The Process: A Self-Publishing Help Page

Everything I’ve Learned About Self-Publishing In One Handy Location

Welcome to my splash page for The Process, my catch-all term for everything related to the self-publishing experience. This is a way for me to organize all the posts with the thoughts, experiences, and advice I’ve gathered while publishing my own novels.

Let me be clear, I’m in no way saying that this is the right way. In fact, I don’t believe there is any one right way to do this. What works for me may not work for you. But the purpose of this page is to at least share some ideas and, if nothing else, you can laugh along with my frustrations.

I’ve tried to organize this page roughly chronologically (Writing, Publishing, Promotion), but of course there’s lots of overlap between steps and sections.

This page is a work in progress. I’ll be adding more links as I continue on my self-publishing journey.


General Advice

Writing

Formatting your manuscript

  • You can save a lot of later pain converting your document to e-book formats by writing in Word using barebones formatting. I follow the Smashwords style guide Download External Link Icon - External Link Icon Blue - Full Size ..., which ensures the end product will convert more easily to the standard epub format.

Writing
Self-Editing
Outside readers
Professional editing

Publishing

Deciding on distribution

Getting the ISBN

Formatting the e-book

Formatting for print
Cover design

Promotion

Composing the blurb

Newsletters
Pre-publication marketing

Marketing


For a list of all my blog posts in The Process category, click here.