16 Essential Steps Towards Self-Publishing Your First Book: Part 1 of 2
Key Learnings and Lessons From Successfully Getting My First Book Out Into The World (Numbers 1–8 with Screenshots and Links)
--
In the past month, I’ve had two different friends reach out to ask about the process of self-publishing. The first was, let’s call him Bill (he didn’t want me to use his real name for this piece), a fellow ex-pat living in the same beach town as me in Mexico.
Bill’s also working on a version of a travel memoir, and had questions about the process of self-publishing, which we exchanged a series of long voice notes about. I hope the anecdotal learnings I shared as my top things to keep in mind will help him to reach the finish line faster and with a better result.
The second was my friend Stacey who I know from my tenure at the travel company Remote Year. She reached out to reconnect and to ask the direct question, “Have you done a blog yet on how to self-publish?”
I wrote a general advice piece about travel writing over a year ago, but nothing explicitly about the process a self-published author has to go through. Those things one should know before you’re halfway up the Mountain with the wrong gear, no map, no food, and nobody to help you cut through the fog.
My travel memoir, Not That Anyone Asked, has a 4.8 rating on Amazon and has sold well over 1000 copies now, which puts it in the top five percent of both sales and ratings for a self-published book. I suppose I do have something to share about starting, finishing, and successfully marketing a self-published book.
If you’ve already read Not That Anyone Asked, thank you! If you have questions about how I got it done, or about what you need to do if you want to write and self-publish a book of your own, keep reading.
Kindle Direct Publishing
This article and my experience of pushing a book baby out into the world is specifically referring to self-publishing through Kindle Direct…
