How to Write a Book: 10 Simple Steps to Self Publishing

Article Points:

• Joy shares her experience with self-publishing a book.
• The importance of research and defining your idea.
• Steps involved from drafting to final editing.
• The significance of professional editing and cover design.
• Formatting your book and preparing for distribution.

Hey guys, it's Joy here. And today I'm going to be a video on the 10 Steps to self-publish your own book. This video is a partnership with Lulu.com, which is a self-publishing gateway that I used to publish my first book.

You got into where? How I received admission and scholarships to the nation's top universities. Before we get into the video, make sure that you thumbs up this video if you're interested in things about book publishing.

Also, leave a comment below if you have a book out or if you're thinking about publishing a book, you can leave your idea, you can leave where we can find you, connect with you, all of that good stuff. I'm totally interested in hearing about all the independent authors out there, so we're gonna get straight into the video.

If you're interested in learning more about my book, you can go to ugotintoware.com/book that will be linked down below in the description box. Definitely check it out if you're a high school student or you're a parent of a high school student and you want to go to college and get scholarships.

So I published my book during my senior year of high school. I wrote the book and published it within three months, which is crazy. And I really just was focused and I followed these 10 steps to get the book published.

So number one is research. If you're going into the book publishing world, you definitely have to do your research. You have to decide if you want to go through a traditional publisher or you want to go and self-publish.

So I decided to self-publish because it was more affordable. Traditional publishers can cost thousands of dollars, especially if you're not some big wig celeb who can afford to pay that for a publisher. So for me, I wanted to go the self-publishing route.

So make sure you do your research and find out who you can self-publish through. I found Lulu. I thought they were great because they have great pricing on books.

If you're an author and you buy bulk books, you can get your book on Amazon and all of that great stuff and it's really easy to use and you don't have to go through anyone. No one else has to approve your book. You basically decide when your book is done and when it's ready to go to market.

So number two is to get the idea. You want to have an idea for what your book is going to be about, and once you get your idea, you kind of want to see what other types of books like that are out there.

So I knew I wanted to do a book on how to get into college. And I basically looked at all the college admissions books that were out there and I saw that none were written from a student's perspective.

So I knew that was going to be the unique characteristic about my book. Once you get your idea and you research the other books that are out there, you also want to see what's gonna make your book unique and why people are gonna want to buy it.

During the idea phase, it's also a good time to start building your audience. If you have social media, start building your audience. Start presenting yourself as an expert on that subject. That's especially important if you're writing a nonfiction book or a guide, which is what I was doing.

So I made YouTube videos on the college admissions process that didn't mention my book, but it was just free information that students could use. And they would start following me so they would know that I was a person they could go to.

Number three is to figure out your timeline. Book writing can take as little as three months, like I chose to do, or it can take years. It just depends on how much of a perfectionist you are, how long the book you're writing is, and all of that good stuff.

So I would write out a tentative timeline of everything that you're going to be doing over the next couple of months or years to get your book out. Because a lot of people wanna write books and they have book ideas, but they don't get it finished, they don't get it to publishing.

So number four, I have to make an outline. The outline is basically a tentative table of contents of what the chapters in your book are gonna be about.

After you have those basic broad statements of what you're gonna talk about, you then start to break it down into subcategories and you break those categories into more categories.

So for me, my outline looked like this table of contents initially. And then I kind of just wrote out small things about what I wanted to talk about. It doesn't have to be complete sentences. This can just be phrases and things that you definitely wanna talk about.

Then when you have different ideas about your book, you basically go add them to your outline under the section that it goes with. Eventually you're gonna start to see that you have a lot of stuff under certain sections. And that's how you know that those are going to be really solid chapters.

And then some sections, they won't have a lot. You can move them under different sections and make them a full chapter as well. So after you have that really broad outline, you're gonna want to start changing those phrases into sentences.

You do it like you did in high school, where you would have a big point and you'd have three sub-points and then you kind of just expand from there. So after your outline is done, that took me maybe a week or two to do.

I basically went on to my drafting stage. You basically keep writing until you hit your page limit or until you said everything that you know you have to say.

Definitely don't try to do it all in one sitting or one week because you're gonna get more ideas as it goes on. Throughout the whole process, you're gonna get more ideas of things you should add and subtract from your book.

So definitely do multiple drafts. Have different people give their opinions on your outline because they're definitely not going to read a whole draft of a book. But you can show them your outline and say, "Hey, is anything missing?"

You can survey your audience that you started to build in the idea stage. So I could ask students what do you want to know about the college admissions process? And they'll give you ideas about what you should put into the book.

I made sure all the frequently asked questions I got were in the book as well. So step six is to find an editor.

Do not publish your book without getting a professional editor or copywriter to look at your book. It's going to be so, so easy to convince yourself that you can edit it, or a friend could edit it, or a family member can edit it.

But this is what is going to make or break the quality of your final book. I turned in my edits and it came back and I had thousands of errors. And I am a journalism and public relations major and I love English and writing.

But when you're writing a book, there's so many things that can go wrong and so many things that you're just gonna overlook. So make sure you get an editor to check for grammar.

You might even want to hire someone to format your book because that part gets even crazier if you're not tech-savvy. So there are tons of places that you can find editors. I will try to link some below that I use, but basically you can just start with Google and searching book editors and you can find people who are really expensive and people who are affordable.

I was in high school, so I went more with the affordable one and I think I paid about $300 for my 100-page book edit.

So number seven is getting your book back from the editor and doing your final edit. You're going to want to read over everything that your editor changed or suggested you changed and kind of decide if you're gonna move forward with those changes or keep what you had.

You want to read over your manuscript tons of times. Read it out of order, in order, back to front, front to back and really just make sure that you're really happy with it because then you're going to be done with the writing stage but that is not the finish process.

So number eight, you can do this while your book is at the editor and that is your cover art. Either you hire a graphic designer to do your book cover art that might involve you going to a photo shoot if you wanna be on the cover of your book, or you just give the general ideas of what you want your book covered to be about to a graphic designer.

I have skills in Photoshop, Illustrator, all the Adobe tools. So I designed my own book cover and this is what it looks like and I had the photo taken of me from a photographer.

So that is what I decided on for my final cover. But definitely, if you do not have experience in graphic design, go to a graphic designer because the cover is what's going to make or break.

If people buy books, people really buy based on the cover. If you have a really unprofessional cover that's not, that doesn't abide by design principles, that's not easily readable if you have too many fonts, all of that stuff can drive your book sales down the drain.

So if you invest in anything, invest in an editor and invest in a graphic designer for your cover art.

Number nine, we're on our second last step. After you get your manuscript back from your editor, you have your cover art, it's time to format the inside of the book. So this might require a graphic designer as well.

If you're doing something like a cookbook, a guide, a non-fiction book, or you have a fiction book that you want to have cool graphics and stuff like that, a comic book, all of that stuff, you're gonna have to design the interior.

Even if you just have a simple novel, there are different rules when it comes to formatting your book for publishing and distribution. There are different sizes, fonts, margins and all of that good stuff that are requirements if you want your book to get published.

That will be given to you by your specific publisher. Thanks to Lulu, they give you an awesome guide on how to do it yourself. Or you can hand that off to whoever is doing the interior design of your book.

Definitely read the resources that Lulu has on getting your book published through their channels for the different things you have to do. I always recommend that you do your book writing in Microsoft Word.

I have a MacBook, I have pages, I did it on pages to start with and that just made the process so much harder. Do all of your formatting, your headings, your headers, all of that. Do it on Microsoft Word.

You will save yourself a huge headache if you think you want to use a different word processor. I'm sorry, go with Microsoft Word because you will have a headache if you try to do something else to go publish your book.

And the last step is number 10 and that is ordering your proof copy of your book. So before your book can go to publishing with Lulu, you have to purchase a proof copy, which is your sample copy.

This is my proof actually that I had gotten and I have written in here that it's my proof so I don't accidentally sell this to someone. But this is what you're gonna get in the mail and then you're gonna go through it.

I'd recommend you read it a few times, give it to someone else to read. Make sure all the font sizes look good, make sure there's no spelling errors that you missed, and make sure that the cover is formatted how you want it to look.

After you have your proof, then you will approve it for distribution and that will send your book onto different channels. With Lulu, you have the pleasure of being able to go on Amazon, iBooks, Barnes and Noble and a bunch of different retailers online, which is amazing.

So my book is available on Amazon Prime, I have it on my website, I have it a bunch of different places that people can purchase if they're in the US or not.

And once it's published, you're gonna want to work on different things like marketing, distribution, presales, all of that good stuff, which is a whole nother video that I can make.

But basically, after you finish the book, you want to work on your launch plan. Some people do book tours, some people do online webinars, some people have YouTube channels, all of that good stuff. If you're interested in learning more about how to market and promote your book, definitely let me know in the comments below.

I'd love to make a video on that as well. So those are the 10 steps to self-publishing your own book. I hope you guys are excited and this helps you get some guidance on how to publish your own book.

Definitely leave any questions you have in the comments below. I'll be there answering. And that, that's basically it. So make sure you guys check out my book U Got Into Where and it is available at ugotintoware.com/book.