How to Successfully Self Publish: Indie Publishing for Beginners

1. Welcome & Course Overview: Hello, and welcome to How to successfully self publish your book Indie Publishing for beginners. Are you interested in self publishing, but you don't know where to start? Or maybe you've tried it before and you just found the whole thing overwhelming? Well, I'm Wayne Kelly, Indie author, script writer, and podcast producer. And in this course, I'll give you all the tools and confidence you need to get your book out into the world and give you the best platform for success. I'll show you how to adopt a professional mindset to ensure your book sits perfectly besides those big budget bestsellers out there. We'll dive into things like setting a budget. We'll explore editing options. We'll talk type setting and book formatting. There are course notes along the way and some practical exercises as well to make sure you see why you definitely should judge your book by its cover, for example, we'll also help you hone your book descriptions and explain Amazon KDP, ISBNs, and all the other technical stuff you shouldn't be afraid of. All of that, and we'll even touch on the dreaded sales and marketing, talking about how you can start to create an author platform and generate buzz for you and your books. So by the end of the course, you'll be feeling more confident and ready to start or continue if you've already begun your journey, your Indie publishing adventure and get your book out on kindle and paperback and into the hands of your readers. So let's take a quick look at the course overview itself. So what are we going to be looking at? So initially, we'll be looking at what do I mean when I talk about Indi publishing and why did I choose it? How is it different to self publishing and traditional publishing? Then we'll look at that exciting time. You've written a book, but what now? And that's all about making your book as good as it possibly can be, thinking about things like editing and stuff like that. Then we'll take a look at the Amazon elephant in the room. Yes, it's the biggest retailer, and it has a huge impact on your sales and everything else. But what does that mean in terms of stats and also the way that you approach putting your book out into the world? Then we'll look at why you should judge your book by its cover. We'll give you some practical exercises to look at book covers, how it has to reflect your genre, how it has to look professional, slick, and it's the single biggest factor often when people are deciding whether to buy your book or not. So we'll look into that and we'll give you some of the tools to help you there as well. And then we'll be looking at formatting your book. It's not just a case of taking a Microsoft Word document and throwing it up onto Kindle. There are other factors. There are more than one kind of file that you need to look at. There are tools out there, free and paid, and I'll be talking to you all the way through that. Chapter six, we look at that technical stuff that I mentioned before, so it's KDP, it's ISBNs. We'll look at how you can get a KDP Amazon account and how you have to set that up and also look at your ISBNs and your barcodes and setting up an imprint. Then we'll talk about the blurbs. Now, people mean different things when they talk about the blurbs, but for me, it's the book description. It's the back cover copy. It's the thing that helps to sell your book. It's the description of the book. There's a formula, there's a way that you can approach that. I'll help you with all of that. And then finally, we'll end on sales, marketing and this idea of becoming an author, building this platform. How can you make it unique to you? How can you set yourself up for success and ready to build this ongoing Indie publishing platform. So we've got all of that. There'll be coursework as you go along. There'll be things to do. There'll also be course notes that you can download, and you can also send your questions to me. You can email me Wayne at wayne Kelly rights.com, and I'll talk you through it, as well. But for now, let's crack on. Let's get started, head over to Chapter one, and I'll see you there. 2. 1.1: Introduction to Indie Publishing: So welcome to Chapter one. What is Indie publishing and why did I choose it? So first of all, let's take a quick look at what we're looking at in this module. So I've split this module into two parts. First of all, we'll be looking at TAD versus Indi and what I mean by that traditional publishing versus Indi publishing looking at the differences between the two. Then we'll be looking specifically at what I mean when I talk about Indie publishing, because it's not the same as traditional, obviously, but it's also not just straightforward self publishing. There's something else, and there's a different way that I like to think about it. And then in Part two, we'll be looking at my own journey and my thought process, and then I'll give you some coursework and things to think about yourself as you move forward in your own Indie publishing journey. So let's get started and look at some of these different areas. So first of all, what is Indi publishing? What do I mean when we talk about that? But the best thing to do with that is to look at the differences between traditional or Trad publishing and Indi publishing. So traditional publishing, hopefully most of you are sort of familiar with that. And if you're not even if you haven't gone down that route yet, anytime you pick up a mass marketed paperback or hardback off the shelf, that has probably been through some form of traditional publishing with a large publisher, or maybe it's a small independent publisher, but it's the same sort of principles. You're printing lots of copies. There's often an agent involved and other people. That's sort of traditional. So let's go through and look at the specific. So with traditional publishing, you've got this idea of gatekeepers and agents. And if you've been down that route, you'll know what I'm talking about. So this is the idea of, you know, you putting together your submissions package, your first three chapters, your synopsis, your covering letter, which these days is an email. And you're often doing that to try to get initially, you try to get an agent, and then you're hoping that the agent takes you on, and then they will help pitch you to a publisher. That's one way of doing it. Also, there are small presses, and there are digital first publishers now that accept direct submissions, and you don't need an agent, but even so, it's the same thing. There's usually a gatekeeper, there's somebody checking the work, looking it over deciding whether it's for them and deciding whether it fits with what they do. And obviously, with Indy and self publishing, there's nobody to stop you, which is a double edged sword, so we'll talk about that a little bit later. With traditional publishing, there's also a team behind you, depending on the size of the publisher. They've often got marketing, promotions, sales, editing. There are sometimes TV pluggers. There is a whole print team and all the rest of it. You know, depending on the size of the publisher, that can be huge. And with Indy, again, you're on your own, kind of, which we'll talk about. We'll talk about this idea of putting your own team together. But you are on your own, essentially. Traditional publishing, depending on the size of the deal that you get, if you actually get accepted by a large publisher, there could be a bigger budget. You might have more money to spend, depending on what your own budget is, but there'll be people there. There'll be a certain amount of money to spend on your book in terms of getting it right, getting it ready for marketing, getting ready for market, looking at the cover and all the rest of it. So that's something to bear in mind, whereas with Indy, you are investing in yourself. And again, we'll go into this more later on. But I'm not always talking about financially when I talk about investing in yourself. I'm talking about investing in yourself like you have by doing this course, for example. It's the time. Yes, there's some financial element to it, but it's the time to learn these new skills that will send you in good stead. Traditional publishing, we talk about having an advance. So often what happens if you get signed by a traditional publisher, you'll get some kind of advance. They'll give you some money. They'll advance it to you against the sales of the book before you get it. And again, depending on the size of the publisher, that might not be a huge amount of money, but it could be. You know, there are six figure advances out there, depending on what it is, for maybe a one or two book deal and beyond. So you're not going to get that with Indy. Nobody's going to pay you to publish your book, unfortunately, so you have to bear that in mind. But the flip side of that is the royalty share is bigger for Indy. So you're going to make more money off each sale of the book. Now, potentially, there is especially when you start off, you're going to be selling less books than maybe you would be with a big publisher, but that's not always the case. But either way, you get a bigger slice of it. Bookshops. It's a huge thing for most writers. You want to be able to walk into Water Stones or wherever else your favorite bookshop is or a supermarket or whatever and say, Hey, there's my book. That's fantastic. And that can happen with traditional publishers. But the reality is, if you're going to go down the Indie publishing route, forget Waterstones. At least the idea of having it in every Waterstones on a national basis. If you can go and speak to your local waters stones, and sometimes they will do things for local authors and they might agree to put your book somewhere in the shop. But if you're thinking it's going to be in multinational bookshops, forget about it. That's not going to happen in Indi. So if that is a big thing for you, you might need to rethink your thinking there with that. Awards with traditional publishing comes the legitimacy, which is also the next point. But yeah, most awards at the moment, if you think of the book and all these kind of things, they are aimed at traditionally published authors. This is the publishing industry, the traditional publishing industry, celebrating success. And lots of those awards have not opened up to Indies yet, but attitudes are changing, and there are a number of organizations like Ally, the Alliance of Independent authors that are helping to change these attitudes, and they're lobbying for us to be included in legitimate awards, if you like. But, you know, attitudes are changing. Legitimacy, which kind of feeds into the previous point, you know, there is this idea that if you're traditionally published, whatever that looks like, you're somehow legitimate. You've made it and you are a real author. But what you should ask yourself, first of all, do you care, but more importantly, do readers care? Because in my experience, readers couldn't care less. They really are not bothered. If your book reads looks like sounds like and everything else, a real book, something that can sit next to one of these big publishers books on the shelf or whatever, they don't care. The main thing is, do they like the story? Do they like your characters? Do they buy into what you're doing? So if readers don't care, why should you care? That's my argument. Festivals. And again, there are some big festivals like the Harrogate Crime Festival, which is not geared towards Indie publishing at all in the slightest. But there are lots of festivals now that are on the up and they're changing that, and they are allowing Indie authors to go on panels and things. But what's great is there's this kind of gray area, which is book fairs and book festivals, where you can set your stall out literally. So you go there with your books and stand and you get to talk to potential readers, and you can sign your books and sell your books. So there is a huge scope for that. So if that's important to you about getting out and meeting people, you can still do that as an Indie author. Film TV and film rights, which, again, is a big thing, and people tend to associate this with traditional publishing because as I've mentioned before, they will have agents that specifically look at securing TV and film rights as well as foreign language rights and things like that. But you'd probably be surprised to know two, at least two of the huge successes in TV and film adaptations of recent years. Well, say recent years. Legally Blonde is actually very old now. But Legally Blonde and the Martian were both originally Indie books. They were Indie stories, and they were adapted, and they became obviously huge successful films. So that can be done. And also, there have been other you know, if you Google it, there are other books. Basically, all that people care about is is there an audience there? So if you're successful with your Indie book and you prove that there's an audience there and people buy into your story, there's still a chance you can sell it for TV and film rights. So don't let that put you off. And with traditional publishing is also this idea that they've got easier access to the mainstream, which again, I would say that is true, but the reality is, it doesn't matter whether you're Indi or Trad. This is going to be tough. It's very, very difficult to get access to mainstream TV, say, for example, or radio or anything else, the same as it is with bookshops. We're talking about traditionally published books getting an easier riding and being able to get into water stones. But even so, there are so many books published now, even with traditionally published authors, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to be in Waterstones or if all their books will appear in water Stones. Lots of authors, maybe book three of a series turns up in there, but none of the other books are available because there's only so much shop space. So depending on the size of the traditional publisher, they've got access to that, and they can push that. But either way, it is tough. You kind of have to push yourself, you have to do it, find different ways to do things. And that's what Indie publishing is all about, at least in the way that I approach it. And so I want you to sort of think about it differently as we move forward. So let's look at what I mean when I talk about Indi publishing. And lots of people will say, if you say self publishing, they'll go, Okay, so it's vanity publishing, which, you know, it did used to be. There was a huge industry, and there is still a huge industry, by the way, for this idea of vanity publishing, basically paying somebody to publish your work. It's how things used to work. And the way that it would work was you would pay a very large amount of money to essentially a printer, but they set themselves up as a publisher, and they are going to maybe they'll edit your books if you pay for that and a proof read, but then you will essentially order boxes and boxes and boxes of books. And if anybody listens to the creative Penn podcast, for example, with Joanna Penn, When she started out in self publishing, many, many, many, many years ago, this was how she did it, and she quickly realized that that's just not the way to do it. She ended up with a garage full of books that she couldn't sell. So that's kind of how things used to work. It's not good for the environment. You'd print off hundreds or thousands of copies of books that then weren't going to get sold. And it's also really, really, really expensive way to do it. And it's the old way of doing it. And there's no guarantee of quality or results. And that is vanity publishing. And people look at it and go, Well, this is just something that you've paid somebody to put out for you. That is not what Indi publishing is. That's not the way that I'm approaching it at all, and I don't want you to. So again, the standard self publishing approach. So, again, if you're just thinking, well, okay, it's not vanity publishing, I will do it all myself. What do I mean by self publishing? This is really just somebody that just maybe it's a hobby. Maybe you've retired and you just think, well, you know what? I just want to write quickly write a book and just get a book out there and hold a copy of it and say, I've published a book. That's fine. Maybe just normal standard self publishing, don't really care too much about the quality or anything, get it out there. You just write the book, you type the end, upload it to Amazon, and away you go. You can do that, but then, you know, that book is going to be up there for a long period of time, and you can hope for the best and see if you can try and sell some copies as well. But is that what you really, really want? Is that what you want your legacy to be? Is that what you want people to look at when they pick up a book that's been written by you and it's got your name on the front? And also, if you're serious about doing this and you want to write more than one book, you need to adopt more of an Indi way of doing it rather than this standard self publishing approach. So I'm talking about Indie publishing and, you know, independent publishing. But what do I actually mean by that? Well, when I talk about the Indie Wait, I'm talking about, first and foremost, more important than anything else I tell you on this course, more important than all the technical things or anything else that you'll learn. The number one thing is write the best book that you can because it's the best sales tool of all. If somebody likes your book because it's written brilliantly and it's as good as it can possibly be, there's way more chance they're gonna buy another copy or they're going to buy a copy of your next book or they're going to tell other people about your book. That's how you build your book, your brand, your author brand, and all the rest of it. And that means editing, editing, editing. It means adopting this professional mindset. And thinking, Well, I am an author, okay? I'm not doing it the traditional way, but I'm still a professional writer. This is what I want to do. And don't get me wrong. Most of us are still doing it on the side. We're not able to do it full time often, just making money solely from our books, but you have to start somewhere and you have to have this professional mindset to move forward with it. We need to learn the lessons of Trad publishing, traditional publishing. We've talked about it earlier on. We're talking about the things that Trad publishing can and can't do and the way that they approach things. Look at what makes them successful, look at the way they do things and see what lessons you can learn from that and what techniques you can adopt moving forward. I mentioned it earlier, but it's really important. Get into this mindset of investing in yourself. And I know that we don't all have tons of money to spend on these things, and that's fine. But what you can invest in and you can carve out more of is time. Time is really, really, really important. So the more time you put into this, all of this information is out there. It's available. You can go and search for it. You can look at different people doing different things. You can try things. If you're willing to invest the time and you're willing to learn lots of new skills and gain lots of new knowledge, you can do this on a really, really tight budget. But also, if you are willing to, okay, maybe I'm not going to buy that new computer I was thinking about or spend all my money on the latest Netflix streaming platform or whatever else it is in your life. If you want to invest in it in something else, invest in yourself to get into that idea. You need to think about building a platform, which I'm not a huge fan of that term, but because it sounds a little bit corporate, but it's true. We do need to think about what our platform is, and a platform, it's a base to build up from. So it's things like your social media platform. If you want to go down that route, it's having a website. It's basically setting your stall out online and in other places to say, Hey, everybody, this is what I do. I'm a writer. Here's all my things that are available. It's this idea of creating a brand. And again, it's something that you need to do right at the beginning when you start thinking about this. It's like, what kind of writer do you want to be? And I don't just mean your genre. I mean, what's your persona? How do you want to present yourself to the world? Even if you're a very shy person and you're not keen about maybe going out and meeting people in person, you still need to think about, you know, are you going to build up this mysterious idea of what you are or, you know, charisma. You know, people never really get to see the face behind the brand. You're going to create something like that. Maybe you want to make it all about you. Maybe you want to come up with a pen name. Maybe there's a particular author that you're impressed with and that you want recreate what they do. And it's thinking about those things. That's what I mean when I talk about creating a brand. What does it mean when someone picks up a Stephen King Book, say, for example, because he started out as a horror writer, but now he can write anything he likes, but the thing is, if somebody sees a Stephen King Book, they know it's a Stephen Kingbook even before they see his name on the book. And there's lots of things and lots of work that has gone into that. Part of that is the way the work that Steven creates, but it's also about his mystique. It's about his author brand, and how can you recreate that? That's the Indi way. And it's this idea of thinking long term. You know, Indy is different to just standard self publishing where you think, Okay, I've managed to squeeze out this book that I've just hastily cobbled together, or maybe you've been writing it for a long time, but you haven't got anybody else's input in it, and you just throw it up onto the web. That's self publishing. Indie publishing is thinking about right. How can I build this? And maybe right now, you can't think past one book, and that's absolutely fine. But once you've got that book out into the world, you might change your mind and you might find when people really enjoy your story and they're giving you great reviews and they want to talk to you more about it and asking you what you do next, then you'll be thinking more about it. So think long term because it will give you a better chance of success. And then it's all about finding your readers. That's what Indie publishing is. That's finding advanced readers initially and trying to reach the people that will be interested in what you do and what you have to say, whether that's, you know, you want to meet the best romance readers or romanticy or you want to talk to the best crime and thriller readers. What sort of thing do they like to read? Do they like your brand of crime? Are you writing police procedures? What kind of people write police procedures? Where is the best place to find them? Start locally and build up. But again, need to be thinking about this even before your book comes out into the world, that is the Indi way of doing it. So that's what I mean when we talk about Indi publishing. That's the mindset behind it. In part two, I'm going to be talking more about my thought process and why I decided to go that route. So take a look at that and there'll also be some coursework at the end. 3. 1.2: Why I Chose Indie Publishing: Okay, welcome back to Chapter one, Part two, where I'm going to be talking a little bit about why I chose Indie publishing and some of the other factors that went into it. So a little bit about my backstory, first of all. Initially, I'd been writing I've been writing all of my life. I write scripts. I've written screenplays. I work in film and video production. I've done documentaries and all kinds of different kinds of things. But in the background of all of that, I've always written pros, I've written short stories that I've had in anthologies and different bits and pieces. And many, many years ago, initially, I started writing a crime novel. I didn't know it was a crime novel. It was a short story initially, and it grew into something else. So it became this crime novel, and it was written over a very long period of time. I got lots of great critique and feedback. And anyway, eventually, cut to many, many years later, when I was looking for validation, I actually tried out for a mentorship program where you had to submit some of your work to see if you'd get accepted onto this free mentorship program. And I was incredibly lucky to get a mentor who was Laura North, LC North, as she writes as, as well as a crime writer. And that was brilliant, and it took me to another level, and it gave me the validation that I was looking for. And then I began the long drawn out process again of the submissions process, which, as you know, often involves the first three chapters of your novel, preparing those, having a synopsis, and a covering letter or covering email. And I went through all of that. And eventually, I got to the point where I was having lots of near misses. I was getting lots of great feedback, particularly from some digital first publishers who were asking for the full manuscript, but it didn't ultimately end up with publication. In the background to all of this, I'm a podcast host, and since 2014, I've interviewed lots and lots of traditionally published authors about their experiences. And often usually off air, a lot of traditionally published authors would talk about their bad experiences that they've had with big and small publishers about the fact that they weren't happy about how little control they had, how long everything took to happen. They weren't happy financially in some instances. They were having to do lots of unpaid work. So this was kind of in the back of my mind. And added to that, I was also talking to lots of other Indie authors who were telling me, well, that's not our experience at all. We love it. This is why we love it. We've been doing X Y and Z. So it was always something that was around, but I wasn't sure about it. And I made a decision. If the next submission wasn't successful, I was going to try Indie publishing. And so, reluctantly, initially, I thought I would give this a go. The clock was ticking, as I was saying, hence the sands of time there. But the other thing to bear in mind was that the whole time over this sort of ten year period that I'd spent doing the podcast and speaking to people and keeping an eye on the publishing industry, I'd noticed that Indi publishing in general and authors, they were sort of coming more to the fore, and I knew that things had moved on from when I had initially looked at it. So the technology was better, say, for example, I knew that it was getting easier from that point of view. There's loads more resources and tools now because more people are doing it and there's more of a market for it. And you do have complete control. And also, I'd seen some Indie books that were out there and that I liked the look of and that I'd read, and they were great. So, for example, my friend Dan Howarth had a book, Territory, which has got a brilliant cover, and it's a great story. I really enjoyed that. The Helene Keist, which again, was brilliant LJ Ross is a huge, huge success story. If you look at LJ Ross. Most people don't know that LJ Ross is an independently published author. They assume that she's traditionally published. She's sold literally millions of copies, and that's all on the back of independent publishing. So you've got this control. I saw how things were moving on. I saw that lots of authors were having success in it. I liked the idea that you can move as fast or as slow as you want to. And your self promotion counts for more. That was a big thing. So lots of traditionally published authors, they still have to do the self promotion. They're still expected to find places that they can sell their book. They're still expected to go to local book events usually on their own expense. Anyway, sometimes there's a small budget if it's a bigger publisher but not always. And the whole time you're doing this, that's fine. But obviously, you aren't getting a huge slice of the profits because the publisher's taken their cut, the agents taking their cut. So with independent publishing, you're still having to do the same self promotion. But it counts for so much more. That's how I looked at it. And I also knew that I'd already got some of the experience that was needed and some of the skill set. I've got some of the technical skills in terms of computer literate. I've used design programs. I've worked in video production. I can edit things. I knew that that would probably feed into it, and I knew I could pick up a lot of the rest. So I got to work and I started to research and I started to talk to more people. And the biggest thing for me, and I've mentioned it earlier on, was that actual readers don't care. People in the publishing industry tend to notice, and they tend to care a little bit more. But readers, they don't care. When I go to book fairs and events and I meet readers and they look at my book and they pick it up and they decide it's for them or if it's not for them, if it's not the genre or whatever. But when they decide that it's for them, they'll just go for it. They never ask me where it was published. They just look at it. It's got my imprint name on it. It looks like a real book, and they go away and they read it and they give me positive reviews. They don't care. They never remark on where it's published. So that was a huge thing for me. And since I self published, it's just just continue to develop. I've noticed that more and more. And so, eventually, having made that decision, in November 2023, I published my debut, which was Safe hands, which is a crime novel, and I put that out on Amazon Kindle eBook, Amazon Paperback, and Ingram Spark paperback, which we'll talk about a little bit later, but that means that it's available in bookshops and other places that you can order it. And also as an audio book on Audible. And I haven't looked back. It's been a fantastic experience, and I've learned so much as I've gone along the way with it. And now, as I record this very shortly, the sequel, the callback will be out in January 2025. So I've got loads of stuff going on. I've had a whale of a time. I've absolutely loved it. The things I was worried about and that I wasn't sure about when I started out, I've really, really enjoyed, and I think you will as well when you get started. There's lots of fun to be had. There's not one single way to do things. You can find your own way and you can really make it your own. So that's why I decided to choose Indie publishing. But that said, I've given you lots to think about there. You know, you've seen the reasons that I decided to go the way that I went, and hopefully I've given you a good overview of the different approaches and what the differences between traditional and self and Indie publishing. But I want you to think about it a little bit more, so I'm going to give you some coursework. So I want you to first of all, think about what are your publishing goals? Is it literally you've got this book that's been hanging around? You're not really too bothered about the quality of it. You're hoping that you've got the story out there and you just want to be able to hold a copy of your book. Then probably self publishing is probably where you want to go. That's absolutely fine. Maybe vanity publishing if you've got a big budget. There are companies out there that do it, or there are people that can help you with it. Maybe you can go down that route. But what do you really want to do and where do you see yourself going in the next one, three, and five years? Why do you want to be published? Now, that seems like a strange question, but is it just that you want to hold a copy of your book or you want to give your friends and your family a copy of your book? You want a small audience to read your book? That's absolutely fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But do you want to reach a wider audience? Do you want to develop as a writer? Do you want to develop as an author and a publisher? Then maybe independent publishing is for you? And then you need to think about how much you're willing or able to do for yourself. Make a little list of the things that you can do, your skills. Are you comfortable getting out there and talking to people, for example? Do you have lots of technical skills? Maybe you're a designer already or maybe you've done some design work on the side? Maybe that would help you because you can think about things like cover design or book layout. It doesn't matter if you haven't got those skills, but have you. But make a list and think about the things that you either you can do now or you're willing to learn how to do. Then this idea about your time and your money budget, it isn't just about money, but money does come into it. You can self publish a book for free, but it probably won't be a great product at the end of it. You do need to spend a little bit of money. But what is your time and your money budget? How much money and how much time can you actually invest in this and assigned to this project? Okay, so have a think about some of those things. Take a look at the course notes, and then when you're ready, head on over to Chapter two, where we're going to be talking about what you do once you've written that killer book. No. 4. 2.1: After the First Draft: Okay, Chapter two, you've written a book, but what now? We'll talk through everything you need to do once you've got to the end of that elusive first draft. So let's take a look at what we're going to be looking at. So once again, there's a lot to go at here, so I've split it into two parts. So in part one, we'll initially start off by talking about what happens when you finish that first draft and dealing with all the impatiens that you're bound to have. Then I'll talk about the editing process. I'll give you an overview and my suggested approach of a particular order in which I think you should do things. And then I'll be digging a little bit deeper into the types of editing. What do we mean when we talk about structural edits, copy edits, proof reading, and all the rest of it? And then in Part two, we'll move on to talk about specific editorial roles, the people out there that you can actually approach to get help and what sorts of things each one of them does. I'll tell you where you can find some help, and then we'll wrap up the module as usual with some more coursework, giving you some things to think about and progressing your own Indi journey. So let's get started. So you've written a book, but what now? The inevitable question comes, can we publish it now, mum? Because I know and I speak from experience many, many years of writing, it's very tempting when you finally finish writing that first draft. It's exciting. You type the words the end. You know, you've got a whole story there, and the instinct is to just get it out there and get people to read it and you want to publish it straight away. But the first question you should ask yourself is, is it ready? That's really important. And the chances are if it's a first draft or even if it's a second draft, then it's probably not ready, so you need to think about that. So let it sit would be my initial advice. So the temptation will be to just get it out there straightaway, but put it away, put it in a drawer, metaphorically speaking, if it's on your hard drive or whatever, maybe move on to another project for one, two, three weeks, however long you can leave it for the longer the better, really, because when you come back to it, you'll have fresh eyes. And then when you start reading again, when you start looking back at it, try reading aloud. Now, that sounds when you initially start doing it, it sounds strange. You'll be feeling really self conscious and maybe you're sitting in a room on your own. But if you read it aloud, there's something different that happens. You can actually sort of start to hear it, how the reader might hear it. And you'll be surprised at all the different mistakes and things you can find. You'll find that you've got repeated words. You'll hear sentences that sound like they don't hang together properly or they sound clunky. And you'll also spot mistakes and more grammatical things if you do that. But just for a start, try reading it aloud. Again, no one else has read it yet. This is just you. These are the things you can do before you get other eyes on it. And speaking of which, who has read it so far? Probably if you've just written the first draft, maybe you've shared some of it with your better half, possibly, or maybe your best friend or whatever. But who else has read it? Ask yourself who's actually taken a look so far, and what kind of feedback have they given it you? Now, obviously, if it's your wife or your best friend, maybe either they haven't got a lot of experience with reading or writing or maybe they just really like you, so they're going to be very flattering and tell you what you want to hear. So that's not really the best way to go with it. It's a good start to get a bit of confidence initially, but you need to be thinking about what we call Beta readers. Now, Beta Readers is really just a fancy term for saying anybody that's going to read a very earlier version of your book. They're used to reading books that are not finished, not polished, not proof read or anything else. They know that they're reading it on the understanding that it's an early version of the book. It gives you a chance to see whether the story works, whether they can connect with the characters or their glaring plot holes that you haven't recognized or seen yet. Now, you might be able to get some writer friends that can help you with this, and they can give you specific feedback about the writing. But to be honest, even if you get somebody that's just very well read and likes to read lots of books in your genre, that's a good start. And the genre aspect of it is really, really important. You don't want somebody that reads all out romanticy all the time and nothing else to read your gritty British thriller, say, for example, because they're not going to be used to the tropes. There are going to be things they're not happy with, like the violence, say for example. And so you need people that are well versed in the particular genre that you are writing because they can give you the best feedback. If you're going to do this, you should do it with a good few people so that you can get a sense you don't want to be taking all the feedback from one person necessarily because everyone's got opinions. And again, you don't want to be flicking from one thing to the other. You need to take on board what they say take a moment for it to sit with you and decide about it, analyze it. Is there an issue with it, and look for trends. So if more than one person is telling you that your main character is just horrible and they can't relate to them, then you've probably got an issue. But if one person says it and everyone else thinks your main character is brilliant and they can relate to it, then they might be an outlier. If you're ending doesn't work, say, for example, that's a really important aspect that you can get from Beta readers. And then a critique group is I recommend this to everybody. I've been doing my podcast now for over ten years, something that comes up on a regular basis. But I would say joining a critique group, whether that's online or it's in person is one of the best things you can do. When I did it, I had a huge quantum leap in the quality of my writing. It just went up exponentially. When you're reading it to a group of other writers or they're reading it, you're sending it to them and they're reading it in small chunks or whatever, and they start giving you structured proper critique and structured feedback, there's just nothing like it, and you just will not believe how quickly your work improves. So join a critique group, if you can. There's lots of online groups. If you haven't got one that's local to you and you can't meet in person, you can still do it online. And treat it exactly the same as if you were going to make a traditional submission. So when you get those first three chapters together and you're thinking about your synopsis, approach it exactly the same because those first three chapters, when you eventually put your book out into the world and you Indy publish, that's going to be what your readers decide on whether to carry on reading your book or whether to buy the next one or whatever. That's what they're going to do. So it's got to be up to the same level. That's what we need to be thinking about. That's where we've got to get to. That said, there is the old saying that perfect is the enemy of good, so you also need to know when it's time that you've done enough work on it. But I guarantee after you've written that first or the second draft, the book won't be ready for publication. So make sure you get some other eyes on it and you get some advice from other people to make it as good as it possibly can be. Okay, so you've let it sit. Maybe you've got some other eyes on it or whatever. You've got still an early draft. Then we really need to get serious about the edit. And what do we mean when we talk about the edit? Now, when you first start writing, you might be thinking, Well, I just need to make sure it hasn't got any typos in it and all the punctuations correct and all that sort of stuff. You will need to get to that, but when you initially start, you need to go much, much bigger picture than that. You need to take a step back and make sure the fundamentals are correct. So we start off with a developmental or structural edit. We need to make sure that everything hangs together properly and that it works as a story. And that means looking at things like the structure of it, as I've just said, but also the pace, the tone of it, and making sure that it's consistent throughout. Maybe you started off writing what you thought was a gritty thriller, but then in the middle, for some reason, there's a whimsical romcom. And again, it's fine to have these different aspects, but it's how you merge and you go from one to the other, and it's keeping this tone consistent and making sure that as you go from one scene or one chapter that you think about these little beats, these little story beats. Is everything in the right place? Because it often isn't, you often find on those early edits and the early versions of your stories that, particularly with the beginning of your story, you've probably started in the wrong place, not always, but often I often start really way too early in the story. And I found when I go back, I find that I'm actually I've sort of written my way into the story with the characters and the backstory and all the rest of it when really what I thought was my Chapter one was really my Chapter one was Chapter six, and I just need to drop the readers into the story a bit later. Have you landed your ending? So that's something that's really important, obviously with the structural edit, and it is the thing that you leave your reader with. If they've invested all this time reading your story, your book, and they get to the end and you haven't satisfied them with that ending, whatever that looks like, then you're going to be in trouble. Does it start in the right place, which I've just mentioned? That's a really, really common error. And then you start to think about you go wider picture still, and you're thinking about things like themes. So maybe you thought you were writing a book about, you know, two robbers robbing a bank or something, but the actual theme was friendship. And so that's something that you want to think about. So now you can go back over the story and you can make sure that you've kind of emphasized that in the places that you want to emphasize it in. What was the point that you were trying to make? What was it that you were trying to say outside of the story? That's what we mean when we talk about theme. And then looking at whose story is it, which, again, sounds like an obvious question, but if you've got a point of view character, you've got maybe you've got more than one main character, that's fine, as well. But whose story is it? Are they actually driving the story because you don't want them to be passive, which, again, is a really common error. And as I've put here, think about it like you would with a house renovation. Start with the structure. Make sure that the building is not going to fall down before you start working on the painting and the wallpaper, because otherwise you're wasting your time. So make sure that everything is absolutely structurally sound before you move on before you do anything else. Okay, so that's the big picture stuff. That's the structural edit, and you do need to make sure you get that right. But then what do you move on to? Well, that's when you start thinking about going a little bit deeper and we talk about the copy edit or some people call it the line edit. So what do I mean by that? So this is where you are looking now a bit closer, and you are looking for things like typos, missing words. You're making sure that the books kind of formatted how you want it to be formatted, and that there aren't huge great big gaps in the text in the manuscript, say, for example, you're looking a little bit deeper. You're looking at consistency. And that's not just in formatting, but it's also your spelling, it's in names, it's in dates. So, for example, you know, did you start out calling your main character Jemima, and then halfway through the book, she becomes Gemma, and then by the end, she's called Jane, because believe it or not, they are the kinds of things that I do on a regular basis, as I'm going through a novel. It's a long period of time, 80 to 100,000 words and lots of things can go wrong and go awry in that time. Have you started your book in the winter, but then halfway through, you suddenly say that it's summer and seemingly only a week's gone past. These are things that you need to look at when you look at your copy or your line edit, and you need to make sure that everything's consistent as regards that. But if you start reading out loud, like I mentioned earlier on, you will start to notice when there is repetition or similar words. Maybe you've started a chapter in the same way over and over again. Maybe you've ended chapters in a very, very similar way. They're the types of things that you need to be looking for, need to make sure that you aren't repeating yourself. Fact check where necessary. I don't know about you, but when I go through an early draft, I often leave myself little notes, rather than get lost in lots and lots of research as I go along, although that is another way to do it. If I need to know the name of a specific security camera or a gun or whatever it is, I often make a little note, but then I need to go away and just double check that and make sure my research is correct. It's making sure you've got your facts correct. And then we need to enhance clarity and understanding, which sounds very, very obvious, but you need to go through when you're reading your text, whether you get someone else to do it or you're doing it yourself. What you don't want at any point is to lose the reader. I don't just mean by boring them. I mean the simple nuts and bolts. So they need to if for example, if you've got a scene and there are three people in the room, where are all the three people standing? Does it matter? So do they interact with each other? Is one of them sitting down, one of them standing up? Maybe one of them's over near the window, one of them's over at the door. And if at any time as I'm reading this as a reader, I'm confused about who's where or what they're doing, or maybe you're trying to explain a simple action, and it's not on reading it back, it's not obvious or it appears, hang on, I can't visualize that or I can't understand it. That's what you need to be looking at. So if, for example, you're using beta readers and you've had other people read this, and they say, I didn't really understand what was going on in the scene where Dave did the washing up and something happened, and he cut his hand or whatever it is, they're the things that you need to be looking at. If that's a question mark there, the very, very basic thing with writing is the people reading it need to understand what it is that you're trying to say and trying to show them. So that's really important. And then the general thing is, how does it read and how does it sound? And that's what I was talking about when you're reading out loud. If it doesn't quite sound right to you and you might not always be able to articulate why that is, but you do need to look at that. And you need to try and approach it as if you objectively, as a reader, coming to it for the first time, you can't assume that your reader knows everything and that they know everything that you know, you wrote the book. So where are we in the novel? Have they got enough information? To understand the story and properly land the beats that you're trying to land. Then we can look at things like correct punctuation and making sure that you've got a varying amount of long sentences, short sentences as if you put your commas in the right place and all the other stuff that some people love to look at in lots of detail, and I don't, but it's really, really important, so you need to make sure it's right. And also, you need to look at structure. Again, you need to revisit it and things like scene transitions. So what do I mean by that? So with scene transitions, for example, if you've ended lots and lots of chapters or lots and lots of scenes with the same tone, the same feeling, for example, do you tend to say, meanwhile, maybe that's how you've starting a new scene or a new chapter or whatever. And if you've done the similar version of, meanwhile, two or three chapters in a row, then you need to look at it. Or have you landed? Have you ended three chapters the same? Have you ended them all on a very, very similar cliff hanger, then you need to look at and see how you can change it. And just variety. Keep it interesting. You don't want people to think you're re treading the same thing over and over and over again. So that's really important with the copy of the line edit. And then we move on, and again, zooming in even further. So we've had the big picture. We've looked at it on a line a line by line basis and a scene by scene and a chapter by chapter basis. But now we really want to get honed down and really, really zoom in. We're getting closer to publication. Happy with the story, we're happy with all the nuts and bolts of everything. Now we just need to give it that final checko if you like. And that's where you look at the proof read. So let's talk about that. So this is basically the final checko. This is when you make sure that everything is absolutely tip top and ready to be read by your readers, your final readers. It's the publication check, if you like. This is your final chance. Now, the great thing about Indy publishing, it's not you're at your final chance because as we'll talk about later on, you can actually change your manuscript even after publication, but we don't want to be thinking about that. We want to try to get it right the first time if we can. That means doing a proper proof read, whether you do it yourself or even better, you get someone else to do it for you. And so we're looking at things like mistakes in grammar, spelling, formatting. It's best done with the final formatted version. And what do I mean by that? Well, as we talk about a little bit later on in the course, one of the files that you need to produce for the actual printed version of your book is a PDF file, and it will look a bit like this that you can see on the screen now. So this is Chapter one from my first book, Safe hands. And so it's laid out in a double page spread like that, and it actually looks like the final book. That's what's important about it. And I know it sounds strange, but what's funny about that is that when you read it like that in the way that it looks like a book, that's when you tend to find mistakes. You look at it. That's exactly how your final reader is going to read the book. So you'll find things like repeated words or there's a silly little mistake or maybe there's a formatting error or anything else. That's the best way to do it. Some people like to do this just by changing the font on their book to some crazy font that they don't usually use. That helps them see it in a different way. But it's a good way to check over and find those obvious mistakes. So that's what the proof read is all about. So there you go. Hopefully, that gives you a good overview of the various aspects of the edit. You've got the structural edit, you've got the copy or the line edit, and the proof read, the final part of it. And in Part two, we're going to be looking specifically at some of the editorial roles, some of the people out there that can help you a little bit with this if you want to employ somebody and just the way that you need to think about it, and then we'll also be finishing off with some coursework to help you along the way and the next step in your Indie publishing journey. I'll see you in part two. 5. 2.2: Working with Editors and Self-Editing Resources: Okay, welcome back to part two of Chapter two. In Part one, we were looking at the various aspects of editing, from the big picture stuff with structural editing onto copy and line edits, and then the proof read. But now let's take a quick look at some of the specific roles, some of those editorial roles, and some of the people and the services out there that might be able to help you. So let's look at some of those roles because it can get confusing. You'll see lots of people offering their services out there, and sometimes it's difficult to know what's worth paying for and what you might need for your particular book or manuscript. So first of all, there's an editorial assessment. Well, what is that? So this is brilliant for starting with an earlier or an incomplete draft. It's a good starting point. You usually send off the manuscript. Sometimes you can do it on part of the manuscript if you want somebody to take a look at the opening of the book and the cost will reflect that, as well. But if you send off a complete manuscript, they're going to give you a good overview. It's less expensive than a full developmental edit, which we'll talk about in a minute. Just going to give you the big picture stuff. They're going to talk to you a little bit like a Beta reader might. They might be talking to you about they don't think you've developed this story particularly or this character is not well enough developed or maybe the ending doesn't work or you've started in the wrong place. It'll be a little bit more specific, hopefully than just a standard Beta reader, but it's a good place to start, and it gives you a sense of where you are with the story. Coaching or mentoring, something that I offer as well, where you'll be led through the whole process. So they'll be looking at helping you with the developmental edit. They might be helping you with specific problems you've got with the story, but they can also look at more general things like your writing goals and where you want to go with your career, but they can take care of the whole thing. Then you've got the developmental edit, which is specifically an editor that is going to particularly look at the developmental edit, the structural stuff. They're going to help you with the big picture. They're going to make sure that your story hangs together properly. So that's all the stuff that we looked at in part one. It's often very detailed, and as a consequence, there is a higher cost with it, but they are going to be very, very specific and drill down to this big picture stuff and make sure that your story is absolutely spot on before you look at those more detailed things. Then you've got the copy edit, which if you remember, they're zooming in a little bit further, and they're going to look at your book on more of a line to line kind of level edit, and they're going to improve things like clarity, understanding, the formatting sometimes, and the consistency in your book. And then you go on to the final thing, which will be a proof reader, and they'll be looking at final stage to remove those errors. Now, sometimes, for example, the copy editor that I've used recently, she's a copy editor, and she also offers proof reading. So she tends to combine the two things, and she does that as well. And some people do that. And again, you can get editors that will do a combination of some of these things and different bits of pieces. You need to find the right person for you. They need to have the right skills, yes, and maybe they've got experience in the specific genre that you're working in as well. But it's a personality thing, the same as with anything in life. You need to make sure that you can connect and that they're going to do the things that you want them to do and communicate in the way that you want them to communicate with you. And often they will ask for a sample of your work, so they get a sense of where you are and also give you a better idea of cost. For example, if you're very, very early on in your journey or it's a very, very early draft, then they're probably going to have to spend more time on it, and as a consequence, the costs going to be higher. But they'll usually give you kind of a base idea of where they are with it and how much it's going to cost. About if you want to find out more yourself or maybe you want to do more of the actual process yourself because you can self edit and you can get your book and your manuscript up to a very, very high level if you spend enough time on it and you've got enough knowledge to do that. Where can you find that knowledge? Well, you could start off by buying a book. There are different ones out there. One of the ones that I recommend is sort of a classic in the genre, if you like, which is self editing for fiction writers by Rennie Brown and Dave King. That's a good place to start, but there are other books. It's quite an old book now, but there have been some reissues of it, and it's still fairly up to date. And the things that they talk about are kind of evergreen and they'll always work for when you're self editing. Of course, you can find lots of stuff on YouTube. There are people that talk about this. One person that I often use and is great on self editing is the author Level Up channel with Michael Laron. That's a good place to start. But again, if you do a search for editing, self editing, take a look at a few. Don't just take the first advice that you find, but it's a good place to start, and there are some really, really good channels on there. There's reads.com, which is a great place to find freelancers and find editors of all different kinds of levels. It's free to join Reads, and they have lots of different recommended developmental editors, copy editors, proof readers, and tons of other services on there as well. So take a look at that and you can also approach people and ask for examples and testimonials, and I would recommend that you do that. It's free to sign up to that, as I said, and you can search for these professionals on there. Also, and we'll come to this a bit later on as well, but there's also a free book formatting platform on rez.com. So I recommend you get yourself a free account on there. Anyway. It's definitely worth doing. And then this Ay, which has been mentioned before, but it's Alliance of independent authors, and they are brilliant for Indie authors. As I record this, it's currently about 69 pounds a year to join, and you can get legal and technical advice and lots of other good stuff on there. There's loads of self help guides. And again, it gives you somewhere to start as you go on your Indie publishing journey. And they've also got discounted services and membership benefits. So I hope you realize now that it's not just a case of typing the end on that first draft and throwing your book out into the world. We have to make sure that book is as good as it possibly can be. And editing is a huge, huge part of that. So remember, start big picture with your structural edit, move on to those line edits, and then you're looking at the proof read and making sure that there's no errors and there's nothing that's going to be a glaring thing that's going to stand out to your reader at the end there. And you don't need to do it all on your own. There are professional people out there that can help you with it. Okay, let's talk coursework. Hopefully, you can see now how important the edit is. But how do you move forward with that with regards to your own work? So first of all, I want you to think about where you are with your current draft. Obviously, the most important thing initially is to finish a draft and get to the end of the first draft. But maybe you've done one draft or two drafts or three drafts or whatever, but where are you with it? And how have you worked on it so far? That's what's important. Have you just been through and change lots of sentences and mess around with the punctuation, but haven't really paid much attention to the story, then that's what you need to do. You need to go back. So on that subject, make a plan to tackle the edit. How are you going to do it? Remember, you have to start with structure. If your structure isn't right, the rest of the process is a waste of time. Then think about who your beta readers might be. Maybe you've already got a couple of trusted readers. That's fine. Can you expand that a little bit? Can you get some more input? Don't just choose people Willy Nilly. As I say, there are sites, reputable sites, and you can also do it through some Facebook sites as well, and you can find Beta readers that way. But try to find some objective readers who can give you a better idea of whether your story works and how you're going to do that. And then you need to think about who will copy edit or proofread your work. You can try to do these things yourself, but it is better if you can get another pair of eyes on it. And I appreciate not everybody can afford to hire a professional, but maybe you can get somebody that you know has got a good level of grammar and punctuation and can read the book and give you a second pair of eyes on it and just make sure that it's as good as it can possibly be. So think about your release schedule. Is it realistic and giving you enough time to make sure the book is as good as it can be? It all starts with the manuscript. If that isn't right, then nothing else will be. Doesn't matter about the cover or the promotions or the marketing or anything else, the book has to be right. Now, I'm not saying you should work on it, add in forinem you do need to make sure you give yourself enough time. And if you are using some other professional people, that means checking their schedule and making sure that they can fit with your release schedule. So start there first, find out who's going to be working on the project, whether it's a friend or whether it is a professional. What is their schedule? What's your schedule, and is it realistic? Make a note of this, make a plan, and you'll have the next step in your publishing journey. So that's Chapter two. Make sure you do your homework, check out the course notes, and I'll see you for Chapter three, where we're going to be talking about the Amazon elephant in the room. 6. 3: Where to Sell Your Books: Chapter three, where we're going to be talking about where you'll sell your books and, of course, addressing the elephant in the room, Amazon. So let's take a look at what we're going to be covering in this module. So first of all, we'll be talking about whether to go wide or not with your books, whether to sell everywhere or to go with Amazon exclusively. Then we'll be looking at the stats behind that and how that might influence your decision. Then we'll be talking about Amazon KDP. What exactly is it? And then I'll be telling you my suggested approach and the way that I do things right now. And then we'll finish up with the inevitable coursework, giving you ways to move ahead with your publishing journey and make some of these decisions for yourself. So let's get started and address that elephant in the room, Amazon. So first of all, let's look at eBooks and whether it's a good idea to go wide or go home. And what do I mean when I say go wide? I just mean not granting exclusivity to one organization in this instance, Amazon. So what are some of the pros and cons with that? Well, usually when you're selling something, obviously, like anything, you want it to be as accessible as possible. You want people to be able to find your book in as many different places as possible. That makes sense. You want to reach a maximum audience. But you also need to consider your margins and your profit. And that is something to bear in mind with this particular decision. It's not the same for paperbacks as it is in eBooks, which I'll explain in a minute. And you need to think about where are your potential readers. So where are your potential eBook readers? And on that subject, can you name right now, take a second to do it, can you name three other eBook brands? Well, can you name two others? Let's say Kindle. I'll give you that one, Amazon Kindle. What are the other two? Can you think of another two? Give you some time to think about it. You might be able to particularly if you're an American, watching this video at the moment, you might be able to think of the nook or the cobo. But over here in the UK, they aren't well known at all, very, very difficult to get hold of those e readers. And so really the one that springs to mind is Kindle and with good reason. So let's look at some stats. Where do people buy their books? Well, it's not going to surprise you, I don't think that a huge part of that pie chart there is Amazon with 85% of the market. Then you've got Apple Books, which was another eBook reader that we didn't mention. Well, I didn't mention it in the last slide, but they do have 10% of the market. Then you've got Barnes and Noble, with around 4% and Cobo with around 1%, and then you've got the others that make up the rest. So as you can see, at the minute, Amazon does have a huge slice of that market. And yes, there are other rereaders out there, and there are other markets. But I'm suggesting initially, for those of you new to Indie publishing, to go with Amazon KDP and grant Amazon exclusivity. Let's look at that in a little bit more detail. So basically, what that means is you're granting Amazon exclusivity specifically for the eBook version of your book. It's only for 90 days at a time. So you can make this decision. You can try it out for sort of three months or whatever it is. And if it doesn't work out for you, and after that period of time, you want to go wide and put your book out to a wider market, that's fine. You can do that at any time, and then you can come back into KDP select if you like. So this is not one of those things where you do it, and then that's it, decision made, which is another reason I think it's a good place to start. Then this Kindle Unlimited, what is it? Well, maybe you're not familiar with Kindle Unlimited, but it's a subscription service, and it enables readers to pay a flat fee every month, and they get access to a huge library of Kindle Unlimited books. And that's basically any books that have been enrolled into the Kindle Unlimited program. Why are we bothered about that? Well, because when readers do that and they're essentially borrowing their books, it's a little bit like a library, but we get paid on page reads. And although it's a relatively small amount, obviously, it does add up. You've got hundreds of pages in a book, and then, depending on how many people read your book, it does add up, and it's another source of income. So Kindle Unlimited is part of being KDP select, so that's great. There's a 70% royalty option for granting Amazon exclusivity. So if you do this, it means you get 70% of the royalty rather than 35%, which is what it is, if you go wide and you want your book to be on other re readers, as well. But if you grant Amazon exclusivity, you'll get a 70% royalty option, which is obviously much, much higher. You get access to other promotions like the Countdown Deal and the free Book promo and stuff like that, which again, you don't get if you're not in KDP Select. And you also get entered into the Kindle owners Lending library, which again, kind of similar to Kindle Unlimited. You get paid for how many people take out your book, and again, on page reads. So as you can see, there are loads of benefits to joining KDP Select. And even if you change your mind further down the line, that's fine. You're only ever enrolled in it for 90 days at a time. And you might want to go wide, depending on where your readers are in the future, but you can always change your mind and go back to going wide after that. But I think it's a good place to start for people new to Indie publishing. So let me just go over my approach and how I've done things both with the E book and with the paperback. So for the EBok, my approach is to go Amazon exclusive and I've joined KDP Select. I get that higher royalty promotion. I get access to the other promotions we talked about. I'm enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, so I get page reads as well. That's worked really well for me for my EBok. But then the paperback, this is where I do go wide. So I go to not just Amazon. I don't want my paperback to just be available on Amazon. I do want people to be able to get it in bookshops, for example. I also want them to find it on other online retailers. And unlike Amazon, where most people are reading eBooks on a kindle, obviously, people can get paperbacks from a wide range of places, and I'm happy to open up my paperback to that. Plus, you don't get the same level of benefits that you do by going exclusive with your paperback with Amazon. So I think it pays to go wide. So for my paperback, I've got Amazon for online sales, so I do have an Amazon version. That's fine. I've used Ingram Spark, which is a company we'll talk about a little bit later on. And there are others like Book vault, as well, but that enables me to get my paperbacks in bookshops. So bookshops can order my paperback into the bookshop, and they can also find it on online versions of bookshops, as well, like Waterstones and wherever. And also, I can then sell copies direct to my audience through my website and through using other channels as well. And again, there are other companies to help you do that. But essentially, I'm Amazon exclusive for my eBook, and then I've gone wide for my paperback, and that works really well for me. So that's my suggested approach in terms of how you move forward with your publishing. So just to reiterate, we're talking about going exclusively with Amazon and joining Amazon KDP select for your EBok because most people read eBooks on kindles in my experience, and then going wide for your paperback. So bearing all that in mind, here's what I want you to think about for this module's coursework. What's your priority? Is it the E book or the print? Or maybe you haven't got a priority? Maybe you think both are as important, and that's fine, as well. But make a note of that and think about what you want to get out of it. What's going to be your sales strategy? Where is your audience? What do I mean by that? Well, there are certain audiences. For example, people that like to binge lots and lots of fast paced thrillers who might read maybe four or five books a week and more sometimes these guys binge books, and they tend to be members of Kindle Unlimited, and so they like to find their books on there. So maybe the E books a priority if you write in that particular genre. But where are most of your readers? If you're a romanticy author, sometimes the paperback or even the hardback version of your book is super important because for those readers, they want amazing cover art and they want the hard copy of their book and they talk about it on TikTok and all the rest of it. But think about where your audience is likely to be. Where do people and fans of your genre? Where do they find their books? Are bookshops important to you? If so, again, you need to think about whether you go wide with your paperback or whether you just stick to Amazon because you can just put your paperback on Amazon. That's absolutely fine. If you're not bothered about it being available anywhere else, that's fine. And you can do that. And then you only need to make one version of your paperback. And then just think about your approach. How are you going to do it? I've suggested an approach. This is how I do it, but maybe you don't think that's right for you. That's absolutely fine. But decide on that, make that your plan, and then you are another step along the way in your publishing journey. So lots to think about there, want you to make sure that you plan, decide on the approach, how you're going to put your eBook out there, your paperback, and we'll talk about all the technicalities and the specifics a bit later on. But for now, just think about how you're going to plan to do it. And then join me in Chapter four where we're going to be looking at why you really should judge a book by its cover. 7. 4.1: Why Covers Matter: Chapter four, where we're going to be looking at why you definitely should judge a book by its cover. So let's take a look at some of the elements. This is a module with quite a bit to look at, and there'll be an exercise halfway through, as well. So I've broken it down into two parts. We'll start off by looking at why covers matter. Then we'll look at what makes a good cover and there'll be a chance for you to do a bit of an exercise. Then in part two, we'll be looking at the key elements and technical aspects of what makes a cover and the things that you need to think about there. And then we'll be looking at the different options available to you for cover creation, whether you've got design experience or not. And then as a little bonus round, we'll be looking at something called Amazon A plus content, and I'll be explaining what that is and how you need to make sure that you've got that covered as well. And then we'll finish up with the usual coursework giving you more things to think about and moving forward with your own publishing journey. So let's get cracking. So what makes a good cover? It's one of those things it can be difficult to articulate sometimes. We know when we like a cover, and we often know when we don't like a cover or it doesn't even register because it just doesn't stand out enough. Well, I've picked up three examples here. These are all best sellers in their particular genres, and you can tell straightaway that they are all three very different genres. And what's important and one of the most important aspects that you can think about with a cover initially is that aspect of genre. It's really clear straightaway which kind of genres, what kind of books these are just by looking at them in a very, very quick cursory way. If we look at Veronica Henry's book, it's clearly some kind of escapist romance. We've got the key elements of the story. It's called a wedding at the Beach Hut. There's a beach hut in there. There are pastel colors, there's pinks, there's blues. There are flowers there. We've got a good call out line as well, a secret from the past, a promise from the future and a day they will never forget. Then we look at the JM Dalglish book, which again, is clearly totally different genre. It's going to be a dark, gritty story, and that's easy to tell just by very quickly looking at the cover there. The text is very big, very bold, very easy to see the title of both the author and of the book. We can tell which series it's from. So it's the Tom Jansen Thriller series. And then if you move on to Ken Follett, which is historical fiction, we've got Kingsbridge 11 35, so very quickly we know what time period we're talking about. We've got a very particular use of a font. Again, if you look across lots of historical fiction, they'll often use a certain kind of font to give you a sense of the place and the time that we're talking about. And they're obviously, all three of them are very well designed graphically and everything's placed where it should be, and there's lots of clean, empty space, again, which we'll talk about in the future. What I want you to do is be a bit more specific and think about how you can move on and do something like this for yourself. But that's just a very quick overview to give you some of the ideas that you can take from books and why particular book covers stand out. But I want you to do a bit more of a deep dive, and I'm going to give you an exercise to help you do that. So let's look at that. We've got a cover here on the left by Cali Taylor, CL Taylor, which, again, it's very, very easy to see the text on there. We know what the title of the book is. We've got some shout outs. We've got some author blurbs on there. It's very, very quickly. We can see what kind of story we're going to get. But I want you to dig a bit deeper yourself and look at how you can apply some of these techniques with your own cover. So let's look a bit of an exercise. I want you to think really deeply about what is your genre. If it's romance, I want you to be very specific about what type of romance it is. Is it contemporary romance? Is it historical romance? Is there a rom com element to it? Maybe it's set in a particular period. If it's thriller, what kind of thriller is it? If it's horror, the same goes. Maybe you're a non fiction author, but you need to really, really consider that. And then off the back of that, I want you to look at what the best selling books and authors are in that genre. Now, that's very easy to do on Amazon. If you go on Amazon and you literally type best selling Rom com, 2024, 2025, whatever year you're watching this, and put that in, and you can quickly get to see the top ten or Top 100 or whatever. And you can see the types of books that are at the top, and that gives you a really, really clear idea of the types of books that you're going to see there, and you'll see similar colors. And similar covers there. And then I want you to think about who your comparative authors and books are. What are the authors that you aspire to be? What are the books that you would like to be writing? Where do you think your book would sit if it was on a bookshelf next to in a particular genre or a particular part of the library or bookshop? Where would it be? I want you to think about that and make a note of that. And then once you're in that genre and you're looking at these bestselling books and bestselling authors, I want you to look for patterns. I want you to look for visual styles. I want you to look at what kind of fonts that they use, what kind of pictures they use. Do they use pictures? Do they use artwork, or do they use photography? And as I say, fonts, typography, trim size. When I talk about trim size, I simply mean the size of the book. And again, that sounds like a strange thing to say, but if you write fiction or you write non fiction, there are different trim sizes expected of the genre. If it's a standard paperback or if it's a hard back. Again, very easy to do, even if you're not in a bookshop, if you're in a bookshop, or you can look in person, that's brilliant. But otherwise, just do a search on Amazon and you can look at book dimensions to look at that. But what you'll notice very quickly is there are certain patterns. Now, I'm not suggesting that you just rip off everything that you see and that you just make it look everything looks the same, but you do need to bear in mind that it needs to be very, very quickly obvious where your book should sit on the bookshelf and in Amazon and online. And then I want you to think about the stop the scroll test. So often most of us are shopping now online, whether that's on a phone or on the computer. And we're scrolling through lots and lots of products and books and whatever it is that we're shopping for. But what is it that makes us stop the scroll? What is it that makes us kind of just wait for a moment and just pause and look at something? What is it that makes us think about something a little bit deeper or check it out and think, Hey, that's something that I might be interested in. And it's about designing something and having something for your book initially that will do that, that will stop the scroll. And lots of those books that are in the best sellers, they do that. They've been designed with that in mind, and they stand out. And just try to analyze what it is that made you stop when you were scrolling through. What was it that attracted you to the cover? What was it that you like? Maybe it was an arresting image, maybe it was the way that they used the text. Maybe there was an effect that they've used on what is it? What is it that draws you to it? That's what I want you to think about. So once you've done the stop the scroll test, I want you to think about what makes it stand out. What is it that's attracting you to it? Why did you stop scrolling, and what is it about that book cover that you liked? So I want you to work your way through that list, do the research, work out why these books work so well visually, why the cover really grabs you, grabs your attention. And what are the specifics about your genre and where is your book going to need to sit and the kinds of things that you're going to need to think about when you design your cover and you get to that aspect of it. And then join me for part two, where we'll be looking at the technical aspects of what you need to look at with cover design. 8. 4.2: The Technical Side of Cover Design: Okay, it's part two of Chapter four. Welcome back. And how did you find the exercise at the end of the last chapter? Did you really drill down? Did you look at specific examples in your genre, have you got a better idea of what makes a successful book cover specifically in your genre, because that's where we need to be looking at. And now we're going to move on and look specifically at the technical aspects of cover design and some of the elements that make up a cover, particularly for a paperback. So let's walk through some of the paperback design elements. So this is a template that comes through. This one specifically was from Amazon when I created the cover for safe hands. And so I needed to put my specific trim size in. So in this particular instance, it was 5.25 " by 8 ". So I had to be specific about which trim size I wanted to choose. And then I needed to know how many pages were in the printed version of my book. So that I could look at the spine width because that's really, really important. And the great thing about Kindle or if you use Ingram Spark, which we'll talk about later on, they will give you that spine width calculation automatically based on the number of print pages and the kind of paper that you've chosen and all the rest of it. And on the back of that, you can then download a template. This one, in particular, is for Photoshop, and you've got the various different elements on there which allow you to make your own design. Or if you're using a designer, they will need this to work from so that they make the design the correct size for your book. So as you can see, it looks a bit complicated when you first look at it. But basically, the red line that you've got there is called the bleed, and that just means the area that is probably going to get cut off. And so you need to make sure that you don't put anything too important there. So don't put any text that you don't want to lose in that area because it could get chopped off. That's why it's called your bleed area. But you also need to make sure that all your images and any colors or anything else that you've got bleed all the way right to the edge. And again, your designer will know this if they're designing it. Also tells you where the spine is and where the folds are going to be obviously, you've got the white area, which is your live area. This is where you're going to position your logos, your texts, and anything that's essential that you don't want to lose. So you need to make sure the book title, your name, and everything else is well within that so that it doesn't get cut off. You don't lose it in those trim lines there. And so that's the starting point that you'll use if you're designing it yourself, or if you've got a professional designer on board. And then when you're working on your design, this is what the full wraparound design will look like. Well, obviously, it won't look like this because this is my book, but to give you an idea of where the elements are placed. So you can see that we've got the title which is nice, it's big, legible title, consistent with the E book. Again, everything needs to match, so your eBook and your paperback will need to match in terms of design. And hopefully, what you'll have found when you did the research and the exercise at the end of the last chapter, one thing you'll find regardless of the genre nowadays is that the text was very big and very, very easy to read as a small thumbnail, because let's be honest, most of us are shopping on our phones or maybe on a small computer screen, and we need to be able to quickly see the title of the book. So that is very, very important. Then you've got the cover blurb or the quote, or the enticing copy. And again, that would be genre specific. So in my case, I managed to get a blurb. I was lucky enough to get a quote from SJ Watson talking about my book, and that was very prominently put on the front cover because I was very proud of it. Then you've got the width of the spine, which I mentioned before, which, again, if you're using Kindle or Ingram or Book volt or any of the other services out there, they will usually have a page calculator which will tell you how wide that needs to be to make sure it's wide enough for the number of pages. Then you've got your back cover, your blurb, which we'll be talking about later on. And this is your chance to really sell your book, and we'll be working on elements of that later on, and I'll be telling you how you can do that. You need to make sure that there is space for the barcode on the back there, which you see on any retail book. And then you've got your imprint name or your logo, if you want on there. And again, we're going to talk in more depth about imprints. But essentially, that would be where the name of the publisher usually goes. So you probably can't see it on here, but that's PiockPublishing for me, and it's got my logo on there. In all of this, you need to be thinking about your brand, your author brand, your book brand. If you're writing more than one series, maybe you've got a science fiction series, and then you've got a thriller series or maybe you've got a police procedural and then a different kind of thriller or whatever. But what you really need to be thinking about is how you brand these so that they look different, but they look consistent with each other. And again, think about genre, which hopefully the exercise that you did at the end of the last chapter will help you with that. Where does this fit within the genre? And is it immediately obvious that it fits within your genre and can people tell what kinds of books you write? And then you need to be thinking about future books because this is the first cover if you're publishing for the first time, but if it's going to be a series, or you're going to be writing more books, do you want your books to have a consistent look and feel? Well, that's something you need to think about now. Now, you can always change these things further down the line and do rebrands and all that, but why not get it right first time out of the gate. So as you can see, there are lots of technical aspects to it, and there are lots of things that you need to think about. And maybe if you haven't got design experience, you're absolutely terrified by all this talk of bleed and spine width and trim size and all the rest of it. So maybe you want help with it. Well, let's look at some of the pros and cons of doing that. So do it yourself or get expert help. That's the question. But before we tackle that, take a look at the books that are on the left there and ask yourself, would you buy these books? Now, all due respect to the author's concerned, but I'm guessing they did these designs themselves. I have no idea really what kind of genre either of them are. Maybe the one at the bottom is something to do with some kind of fantasy thing, but I'm not entirely sure. And the one at the top sexy Pyramid mystery, maybe. I don't know, is that even a genre. But the point is, you know, they aren't designed particularly well. They're actually very difficult to even read the title, let alone work out what the genre is. And is that the kind of thing that you want with your book? Is that what you want going out into the world? So ask yourself that first. So if you don't have the skills, that is something to bear in mind. That said, obviously, budget, as with all of these things, is an issue. What is your budget? Do you have any money to spend on this? There are different versions and different things you can do, and they don't all have to cost lots and lots of money, but do you have any money for it at all? What's your skill set? Do you have any design skills at all? Have you worked on design at all, or is it something that you think you might be able to learn? Maybe you could take a course. Maybe you've got a friend that could help? And there are online courses and YouTube courses and all the rest of it to help you do that. Then there are some tools like Canva or KDP cover creator. Canva helps massively with lots and lots of graphic design things. You can design banners with it. You can design social media posts, and they do have some templates for book covers. Again, you're relatively limited, you kind of have to follow the template. You can tweak things, and you do kind of need to know what you're doing, but at the same time, it's very easy to get something that looks presentable, and that won't cost you anything unless you want to use some of the premium images. And then this KDP cover creator, which again, is pretty basic, but it's easy to use, and you can sort of produce an okay generic cover, so that's something you could check out. Something you need to be aware of is imaging, licensing and rights. Now, this is an area you do need to focus on. You can't just Google the picture of an elephant, for example, and then put that on the front cover of your book and hope for the best. The chances are that that is a copyrighted image. Somebody else owns the rights to it, and they are going to want some money if you haven't licensed. Now you can license images yourself. You can pay for it. You can go into places like Shutterstock and pay a certain fee. You need to be very specific about what you're using it for because the fee will change depending on how wide the audience is. But also, there are places like Pixabay where you can go and get copyright free images, and you can use those without any problem, and they're under the Creative Commons license. And so you need to make sure that all the imagery, all the photography, if you use it on your cover belongs to you and that you've got the rights to be able to use it. That's really important. And there are other places that you can get help with covers. So, for example, there's Fiber or Upwork, where you can hire professional designers. There are loads of designers on there, and often they focus on a specific genre. You can see examples of their previous artwork and you can work out whether you want to use them. Some of them are very, very inexpensive, some of them are more expensive. It just depends. You need to look at reviews and everything else. Or you can use a site like Get Covers, which is really good. Especially for certain kinds of genres and really inexpensive. And I'd definitely give those a go if you can. And if you are using a designer, you'd need to make sure that you give them a very clear brief and a rough idea of what the book is about. What are the main story elements. You can sometimes they'll even ask for a synopsis, a short synopsis, so they've got a clear idea, and you can give them a sense of what you're after. If you are going to use a professional designer, make sure you ask to see examples of their previous work. And if you can, maybe some testimonials as well. And when it comes to the fee, ask how many amendments you get to it because the chances are they won't hit it exactly how you want them to hit it on the first try. They will need some input. They will need to go back and make some tweaks. Is that included in the cost that they're quoting? Make sure you find that out, as well. So that's a big question, working out whether you can do it yourself or whether you want some expert help. But another area to consider is what's called Amazon A plus content. What do we mean by that? Well, essentially, it's the bit that you get at the bottom of the Amazon listing for your book in the from the publisher section. And it's an extra shop window that Amazon gives you if you want it with various different layouts that you can use. You can really sell your book. You can add extra quotes in there. If you want to, you can have another picture of your book. You can do it in this particular example that we've got here with the three sections. There are lots of different layouts. Needs to be consistent with the rest of the design of your book. So this is something you would do after the cover has been designed. You need to make sure it follows the same font layout, colors, and it follows the same sort of design and tone, if you like. An example would be this Ian Rankin book that's just come out, as I recall this in October 2024, it's the new Ian Rankin midnight and blue. And as you can see, this is a specific layout that Amazon offers, and the graphic designer has used all the different tabs. So it's basically broken into three sections, and they've used different images of the book. They've got it on the phone there as well. There's a big shout outline of he spent his life putting them behind bars. Now he's joining them. And, again, it's just an extra option for you to sell your book. Hence why it's called A plus is to help you get to the top of the class and really make your book stand out. So that is definitely something I would add, and it just gives you that extra professional polish. And again, it's something that you see the traditional publishers do all the time. And as I've said before, let's learn from the traditional publishers and see how we can do things better. So hopefully, you can see just how important a really good cover is to the success of your book now. It's absolutely key. It starts with a brilliant manuscript, but the reader might never even get to read the book if they judge your book on that cover and it isn't up to scratch. So we've got to get that right. So before we wrap things up, let's set some coursework. I want you to build on the research that you did in Part one of this module. Really drill down, take your notes and think about your own cover moving forward. What are the trends of your genre? What are the key aspects of your story? What are the things that you want to be apparent on that front cover and on the back cover if you're thinking about a full wraparound for the print version? I want you to find three reference covers. So three other covers that you think, Yes, my book needs to be in the same ballpark as these books. This is where I want to be. Then I want you to create a brief for a designer, and that doesn't matter whether you're using a professional designer or whether you're thinking of doing it yourself. I still want you to create this brief. What are your initial ideas when you're thinking about what you want from your cover? And then I want you to decide on the approach. Are you going to go down the self designed route or are you going to seek professional help with it? So really work your way through those points and decide what you're going to do when it comes to your book cover. Check out the course notes and then meet me back here again for Chapter five, where we're going to be looking at how to format your book. 9. 5: Formatting Your Book: Okay, Chapter five is where we look at formatting your book, specifically the interior of your book. Let's get started. So in this chapter, we'll start off by looking at typesetting, and that just means preparing the manuscript. Then we'll look at a potential DIY approach for those of you who are a bit more technically minded. And then I'll be showing you some tools that can help with the job and make it a lot easier, and then we'll finish off by doing the usual course work and working out how you can take the next step in your publishing journey. Let's get started. So you've probably heard the term typesetting before, a term that's been around since the start of print technology, however, many years ago. But book formatting now is a little bit different. So let's get into that. So typesetting sounds technical, but all it really means is preparing the manuscript. And so if we think about Microsoft Word or any kind of standard word processor, a big part of that is Wizzywig what you see is what you get. Well, with book formatting, that isn't the case. When you move towards formatting your book for print in particular, what you see on the page in your word processor, Microsoft Word or whatever office program you're using at the time is not what's going to necessarily appear when you start moving over to make ePub files for your eBook or PDF files for the print version. We need to bear that in mind. There's going to be lots of things that we can't necessarily see that are going to show up on those other versions. And part of it is formatting. So it's things like how you want your headings to look, how you want your chapters to look, how you want your paragraphs to be spaced, justification and lots of other things that you need to get into. There are things like double spaces. So we've all done it before. When we're in the midst of writing, you press space, and then you're thinking, and you press space again, and before you know it, there are two spaces there, but you don't necessarily notice them because they're very, very tiny on the screen. Well, that will cause a big issue when you move over to formatting the book for the print version or the EPub version, and you might not be aware of it. There are fonts. We might just assume it's just going to pop up in our times new Roman or Curia or whatever else it is that you're using, but that's not the case, and we need to think about how fonts look. And with an eBook version, it will use its own fonts, so we need to make sure that everything works there. Page breaks are not going to be standard unless you make them standard and unless it's coded in such a way that the page breaks are there and just consistency throughout the manuscript so that we make sure everything looks professional and clean and slick throughout. And as I mentioned earlier on, there are two file types with this ePub, which is for eBooks and PDF, which is for print. So they're the two files that we're going to focus on creating. So first of all, we can look at the DIY approach, if you like. And if you're a little bit more technically minded, you are able to do this. You can look at doing it. You can do it within Microsoft Word. You can make sure that it's formatted exactly how you want to be, and there are things that you can do. And the best thing to do if you're considering doing that is if you actually go into KDP when you sign into it and you look at the EBook manuscript formatting guide, it will give you a step by step approach of how you should be doing that, so you can look through that. But there is quite a lot to it, so just bear that in mind. If you are whiz on Microsoft Word and you're used to doing Excel spreadsheets and maybe programming little bits and pieces into Microsoft Word. It might be a cinch, but for somebody like me, it's just too much. I wasn't interested in doing that. But essentially, you can do that, and you can follow the guide, and then you can use the KDP conversion tool, which will convert your Microsoft Word document into the correct files for EBOok. So you can do that, but just be aware it might be a bit hit and miss and a bit trial and error for a start, and there is a bit of a learning curve with it. So if you like me and you're not so technically minded, what is out there to help you move forward with it? So this Read Z, which I mentioned in an earlier chapter, which has a book editor, and that's totally free. Read is free to sign up to, and you can use Read Z, and it's quite straightforward. Again, you just need to make sure that it remains consistent throughout, but you can upload your book to that and you can work through it. There are templates. You're limited in the fact that it will only be able to look in a certain way. There aren't loads and loads of things that you can mess up brown with or change. So you might be limited to getting very specific if there's a very specific look that you're after or you want your book to be laid out in a very, very specific way, you'll have to just follow the templates, but it is free. There's a piece of software called Scrivener, which is the picture that you can see on your left there. That's my Scrivener setup, but Scrivener is a piece of software that's predominantly aimed at people who are writing books or writing non fiction or whatever. You can write lots of other things in it. And within Scrivener, there are ways that you can format an e book and a PDF. Again, there's a bit of a learning curve with it, but it does take care of a lot of the heavy lifting. I love Scrivener. I use it for writing. I don't use it for formatting my books, but I do use it for my writing, but it does have formatting tools in it. There's vellum, which is Mac only, and at the time of me recording this is just over 200 pounds. That has got loads of beautiful templates in it. It's very, very, very, very easy to use. You can do E books. You can do PDFs with that. Consistent all the way through. It takes most of the stress out of it, and I highly recommend vellum. But some people, obviously, if you're not a Mac user, you can't use it, so you're limited there. And for some people, there isn't enough flexibility for things like non fiction and being able to change things on a sort of micro level. They like to be able to drill in a little bit more. And if that's you, then Atticus might be the piece of software for you. That's around about $147 as I record this. Um, and that has got lots of templates, but it's also got lots of flexibility in it. You can change lots of different bits and pieces. There's a bit of a learning curve, but again, it's fairly straightforward and it's highly recommended by lots of people. I've used Atticus, and I really like Atticus as well, and it's available on Mac and PC, so that might be an option for you. If you remember, in the editing section in Chapter two, we talked about a copy editor. Well, lots of copy editors also now offer book formatting services, so they will lay out the book exactly how you want it to be laid out, and they'll produce these files for you, obviously at a cost there, but that might be something that you want to look at as well. There's loads of options. If you're technically minded, you can work through it yourself, or you could use one of these free tools or one of the more expensive ones, it's up to you depending on the range of options. There are also free downloadable versions of all the software that I've mentioned there, trial versions where you can have a little go and see what you think of it, whether that's Scrivener, Atticus or vellum. All of them have free trial versions. So try it out, see what works for you and move on from there. So in terms of coursework for this module, I want you to think about how you'll format your book, based on what kind of skills you have and what your kind of opinions are on it. I want you to investigate the available tools, try out the ones that you want to try that look attractive. Think again, as always, about what your budget is, both in terms of time and money. Do you have time to spend on this stuff hours and hours and hours formatting a book that's 100,000 words long, or is it something you'd sooner hand over to somebody else? If you are going to do that, have you got the money to do it? How tech savvy are you? Maybe you're an absolute whiz on Microsoft Office, and you can do all these things without even thinking about it. Great. Then push on and see if you can work out how to do it yourself. Another aspect is whether you're producing fiction or nonfiction. Why is that important? Well, usually with fiction, unless it's children's fiction, it's usually predominantly text, which is much easier to format, and you haven't got too many things to think about. But then, again, if it's non fiction, you might have a more difficult layout. Maybe there are more photographs, maybe there's some more complicated layouts you need to think about. Again, that might be tricky for you to do on your own. Maybe you won't be able to do it in one of these pieces of software. So that's something to think about, as well. And finally, I want you to think about whether you're looking to establish a house style and that's important in the text, just as it is with your cover or any other part of your branding. Is this something you're going to be moving forward with you gonna be producing more books? Do you want them to have a similar layout? Do you want all of your books to have a similar sort of feel or a tone? Well, that's really important at this stage to establish what that is. So think about what you want your house style to be. Work your way through all that, then you'll have a much clearer idea and a plan of how you're going to format your book. And then meet me back here for Chapter six, where we're going to be looking at KDP, ISBNs, and all that techie stuff you really shouldn't be afraid of. 10. 6.1: Navigating KDP, ISBNs, and Book Pricing: Chapter six, where we're going to be talking about KDP, ISBNs, paperbacks, and all the other techie stuff that you're probably a bit scared of right now, but you really shouldn't be. Let's get started. There's a lot to go at in this module, so I've split it into two parts again. So we're going to start off by looking at KDP. What is it? Then we'll look at pricing, taking a look at how you should be pricing your books and what's realistic in the marketplace. Then we'll be taking a look at ISBNs or barcodes. In part two, I'll be telling you how you can create your own imprint and why that's important to give yourself that professional publisher sheen. Part five, we'll be taking a look at bookshops, paperbacks, and selling direct, and then we'll finish up with some coursework, giving you more steps to progress your own publishing journey and get you that little bit closer to getting your book out into the world. Let's get started. And before we dive into all that technical stuff, I thought it would be worth reminding you my suggested approach for publishing that first book. Okay, I'm essentially suggesting a three pronged attack. The EBOok is very straightforward. I'm suggesting you give Amazon complete exclusivity on the EBok, the Kindle version, and enroll your book in KDP select for the reasons that we discussed earlier in terms of a higher royalty rate and access to promotions and things like that. But I'm also suggesting that you produce a paperback version through Amazon. So Amazon customers can buy your paperback through there because let's be honest, it is the biggest retailer, and that's probably where they're going to find it initially. But you've also got the option to buy author copies from Amazon once your book is out into the world, and they're charged at cost, so they're a little bit cheaper, and then you can sell them direct for a profit. But then I'm suggesting that you use a service like Ingram Spark, which we'll talk about a little bit later or Book vault, one of those services, because those services mean that your paperback is also available in bookshops. If bookshops want to order it in, it's in the bookshop catalogs. It'll also be available on the online stores for those bookshops, as well. And again, you've still got the option to then or author copies from there, depending on what the costs are. And there's also another option that you can use an outside printer if you want to do short run print on demand as well, once you've got your cover design and everything else sorted. But initially, Amazon for the EBok Amazon for the paperback, and then Ingram Spark or another service also providing a paperback. And that will cover everything and make sure that your book is available everywhere it needs to be. Right. Let's look at KDP. So what is KDP? Let's just remind ourselves. Basically, it stands for Kindle direct Publishing. You can find it at kindle amazon.com, very straightforward. It uses your existing Amazon account details, your shopper account details. If you've got an Amazon account, most of us have, I would imagine, by now. It deals with Kindle, the paperback and hardbacks, which at the time of recording this, we're still in Beta, but they're set to go mainstream soon. So you can do all three different versions in Amazon. On there, you'll be able to find your sales reports, your Kindle edition normalized page reads, which again, we'll talk a little bit more about later on. But that is for Kindle Unlimited readers and how many pages they read that generates income for you. You can deal with pricing on there, depending on different markets around the world, and you can promote and advertise, which we talked about before. So that's all on there. So this is what it'll look like when you actually log in, as you can see, create, manage, publish, depending on whether they make any updates between now and when you actually watch this, it might look slightly different, but it'll be along the same sorts of lines. And what you find is this big yellow button on the top right there, create. And essentially, that's where everything begins. That's where you start making your books. But then you've also got tools and resources on here on this tab. There's a section for free ISBNs, which we're going to talk about a little bit later. Don't go into that at the moment. You don't need to worry about that too much. So let's just run through what it will actually look like. So this is my Kindle direct publishing dashboard, and I'm just showing you here what it would be like when you create a book, just to give you an idea, we'll just run through the thing. You'll work your way across these three tabs at the top there. So we start in the Kindle book details, and we're looking at the callback as my next book is about to come out as I record this. As you can see, I put the title, a subtitle. It's a series, so I've put that in there as well. And then there's obviously your author details, fairly self explanatory. And then there's the book description, which again, we'll cover a bit later on when we talk about the blurbs and how you can write a great cover blurb. Make sure that you've got the publishing rights for this. Obviously, if you've written it, then you've got those. Say whether there are any sexually explicit images or the titles explicit in any way. You can set a minimum and a maximum age range if you want to do that. But you don't need to worry about that too much. It's not essential. And then decide on your primary marketplace. For me, that's dot co.uk because I'm in the UK, but you might be.com or wherever else you're based in the world. You can change that. And then we've got categories here, you decide on the three main categories, and you decide what kind of genre your book is and you can find the right things for there. You've got options for keywords, which we're not going to get into in this particular course, but that's a sales thing, and you can make sure that people can find your book. And once you're happy with all that and you've set yourself a release date or pre release, if you're going to pre order, you then move across. So you work your way through the tabs. It's fairly straightforward. And then you'll have the chance to upload your manuscript, which we've talked about making your files there. So they'll go there. You've got your Kindle eBook cover. Again, although this is fairly straightforward, once you've created the content, you have to say whether you've used AI at all, just to mention that. And then you carry on going down. You've got your eBook preview, which mine is not available on there at the moment, because as I record this, I've not uploaded the final manuscript. It's available for preorder. And then you move across the tab again once you've completed that. So it's very straightforward left to right, and now we're on pricing. You decide where your book is for sale. Mine's available all around the world. And then you get into pricing, which again, we'll talk a little bit more about later on in this module. You've got your royalties there, 35% or 70%. Provided you're in KDP select and your books Amazon exclusive, it will be 70%, which is great. And then you work your way through all the countries deciding on a price. You just want to make sure that you round these or down and make sure it's kind of a round number because some of them depending on your starting currency will look a bit strange. And then you've basically got the option to publish your book as a paperback or a kindle, depending on which bit you're working on. And off you go. And then you just work through, you create your next version. If that was the Ebook, you'd then move on to your paperback and on it goes. So it's very, very straightforward. That quick run through should just give you an idea so that when you sign into KDP, it doesn't look absolutely terrifying and you're not sure where to start. But if you start with the Create button and you work your way across those three tabs, most of it is self explanatory. You'll need to create the correct files before you get there, and you'll need to generate all the content and your manuscript and the book description and everything else. But KDP itself is really user friendly, and there's lots of help online tools and resources that you can dip into to help yourself there. Let's look at pricing now because we've just covered it off there in the KDP. You can see you can select all your different pricing, depending on where you are in the world. So let's take a quick look at that. There's a few things you should bear in mind when thinking about what to price your book at. First of all, be realistic because you are not Stephen King or James Patterson or anybody with a huge global following. You know, we're just starting out on this journey, and if you want people to buy your book, you need to be realistic. And that means looking at other books in your genre. Have a quick look around, look at similar books and maybe look at books that you think might have been Indie published, as well. What are they selling for? Because don't forget as Indie publishers, Indie authors, we've actually got much better margins. So we've got lower costs. So use that to your advantage. We don't need to set a really high price. We can set a relatively low price and still make a decent amount of money on each copy sold. Plus, you need to think about whether you want people to read your book initially and just grow your audience or whether you think you're going to make millions of pounds straight off the bat, but be realistic. With non fiction and self help books, you do tend to have a little bit more flexibility with that. So do have a look at what's going on in your genre and what other people are doing for similar books. There does seem to be more of an acceptance that non fiction books are going to be slightly more expensive. Maybe it's because it's fulfilling a need. It might be a business book or perhaps it's a memoir or something like that. But take a look around and see what the going rate is. That's the best thing to do. You don't want your book to be outrageously cheap because people will just probably assume there's something wrong with it, but equally, you don't want it to be priced out of the marketplace. And you'll have seen on my KDP run through there, you may have seen that you're able to set your book for pre order, which basically means making it available for people to order before it's officially released. And this can be a great way to build anticipation. And you can also offer a lower price for those early orders. So you could essentially, for example, you could say it's 199 if you order it before such and such date, and then it's going to go up. It's a good way to kind of generate anticipation and get people interested in the book Early doors. The only thing I would say about that is just as a note of caution, don't set a pre order date that's unrealistic. And the same goes for your release date because if you don't think you're going to be ready in time, you don't want to be in a situation where you're going to be rushing things. So just bear that in mind. ISBNs. So you've heard ISBN. The term mentioned quite a few times already probably popped up. Essentially, all an ISBN is the bar code. But let's get into that a little bit more and talk about this technical aspect is the ISBN, because people worry about it a lot. So ISBN or international standard book number, really, is just a barcode that you see on the back of any book, any paperback book. It's only for the print book. You don't need to worry about it for the EBok, especially if you've just got the Amazon exclusive, accept the ASIN which is the Amazon identifying number for the EBok. That's absolutely fine. You don't need to worry about the ISBN for that. The ISBN is only for the print book. You can get them free from Amazon or Ingram Spark, for example, if you want to. However, be advised that if you do that, if you use a free ISBN from Amazon and use that for your paperback, you then can't use that on your other paperbacks, your non Amazon paperbacks. Also, it will be down as a book that is published by Amazon, and they will be the publisher of record, not you. So my advice would be to purchase your own ISBN. They're not cheap. The UK price, as I recall this is about 93 pounds, but you can actually purchase ten of them for about 190 pounds. So that is more cost effective if you think you're going to be publishing lots of books. So that's something to bear in mind. But if you do that, you can then register it in your own imprint. It's your ISBN. You are the publisher. That's important. You are the publisher of record, as it's known. It also means that you'll be searchable for bookshops and catalogs and everything else, they'll be able to put the ISBN number into their systems and find your book. And when you purchase it, you register it under your imprint, which we're going to talk about a little bit more in a minute. But essentially, then it will look like an inverted commerce proper book. It will have your publisher on it. I'll be registered to you, and you'll be the publisher of record. So although it's tempting to take advantage of those free ISBNs from Amazon or Ingram Spark or if you use another service, a lot of them offer free ISBNs. My suggestion would be buy your own. This is something that I really would suggest that you put your hand in your pocket and you pay for because it is worth doing it. You want to be the publisher of record, and you want it to be under your name and your imprint. Speaking of which, that's the end of this part, but in Part two, we're going to discuss imprints and more, so stay tuned. 11. 6.2: Imprints, Paperbacks, and Selling Direct: So welcome back to part two of Chapter six, where we were talking about all the techie stuff. And now I want to talk a little bit about an imprint. What is it? How do you create it, and why do I think it's important? Let's get cracking. So what do I mean when I talk about creating an imprint? Well, essentially, I'm just talking about very simply creating a name, a brand name, if you like, for your publisher, it's who you're gonna be. Now, that can just be your name, your initials or anything else. But why is it important? Well, I think it's the first step to building your brand, which we talked about in an earlier chapter. It's who you are, it's who your books are going to be published under, and it's giving people a sense of what to expect right from the get go. If you don't create an imprint and you just do it normally without any kind of registering it to just your name or anything else, all it will say on Amazon when you scroll down for the details is independently published, which don't get me wrong, it's absolutely fine if that's what you want to do. But it's just another one of these little signposts that tells people, Oh, okay, well, this is a self published book. Again, nothing to be ashamed about, but why not take after Trad publishing and make it look that a little bit more professional and a little bit more polished. It can be simple. As I said before, it could just be a variation of your initials or something or a word that's important to you. It doesn't make any difference. It does add that professional sheen. And you can include it in your print design. So if you look at the picture that you can see on the screen there with my book, the opening page there is PiockPublishing. So I created a little logo there, put it on the title page. It's also on the spine of the book. Just adds that professional sheen. It removes a reader barrier because some readers will immediately look for, Okay, who's published this book. And even if they don't know the name of the publisher, if there is a name of a publisher, they're a little bit more relaxed about it. And, you know, it's that old thing. It does look like a real book rather than just something you've knocked out yourself. So I definitely encourage you to create an imprint. Think about it before you register for your ISBN, and then you can use it when you register all your ISBN is going forward. And again, it's just getting into this mindset of being an actual publisher rather than just somebody who puts out their own books. And on that subject, bookshops, paperbacks and selling direct. We just want to sell books. We want to get them into the hands of readers. Yes, some of that's going to be through Amazon. Maybe a lot of it's going to be through Amazon, but there will be times when you want to do that in person, you want to if you sell direct, you'll make more money because there's a higher margin for doing that. And as we've said before, you do want to see your paperbacks in bookshops wherever possible. Indie bookshops are great for that. And if you've got a good product and they can access it on their system, it just gives you a better chance of getting in there. So again, for that, just to reiterate, you will need your own ISBN, your own barcode. You can use Ingram Spark, as I've mentioned a few times already to publish one of your paperback versions, which is free. The only reason I've got the 25 pounds thing there is again, at the time of recording, they do tend to change from time to time Ingram Spark, but it's free at the moment. However, if you need to change the design within a certain set period of time, it will cost you 25 pounds to change your cover design or your manuscript, if you needed to make changes, last minute changes to it. So just make sure everything's good to go before you do that. There's also Book Volt, which is a relatively new service, at least, it is to me. As I record this, I am yet to use it, but I've got a number of Indie author friends have used it, and they've gotten really, really well with it. There's a roughly 20 pounds setup as I record this. Obviously, all of these prices are subject to change, so make sure you check yourself before you get into it. But then once you've set it up, it's free to do, and you can use those for distribution. Now, each one of these, whether it's Amazon, whether it's Ingram Spark, Bk Volt, or wherever, or even a private printer, if you use that down the line, they will have slightly different design specs for your cover art. But they will all tell you. They'll all give you their own template. It all depends on the kind of paper that they're using. Different paper creates a slightly different thickness of book, for example, which will change the spine width, which means you'll need to change that. Now, if you're doing that yourself, obviously, you'll need to do that yourself, but if you've got a designer, you'll need to get your designer to give you another version of the book and make sure it doesn't get mixed up. I would definitely advise, especially when you're starting out, I would ask for proofs before you order lots and lots of books, and all of the providers I'm talking about here will provide proofs. You'll have to pay a fee to do that, but it's worth doing initially because you can get unexpected errors, things colors are not quite how you thought they were going to be or something's not as clear as you wanted it to be or the size is slightly off. So that's why you should get proofs when you're first starting out. And then you need to think about where you want to get your author copies for from. You can get author copies from Amazon, as I've mentioned before, but you can only do that once the actual book is published. Otherwise, you'll get it, but it'll have the words proof emblazoned across it, which is really irritating. But if you use Ingram Spark, they will send you author copies before the actual book goes live, you can get a proof copy, and it will be a proof that you can actually check and make sure it's okay. Another option is to use a dedicated printer. There are lots of print on demand short run printers, and they're usually very inexpensive if you find a good one. So look around for local suppliers, ask for some examples. They'll usually check over your artwork for you and your design, but that is another option. And if you do if you can get the cost down on your books, especially when you start doing in person events, or you're selling direct through your website, then you can make more money and you can get a higher margin there and still keep control of the quality and make sure that everything's good. If you're doing signed copies, for example, which is I sell signed copies through my website, obviously, you're going to need some copies to be able to do that. So just think about where you're going to get your author copies from. And the way that I sell my signed copies is, again, at the time of recording this, I use Kofi or coffee or Kofi. I don't know how you'd say it actually. But there's also Shopify, if you want to set up a little shop on your website or wherever you want to sell your books from, and that way you can directly sell to your readers. So they're all good things to bear in mind, but definitely don't neglect the paperback because although lots of people like to read on Kindle the paperback is the physical artifact of your book. It's great when you're out and about and you're at events, so you want to do an author talk to have your own book. People look over. It's just a great way to sell your book, and why wouldn't you want a paperback or hardback, if you want to go down that route, but obviously, I'm not covering that in this module, and you'd have to look at different price options and things. So we've looked at, you know, we've run through all the techie stuff, the paperbacks, the KDP, the ISBN, and all the rest of it. There's lots and lots of stuff to think about there. So for your coursework and how you're going to progress going forward, I want you to set up your KDP account, log in with your details, take a look around, research the pricing options for your book. Remember the genre, the length of your book is also important. If it's a novela and it's not very many pages, then maybe you need to start off cheaper anyway. But what's the going rate? That's the most important thing. Is what you think you can realistically sell your book for. But also, my advice would don't sell yourself cheap. The days of 99 PBoks I think are short lived. A lot of people look at 99 PBoks and think, why is it 99 P. But that's just my opinion. You can decide for yourself, depending on the genre and the length and everything else. Decide on a name for your imprint. And again, think long term if you're going to do more than one book, is it going to be a name that you can live with for multiple books and you can register lots of ISBNs with and again, with that, think about logo, artwork. Is that something you're happy to design yourself? Maybe it's just going to be very simple and it's just going to be your initials, a bit like my logo, WKW maybe. That's literally just some initials that I've used there. So that's another option there. And then finally, I want you to look at your print options and think about Ingram Spark. Are you going to use Book volt or maybe you just want to use Amazon on its own and that you're happy for your paperbacks to be there? That's fine, but I would still suggest getting your own ISBN so that you can be the publisher of record. That's really important. At least I think it is. I know I've given you a lot to think about there, methodically work your way through that coursework, check out the course notes, and then come back for Chapter seven, where we're going to be talking a little bit more about the blurbs and the information on your book that really helps to sell it and make it pop. 12. 7: Writing Compelling Blurbs: Yes, it's Chapter seven, the blurbs, where I'm going to give you the tools to write compelling copy that's going to sell your book. Let's get started. Let's look at what we're going to cover in this chapter. We'll start off with what I mean when I talk about the blurb. Then we'll analyze some great examples of blurbs and cover copy. And we'll finish up with some coursework, giving you the tools that you'll need to create your own compelling copy that's going to sell your book. So I should say, at this point, I'm using the term the blurbs and blurb to mean the copy that goes on the back cover of your book and sometimes on the front as well if you're using different shout outlines and various other different selling techniques. Some other people talk about blurbs as testimonials that they've got from other writers or other authors, that's fine, as well. They're kind of interchangeable. But what we're looking at in this particular chapter is how you can write your own killer copy to sell your book, to set it up, give us synopsis, give the reader a good idea of what they're going to get. And ultimately to help them to make that choice to buy your book. Let's get started. The key thing to remember about the blurb is that it is selling your book. That overrules everything else. It's the most important thing. It should set the tone and the genre for your book. We're looking at what's the hook or problem that you're addressing. It should only be around 100 to 200 words. Most good burbs are actually closer to 100 words than they are 200 words. They're very succinct. It should include the main character or premise. And if it's non fiction, it should address who you are or what your unique perspective is. That's really important. It should be well written, obviously, like all your work. There shouldn't be any mistakes in it, and it should be a consistent voice in terms of consistent with your novel or if it's nonfiction, consistent with your authorly voice for your nonfiction book as well. And you should look at other books in your genre to see what they're doing as regards to the blurbs. So let's look at some examples. So here we've got Beth O'Leary's the wake up call. It's a romantic comedy. So let's look at what the blurb says, first of all. Welcome to Forest Manor Hotel, where the staff and guests are one happy family, except for Izzy and Lucas, bitter rivals banned from working the same shift for everyone's sake. After struggling for years, the hotel may soon have to close its doors forever. But when Izzy returns a guest's lost wedding ring, the reward convinces management that this might fix everything. With four rings still sitting in lost property, Izzi and Lucas are forced to work together to try to save the day. But as their rivalry becomes something much, much more complicated, Izzy and Lucas start to wonder if there's more at stake here than the hotel's future. So let's just break that down a little bit. So we start off that first paragraph there. We've introduced the characters, and if possible, the location. So let's just take a quick look there. So we've got the characters Izzy and Lucas, and we've got a rough idea of the location as well. So it's going to be set in a hotel, Forest Manor hotel. So the first paragraph has given us on main characters and a sense of where the story is taking place. Let's look at the second paragraph. So here we should be looking for the premise or the source of the conflict. So again, we've got a much better idea of the story. We know that Izzy returns a guest's lost wedding ring, and the reward convinces management this might fix everything. And there are four other rings to go out. So the idea is set up that Izzy and Lucas are going to be forced to work together to try to save the day. So that's the premise. We know that these two characters don't get on, so that's where the source of conflict is, and that's all set up in that second paragraph. But as their rivalry becomes much more complicated, Izzy and Lucas start to wonder if there's more at stake here than the hotel's future. And that is essentially the promise of the story. So where it might be headed, it gives you a sense of the tone and where it might be headed. So you've got the premise in the second paragraph and the promise of the story, where it's heading, what the reader might be able to expect in the last paragraph. It sets it up. It's the hook, almost like a question. Let's look at another example. This is Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris. So this is a historical fiction. So we've got a call out line at the beginning. From what is it they flee? 16 60, Colonel Edward Wally and his son in law, Colonel William Goff, crossed the Atlantic. Having been found guilty of high treason for the murder of Charles, they are wanted and on the run. A reward hangs over their heads for their capture dead or alive. In London, Richard Naylor, secretary of the Rgicide Committee of the Privy Council, is tasked with tracking down the fugitives. He'll stop at nothing until the two men are brought to justice. So as you can see, it's really laying out the premise there and the conflict and the drama. The final paragraph says, act of oblivion is an epic journey across continents and a chase like no other. So again, let's just look at the breakdown there. So we've got the call out or the hook line at the beginning, which is kind of an added thing that wasn't on Beth's synopsis. We've then we've introducing the characters and if possible, the location. So we've got the son in law, Colonel William Goff and Colonel Edward Wally in there as well. We also know that they're going to be crossing the Atlantic, so we know where the story is probably going to be based. And the premise and the source of conflicts, as I mentioned before, is that dramatic regicide committee of the Privy Council. Richard Naylor is basically tracking them down. He's tracking down the fugitives, and he'll stop at nothing until the two men are brought to justice. So you've got the premise there. It's basically a chase. He's going to hunt them down. And what's great about that, as well, is it's set up a real strong antagonist, so we get a really good sense of the conflict in this story and where the dramas going to come from. Then finally, you've got the promise of the story with active oblivion, is an epic journey across continents and a chase like no other. So we really get a sense of where the story is heading and what kind of book this is going to be. Really, really powerful blurb there. Let's look at another example. So, finally, we've got a memoir. So this is non fiction, written by Henry Marsh, and it's called and finally a Neurosurgeons reflections on life. So this is non fiction, but as you'll see, it still holds with the same formula for writing a great blurb, from the number one bestselling author of do no harm and entrancing and uplifting meditation on the gift of life. As a retired brain surgeon, Henry Marsh thought he understood illness, but even he was unprepared for the impact of his diagnosis of advanced cancer. In and finally, he navigates the bewildering transition from doctor to patient. As the days pass, his mind turns to his career, to the people and places he's known, and to creative projects still to be completed. Yet he is also more entranced than ever by the mysteries of science and nature, by his love for his family and most of all, by what it is to be alive. So let's take a look. So you've got your call out or your hook line at the top, also tells you who the author is. We're introducing the author in more detail there. It's Henry Marsh. He's a retired brain surgeon. So it's non fiction. So we know we're in safe hands here. We know it's an expert that's given us this story, and he's already a successful author, as well, which helps. And then we've got the premise and the source of conflict exactly the same as we have with our fiction examples there. So he's navigating this bewildering transition from doctor to patient. We're struggling he's struggling to comprehend what's happening to him. His mind turns to his career, the people and places he's known and to the creative projects still to be completed. And then the promise of the story, where we're headed with all of this. So yes, he's entranced more than ever by the mysteries of science and nature and by the love of his family, but also what it is to be alive. So we get the sense that this is an inspiring memoir. It's going to uplift us, and it's going to take us to really interesting places. So exactly the same formula, whether it's fiction or nonfiction. So you've got your call out or your hook line. You've got your introducing the author. You've got your premise or your source of conflict, and you've got the promise of the story. So, let's move to some coursework. You're going to write your own blurb now. You need to research, so I want you to go away and look at similar books. I want you to find what other books in your genre are doing, the kinds of things, how they're approaching it. Remember, it's 100 to 200 words maximum, so you might start off long, but then you need to edit it down. The closer you can get to 100 words, the better. What is going to be your call out or your hook line? Whose story is it? That's really important, whether it's fiction or it's non fiction? What's the premise, and if possible, which it's not always in your blurb and it's not always relevant, either. But if it is possible and relevant, your location, the promise of the story, remember that's different to the premise. The promise is what the story is going to deliver for your reader. And remember it needs to be consistent with the genre and also the voice and tone of your writing and how you've written this particular novel. It needs to match that authorly voice. So you've got some very specific homework there. I want you to write a really compelling killer blurb that's going to sell your book. Don't just accept the first thing, make sure you treat it exactly the same as you would with any other writing write it, edit it, redraft, write it again, get the key elements of the story. Remember, this isn't a synopsis, so you don't need to be really, really specific and accurate with exactly what happens in your story, but you need to give a sense of what kind of story it is, what genre it is. Where's the drama? Where's the source of conflict going to come from? And why should your reader pick up your book instead of someone else's. So try that and let me know how you get on and then come back for Chapter eight, where we're going to be looking at sales, marketing, and the idea of becoming an author. 13. 8.1: Sales, Marketing, and Becoming an Author: And now our final module sales, marketing and becoming an author. Let's have a look at what we'll be covering. Although this is just an introduction, there's still quite a lot of stuff to cover, so I've broken it into two parts again. So we'll start off with when and how to start. Then we'll be looking at Amazon Author Central and Good Reads. And a quick look at social media. And then in Part two, we'll be looking at other marketing ideas, building an email list and sales sale sales. And then we'll finish off with a little bit more coursework, some homework for you to take that next step along the journey to becoming an author. I know as writers, lots of us are introverts and very humble and don't like to shout too much about what we're doing, but we really have got to get over that if we want to sell some books, and that's what we're going to cover in this chapter. And the key question is, when and how do we start? Well, the answer to that is quite simple. You need to get started straightaway as soon as you can. Even before you've finished writing the book, it's really important to start building some momentum. The longer lead time, the more impact you can make. And one of those ways that you can do that is to have early readers, advanced reader copies is what Arcs stands for, which essentially are copies of your book that you are giving away for free. Now, they don't have to be hard copies, paperbacks. They can be eBooks, which is how I did it when I did my first book. It's a more cost effective way to do it. I sent paperbacks to some well known authors and people that I had already got a relationship with. But for everybody else, I used an e book, and I sent out an advance reader copy of my book on Kindle essentially. And I used Book funnel to do that, which gave a watermarked manuscript, and you can do that, and they can download it and you get their email address, and then they can read it. But why would you do that? Why would you send it out for free? Well, the whole idea is to generate some momentum and hopefully get some early reviews. So when you send out arcs and you ask for arc readers, the key thing is to make sure you tell them that you're giving them a free copy of the book in return for a fair and honest review. That's very key. Don't pay people to do it, especially because if Amazon picks up on the fact that you're doing that, then you can get banned from using KDP and Amazon. You can't pay for reviews, or you're not supposed to. They want other reviews on there to be legitimate and realistic. So obviously, there is a chance that somebody might not like your book, but that's a chance you'll have to take. And hopefully you choose arc readers that are interested in your particular genre and going to enjoy your book. And it's a great way to build up momentum. To find advanced readers, the best thing to do is look at Facebook sites or other social media sites or forums where people hang out, readers hang out, and they might be looking for something that's hot off the press, so they can get an early look at a book. There are people that enjoy doing this and they'll do it in return for this fair and honest review. But also, maybe you know some successful authors or even some celebrities that might look at the book and give you a bit of a testimonial and something that you can put on the actual book when it comes out that you can use to sell the book. I wouldn't just send them to people that you don't know and just people that you hope will read it. It is better if you've got some kind of relationship or you've had some kind of contact with them in the past. But if you do know anybody, rack your brains. If you know somebody that's a celebrity or an existing writer, that will happy to take a look at your book and maybe give you a quote. What I would say about that is don't just willingly send your book to people that you haven't got any kind of relationship with at all in terms of celebrities or well known authors. They get sent loads of books all the time, and they are highly unlikely to want to read your book unless you've got some existing relationship or you've done something with them in the past. And nobody likes to get spammed, but do have a think about anybody that you might know because key to making a successful book is if you can get some good quotes that you can either put inside the book or maybe even on the front cover depending on where you are in your production cycle. So you've got your quotes, but then you also need to make sure that you start talking about what you're doing. And I know that's kind of what social media is all about in general, but you need to be putting yourself out there as a writer. So talk about your maybe you want to talk about your process or you might want to mention that you've been doing some writing today or animal pictures are always good. Maybe you've got, you know, you've been writing and your cat's been bothering you the whole time. Get it out there, talk about what you're doing. Obviously, that will mean probably getting a website, and you might want to look at WordPress to do that or square space if you want a paid option to do that. But somewhere that people can go there or hub, something that belongs to you that's got your blog on there, your information, and where people can find you, that's always a good place to start. The key to all of this is finding things that you're comfortable with and make it unique to you because that's your superpower. That is worth more than any money or anything else. Have a really good think about what's unique to you. Maybe you've had an interesting job, maybe you've had an interesting life story, maybe there's an interesting location that plays into the writing of the book. Maybe you wrote it while you were on the bus going to work. Maybe that's an angle that you can use to make a story or a social media post or talk to people about. Make it personal to you. That is really, really key and go to where your readers are. What do I mean by I mean, think about genre. What kind of people read your books? Where do they hang out both online and in real life? What kind of people are they? Write some notes? How old are they? Where do those kind of people go to? Where do they socialize? What do they think about? All of these things can feed into your sales and marketing plan. The sooner you can start drilling down, getting all this information together, and really thinking about who your readers are, the better. Okay, let's take a look at Amazon Author Central and Good Reads. These might be things that you've heard of before. I'm sure you've heard of GoodReads if you've been reading for any amount of time. Originally, it was an independent reading site. Now it's actually owned by Amazon, which means that the reviews feed into Amazon. So it's really, really important. Amazon Author Central is essentially where everything happens as an author. So you want to claim your Amazon author Central profile as soon as you can. And once you get on there, you can upload a picture. You can put a little biography on there. You can link your books once your books are alive. And it just means that when people go to Amazon and they're shopping for your books, if they scroll all the way down to the bottom, and you can do it with your favorite author now if you like, you'll see there's a link to them, their page, where they are, where you can find their website, where you can find out more about their books. It's really, really important because we all know that when you find a writer that you enjoy and that you like, you want to connect with them, you want to find out a little bit more about them, and you want to know when their next books are coming out. You want to get ahead of that as soon as you can, and you also want to set up your author profile for good reads as well and make sure that you can link your book on there because that's really, really important. Once that's on there, people can start leaving reviews on Good Reads. Whether they buy it on Amazon or whether they don't buy it on Amazon, it doesn't matter, but it all feeds into it and will help the algorithm find your book. And you can do that at amazon.author.com. And once your book is actually live and it's out there in the world, you also need to make sure that you can claim your Good Read's author profile because that's really important. It's where all your books will be housed. It's where people on Good Reads can find all the information for you as well. It's got a lot of the same information. It's got your website on there. It's got your social media. If you've got social media profiles, it talks about what your genre is. You can also connect it with your reader profile, so it knows what you're reading. And again, you can connect with other readers and other writers on there. And essentially it's just another social media platform, but it's specifically aimed at readers. People have got mixed feelings about good reads and the reviews that you get on there, but it is really important to the success of your book. So let's talk about social media. I know that for many people, they hate social media. They don't like anything about it, and they don't think there's anything positive about it. And I understand that. And I'm not for any moment in time, suggesting that you should definitely have social media. If social media is not your bag and you don't like doing it, then don't do it because my whole advice with any of this is don't do anything that you're really, really uncomfortable with. I know there's the old adage, feel the fear and do it anyway, and that's true with lots of things in life, but there's no point starting a social media platform and going on a social media platform if you just know you're not going to use it and you're not comfortable with it. Maybe dip your toe in and see how you get on, but the whole thing is about being yourself. So if you are going to go onto social media, you need to think about which, if any of the platforms. Like I said, you need to find the ones that you're most comfortable on. The whole key to this is you must be authentic. People can smell it a mile off if you're pretending to be something you're not. The whole key to this is to be yourself. Whether you use social media or not, it's very, very important. Put yourself out there, yes, but be yourself in a comfortable way in a way that you can be authentic all the time. It's very, very difficult to be something you're not. Another huge part of it is don't forget the social part. It is called the social media, and people do forget that. And I always like to think about if you're in a room, if you met a room full of other people, potential readers, and you met them in person, and you walked up to them and you shook the hand, the first thing out of your mouth wouldn't be by my book. If you did, you'd get lots of strange looks and people would walk in the opposite direction. So I don't know why people do this on social media. I get this all the time on my Twitter and on my Instagram feeds. Somebody will befriend me, and then the first piece of communication they sent to me is Buy my book or buy my service or whatever it is, listen to my song or whatever it is. It's literally the first thing they say, and I just immediately switch off and I don't want to have anything to do with them. So think about that. Try to build relationships, make real connections, and then people will find your book. And eventually, yes, you can put some sales things out and you can ask people in more general terms to buy your book, and you can talk about what you're doing. But don't just connect to people and immediately say, By my book. It's really off putting. Focus on your strengths, your interests. So regardless of what genre you write in, if you're really, really passionate about, say, cooking, for example, then put that on your social media. Maybe there's some way to link it back to your book. Maybe there isn't. But again, it adds another dimension. It's something that's interested. Maybe you'll become as famous for your scone recipes as you will be for your book or whatever. But it's another way for people to find you. It's something that's interesting. It's another form of connection that you can make with this audience. And, you know, we talk about this a lot, but find your tribe. Who are your people? Who are the readers that you're trying to reach? It's about what we were talking about before, finding your readers. And also, it doesn't hurt to find writers and other creatives that you can connect with because we're all stronger together. You can share your work. You might be able to join a critique group on the back of it. So find your tribe. That's what social media can be good for. That can be the positive aspect of it. So find something that you're comfortable with if you're going to give social media a try. Maybe you're on there already, but you haven't posted anything for a while. On there, interact with people, try to have real meaningful conversations. It seems difficult sometimes, but it is possible. And then think about it more of a little and often or set a schedule. Maybe rather than just getting sucked into doom scrolling for hours and hours and hours a day, maybe just say, Okay, every day in the morning, 15 minutes, I'm going to do my social media. I'll have a quick look and I'll post something or I'll do it last thing at at nighttime, or maybe I'll do it three times a week or whatever it is. But try to set a schedule. Don't get sucked into just spending all your time on there because apart from anything else, you've got lots of writing to do and all the publishing stuff that we've been talking about. So don't waste your time on social media, but it can be a useful tool. And another thing to bear in mind is that with a lot of this, you do feel like sometimes if you're on Instagram and you're on Twitter and you're on Facebook and you're on TikTok, it does feel like, Oh, God, I just need to keep posting lots and lots of different content on everything. You don't a lot of these things are linked now. So for example, if I post a reel on Instagram, it will then be shared to Facebook if I want it to be. So that means I don't have to then post it to Facebook separately. I can put a different spin on it, or I can use the same content, but maybe add some text to it or a piece of music. Don't keep reinventing the wheel. If you've come up with something that you think is a blog post or it's an interesting photograph that you want to talk about or whatever, don't be afraid to reuse it. Maybe just put a slightly different spin depending on who your audience is and just experiment with it. See what works. That's my best advice. As I say, I know social media isn't for everybody, and that's fine, but maybe experiment, see what you can get away with, and if you don't want to use it, don't use it. I'm not forcing anybody to use social media. That's it for this part, but join me again in Part two, where we're going to be looking at some more ideas for sales and marketing. 14. 8.2: Creative Sales and Marketing Strategies: Welcome back. It's Part two of Chapter eight, and now we're going to be looking at some other ideas for sales and marketing. One of the first things to consider is a press release. And you can Google how to write a press release. It's not particularly complicated. You can also reuse a lot of the stuff that you created for your book blurb that we worked on in a different chapter. Put that together, talk a little bit about yourself, a biography. Then it's about looking to different places that you can send that, and some of those will be local newspapers, publications, I'll be local radio. And again, think about what your angle is. The whole thing with local newspapers and local radio, all they really care is it can be very, very tenuous, but find some kind of link to your locality. Now, maybe your books not a local book. That's fine. But you are a local author. You're local to the area. Maybe you've got something interesting that you can link it to within the area somehow or you can talk about something that's been a hot topic locally recently, and then tangeniusly link it back to your book. Maybe that's possible, find an angle. But to be quite honest with you, usually local radio are desperate for content. And if you give them the slightest little opening, they'll take it, and they'll gladly have you on there. Podcasts. As I've mentioned before, I run the joined up writing podcast since 2014. I've also been on other podcasts. This is a great avenue to get your book out there and speak about what you do. Be warned, though, it is quite competitive. Lots of people want to get on podcast, so you need to again, think about what is your USP, what's your angle, what's going to make it interesting for the podcasters, listeners. Look at Indie bookshops. We've already talked about the fact you're probably not going to get in multinational Waterstones and all the rest of it, although you might be able to get in your local book bookshop. But look at Indie bookshops. Maybe you could even use them to do an event. Maybe you could launch your book in an Indie bookshop. They love that. You're going to bring people in. You can do a book signing. But are there other venues? Maybe think laterally? Is there a craft fair? Is the community center? Is there something going on in your village that it might be suitable for? So just think out the box. Then there's public appearances. There's talks. You can do things at your local library. I've done library events. We're talking about books and literacy in general, but also there's that local link there. You can talk about your experience as a writer. And essentially, with all of these things, it's finding lots of different ways to say the same thing, which is essentially by my book, but we don't have to be so blatant about it. You want people to be looking at you and what you do. Now, that can feel really alien to us as writers. I understand that. A lot of us, you know, we like to stay humble and we've got lots of inhibitions and all the rest of it. But you do eyes on what you do. That's how you're going to sell your book. That's how you're going to be able to continue to write more books and connect with more readers because there's nothing better than when you get those early reviews and people tell you that they've loved your story or it's touched them in some way, it's worth it, I promise you. Rather than selling yourself, think about it as connecting with other people, connecting with readers, connecting with writers, and getting your story out there. The whole thing is about encouraging this interaction. It's a two way conversation between you and your reader or your potential reader and them looking at you and what you do in your book. Email mailing lists. Again, some people have mixed feelings about it, but for me, it's really important weapon in your sales and marketing arsenal, if you like, because if you can build this direct relationship with your readers or potential readers, you own the data. You can speak to them whenever you want, on a schedule that suits. You can talk about anything you like in your emails. And they can also be quite fun. I run a monthly newsletter, and it's a really fun way to connect with readers. But how do you build that? How do you go from having nobody in your mailing list to lots of people? Well, the first thing you need to look at is, as I say, a monthly newsletter, I reasonable for you or something that you can do. It doesn't have to be monthly. Some people do them weekly or even more than that. But I would say monthly is pretty good. You don't want to spam people, especially out of the gate. You don't want them to think that you're going to be bombarding them all the time. There are lots of services out there that can help you, and most of them are free, at least up to X amount of subscribers, at least to get you a really, really good start and get lots of subscribers potentially. You need to think about a reader magnet. So what is a reader magnet? Well, for me, I created a short eBook that's got two short crime stories in it, and it's just something that I give away for free in return for a reader's email address and the understanding that they're now going to be part of my monthly mailing newsletter campaign. So they subscribe to your newsletter, and in return, they get something for free. In this case, it's a free E book with two short stories, but sometimes people give away different things. They might give away some kind of electronic calendar or maybe it's a downloadable bookmark or whatever, but books tend to work the best. So if you've got some short stories or something that you can package as an eBook, that tends to work really well. If you want a tool to help you do that, I really recommend Book funnel. There is a small cost involved monthly subscription, but it enables you to have your book available up there. They will help you collect the email. And the thing about Book funnel is there are other things on there like group promos, for example, where you can run promotions with other writers, and you can share each other's newsletter and help them reach other people and you can reach other people in return. And it's a really, really good way to build your own mailing list. I really recommend Book funnel, and I'll put that in the course notes. And it's this idea of building exclusive content for your fans. So you've got that initial reader magnet, but there's also the promise as you go along, the longer the stay with you, you're going to give them some other free short stories down the line. Perhaps you're going to give them an early offer on one of your books, maybe you're going to give them behind the scenes content, whatever it is, something that makes them feel a bit special and this idea of you building a fan club, essentially. But you don't have to do all of this on your own. Having a newsletter means you can also network with other authors. If they're in the same genre as you, maybe you could do a guest post for their newsletter, and they could do the same for you. Doing that, you can help to build each other's newsletters. And also Book funnel helps you to do that through those group promos that I mentioned. Finding different ways to share promotion can be a great way to take the load off your own shoulders. So you can lay the groundwork. You can build your mailing list. You can get started with building your author platform and your profile, but eventually it is going to be all about the sales. So let's look at some ideas to boost your sales. Book fairs literally set your stall out. I cannot recommend book fairs enough. It's brilliant. It's an opportunity for you to meet readers. You can sign your books and sell your books. You can chat to potential readers. You get to meet other authors. Often, a lot of Indie authors at book fairs, which is brilliant. You can share ideas. You see what works in a retail environment. I didn't think I was interested in retail at all until I went to a book fair, and then all of a sudden, I'm talking about what kind of stand I can use, and I'm noticing what people are looking at when they first enter a book fair and where they go and what grabs their attention. You need to think about promotional material when you do that. Again, this idea of brand, what is your author brand? And hopefully by now, as you've worked your way through the various course notes and the homework that I've been setting, you've been building that up as you've been going along and you've been thinking about that. You need to think about giveaways. So when I do book fairs, a really successful giveaway is bookmark. Again, obviously there's a cost involved, as there is with any sales and promotion, but it's great. Readers love bookmarks. Who doesn't want a bookmark? It's got a link to my book. It's got a QR code where people can scan it and find out more information. Giveaways are great. I like bookmarks, but you could use stickers. You could maybe have a poster. You could have badges, whatever you want. And obviously, cost is always a factor as well, but bookmarks have been really successful for me. QR codes, I mentioned, I put one on my bookmark. They're really, really successful. There are free generators online now where you can generate your own QR code, which essentially links to our website. It could be your own website. It might be to your Amazon page, wherever you want to send them, basically, it might even be if you've got an audio book or something, you can send them to that. I do that as well, but QR codes are brilliant. Everyone's got smartphones now so they can just scan it and then they're immediately on the right website. And as I've mentioned before, just get creative with it. It's like taking on a role, as I say, I know a lot of us are a little bit shy. We're humble. You know, we're uncomfortable with doing a lot of these things. But just think about it like this. Today, I'm going to be taking on the role of a successful Indie author. I'm going to be going out there. I'm going to be somebody that I'm not usually. I'm going to be charismatic. I'm going to talk to people. I'm going to be passionate, because if you can't be passionate about your book and your writing, then who is going to be passionate about what you're doing? You've got to be passionate about what you're doing. You got to be selling it. You got to be talking to people and making connections. You don't need to go hard sell. Just be passionate and be enthusiastic about your book and your story or your characters. Get into it. Have a pre rehearsed pitch on what your books about and the characters or the location and get to try it out on people. That's what's great about these in person events. And as I said, when I go to book fairs, look and learn and make connections, you'll be seeing things that work. You'll also see things that don't work. It's a great place. When you go to a book fair, you'll often see some awful book covers, for example, and you'll see the difference that it makes between having a good cover and a cover that's not doing what it's supposed to be that doesn't tell the reader what genre it is or that it looks professional. And you'll see this for yourself. But also, you'll get to make these connections with writers, with readers, build the mailing list in person, as well. It's just there's so many things that come out of positive things that come out of these in person connections. It's not just about paperbacks, though, and it's not just about these physical sales. Don't forget your eBook and your kindle because you'll find as you go along, especially in the Indie world, your margin is higher on an eBook. It's 70% royalty. There's less production cost, obviously, once you've got it out there, and there's more facility for you to just sell it all around the world. Everyone's got eBooks and things now. So don't forget that there's an eBook, and don't forget to market that as well. Make sure you encourage reviews and sharing. So whilst it's great if somebody gives you a verbal, you know, they've told you, Oh, my God, I've just read your book and it was great. Oh, they send you an email. Oh, I really enjoyed your book, thank them, be grateful, and then politely ask them to leave a review on Amazon because it makes a huge difference. And it takes 2 minutes to do. Even if they just leave a rating and a one sentence review, that's brilliant. It boosts your book in terms of the algorithm, more people are going to get to see it, more people are going to be able to understand it. And also, as you go forward, it actually generates more promotional material. You can then use some of these quotes, these reader quotes on your next banner or your next poster or your next social media post. For example, one of the readers that read my book described it as Scarfacing SkegNs. I wish I'd have come up with that myself. I didn't, but I took it from an Amazon review, and it's brilliant, and it's been really successful in selling books when I go to in person events. So encourage reviews. Make sure people share your book, tell other people about it because that's where more sales and more writing great books as you go forward, that's where it's all going to come from. That's where it starts. And don't forget to get pictures because all of this is sharable content. So everything you do for a good example is local radio. I mentioned local radio earlier in the chapter. Local radio, let's be honest, there aren't going to be millions and millions of people listening to local radio depending on where you're based. Maybe there are. Maybe you've got really successful local radio, but most local radio stations that I know have got relatively small audiences. But if you get a picture outside the radio station, if you get a picture with you and your book and the DJ and if you write a post about going to it. Maybe you get a tiny little video clip. Whatever you get, maybe you can then record the audio or get a recording of the audio from when you went on and you did the interview. All of that stuff is then sharable content. It's reusable. You've got it going forward. You can post it again in a few weeks or a couple of months or whatever. Plus it's building up this portfolio of stuff that you've got that you can talk about. So nothing is wasted. The more things you do, the more things you've got to talk about. The more things you've got to share, the more places people can find your book. That's what it's all about. So hopefully, I've shown you that sales and marketing is not this big, scary thing that you need to be terrified of. You don't need to be this outrageously charismatic person. That's got no inhibitions to go out there and talk about your book. You just need to be passionate. You just need to be enthusiastic, and you need to be willing to try some new things and see what works for you. Be authentic, be yourself because that's the key to it. People want to know who the person is behind these stories and these books. That's the key to what you do. In the same way that only you could write your story, there's only you that can market your book. You are the best person to market your book. So just remember that. So as we wrap this chapter up, let's look at some coursework and remember it's all about you. So what do I want you to do for this? I want you to really think about what your unique selling point is. What is it that's special about you? I know you don't like to think that you're special, but you are. In the same way, it's only you that can write your book, it's only you that can talk about it. So what are the key elements of your book, your story, what are the main selling points? And think laterally, doesn't always have to be all the things that everyone else has done. If doing an event at an Indie bookshop doesn't work for you, think of something else. Maybe it's down at the bus station, maybe it's standing next to a busker that you know really, really well, and they're going to do some music, and you're going to talk about your book. I don't know. You need to think creatively. You need to think laterally. What is your hook? What's the hook of your book and your story? Yes. But what's your hook? What's your personality hook? What is it that someone can hook into? Maybe there's a story within your family history that links back to what you do with your writing or anything else. What is it that's going to make you stand out and make people remember you and your books? Maybe there's a location link. So where's your book set? Think about that. Even if it's not somewhere that's local to you, is it somewhere that you could visit? Maybe you could talk to their local radio station. Maybe your book is historical fiction and maybe there's somebody from a historical society that you could talk to that they could talk about your book and that you could link in there. Try to be a little bit different in the way that you think. Don't always go for the obvious solutions. So what I want you to do is think of three things you're going to research or try to promote your book. That is the main bit of homework for this. But in general, I just want you to really, really dig deep into yourself, into your personality, into your life history, if necessary, anything that you can use to link in to sell yourself, your writing, and what you do. So there's loads of sales and marketing ideas there, and yet, I know we've barely scratched the surface. You're only limited as you are with your writing by your imagination and what you can come up with. So work your way through the coursework, when you finish that, pop back and we'll have a conclusion to wrap the whole thing up. 15. Conclusion: The Start of Your Indie Author Journey: So here we are at the end of the course. But really, it's just the beginning of your Indie author journey. So let's just take a few minutes to wrap up and look at what we've covered so far. Remember, right at the beginning, the most important thing, the thing that starts the chain reaction and kicks all this stuff off is to write the best book. And that means edit, edit, edit, produce the best product you possibly can, and that starts with the story, the words, the manuscript. Give yourself time. You don't need to rush. You're going to be setting the timeline with this. You're going to be deciding when this books coming out into the world, so you may as well make sure that it's as good as it can possibly be. Don't forget to take stock of your skill set, and that might be where you are now and where you want to be. But what skills have you got already that you can bring to the table? Make a list. Hopefully, you've done that as you've gone along. You've followed the coursework, and you've got a better idea now of what parts of this process you can take on yourself. Decide on your budget, and remember that's not just money. It's time, as well. How much time can you dedicate to this? Because if you are going to be successful, you are going to need to dedicate a lot of time, if not money, definitely time. You're going to need to be learning about new things. You're going to expand your knowledge base all the time, and things change all the time. Things change as I'm recording this. There are new developments, and there are new things coming out in the world of Indie publishing. So you've got to keep on top of it. You've got to look out for the latest things that can make your life easier to help you sell more books and reach more readers. Remember, covers really matter. You'll see that when you're out in the real world and you'll see that when you're online. What is it that attracts you to a book? It's initially a great cover, a great title, but it's the cover that really grabs you in that first instance. So yours needs to be absolutely top draw. It's never too early to build a platform. Even if you haven't finished writing your book yet, get started on thinking about your website. Are you going to go down the social media route? Where are you going to talk about yourself online? Are you going to network with other writers and other readers in the real world? Start doing it now. Start thinking about the fact that you're already a writer, you're already an author, and you're going to be getting your books out into the world. Comes to sales and marketing and everything else that you do, make it personal. That is your superpower. That is your USP. What is it about you that makes it special? You might think you're not special, but you are in the same way that your books and your stories are unique to you. So is your sales and marketing journey. So is what you're offering to the world. Make it personal. Don't forget you need to be thinking about early readers as soon as you can, and that means advanced reading copies. It means getting a version of your book out there that people can read and not being afraid of what's going to come back. Just make sure that it's in return for a fair and honest review because that generates momentum. It's all about reviews and get into this mindset of thinking like a publisher. So yes, think like a publisher, but think like an Indie author, think like an entrepreneur. Never stop learning and remember this is just the start of the journey, and I can't wait to see where you go next. Be sure to upload your coursework to share with other students, bounce ideas off each other and get more feedback on your plans. And why not let me know what happens next by dropping me a line Wayne at wayne kelly rights.com? I'd love to hear about your projects and how you're getting on, as well as your feedback on the course. I'm always looking at ways to improve the content, so your thoughts on this course, as well as what you'd like to see in future courses will be gratefully received. And please do follow me on all the usual socials. Finally, follow me here on skill share to be the first to hear about new offers and courses, and I also offer bespoke mentoring and coaching packages for those of you looking to develop your writing or learn more about Indi publishing, happy writing, and I can't wait to check out your coursework, books, and projects.