How to Self-Publish a Book | 3 Different Case Studies from 3 Different Businesses.
So, we launched our book! Yes, after A LOT of work, we are now published authors.
We decided to go the self-publishing route for book number 1, however, when we started this journey we didn’t realise how complex it was, how many obstacles we would come up against, and how many options there actually are to get a book launched.
Turns out, there is A LOT of ways to publish a book.
In fact, 2 of our closest business friends Tiana Wilson-Buys of Talking Business, and Mike McCoy of MEPAT Services, also self-published their first books recently, and all 3 of us have self-published in 3 completely different ways.
So, with that being said, we wanted to run through the different routes we all took, and the pros and cons of each. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but just 3 ways based on real experience that may help with your book launch.
Route 1: The Hippo Campus by Andrew and Pete.
Published on Createspace
What’s the Book About?
Everybody tells you how important it is to ‘Stand Out’ in your industry, but not many tell you ‘how’. We’ve been perfecting the process over the last few years as to how to actually think of unique ‘Stand Out’ ideas, that work specifically with YOUR business. We break it down into 4 simple steps you must understand, to make a remarkable business that people talk about.
How did you publish it?
We opted for CreateSpace by Amazon. How it works is quite simple (in theory). Once you have wrote your book, you upload it to Createspace, which makes it available to buy from all the Amazon stores. When somebody buys it, Amazon prints your book on demand and sends it to them within a few days.
On the same platform, you can also make it available on Kindle, book shops can purchase it, and libraries can order it in.
How much did it cost to publish?
£0. Createspace is a completely free platform to sell a book on. It makes it’s money through royalties. For every book we sell at around £11, we get approximately £5 of that and Amazon gets the rest. You can also bulk order your own books at a much discounted if you like. When we launched, we bought 20 books for around £80 (and about half of that was international shipping).
You are completely in control of where it is stocked, how much it is, and there’s different sizes and finishes to choose from too. You can upload your own cover design for free (which is what we did), or they have a service where you can pay them to do it for you.
What was the hardest thing you came up against?
Although it is relatively easy, there were some technical stumbles we came up against. We had to ensure the manuscript was in the right template and format – which for Kindle was difficult as we had a few pictures throughout.
You also have to go through some questions for Tax reasons, and with it being mainly a US service it was a bit tricky to work out what they needed from us.
How did you overcome it?
Initially we thought: ‘we’ll just find somebody that can help us and pay them to do it’ to save some time, but it ended up taking more time to find a person to help us with this! We ended up wasting so much time in back and forth emails, Skype meeting etc. that we decided if we put our heads together we could just work it out ourselves – we are pretty tech savvy, we just were super busy!
We downloaded the Word templates Amazon provides for our manuscript to our Macs, converted to .Pages and they worked fine. We then done a bit of Google research for the Tax questions, realised we were selecting the wrong option, and that was pretty easy too once we knew what we were doing.
For the Kindle version manuscript – we found somebody on Fivrr.com that completed it in less than a day for less than a tenner. That was a win!
Once you had finished writing it, how long did it take to get it published?
Once we had all the above in order, uploaded it to CreateSpace, selected our distribution channels and our price, the process was pretty smooth. It was available on Kindle the next day, on Amazon.com in a couple days, and European Amazon sites in just over a week (it should have been quicker but Amazon had a delay on their end).
What’s the main benefit of publishing this way?
The barriers to being published are ridiculously low this way. There’s no cost, and the amount of places your book can be bought is amazing. We think if you are a technophobe you may struggle doing it all yourself, but if you are happy using a computer then it really is a good D.I.Y. option to getting your book published relatively easily.
Any other comments? Is there anything you would do differently?
From a Marketing point of view, publishing a book has been really beneficial. The obvious benefit is the positioning and credibility you get from it (which to be honest – was the main driver for us), however once we started the process, we found it really great for bringing together things we had learned over the years into one system. It was almost therapeutic!
There’s is a definite risk of writing too much – when we started, it was more of a brain dump – and we ended up cutting enough to fill a whole other book! But that’s OK – not everything you know should go in a book.
When we write book 2 – we’ll have a much clearer vision of what should be included, so we don’t end up with as much on the cutting room floor.
Route 2: Referral Harvester by Tiana Wilson-Buys.
Published by Authorhouse
What’s the Book About?
Referral Harvester – A Proven Strategy for Compounding Your Client Base.
Waiting for business referrals to happen at random is not a reliable business strategy. Being reactive rather than pro-active in your business, could lead to disaster.
The Referral Harvester system is a pro-active way of systematically controlling the influx of referrals into your business. Not only does this system help increase the amount of referrals, but also the quality of referrals.
Every business owner, manager and sales professional should create their very own Referral Harvester. This book shows you how.
How did you publish it?
I used AuthorHouse which is a hybrid between self-publishing and traditional publishing. They offer various packages to suit your needs. Depending on how much of the work you want to do, you can find a package to suit you. I needed the publisher to do all my layout, cover design and some marketing. I thus chose the Classic Black and White package.
How much did it cost to publish?
At the time, the Classic package was available for £650.00
What was the hardest thing you came up against?
Faffing! The editing was very difficult. I kept going over and over the manuscript, wanting it to be perfect. I did five drafts eventually!
How did you overcome it?
By deciding that “done is better than perfect”.
Once you had finished writing it, how long did it take to get it published?
Once I sent it off to the publisher, it took less than 10 days to be published. In that time, they did the cover design, layout etc. This was a very painless experience.
What’s the main benefit of publishing this way?
As I have never published before and have zero design skills, it was easier for me to have AuthorHouse guide me through the process and take care of the design part. This enabled me to focus on writing, which is what I wanted.
Any other comments?
Immediately after publishing Referral Harvester, I said I would never write another book! However, I have learned a great deal from this experience and think writing a second book will be easier, so I might just do that!
Route 3: Newcastle Old and New: The Story so Far by Mike McCoy.
Published by a traditional self-publishing print-run.
What’s the Book About?
The book is called “Newcastle Old and New the story so far…” and is effectively a remake of a sorts of an old school project some 38 years ago which has laid buried for 35 of them years and initially comprised of 20 tales and stories of my home town of Newcastle upon Tyne. With the massive support of my wife Alison and my business network community in general, it has over a three year period been updated, had extra sections, poems and stories added and has been “soft” launched in March to a very enthusiastic response from friends and public alike!!
How did you publish it?
Again using my business network community I “self-published” the book with the help of a writer called Chris Rooney of Writing works, a printed called AMS Creative based in West Chirlton, Julian Nash and Andrew and Pete for the cover and many more contributors [there is a very large section at the front of the book thanking every single one of them]. I then had 200 printed and have so far sold over 60 copies as to date with at least another 10 orders waiting…
How much did it cost to publish?
I self-published the book and allowing for a few variables the cost was around £1500, this excluded an ISBN number which, as are we getting close to the “break-even” barrier will add another £100 to the costs as this is necessary as I will approach local distributors, we already have two interested parties..!!
What was the hardest thing you came up against?
This is a simple question to a very tough answer as the last 3+ years has been a massive learning curve! Working with a writer, sourcing images and replacements for the pictures from the original 1977 book, obtaining copy write, raising the finance to self-publish, finding a printer and sorting the image and artwork for the cover. Coming to terms with promoting via social media which a new thing for me! Most of all finding the time in-between “the day job” of running our own business!
How did you overcome it?
The project took almost four years to complete and leaned heavily on my very helpful network contacts….
Once you had finished writing it, how long did it take to get it published?
Between sourcing a printer, updates and corrections and what seemed like endless editing I would say that the “self-publishing” took around 6-8 months
What’s the main benefit of publishing this way?
This is and has been my first ever book so it is difficult to compare with other ways to publish, but I would say that although it has been massively hard work with lots of long hours that the sense and physical feeling of full control and greater returns…
Any other comments?
Close to production I was approached by a local publishing house who offered to print, edit, market, in fact everything to do with the book but with no financial investment from me however would only pay me a fee of only 20% per book!! [For a £20 book that’s only £4 a copy!!]. At that point I had already done all the hard work AND months of marketing through our own newsletters and social media so it made sense to continue… we now have over 60 copies in the first few months, I expect to break even at around 70 copies. The returns I believe have been far greater by taking this route to publishing AND should I consider a second book [mmmm?] then at least the ground work has been done!
So there you go, 3 different ways to Self-Publish a book.
Through talking to Mike and Tiana about their experiences, we think there isn’t a right or wrong way to self-publish, it is just about finding the right way for you.
Here’s those 3 links again if you wanted to check out any of the books mentioned in this article.
The Hippo Campus by Andrew and Pete >