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Self-Publishing Process at a Glance

Photo closeup of e-reader
Photo by Charles on Unsplash
Source

The Self-Publishing Process at a Glance

Information below is adapted from Book Design Made Simple: A step-by-step Guide to Designing and Typesetting your own Book using Adobe InDesign by Fiona Raven and Glenna Collett. Page numbers are noted in parentheses.

Step 1

  • Start your market research. Yes, you should do this before you write the book (5, 55).
  • Write the book.

Step 2

  • Work with an editor. Please, we beg of you, get an editor. You will be so glad you did.
  • Ask for permission to borrow material—words or images. This can take a long time, so start early. Have a backup plan in case permission is not granted (28, 41).

Step 3

  • Plan your pages for design. Decide if you are going to divide the book into parts or sections. Decide if you are going to include a glossary or an index. Plan to leave a couple of pages for your table of contents, and figure out the order in which will all appear (6).
  • Choose your software.

Step 4

  • Design and lay out your main text (1–54).
  • Design of your front and back matter. That’s the title page, copyright page, dedication, contents, bibliography, appendix, index, and whatever else you might have at the beginning or end of the book (28, 29).

Step 5

  • Send your pages out for proofreading. Please don’t skip this step because a proofreader always catches mistakes that you have missed. Always (53).
  • Obtain the permissions you requested in step 2. They go on the copyright page.
  • Obtain copyright page necessities: ISBN and CIP data (28, 68).

Step 6

  • Design your book cover (55–67).
  • Get the barcode for your back cover, if you’re planning a print edition (68, 70).

Step 7

  • Insert your proofreader’s corrections (53).
  • Send your chapters out to a professional indexer—if your print book will have an index, that is. It’s possible to do your own index, but a pro will do a better job (54).
  • For a print book, have some advance review copies printed and send them out so you can get reviews and find a distributor if you want one.

Step 8

  • Finish the cover (67).
  • Finish the copyright page (28).
  • Create your book’s website. Every book needs a website these days.

Step 9

  • Add the index into your pages (54).
  • Prepare a final file to send to the printer (71, 72) or ebook distributor (73).

Step 10

  • Review the proofs from the printer or ebook distributor (72).
  • Update your website and start selling prepublication copies.
  • Make arrangements with online vendors such as Amazon.
  • Receive your printed books—if you’re publishing a print book.

Step 11

  • One final step: If you used Book Design Made Simple: A step-by-step Guide to Designing and Typesetting your own Book using Adobe InDesign as your guide, you can send them a PDF of your book cover and one chapter of pages at BookDesignMadeSimple.com and they will post them in the “Readers’ Books” section on their website.

Information provided by BookDesignMadeSimple.com