How to self-publish a book
The dream come true moment for any writer is when they see their name on the spine of a book. The rush of euphoria felt in the veins is unparalleled.
But what does it take to self-publish a book?
When I published my first book, Alesia, I had many friends texting me asking how did I do it. Honestly, I saw myself asking the same question just a few months back. I had a finished manuscript in hand. It was a unique non-fiction about the most intelligent battle in human history, yet there were very very few books that covered the topic, one of them was an ancient account written by Julius Caesar himself. There were a few history textbooks that covered the battle but that was it. I could not find a single book that told the incident as an epic military drama it actually was. So, I took it upon myself to tell the story as a fast-paced cinematic spectacle and wrote a 150-page manuscript.
Now I had the raw manuscript, nowhere good enough to publish as a book. One thing every novice writer assumes is that writing itself is the hardest part, editing is just a small step.
I disagree. Editing is just as important as writing itself. Being able to edit our raw thoughts into readable and relatable format makes or breaks our book. The true magic lies in making every reader feel what the author was feeling when he wrote down those words. So, I started tightening my plot. The writer’s liberty was not applicable to this work because I have to relay the exact incidents that happened in 52 BC. It was not in my power to overdramatize the battle, and under-dramatizing will do no justice to the warriors involved in the story. So I had to strike the perfect balance and to do that I consulted all the research I did over 9 months of writing the manuscript and broken down and stitched up my final draft, 72 pages, less than half in length compared to my initial draft.
This was my first book, just a small experiment to test the waters into the depths of literature. I convinced myself it was not worth the effort to contact publishing houses and waiting for their reply as to if they actually appreciated my work or not. I have already decided to publish this little glimpse into history, so I chose self-publishing. Many people falsely assume that self-publishing is a sign of failure. There is absolutely nothing wrong with sharing your work with the world yourself, especially if you strongly believe that the world needs to read your beautiful piece. I chose online self-publishing since it has the widest range of potential readers base. I created myself an Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) account, entered all the required details of the book, uploaded the final manuscript and the cover page that I designed myself, linked my bank account, and set the pricing. Then I had to follow a very similar process for publishing the paperback version of the same book.
2 days later I received an email saying they found no problems with my book and that it is live on Amazon!! Kindle version is available in 13 (weird number, I know) countries and paperback edition in 8.
I enrolled myself in the KDP Select program that promotes my book on my behalf, the downside being I cannot publish my ebook anywhere else until the enrollment period of 3 months expires, which bummed me out. Obviously. So, take my protip and do not enroll in KDP Select, if you wanted your book to be available on other platforms immediately.
Once published, you can order author copies of the book for yourself and giveaways.
Thus was my journey, from researching to writing to editing and publishing my very first book. It is available here, in case you want to take a look. Please do not forget to leave a review. I’m a very bored young man who would love to know what your beautiful mind thought of my work. and I could not be proud enough if this article helped you in any way.
#neverstopwriting
