Self-publishing Part Two

In my first post on self-publishing, I talked about why I decided to self-publish rather than try to get my book, The Paper Trail: Useful  Charts to Organize Your Writing published through a traditional publishing house. 

Now I’d like to discuss the steps I took to get from idea to book-in-hand. 
 
·  First, I had the idea, which might seem like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised at how many people try to write a book without having any clear sense of the book’s purpose before they start to write.
 
·  Since I was already using many of the charts in the book for my own business, it only took a couple of weeks to brainstorm and come up with more ideas that other writers, doing other types of writing, might find useful. Creating the charts was actually the most enjoyable part of the whole book process.

·  Once I had the charts made and printed out, I created fictional information or used work-related information to fill in those charts so I could use them as samples. This process was a bit time consuming, but I knew it was necessary for readers to have a full grasp of how the book charts could function in their writing.

·  I started to play around with ideas for the cover design. Then I did a ton of reading on book cover design online, and then I started brainstorming new ideas. I learned far more than I probably needed, but I’m glad I did the research. The original design was far more complicated than the one I finally wound up using. 

·  I learned the very basics on how to use Photoshop, InDesign, and some of the other Adobe Creative Cloud programs. Much of the month of May was spent trying to understand it all by watching videos, reading tutorials, and reading a couple of books on the subject. The more I learned, the more I realized I still had a lot more to learn, but I finally got a cover design that I was happy with. For the next book I self-publish, I’ll probably hire a graphic artist to create the cover, as I’d rather be writing than scrabbling around learning new computer programs, especially when the programs decide to act wonky at times. Then the frustration really sets in!

·  The one aspect of self-publishing that has turned out to be the hardest is the marketing of the book. I am still in the process of reading and learning how to launch a product successfully; the next book will be done with more intent so that more readers find it more rapidly. 
 
If you have any questions, feel free to send me a comment. I’m happy to help new writers as they travel down this same road. 

Cheers!