Before I jumped into the world of Self-Publishing or Indie Publishing as it is sometimes referred to, I just want to say that I knew nothing. I am a Gen-X baby born in 72. My generation grew up with typewriters, then word processors, then the good ole Apple 2E, Oregon Trail anyone? When I was a senior I begged my parents to help me buy a Tandy K100. Wildly, I still have the hard disks somewhere in a case.

My point is, the internet boom didn’t really kick off until the mid to late 90’s. When I reached my twenties and even my early 30’s, the options were to write or type a manuscript, print it, then snail mail or drop it off at an agent’s office or publishing house. Emailing a manuscript just wasn’t a thing in the early 90’s. There was no internet that was used mainstream until at the earliest, 1994, so there was no saving and then sending your manuscript via email and PDF.

Fast forward to the 2000’s, eBooks and other electronic publishing and reading mediums came about one after another. Soon enough, AmazonKDP, IngramSpark and many others popped up for the means of self-publishing. Here is a list of self-publishing outfitters to peruse from an excellent reedsy post if you’re unsure who you want to utilize. In some cases you can select more than one.

With that in mind, when I decided to self-publish my debut novel it was after a lot of research that still left me needing some help from those that had already been there.

I had the completed manuscript that I had rewritten and edited multiple times but what next. What needed to be done before I moved to technical aspects of the actual self-publishing?

I suggest doing at least 4 of these, if not all of them. I did them all and still had my share of chaos and anxiety. But I’ll get to the why of that later and how to avoid that from happening.

1. Have a friend or contact that has self-published that you can reach out to with questions.
2. Pay for a Story Editor.
3. Listen to your novel read back to you.
4. Create an AmazonKDP account or Ingramspark.
5. Give your manuscript to friends and/or Beta Readers to read either in full or excepts.
6. Spell check your novel and run it through Grammarly, as well.
7. Pay for a copy editor.
8. Complete your edits from your copy editor.
9. Read your novel, yes, again. Have at least one other person read your novel.  In part 2 of this I will go step by step with what you need and the cost to get your manuscript uploaded and for sale.
10. Have a support team. A cheer squad, if you will. Everyone needs positive vibes.

Have a friend or contact that has self-published that you can reach out to. I reached out to a friend who is a self-published romance novelist and has been there and done that with much success. I am purposely not mentioning her name here because I will mention her in another post regarding suggested summer reading. She was extremely helpful in that she gave me the key thing I didn’t know I needed. She told me about Atticus, the program where I would upload and format my manuscript in an actual book format. Don’t try to do it all alone. Feel free to email me and if I can, I will help or point you in the right direction.

Pay for a story editor. I can not recommend this enough. In my opinion, every writer should do this at least once. This is because while the sound of ‘story editor’ might be intimidating, they are helpful and useful. My story editor was beneficial not just with the novel I was working on, but with helping me hone my writing skills overall.

Issues that a story-editor can help with:

• Too many lead characters
• An excessive amount of characters that don’t do anything but were fun to write
• Scene transitions
• Too many stories going on around the main and subplot
• Ways to fix backstory delivery
• Ways to subtly weave and thread in backstory
• Confidence building
• Giving you constructive criticism – it might sting a little at first, but it will make you a stronger writer in the long run 
• Tightening and streamlining your stories best aspects in a way that engages the reader, as opposed to confuses them

My point is, a story editor won’t try to change your story idea, they will help you write your story better, how you want to, so the general reader will be able to grasp it all as close to how you want it received.

Listen to your novel out loud. You can enlist a friend or simply use word or another writing program to have the computer read back to you. You will hear things that you just don’t notice when visually reading and editing your story. I promise you, its worth it to do this step at least once.*For Word – on the far right of your top word panel there is a column- Read Mode. You will select Speak. You need to highlight a sentence or section and when you hit play the system will start reading out loud to you.

Give your manuscript to a few friends and/or Beta Readers to read either in full or excepts. Have a reading party where you select a few chapters to read. You can give people the pages ahead of time but I like doing cold read where they’ve never seen the pages before. This is how someone that buys your book would read it. 

Spell check your novel and run it through Grammarly. Now the thing about running your manuscript through Grammarly is that this step is done the easiest if you have your novel formatted in word and run each chapter through Grammarly, individually. This was how I did it once I had my chapters separated and it worked great.

(This is done by putting all of your chapter titles in HEADING 1, then go to View drop down and select Navigation pane). Atticus explains how to do this on their site under what to do before you upload your manuscript, as well. This will create a list of the chapters to the left of your manuscript so that can make changes more accurately. When I ran each chapter through Grammarly, my goal was an overall score of 80% or higher. What percentage you choose is up to you.

Pay for a copyeditor.  It is a crucial element to publishing your first novel, any novel for that matter. Do this at the end, when you’ve done everything you can to get it as clean as possible. You might think well, I’m an English teacher and my writing skills are superior and on point. I don’t doubt that they are but when we write, our eyes are glued to pages for days, weeks and sometimes, years. Because of this we know our stories inside and out.

So when we edit, our brain, at times, will fill in corrections or a word that isn’t there. Not because there is anything wrong with our brain, but because it’s learned our story like a computer. We know our stories, we dream about them. This is why hiring a copyeditor is crucial, especially for your first go around. They will get into the bones of your story and make sure the grammar and style are within the parameters of readable, professional and presentable.

My suggestion is when shopping copy-editors, narrow it down to 2 and give them the same 2 chapters to sample their editing style. By having someone edit a sample chapter it allows you to know if they are in tune with your style. This does not mean, if someone marks something wrong that IS wrong, but you like it anyway, get someone else. No, you will have to sacrifice and also make some tough choices. It’s all part of the process.

You do not have to take all of the suggestions of a copyeditor. That is fine, but if you discard your copyeditors suggestions, know why you are making that choice.

If you feel insulted when you get your edits back, like you know more, or they didn’t get your story… don’t waste energy on that. If you don’t like their advice, you need to know why you feel not taking it will present your story better or more closely to how you want to present it. I say this because it’s good practice to be able to know those answers in the event a question comes up about your craft and choices.

Complete your edits from your copy-editor – Self explanatory

Read your novel, yes, again.  And have at least one other person read your novel. This is because the last time you worked on your novel you were doing edits and corrections and sometimes when we’re fixing one thing, we can accidently, create an error on another.

Have a support team, a cheer squad, if you will. Everyone needs positive vibes. This is an important step because while people may know you’re a writer, you should let them know you’re publishing your book. You need to get used to people being excited for you. Having friends like one book or another that you wrote is wonderful, but having your friends support you as a writer and understand even a glimpse of the commitment, agony, passion and joy of the whole writers process is one of the best gifts. I am very lucky to have what I’ll call, my squad.  It doesn’t matter who it is, just try to have 1-3 people that you can go to when stressed, stuck, excited and about to launch your book, because once you do it gets a little crazy and you need to put yourself out there, like it or not. You become the CEO and your business becomes writing and selling your books. Be proud. 

If you’ve reached the end of this post, it means your close to beginning the actual self-publishing process. Be sure to check out Part 2 of this blog and if you run into trouble, feel free to reach out with a question. 

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