire life, but the entire life of your child, grandchild, and great grandchild to finish every article.
As an author, what are you most confused/overwhelmed about?
Here are the most common answers we get:
As an author, what are you most confused/overwhelmed about?
Here are the most common answers we get:
- “I’m not a technology person so figuring out Amazon KDP feels like learning a foreign language.”
- “I don’t know how to spend wisely when I self-publish. I don’t want to waste any money.”
- “Writing this book has been so much work, I don’t want to burn out during the publishing process.”
- “As a single parent/working professional I already spent my spare time writing, and I don’t have extra time to research the publishing details.”
After you write your first draft is when most authors run into the slump.
You lose the excitement of writing every day and seeing your book as a finished product feels ever more distant.
You lose the excitement of writing every day and seeing your book as a finished product feels ever more distant.
So, how do you get from the slump to the book launch without getting derailed?
Remember that writing and publishing a book is hard. That’s why everyone talks about doing it and very few people actually do. Just making it to the revision/editing stage already puts you in the top %1.
Publishing a book is a peak life experience.
Our authors talk about it the same way they remember living overseas or designing their dream house.
We’ve taken the 4-week workshop we taught for the National Endowment of the Arts Big Reads program and turned it into a self-paced online course: The Self-Published Author Accelerator.
The course combines video lessons with downloadable pdfs:
- Everything You Need To Know About Buying An ISBN Number And Barcode
- Why Amazon Deletes Book Reviews (How To Prevent It)
- Case Studies and Recommendations For Kindle vs Paperback vs Audiobook Vs Hard Cover
- Specific Recommendations For Trim Size And Font
- How To Pick Keywords And Categories For Your Book To Become An Amazon #1 Bestseller
- Breakdown Of Where To Self-Publish Your Book With Specific, Tested Recommendations
- Step-By-Step Guided Video For How To Publish Your Book On Amazon KDP
Since teaching at the NEA Big Reads Program we’ve also added new bonuses:
It’s been a decade since Carmen helped her first writer become an author. But it feels like we’ve seen 4 decades worth of mistakes:
We use the Pareto Principle to focus on the 20% of effort and investment that will get you 80% of the results. These are steps that we’ve learned working with authors like Chip Heath from Stanford Business School whose books have sold over 3 million copies and been translated into 30 languages including Thai, Arabic, and Lithuanian.
At the end of the Self-Published Author Accelerator you will have a digital and physical copy of your book, publishing on a widely accessible platform, and you won’t be spending an extra $1,000 plus on unnecessary add-ons.
- How do authors actually make money? Example author business models
- Actual Numbers Of How Much Authors Make On Their Books and Book Sidestreams
- Complete Checklist Of Everything You Need Before You’re Ready To Publish
It’s been a decade since Carmen helped her first writer become an author. But it feels like we’ve seen 4 decades worth of mistakes:
- Authors who waste another 1-3 years after publishing to get everything perfect and lose out on the readers and have clients they could have met.
- Authors who spend an extra $3,000-$12,000 on unnecessary and wasted steps while self-publishing their books.
- Authors who write great books but don’t really understand how books make money and are crushed when their book sales slump.
We use the Pareto Principle to focus on the 20% of effort and investment that will get you 80% of the results. These are steps that we’ve learned working with authors like Chip Heath from Stanford Business School whose books have sold over 3 million copies and been translated into 30 languages including Thai, Arabic, and Lithuanian.
At the end of the Self-Published Author Accelerator you will have a digital and physical copy of your book, publishing on a widely accessible platform, and you won’t be spending an extra $1,000 plus on unnecessary add-ons.
don't just be a writer, be an author.
Here’s an email we got when one of our authors launched and hit #1 in an Amazon Self Help category.
And this Instagram comment from an author before their book even went live:
If you want to learn from bestselling authors what actually works and you want a proven, targeted path to successful self-publishing then we’d love to share our course with videos, checklists, proven word-or-word scripts, and step-by-step tutorials.
