Receiving the first print version of my new book “The Personal Brand Blueprint: A No-Nonsense Guide to Personal Branding in the Age of the Creator” was a surreal moment.
It made me realize I’ve learned lessons related to book publishing that I had no idea I’d come across when I first set out two years ago to give it a go self-publishing books.
In this article, I’m going to share those takeaways with you.
I am not an expert. I am not a famous author. However, I am self-taught, and have stumbled my way through this process twice now—a process I can help you navigate by sharing what worked and didn’t work.
TLDR: That said, here are the 5 key lessons I learned writing my first two books:
This one sounds too basic to even include on this list. You always start with goals, right?
I included it because aligning on the reason(s) you are publishing a book in the first place will inform your strategy, and can save you time and money down the road.
You are likely considering publishing a book for some combination of these reasons:
For me, all of these were true, but the first reason was my biggest priority. I knew selling books to my relatively small audience online at the prices books go for wasn’t about to pay my bills.
The bigger career value that could lead to making real money was continuing to grow my thought leadership footprint. Knowing this upfront informed my decisions during the process.
Here’s an example:
I also decided part of my publishing strategy would be to create and giveaway free PDF versions of both of my books on LinkedIn:
That decision was aligned to my thought leadership goal because it turned my books into pieces of content that could be shared freely, expanding their reach and my personal brand’s reach.
You can see how primary goal of thought leadership shaped my decision making during the book production and publishing process.
For my second book, I still had the goal of thought leadership as my top priority. However, having seen the significant time investment making a book requires, I wanted to make more money the second time around to cover the opportunity cost of writing one.
For example, if I had spent the same amount of time I spent writing my first book writing articles here on Medium instead, I would have made more money.
To adjust that equation, I did not hire an editor on my second book and also did most of the design work myself. This reduced my costs, increased my profit margins per book sale, and enabled me to make generating revenue a close secondary goal.
The key takeaway from these examples is to decide what matters to you most about publishing your book, and then base your decisions on that primary goal throughout the process.
Getting yourself to actually write the content for your book is a huge start, and a majority of the book publishing battle.
However, there are other logistics related to book publishing you need to consider. These were all new to me, and required upfront research. These considerations include:
Let’s go over each of these logistical components of the publishing journey.
This is the first big decision that will inform the rest of your publishing process, like where you will sell your book.
Working with a publisher has advantages like:
These can be big advantages for an author, and take a lot of work off of your plate so you can focus on writing.
For my first two books, I elected to self-publish with Amazon. My thinking was:
The self-publishing process at a high level involved:
This is a relatively straight forward process. Doing it for the first time took longer because I was learning as I went. The second time was much easier, since I knew what I was doing. This is not to say these steps aren’t a lot of work, but it is mostly busy work vs. complex problem solving.
Now that I’ve done this a few times and see what it’s like producing, self-publishing, and promoting a book on my own, I may consider working with a publisher in the future. For now, self-publishing has been great and suits my needs.
Choosing the marketplace where you will sell your book is an important consideration.
In order to sell a book online, you need tools like an ecommerce solution to handle the actual sales transactions, a mechanism for uploading and distributing the digital documents or physical products that represent your book, and marketing tools, like a product listing landing page, that you can use to promote your book.
Luckily, major marketplaces like Amazon and Gumroad have all of these tools and make the process of listing and selling books straightforward.
For my own books, I have chosen a three-pronged approach to marketplaces:
Given that my main goal is thought leadership and helping my network, as opposed to making money, I took this unique approach to marketplace selection. Ironically, the actual book publishing marketplaces are secondary in my mind because my primary aim is gaining exposure for the free PDF.
However, many of you may be pursuing this with the intention of making money — which is a great goal, and one I fully support, considering the considerable effort required to write a book
These marketplace considerations demonstrate how important it is to have your goals in mind from the start, as they will inform where you sell or distribute your book.
Another key consideration among book publishing logistics is considering copyright protection for your work. Registering a book with a copyright service establishes legal ownership and protection for your work, giving you exclusive rights to reproduce, distribute, and change the book’s content.
For example, if you are in the United States, you can register your book with the US Copyright Office. This process serves as a public record of the author’s claim to copyright, enhancing the ability to enforce copyright and seek damages in case of infringement.
You can use services like this to register your intellectual property and safeguard it, ensuring you retain control over it and can monetarily benefit from it through royalties, licensing agreements, and other forms of revenue.
For my first book, I took this extra precaution not fulling understanding what waters I was wading into. It seemed like a good idea and it made me feel confident about publishing my book and putting it out into the digital world where copying people’s work is unfortunately a common occurance.
However, for my second book I skipped this step for now. I may change my mind in the future, but my considerations were:
My take on the decision to submit a book to a copyright office: If it will make you feel safer and more confident publishing, then submitting your work to a copyright office is a good idea. It is also worthwhile if you have a big audience, and anticipate additional risks and opportunities to arise when you publish your book because of your brand’s reach.
If these items do not apply to you, a more guerrilla approach where you skip this expense and extra work stream will save you time and money, and presents a relatively a low risk profile.
An ISBN, or International Standard Book Number, is a unique numeric identifier used worldwide to catalog books and simplify their distribution and sale.
This unique code that gets assigned to each book registered with an ISBN allows for the identification of a book’s edition, publisher, and physical properties, streamlining the management of book inventories for book marketplaces and libraries.
Most marketplaces selling print books require them to have an ISBN for these reasons. Ebooks on the other hand do not require ISBNs on marketplaces like Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing or Gumroad.
When you are self publishing, your options for getting an ISBN include:
In terms of ISBNs, my recommendation would be to either go without one if you are selling an ebook, or to utilize Amazon’s free ISBN assigning service for print books. This should cover the needs of most first-time publishers.
However, if you are working with a publisher, or intend to sell your book in multiple marketplaces, investing in purchasing your own ISBN will give you that optionality.
I hired a good friend of mine who is a PR professional to serve as the editor for my first book (side note: anyone in need of a great editor or boutique PR agency, hit me up. I’d be happy to refer you).
I did not hire an editor for my second book. The primary reason being the cost I mentioned above and wanting my second book to be profit-generating as a secondary goal. I saved money, but I noticed the difference and it was a significant tradeoff.
I am sharing this detail so you can do your own cost-benefit analysis. Hiring an editor will cost money and eat into your profits. Not hiring an editor will save you money, but cost you more of your time.
If you are considering getting editing help, perhaps you have a friend who is a good writer that you could call for a favor. Or perhaps you can hire an editor for a single review using a platform like Upwork or Fiverr.
These could be cost-effective solutions to getting editing support without adding a larger upfront monetary investment to your book project.
I am not saying you need to invest heavily in design like I did.
However, investing some time, money, or both in design can go a long way toward presenting your book in a professional manner and attracting more interest.
Design plays a key role in marketing, and can influence how many people end up purchasing and reading your book.
On my first book, I hired designers I worked with previously in my marketing roles. I worked with them to design the cover and interior graphics for my book.
This was an awesome experience because they brought the key messages and vision for my book to life. It was also easy for me, because I could work on other aspects of the book and knew the design was taken care of.
For my second book, I created a majority of the graphics myself, including the cover design. I outsourced the design of a few interior graphics and the layout of the free PDF version of my book.
My goal was to see if I could save money by doing as much of this as I could myself. I wanted to augment my own efforts with getting support from a designer for some aspects that would take me longer and have a higher opportunity cost in regard to my time.
The hybrid approach I outlined for my second book is one I will take again in the future.
It was more cost effective than outsourcing all design aspects of the book, while still giving me the ability to outsource aspects of design I’m not personally skilled in or do not want to spend time executing myself.
Whether you are writing a book to grow your personal brand, make money, or both, it’s a huge value-add to your career.
Putting a book out there with your name on it demonstrates your expertise, writing skills, and ability to stay dedicated to a significant, complex project.
Writing a book will offer benefits like:
If you are able to persevere and complete a book, it will be a huge accomplishment and pay multifaceted dividends in your career.
I’m no expert on book publishing. I’ve done this twice, and what I know and learned is 100% self-taught. However, I learned a lot along the way and could see the difference in how well I executed my second book project compared to my first book.
I hope the lessons I shared here from that experience are valuable as you consider your own book publishing journey. Best of luck and happy publishing!
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