By RiazDhich You were waking-up early in the mornings to complete your drafts, now hands on the final draft and finding a place to get it published. As writing is a skill, publishing your content is even a skill. Publishing requires strategic decisions and a deep understanding of the demand of market in literary terms. Before publishing, an author needs to pass through the process of editing, and proof-reading. As book industry is thriving, and self-publishing is rising, demands of self-publishing is dedicated to foster the new emerging talents, to be well-aware of every bit of information with exceptional guidance and knowledge.
Let’s delve into this blog to get knowledge about some factors that are to be taken in account before investing your time and money in publishing.
Pros Of Self-Publishing
You can check about the Canadian book publishers, if you are located in Canada and written a book. Didn’t find something matching your demands, go for self-publishing side. Before the self-publishing is examined deeply, let’s consider some of the advantages of self-publishing.
- No Gatekeeper: As there are no literary agents or publishers blocking your way. This leads for diversity to flourish, and underrepresented voices to stand and raise their voice as they have finally some space to share their work.
- More Profit: Along with the merit of increasing the chances of getting book in market, your profit margin bar goes high. When you choose to work with traditional publishing houses, they have to take their cut. By getting your book published solely alone, you earn more for each book that you sell.
- Your Ownership: Getting your work self-publish, gives you a feeling that you have bought-up your baby. As an author, you have poured in your heart and soul, waited keenly for this day. It’s very important for you make decisions through competing the publishing process.
- Equal Quality: With the boosting technology, if your book is given the same value as a book published by a publishing house, so why not opt for self-publishing. Your book will look similar to other books on the shelf.
Steps To Self-Publish Your Book
Looked into the advantage of self-publishing, made up your mind and ready to publish your book solely on own. These steps and guidelines will make it possible.
Set Your Goals
Merchants use the market research strategy to know about the demand of the audience. They examine closely the products that are market competitive, find their strengths and weaknesses to target the audience.
This process might sound weird to a writer, but good writers are aware of the importance of this step. This will help them in easily selling their books down the road.
It is an obvious thing, a writer takes a paper and jots down all the points clicking in their mind before considering the demand of audience, and each writer has strength in some specific genres. To get your masterpiece up on the book shelves, consider these steps beforehand:
- Identify your Genre: Genre is more than simple a book category. Features like story structure, writing style, and content differ in each type of genre. Consider those features that can easily target the audience.
- Evaluate your Competitor’s Positioning: Searching about the positioning of your competitor in the chosen genre helps in pitching the audience. Question yourself, what makes the popular books in your genre set apart from others. The creativity in their cover pages, the title, and content helps in compelling the audience to give it a read. How can you grab reader’s attention?
- Fill in the Gaps: Search out the market gaps and find possible ways in filling up those gaps. This will help with selecting the target audience and can excel in no time.
If already you are done with the drafting of your write-up and ready for self-publishing, touch upon market potential before moving to the next steps. In any case, having an understanding of the audience for your book will help you in making future decisions.
Edit Like An Expert
Before publishing, editing is pivotal step that cannot be missed. Remember, your book will even compete in the same market as other books. Edit your manuscripts like a professional to remove errors in all possible ways. Your book needs to look just as refined and polished as it is product of major publishing house.
It is clear that you might not have vast well of editors that a large publisher has, but this doesn’t mean you can’t compete the market.
Design A Creative Book Cover
A book is always judge by its cover. This is a wrong strategy while looking for something to read, but most people do. Your book acts as your manuscript’s first visual expression when users browsing online, searching in marketplaces or every place where your book is sold.
Many authors choose the option of designing their book covers either hiring a professional designer or use freelancing apps to get their work done.
Choose Your Publishing Platform
If you’ve written a fiction or a comic book. You can look for the option of Comic Book Publishers in Canada, or you can get your books self-published using different self-publishing platforms. A self-publishing is a tool where all elements of your book are converted into a physical product and distributed to buyers and retailers. It depends on the type of self-publishing company you use, the distribution channel will be affected. Think deeply about the places where you can sell your books online.
Looked and searched about those online platforms, figure out all the requirements of these platforms and work on completing their demands.
Format Your Book
At this stages, you will be putting the final touchups to your book, making sure it meets all the demands of a professionally published book.
It looks strange when thinking about this stage after finding a publisher. The hidden secret is self-publishing platforms typically have their own built-in layout and formatting features. The tools you use may differ from theirs but no worry as the end product will be same.
Format Your Manuscript
Although you have already written and edited your manuscripts to perfection, there are still some changes needed before publishing.
Set your trim and margins: publishing platforms have set a specific height and weight of your page. You need to set it accordingly.
Front material: you are supposed to set all the materials before the main manuscript. These include:
- A half-title page: the very first page of the book that contains the book’ title and nothing else.
- A title page: the title page even don’t include the page numbers. There will be publishing company’s logo, but if self-published so logo is optional.
- Copyright page: this is one of the most important page after the title page. This contains information of all the book’s copyright information.
- Table of content: a page where all the chapters and section title of your book are mentioned along with the page numbers.
- Body matter: a body matter contains all the text of your chapters. These contain page numbers on each page.
- Back matter: once all your main story content is presented, there is a page for the author’s biography, and picture if the writer is comfortable in sharing.
It’s Time For Launching
Launch your book in a way the store launches its book. You may not be experienced like a publishing house, but you’ve prepared yourself for marketing by creating a book that has an audience you know in and out. Create websites for your book.
Run Campaigns On Social Media
You’ve written our book, turned it into a masterpiece. You’ve tested all your sales channels and everything is functioning flawlessly. You’ve designed a marvelous website and a great looking book, but still struggling in finding customers.
Social media marketing is the trick to find and reach customers. Social media offers low cost access to huge audiences, having command on social media marketing strategy will help you in building connections.
This is a long-term process, but as more and more audience members become familiarized with your work, your online sales will grow.
Start Your Work On Next Book
Now you’ve completed all these steps and got your first book hands-on experience, you should now start working on your next manuscript as you’re born to glow.
FAQS
Do I need a publishing company to publish my books?
No having your own publishing house is not an essential requirement. You can use the option of self-publishing to get your book published. The clarity of advantages of self-publishing and its steps are important.
Is self-publishing a challenge?
Every work has some challenges initially. Self-publishing is a challenge in terms of limited visibility, potential quality concerns, self-marketing challenges, distribution difficulties, and many more. One can overcome these challenges, and become a pro.
Is it more profitable to self-publish?
When you are self-publishing, profits are significantly higher than traditional publishing. You are the author, the editor, marketer, and publisher, you keep most of the profit.
You Can Do It!
After reading all these pros and steps of self-publishing, you can build in your believe. Just be aware, in the process of publishing don’t show ambiguity. As ambiguity is your enemy. Set your goal by researching about the places where content can be published, the requirements of publishing house, your book version, all those questions that an author is curious about before getting the content viral to readers.
Visualize your strategy of distribution. Clear with all these steps, you are good to go.
