Self-Publishing Checklist

Confession: I used to think self-publishing was a stupid idea. After months of researching literary agencies and querying in hopes of one day landing a book deal, I learned that the traditional publishing industry is not at all what I built it up to be in my head.

Still convinced self-publishing wasn’t worth it, I turned to the idea of working with an independent publishing house. Much to my dismay, I discovered most indie publishers require you to have an agent, and at the time, most also weren’t accepting queries.

Feeling desperate not to let my years of sacrifice and a story I believed was relatable to many be wasted just like that, I decided I’d entertain the idea of self-publishing. With the technology available today, anyone can make a professional book, I reasoned. And anyone can distribute their book online. But how do you do it? What are the steps? The process seemed so overwhelming.

One by one, deep breath by deep breath, I figured out and completed the steps for self-publishing. Below, I’ve put together your self-publishing checklist so that you can become an authorpreneur with fewer headaches and moments of panic than I had.

1. Make Sure Your Content Is Ready

“One of the many great things about self-publishing is that you have the ability to change anything about your book at any time.”

First and foremost, your manuscript should be totally ready for the world when you begin the publishing process. Get an editor’s help if you can to polish things up, or at least have a couple friends or members of your family be beta readers. My family was extremely helpful for catching those misprints that my brain kept reading as what I meant to type.

One of the many great things about self-publishing is that you have the ability to change anything about your book at any time. So say you thought your content was perfect, you publish it, and then a coworker who buys your book points out a few more typos your beta readers missed, or you suddenly have this sickening feeling that a certain scene was a horrible mistake to leave in after all. You can STILL edit! With most publishing platforms, your updates will be reflected in your book within a few days.

2. Create All Other Interior Pages

Other interior pages would include the title page, copyright page, dedication page, and some optional things, like a table of contents, author’s note, prologue or introduction, and epilogue. If you’re unsure how to create a copyright page, see the article I’ve written on it.

3. Commission Someone To Do The Cover Art

“I recommend asking for two different book covers to test against each other in sales.”

If you happen to also be a talented designer and can make your own cover art, more power to you. For the rest of us, it’s necessary to pay a professional to design the front cover, back cover, and spine of your book.

There are lots of self-publishing companies out there that provide these services, such as BookBaby. IngramSpark has a list of trusted book design teams you can check out as well.

I opted to hire a graphic designer I personally know for my first novel. If you like and trust someone’s work and they’re willing to do research on book design best practices and trends, and/or if you’ve done the research yourself and have a clear idea of what you want, contracting someone you know is always a viable option.

I recommend asking for two different book covers to test against each other in sales. Unfortunately, everyone judges books by their covers, so it’s nice to have a backup if it seems your preferred cover option isn’t resonating with readers.

4. Determine Prices

I did this by looking at the prices of comparison titles with page counts around the same as mine. Typically, websites you publish through will have conversions for other countries’ currencies, so you don’t have to sweat the exchange rates if you’re planning to distribute to other countries.

5. Decide Where You’re Going To Sell

There are tons of places to sell your book. Some authors like to publish on as many platforms as possible. Some only publish through Amazon.

Personally, I find it too difficult to manage my title across more than three or four platforms. I do think every author should publish through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) at a minimum due to its power in the industry. And I think it’s important to note that if you publish through IngramSpark, which has global distributing capabilities, you can kill many birds with one stone. I published a paperback through IngramSpark, and it was suddenly available through Barnes & Noble, Walmart, Target, Discover Books, Google Books, Indie Bound, and more.

To understand all your publishing platform options, I cannot recommend the book Successful Self-Publishing by Joanna Penn enough. It’s a quick, straightforward read that tells you everything you need to know to get started. It was my number-one self-publishing resource.

6. Figure Out If You Need To File As A Business

For tax purposes, the majority of authors will be sole proprietors. I decided to file my imprint name (the name you can make up for your “publisher” on the copyright page in lieu of a traditional publishing house name) as an LLC due to the nature of my book’s content. It’s what you’d call a high-risk book, meaning enough of it could plausibly be real and offend people.

So let's say some person I knew back in my school girl days becomes convinced that one of the characters in my book is them, despite my disclosure on the copyright page about the book being a work of fiction, and they decide to sue me, because yes, people can actually do that (though there are reasons they wouldn’t have a very strong case, but better safe than sorry). This individual wouldn’t be able to come after my personal assets, because I formed an LLC. One of the downsides of self-publishing is that you don’t automatically have a legal team behind you like you would with a traditional publisher.

If you also have a high-risk book and are paranoid about how some people may react to it, you should consider filing as an LLC, and consider getting business insurance as well. I chose ZenBusiness to basically complete the business filing process for me (because heck if I could understand how to do it on my own), and so that I couldn’t mess up my taxes and find myself with another kind of legal problem.

FYI, I used Self-Publisher’s Legal Handbook, Second Edition: Updated Guide to Protecting Your Rights and Wallet by Helen Sedwick as a resource. It was efficient in that it answered most of my legal questions related to self-publishing, making my research outside of it pretty minimal.

7. Develop A Marketing Plan

Marketing plans are not one-size-fits-all since we don’t all have the same budget, time limits, and outside help. My best advice is to do what you think you can realistically handle, and be ready for failures that require you to re-strategize, sometimes in big ways.

It seems I’m constantly recalibrating, and I’ve downsized my marketing strategy considerably since I first released my book. This is because I set my expectations too high for certain things to work and couldn’t sustain the output level I had for marketing in the beginning. It just wasn’t humanly possible for me to keep up everything I was doing on top of my regular job and other obligations.

Try not to get discouraged about all the trial and error; it’s an inevitable part of the authorpreneur journey.

To wrap up, I’d like to say that at a minimum, if you read Successful Self-Publishing and Self-Publisher’s Legal Handbook, you should have a grasp on the basics of using publishing platforms and managing yourself as an authorpreneur. Everything else can be figured out as you go.

If you have questions about self-publishing, don’t hesitate to send me an email! I’d be happy to help.

MJ Biggs is the author of the novel A Wonderful Place To Die.