How to become a publisher in 5 easy steps

I had the pleasure of speaking at the Chesapeake Romance Writer’s conference “Pages to Publishing” this weekend (which is why this blog is a day late… sorry!). There I gave my “Jumping into Self-Publishing” talk to a wonderful group of people. But speaking one-on-one to some people afterward just reinforced something which I’ve spoken about with a number of my clients as well—becoming your own publisher can be well… maybe this will help:

Step 1: Learn all that you need to do to publish a book.

That means reading everything you can get your hands on on-line and attending conferences and take courses from people who have done it before.

Step 2: Panic.

Step 3: Calm down and break apart the process.

Really, it’s quite manageable if you take it one step at a time:

Finish writing your book.Get it professionally edited.Get a professional cover madeFormat it for publication for each vendor where you plan to sell your book (there are many which overlap – Nook, Kobo and Apple iBooks all take epub, only Smashwords, KDP and CreateSpace have their own individual formats) or hire a professional formatter (like me).Upload your book everywhereMarket the hell out of it –better yet, start doing that about a month before you upload it and put it up for sale.

Step 4: Call in help from all your friends, acquaintances, relatives and people you’ve randomly met here and there.

Truly. This is not something that someone can easily do on their own. They need the help and knowledge of professional editors, book cover designers, formatters and generally other people who have done this before. As I mentioned to one of my clients, publishing a book “takes a village”.

Step 5: See your work go up on all e-retailers and bask in your glory—because you deserve it! You are a publisher!