5 Things Self Publishers Should Do

Working on a book and planning to self publish, there's five things that you should probably do sooner than later that you may not have thought of. Stick around. I'm going to make sure you're all set when it comes time to publish your book. Hey there. I'm Julie Broad, creator of Revenue Training, Inc. And havemoreinfluence.com after just launching this book, I realized there's a handful of things that a lot of folks self publishing don't realize you're going to have to do. Here's my list of the top five things you probably haven't thought of that you're going to need to do as a self publisher to save you time and maybe even money down the road. Number one, don't wait until you're ordering the graphics design of your book cover to write your book cover copy. Because one of the things you're going to want for your book cover besides your title is probably going to be a little bio of yourself, some testimonials, and of course a book description. And this stuff has to be excellent. This cover sells your book or doesn't sell your book, and what is on it matters a lot. So you're going to want to start soliciting testimonials and endorsements for your book as soon as you have a draft that is worthy of being shared in some format. So you're going to want to make sure you get those testimonials, collect as many as you can so you can pick the best ones for your cover and start writing a book description. And I highly recommend you get people with copywriting expertise to read it, get an editor to review it and refine it, and make sure that it cuts the marketing mustard. If you're writing a nonfiction book, you may want to have it indexed. I only mention it because it adds a couple of weeks to your timeline because you might be planning a specific launch date. And if you're doing that, but then have things like editing and indexing and layout that take longer than you expect, then your project will be delayed and they'll mess up your launch date. So just factor it in. If you're planning on having your book indexed, plan for it to take two weeks and probably get in contact with the person that's going to be indexing it so that you're in touch with them and they're ready for your project when you send it to them. Number three, another suggestion regarding your timeline, allocate a lot of time to review it in every single format. So if you're getting it done in a Kindle format, in an ibooks format as well as a printed format. You're going to have to read that bad boy three more times. Yeah. I hope you love your book because by the end of reading it a hundred times, it's a lot harder to love it. But you have to read it in those formats because funky things happen when it goes into the layout for those things. One of the things that happened in my layout was in the printed version only. I discovered that she had accidentally numbered 11 3. Didn't notice this until the final product. And I only noticed it in the print version. It wasn't in the Kindle version. So these little things happen during layout processing and you have to read it. And so that's more time. You can probably add another couple weeks to your schedule to take care of those things. Number four is kind of a planning thing as well. But you want to have bloggers and podcasters and reviews on Amazon and you want to send these books out in advance. So when you launch, these folks are ready with those reviews. They're ready to share with their audience. They have your book in hand to do that. So once you have printed copies, start sending them out. Or once you have a fairly final version of a PDF, you can start sending it out to these people to get their reviews, to get them to start writing articles for their blogs, or start interviewing you for podcasts so that things are all ready for the launch. This takes some planning because it's logistics and coordination with other people's schedules and plans and following up, because just because somebody says they're going to do it doesn't mean they will. So if you're one of those people who said you were going to write a great review of one of my books on Amazon, there's no time like today to fulfill that obligation. Thank you. Seriously, you can expect probably a third of the people who say they're going to do a review for you to actually do it. And even that's being generous. So you're going to need to follow up with these people and also give them several weeks to review your book so they can do a good job of a review in advance for you. Number five, your author Headshot. Yes, for that cover. But here's the thing that happened to me on my first book. I had a actually peach colored shirt. Not this one, but one kind of like it. And that was my headshot. Loved the headshot. Always figured it would be on the back cover until my book cover was red. It didn't look so good with the red cover. So the very last minute, I had to go back, get a new headshot wearing a black shirt. So in advance, get a couple, probably three or four you, different headshots, different directions so that you're facing different ways because you don't know what your cover design is going to be like right now. So you don't know what color of shirt is going to stand out or blend in or look the best. You don't know what direction you need to be facing for it to complement the design. So give your designer some options by getting a few different colored shirts, a few different poses, and send them some great material to work with. If you like this video, please do give it a thumbs up. Subscribe to my channel so that you catch them all and we'll see you here again soon. Bye. Are you working on a book baby? Here's my latest baby. Well, I'm actually working on another baby, too. A real baby. But my book baby. My book baby number two is right here. The new, brand new. Did you get your copy yet?