In the old days, the only way for writers to publish a book was through a publisher. This meant finding an agent, pitching editors, and hoping that one of them likes it. Then writers would lose control of their books because the editor and publisher would oversee content, interior design, cover design, sales, and marketing.
And this describes what the lucky few writers experienced. Most writers were simply rejected or ignored, and they never published a book.
I'm going to show you how you can write a book and publish it. Are you ready to get started?
2. I N T R O D U C T I O N
In the old days, the only way for writers to publish a book was
through a publisher. This meant finding an agent, pitching
editors, and hoping that one of them likes it. Then writers would
lose control of their books because the editor and publisher
would oversee content, interior design, cover design, sales, and
marketing.
Those days are gone because of the rise of self-publishing.
Now writers can publish their own books and
control their own destiny.
4. 4 G O O D R E A S O N S T O W R I T E
(a) You have accumulated knowledge
that merits sharing;
(b) You want to further an idea that
benefits mankind;
(c) You want to entertain, amuse, or
inspire people;
(d) You want conquer the intellectual
challenge of writing a book.
6. T H E S E A R E T H E T O O L S I U S E
(a) Microsoft Word (writing)
(b) Adobe InDesign (layout)
(c) Evernote (collecting anything)
(d) Dropbox (backing up)
13. T A P T H E C R O W D
The crowd is a beautiful thing. It has helped me
complete my outlines, provided me with stories to
illustrate my concepts, content edited, copyedited,
reviewed for Amazon, and evangelized my books. If I
had to put a number to it, I’d guesstimate that feedback
from the crowd makes my books 50 percent better.
16. H I R E A P R O
There are three ways that a book can scream,
“self-published by an amateur:”
Your goal should be to produce a book that is
better than a New York publisher’s—think
“artisanal publishing.”
(a) Lousy interior design
(b) Crude fonts
(c) Poor copyediting
18. T H I N K P O S T A G E S T A M P
There is a fourth way that a book can scream “self-published,”
and that’s a lousy cover. Canva, the company that I work for,
offers a series of free templates to help you design a
professional looking cover. You can also hire a professional for
$1,000 to design your cover, but I encourage you to at least
try making your cover from one of our templates. The most
important thing about your cover is that it looks great when
it’s the size of a postage stamp because that’s the format that
people will see most of the time.