Wahoooo you’re doing amazingly well within your business and you’ve come up with an idea for a book or a planner! Congratulations! Now it’s time to get thinking about what you REALLY need to do to self-publish your business book.

The reason that you’re doing this is likely to reach a wider audience with your expertise and/or to get some recurring revenue into your business. Both can easily be done but there area few obstacles to overcome first.

1: You’ve got the idea and you’ve put pen to paper per se but you now need to think about the editing

Editing your manuscript can be quite a daunting task, especially when you think about the potential reach of whom your book or planner will reach. A quick tip would be to start at the basics and proof-read your book… over and over until you think that you’ve proofread to the point of not being able to do it again (but then do it again!) If you can afford to, I would strongly recommend that you outsource your editing, this is because:

A: the editor doesn’t know you

B: hiring a professional to do the job that you can no longer see clearly will always be the better option. After all, they’re the expert at this.

Once you’ve done this, you can then have some BETA readers for your book and if they’re within your audience then this is even better. You want honest opinions though… so don’t get people to BETA read if you think that they will pussy foot around you. Pussy footing won’t sell you books.

2: Format your book

So this is quite exciting because you’ve now got a fully edited book and this means that you can now start to think about how it will appear as a physical product. Amazon are really good and they’ve developed a LOT over the years to make self-publishing as easy as possible.

Once you’ve registered with Amazon KDP you can then download templates and choose the size of the book that you’d like. You then need to transfer your book into a PDF that’s easy to upload to KDP and to the size guidelines for their templates. Sometimes this can be a step too far after you’ve created your manuscript… if it is becoming a little overwhelming then again, I would outsource this part of the process. You can also hire a designer to design your book cover for you too… depending on how you feel about design (you can give it a go though and see how you get on!)

Oh… don’t forget to add on your copyright pages and your author info. These are pretty important parts of your book so do ensure that you’ve popped them onto your checklist!

Pst! Don’t forget to order an advanced copy because this will help you to spot the errors before publication (if there are any!)

3: Publishing – this is VERY exciting!

So this is where it gets a bit real… your time, blood, sweat and tears have gone into the making of your book and it’s now time to publish it! EEK! BUT you are’t quite finished yet as there really is a lot to think about at this stage. I know, I know, I’m sorry!

So, first off… think about your book description on Amazon and your keywords. These are really important because they really do help to lure people in and get your found. Like anything in business, it isn’t going to magically happen and good SEO will definitely help with this. Try to think of about 10 keywords here for your book or planner.

Second of all, you need to think about what category you’d like to be listed under. This is where it can become slightly confusing as there are honestly SO many categories to choose from. If there is a category that you can’t see your book or planner being listed under then you can easily request for a category to be listed for you.

Finally, let’s think about publication launch date. A waitlist is a fab way to generate interest in your book and get people talking. After all, we want people to talk about us and our amazing new book… right?

I hope that you found this useful! 

Love, Sophie x

P.S My Get Published! course where I will be walking you through step-by-step on how to self-published your business book launches 26th April. Click to join here