I recently self-published my first book. It was a baptism by fire. Inevitably, I made mistakes, things took longer than perhaps they should have. So, I wanted to collect a few of the key lessons I learned through the process, regarding editing, formatting, and building your audience.

Before I get started a bit of a shameless plug, you can get my book, a collection of sci-fi short stories called Sunset In The East on Amazon now. These eight thrilling mysteries have sci-fi twists that keep you guessing. You can find out more here… 

What I wish I'd known before I self-published my first book

1. Proofreading

This was my very first self published book. I’m the kind of person that learns by doing, by making mistakes. So rather than any particular belief that I would make great quantities of money, this was an experiment. 

Because of this, my budget for the launch was… minimal, and one of the things I skimped on was a professional proofreader. Don’t misunderstand me, I proofread my work a hundred times and made anyone and everyone who would read it edit it as well. 

Yet, when my author proof copy arrived I immediately spotted numerous errors. Perhaps this was inevitable. Reading and proofreading a 60,000+ word document is time-consuming and tedious. 

So, number one on my list is the tried and tested advice of every article on the topic that’s out there, get a professional proofreader to look it over. You can find affordable solutions for this on a variety of sites, such as Upwork. 

2. Formatting your book

What font should your manuscript be in? What size should the font be? What trim size? What colour paper? How do you create a reflowable Kindle document? With so much information to dig through online, it can be difficult to figure out which advice is right for you. But, here’s what I learn the hard way.

How to Format Your Book for Kindle 

Thankfully, formatting for Kindle has been made relatively easy. I used Kindle Create. This software can be downloaded for free. Simply load your document into the software and it does all the formatting for you. 

Once it’s uploaded, create the additional pages such as your copyrights page, contents page and preface (if you've got one) and hit “Generate”.

This creates a reflowable document that can be uploaded directly to Kindle.

Formatting Your Book for Print

One of the great things about self-publishing on Amazon is that you can create a print-ready version. Amazon handles everything for you. All you have to do is upload your manuscript, get your cover ready, and when somebody orders your book they'll print it on demand and send it out for you.

However, unless you are already in the publishing game you probably don't know everything you might need to regarding how to format and design a good-looking, easy-to-read book suitable to your genre. You’ve probably never measured the books on your shelf, or really thought about the colour and weight of paper. And how big is a size 12 Garamond font in real life anyway? 

Eventually, I just went for it. When my author's proof came through I was disappointed but not unsurprised to find that the font was too large, margins too small, and the trim too big, to name a few of the problems. 

So, when formatting your book here are a few things to keep in mind:

Formatting a fiction book for print

Font: Use a standard easy-to-read font. I eventually went with Times New Roman. It’s not flashy or exciting but it does the job.

Font size: 11

Mass market paperback book trim size: This type of book is nearly always 4.25 x 6.87”

Trade paperback trim size: Most fiction books are 5 x 8”. Hardbacks and non-fiction are often 6 x 9”.

Paper colour: Cream for fiction. White for non-fiction

 These are not hard guidelines and I advise additional research depending on the genre of your book, but it’s a good starting place.

3. You need a book launch plan

So, I finished my book. I was happy with my work (oblivious to my grammatical errors). I wanted to get it out there and start selling copies. Well, I quickly learnt that I had two options. Hold off until I could build all the aspects of a successful launch plan, or pull the trigger. As you may have guessed, I went for it. Sometimes you have to jump into the deep end and just see if you sink.

The lesson here for any aspiring authors is that you need to start building your audience, building your social following and creating a mailing list months, if not years in advance of the actual launch date of your book.

Simply putting it up on Amazon is not going to get you sales. Amazon's algorithm rewards reviews and to get reviews, guess what? You need advance readers, and to get those you need a launch plan.

For a more detailed launch plan analysis, I've put together a simple launch plan checklist which you can download here. (This is, if you haven’t already guessed, part of my launch plan for my next book.)

4. Amazon ads are tough 

So far, I’ve skipped a few crucial steps and made several mistakes, but that wasn’t going to stop me. I wanted to get all the way through and see what else I didn’t know. To start driving sales then I decided to experiment with paid ad options. This included Facebook ads, Google ads, and Amazon ads. Of the three, Amazon ads were by far the most costly and least effective. From a spend of about $120, I got 2 sales. Yep - two.

Compare this to a similar spend on Facebook where I got a total of 34 sales in the first ten days. Nothing much to write home about but I more or less broke even on ad spend. I’m currently testing out a few different ads on Facebook with varying copy and audiences to see if I can increase the conversion rate and actually turn a profit (I'll report back on these experiments in my next article). 

The main issue I took away from Amazon ads was the lack of ability to customise and optimise the ads and audiences. Unless you’ve got a lot of money to throw at your ads and are already an established seller on Amazon, this channel seems unlikely to yield good rewards.

5. You also need sales copy 

Once you’re at that final stage, you've got your manuscript ready, it's all proofread, you've got a cover image, and everything is formatted and looking slick and sexy - then you need to do more. 

For a start, you need a killer book description and blurb and an author profile that makes you sound like the boss you are. Then, when you’ve done that you need all the additional marketing copy and materials that you’re going to use for promotions including imagery, call to action, ad copy etc.

It's a slightly different skill set. Set aside some time to do some research, see what others in your space are doing and have a few runs at it. If you’re no good at software like Photoshop you may want to commission someone to put together some creative ad visuals you can use. Or you may want to experiment with software like Canva.

Building your audience 

As a final word, I want to go over a few strategies for building an audience for your book launch and any future book releases you might be planning. All of this activity needs to be carried out sooner rather than later.

Set up a Website

A marketing website lends your brand more credibility and allows you to wax lyrical about your new book. You’ll want to get to grips with basic SEO best practices. You can name your website something simple like yournameauthor.com. 

I went for www.cabbagetreebooks.com but also bought the domain www.benluxonauthor.com which (to save some money) simply redirects to my author profile on my blog website.  

Build an Email List

An email list is an incredibly valuable tool for your book launches. You can use it to get advanced readers and reviews. However, it takes time to build a quality list. The most effective way to build a list is to use free downloadable content. This could be anything you think readers in your niche will be interested in such as a free short story, a checklist, or a guide.

Creating Content

Content is one of the best ways to build your presence online and can be used to build a mailing list. As part of this, you’ll want to get to grips with basic keyword research strategies and create content targeting high-volume keywords with low competition.

Establishing a Social Presence

Your social presence is vital for establishing organic reach and marketing your books. Again this takes time and commitment. If you don’t think you can build a presence on all of your channels pick just one or two to focus on. You can follow me on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Running Ads

When running ads, you have two goals either sales or email capture. If it's email capture, you can run ads to a free downloadable resource hidden behind a simple email capture gate. If it's for sales, you can run ads directly to Amazon or set up a sales funnel on your website.

You can download our free book launch checklist here.