I’ve self-published across genres now. Most notably, my novel The River’s Daughter, which became an Amazon #1 Bestseller in Asian Myth & Legend, is self-published. Its prequel, The River Goddess (releasing this summer), will also be proudly self-published. And my academic book, for which I fought for five years to get my rights back from a traditional publisher, will also be re-releasing as a self-published book under my own imprint this fall: Brown Voices: South Asian American Experiences in Schools.
Before all that though I got my feet wet self-publishing a guide to toddler weaning back when I was weaning my oldest from nursing. Then, through plenty of trial and error, I figured out how to create and publish children’s books (for my own kids), and eventually even a guide on how to self-publish children’s books (Write & Self-Publish a Children’s Book in 7 Days). And what I learned over those early years of self-publishing is that there are self-published books that feel self-published, and then there are beautiful books that happen to be self-published. And the difference there seems to be both the finished product, and the process of self-publishing.
If you want to self-publish a book that looks, and feels, and really really is a “real” book (and you want it stocked in bookstores, reviewed in publications, taken seriously by readers, etc), then you have to get every. part. of the process right, not just the writing.
So what separates an amateur-feeling self-published book from a professional, polished self-published book?
Finishing a draft is not the same as finishing a book, but it’s the step-zero of the entire process. Before you can start the self-publishing process, you need a completed, strong manuscript, which means:
This is also where editing is critical. There are different levels of editing that serve different purposes:
Good editing is invisible, meaning the reader can’t feel the edits. (But the absence of good editing is obvious, and makes a book (self-published or traditionally published) feel unpolished.)
So before you can start the self-publishing process, the manuscript has to go through all the steps of editing first, to go from “done draft” to ready manuscript.
If you want your finished product to be something you’re proud of, you have to start from the very beginning. Every decision from manuscript to cover to pricing should work together harmoniously. Before you publish, you need to be able to answer:
The downstream effects of your answers will include your cover, the aesthetic of the book’s interior, the description, the title, the marketing, even your website. (And in turn, each of these you’ll want to use to actively reinforce your answers to the above question).
→ If you’re an Ed.D. candidate or other academic-adjacent writer thinking about your own publishing path, you might also be interested in Should Ed.D. Candidates Write a Book?
Intention and outcome aren’t always going to be easily connected here but it’s a guarantee that if you go in without a clear answer to the three big questions, you’re going to have confusing messaging around the book’s entire vibe… which is going to have weird effects on who reads it, and therefore how it’s received by your readers. Garbage in = garbage out.
Publishing your book needs to account for how all components of the “final product” will be perceived, as well as consumed based on market position. This means you have to think about the potential perception of…
Without CLARITY in the purpose of your book, even a strong manuscript can feel unfocused.
Readers make decisions quickly and your title and cover are the first signals you have to communicate:
→ You can read about how I designed the cover for a “how to” book here.
While sure, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, your potential readers will absolutely judge your book’s cover to determine if (1) what your book is, (2) whether or not they’re your book’s intended audience, and (3) if they’ll get something out of reading your book.
Publishing requires that you plan, thoughtfully, how to position your book in context of comparable books. Your bottom line has to account for printing costs, distribution costs, any overhead for your self-publishing efforts, etc.
But it also has to be positioned appropriately next to similar books and, more to the point, must align with what the market will bear. When it doesn’t, people who might have been ideal readers for your book will simply be locked out.
I experienced this firsthand with a traditionally published academic book, where pricing and positioning made the work far less accessible than I ever wanted (the hardcover was nearly $100; the paperback was almost $50), which means the reach of the findings was minimal. I’ve written more about that experience, and why I fought for rights reversion and decided to re-release it as a self-published book under my own imprint on my personal site, punitarice.com.
Uploading to Amazon KDP is the final step—not the process itself. Behind that step is:
A lot of times, self-published projects are… fine. They miss the mark just barely because:
But self-publishing can be done well.
Yes!!!! Many authors, myself included, absolutely do. As long as you have…
Then yes, you absolutely, 100% can cultivate all of these things in order to self-publish entirely alone.
If you’re working on a specific kind of book, you might also find these useful:
