Book publishing has over time been greeted with different forms of understanding, while some persons do not consider it to be an easy journey, a few others who already know what is required of them embrace it fully without any iota of fear or doubt.
It is important to have a grasp of what you should expect and what not to expect. Your book publishing process will be a lot much easier if you are able to follow through and understand each of the steps discussed in this blog.
- Writing
After you have picked the message for your book, that is the topic you want to talk about, you do some research on it. Whether you are writing fiction or non-fiction, research will equip you with more information.
You can only write so well if you have an understanding of the already available materials either on the internet or in the physical library.
Now you have more knowledge of what has been written already about your topic, embrace your inner creativity and get started.
Begin putting down every idea that comes to you as far as it is related to the central message of your book.
Below are some of the things you can do at the writing stage;
- Make an outline
When you have selected what message you want to pass across, you have to break down the idea into points and make each point you want to talk about into chapters.
- Write in bits
Now you have your points broken into chapters, begin writing in every free time you have so that you can be able to meet the timeframe you have set for yourself. So that you can do this, you need to write on the go.
Write on your phone, laptop, or notebook, and then reconcile everything when you get to the next stage of the publishing journey.
- Reviewing
Review here is getting a detailed and honest opinion of a few persons or the opinion of an expert beta reader. The purpose is so that you can get to see the things you must have missed during the initial writing of your first draft.
Reviews come without any form of pampering attached as it is meant to help you adjust points that you did not elaborate on and the ones you might have over-emphasized.
Your book review can range from 500 to 2000 words so you can have a well-detailed description of your book.
- Editing
Understanding everything related to book editing is very important because it is the core of the book publishing journey. You don’t want to join the list of authors with books that do not speak well about them and you should avoid all that.
This is the refinement point where all unwanted materials are taken out and the ones you might have missed are included.
Under book editing, you will have to go through a minimum of three stages
- Beta reading
Here you employ a beta reader to go through your book and give you the kind of response that you would be getting from your readers when your book is published.
All the errors that your readers should see when your book is published are seen here and taken out. This also allows for improvement on topics that you did not cover very well.
- Copy-editing
Here your book is subjected to serious editing where your grammar, tone, sentence structure, and clarity of your words are checked and corrected.
- Proofreading
At this stage of editing, your book is ready to be published because you must have done everything else that will be discussed in this piece.
The editing stage of your book publishing journey is the most demanding because whatever mistake is made here can affect both the message that you intend to pass and how people would see you as an author.
You can take advantage of our book editing and proofreading services
- Book interior design and formatting
After your book has been edited, the next stage is that you have to decide what the layout of both the inside would look like. This will shape how your readers see your book because it is said, “first impression matters” and how your book is seen on the shelve from far distance matters.
At the same time, you have to consider things like; font style, size of text, and what colors your text should have. This will improve how well your book should speak for you.
Both the design of your book’s interior and the formatting of the text ought to go together. Be careful with selecting fonts and margins so your book doesn’t end up not looking attractive when printed.
Consider the following with your book interior;
- Choose the general outlook for your book first
This will decide the kind of font size you will use and this depends on whether your book is fiction or non-fiction. You have to choose what would make the book look attractive in the end.
- Don’t put too much text in your headers and footers
Again, this depends on what kind of book you are writing and you should be good at researching to know what is obtainable for the genre you are writing for.
- Take note of special pages
In your special pages, you might choose to include photos or graphics for emphasis’ sake. Just be sure which page is carrying what extra details so you get a very good outlook when you are printing.
- ISBN registration
ISBN simply means international standard book number and it is both a national and international standard for identifying books published internationally.
It is a 13-digit number that applies to both printed and electronic versions of your book. ISBNs are intended for books written on a single topic and published by an author and as such, they do not apply to academic journals, magazines, or periodicals except if it is been published as a book.
Here you must understand the difference between ISBN and ISSN.
While ISBN is peculiar for books that are monographs, ISNN is for magazines, journals, and newspapers.
- Book printing
At this level, all the other factors listed above have been met and it is time to put everything that has been written into a readable form for everyone to read.
Book printing is crucial because a mistake at this point can ruin all the work you have done before now and we want to avoid that
Here we have 3 stages that you should pay attention to;
- Pre-press stage
Here all corrections are checked from the design of the interior to that of the exterior and all the pages are checked for any form of correction there is to be made.
- Press stage
This is where individual copies of your book are printed on paper for view.
- Post-press stage
Now all copies of your book have been printed. It is at this point that trimming of printed copies takes place.
- Book Marketing
People will only know how valuable your book is when you tell through marketing. Every well-written book needs to be sold and to sell, you must employ strategies to make sure you achieve this.
This is where money is exchanged for all that value you have packaged in your book.
The thing about book marketing is that you have to believe so much in what you have written well enough to go out marketing it.
Here are a few strategies for your book marketing;
- Social media
Social media has made things easy for all niches of creatives today and for a published author, it is no different. On your page or profile, you can share back designs of your book before the release date just to wow your audience and create awareness that you have something coming for them.
- Book launch
Now you have to announce an official date for the release of your book into the market and here, you have to make a big deal out of it so people will know that you believe so much in your book.
- Pre-orders
This is a strategic move to push your book into the market and then increase sales for it. Take for example, your book’s copy is valued at $500 per unit, you can decide to give a pre-order price of $300 thereby helping your readers save $200 when it hits the market.
Conclusion
Writing and publishing a book doesn’t have to be as tedious as it might have been seen over time, especially after you have read this blog. It is no doubt that it can be demanding both financially, and mentally. But with the right team working with you, it will be less tasking.
At pen-impact, we offer book consultation and book publishing services and we are always available to guide you through every step of your book publishing process.