​If you're passionate about writing your story, sharing your knowledge and leaving a written legacy with your name on the cover then you most definitely should write a book. Writing a book is no walk in the park, it requires self-motivation, focus, commitment, discipline, perseverance and diligence to write your first book. However it’s all totally worth it in the end because your ultimate goal is to become a published author.


We hope that the FREE Information Package provided here on this page  will inspire, educate and motivate you to pursue your dream of becoming a published author.

Advantages of Self-Publishing

A writer who self-publishes their book as an independent author at their own expense has many benefits to gain from self-publishing.
 
 Here are the main advantages of self-publishing
  • You are in total control of your book and all the decisions associated with the pre and post publishing stages of your book
  • You can set your own royalty rate which is much higher than with a traditional publisher
  • You get paid monthly by distributors for book sales
  • You can publish your book based on your own terms and timing.
  • You are the main decision maker and have full control over your finished work and copyright.
  • It’s relatively easy to make changes to your book even after it has been published.
  • Just about anyone can publish a book

Writing & Self-Publishing for First Time Authors

Writing and publishing a book is not a sprint, it's a marathon and that applies to everyone, whether or not you choose to self-publish or use a traditional publishing company. One of the major benefits of self-publishing a book is that you can get it done on your own terms and in your own time. In fact if your book is already written and thoroughly edited you are well on your way to reaching the finish line towards getting your book published.

There are independent authors who have written and published their book in as little as 30 days. However there's no need to rush if you want to produce a well written , high quality book, with a superb cover and professional formatting and interior layout design. Writing the book can take weeks, months and even years depending on what type of book you are writing and your own commitment to the writing process.

You can successfully publish a good quality book in 90 Days or less by following the publishing guide below. Remember publishing is a journey and you must ensure that you go through each stage of that journey knowing exactly what you need to do. The FREE information provided here is to be used by aspiring authors participating in the YCBAA Publishing Kickstart Challenge. This is a guideline that can help guide you along your journey to authorship in 90 days or less. 

What's Your Author Type?

​Every author is different,
  • Some of you may have already finished writing a book but you just need to know how to get it published
  • Many of you may not have even started writing your book yet but you want to learn more about the process involved in writing and publishing a book
  • You’re probably among those who are almost finished with your book and you don’t know what to do next
  • Maybe you’re just curious and want to know what this is all about
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You Can Self-Publish & Sell Your Book With Many Well-Known Book Distributors.

What's Your Definition of Success?

"Success is defined by your sense of accomplishment"
​The failure or success of a self-published book by an independent author is determined by the author’s definition of success.
That can mean different things for different people. Your definition of successfully publishing a book can be any of the following reasons:

  • You want to become an author and even possibly a best-selling author
  • You want to have a book with your name on it and hold it in your hand
  • You want to win a literary prize
  • You want to see your book sold in a bookstore and at online book retailers
  • You want to have the title of author and use it as a platform for career or business advancement
  • You want to share your story, knowledge, interest or expertise with others in the form of a book
  • You want to leave a written legacy that your family can be proud of
  • You want to make a full-time living with your writing
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​Regardless of what stage you’re at this information will benefit you all you have to do is adjust your sails to suit the stage that you’re at in the process. Apply what you learn wherever you see the need to succeed in your writing and publishing goals. So here we go!

Guide to Publishing Your Book in 90 Days ( 12 Weeks) 

 ​Write Your Book Publishing Goals in a Checklist to Kickstart Your Journey . 

  • WEEK 1 & 2: Writing Goals - Chapters, Finalize Titles; Book Sub-title, Chapter Titles
  • WEEK 3 & 4: Complete Editing
  • WEEK 5 & 6: Cover Design
  • WEEK 7 & 8: Formatting , Interior Design & Layout
  • WEEK 9 & 10 : Quality Check & Review/ Publishing Prep
  • WEEK 11 & 12: Final Prep for Publishing, Submit Book, Get Approved, Get PUBLISHED!

WEEK 1 & 2

SUCCESS is Scheduled. Set a Publishing Timeline by Scheduling Your Writing & Publishing Goals.
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  • Create a To-Do List That Includes : Your writing goals, how many chapters you need to complete, Gather Information you need to research for your book.
 
  • Write a great book, nothing can compensate for content. Your body of work is a direct reflection of you as the author. If you write an excellent book, you will keep your readers interested in your work and they will become loyal fans who will buy any other books you publish in the future.
 
  • Complete the final draft of your book OR If you are now starting to write your book implement this 90 Day Strategy after your final draft is completed.
 
  • Success is scheduled – Set A Publishing Timeline that fits your lifestyle. Set Target Dates On Your Calendar to stay on Schedule.
Finalize Titles: Book Title/ Sub-Title & Chapter Titles

Some authors come up with their book title first while others choose the perfect title during or after the writing process is completed. Your book title is just as important as the content. Your title is what attracts the reader to your book coupled with your book cover. Even if you have a great cover but a boring title people may not be interested in reading your book. Take time to brainstorm the title and ask for a second opinion from family, friends and if you’re working with a publishing consultant or book project manager get their advice to ensure that your title.

Helpful Tips on Choosing a Good Book Title:
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It should reflect the content of your book. Think of the title of your book as the label of your product. The title should give the reader an idea of what they can expect to find inside of your book. Nobody wants to buy a pie labelled Cherry pie only to eat it and find out it’s really a pumpkin pie. Your title should say what the essence of your book is all about.

Make it interesting and make it memorable.
Likewise your chapter titles should also accurately reflect the substance of each chapter in your book. Quite often readers will peruse your  Table of Contents to determine if your book is worth reading. Once are thoroughly satisfied with your Book Title and chapter Titles. You can move on the editing stage. 
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To get more in-depth techniques on title selection and other important aspects and strategies of writing a best-selling book you can Sign Up for the SPS Comprehensive Online Writing Masterclass.

WEEK 3 & 4

Editing is everything... That’s not just a cute cliché it’s absolutely necessary to get your book professionally edited unless you are an experienced editor and have the ability to do it yourself.

Find a professional editor or proof-reader who can properly edit all of your work from cover to cover.  Here are your options:
  • Hire a professional or freelance editor who works on their own
  • Employ the services of a self-publishing company that provides editing services
  • Ask a learned English instructor to edit your work

To produce a quality book, that is free form grammatical errors and other mistakes ensure that your book goes through all the three required stages of editing.
The Three Stages of Editing include Content Editing, Copy Editing & Proof Reading.

Content Editing
Content or developmental editing involves the overall structure of your book and includes stylistic and line editing by paragraphs. The clarity and flow of your book is scrutinized and restructuring may be required for some parts of your work. This ensures that the general format, tone, concept and style is on point.

Copy Editing
This stage focuses on sentence construction and formation, errors in coherence, word usage, consistency, clarity, and the overall organization of your work. 

Proofreading
This is the final stage of the editing process which focuses on such intricacies as typos, spelling and grammatical errors, punctuation, capitalization, verb tenses, repetition or redundancy.

WEEK 5 & 6 

COVER DESIGN 

They DO Judge the Book by the Cover. Your cover design is just as important as the content of your book. Even if you’ve written a wonderful book you will definitely need to have an outstanding cover. The book cover is what separates an average book from a great book. Books that are published by traditional publishing companies usually have a professionally designed book cover.

​To ensure that your book is on par it must meet the quality standards of the industry so ensure that you spend a lot of time and put a lot of thought into the cover design of your book. It’s best to hire a professional graphic artist, a specialist in book cover design or use the services of a self-publishing company that specializes in designing book covers.
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WEEK 7 & 8

FORMATTING, INTERIOR DESIGN & LAYOUT

There are industry standard that every professionally published book must meet in terms of the formatting, interior design and layout of a book. EBooks have a simpler interior layout than print books simply because of their digital format.

You can always tell the difference between a well published book and a book that was badly put together by two main things and these include a sloppy looking book cover and poor interior design and layout. You can choose to do your own interior design and layout or use a professional service to get it done. However it’s best for you to hire a professional book designer or use the services of a self-publishing company that can help you to do this properly.

Book formatting has multiple aspects that are vital to the overall look and feel of your book, whether it’s an eBook or a printed book. This involves both standard and technical requirements from cover to cover that make your book look like a quality and professional body of work. This includes text formatting, page layout such as the front matter; title page and copyright page, table of contents etc. It also involves font style, page setup, page size and arrangement, individual page title, font style, spacing, alignment, page breaks, line breaks, etc.
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If you’re doing your own book interior design and layout you can benefit from using the right tools / software that can assist you in creating a professional templates as well as design software such as Adobe InDesign, Scrivener. Microsoft Word can also be used for interior book formatting but it is difficult to do complex formatting such as images and tables.

​When using Adobe InDesign it enables you to apply a template to the pages of your book and you can also make changes to a group of pages. If your book has a lot of images or tables InDesign is a better option than Microsoft Word. However if your book is text only, Microsoft Word will suffice.
 
Book Interior Design Tips
  • Pay attention to your line spacing/ leading. Bad line spacing affects the readability of the text. To avoid this you can increase your paragraph line spacing to be 2 - 4 points larger than your type size.
  • Never put a blank line between paragraphs, it looks very unprofessional. It’s best to use paragraph style to add extra spacing between paragraphs.
  • The page numbers of your book should be divisible by 2 for print on demand publishing. For the best quality book offset publishing page numbers should be divisible by 16.
  • Only use one space between sentences
  • Use a proper font, additionally your font should be consistent throughout your text. Don’t mismatch fonts and use complementary fonts for your chapter titles.
  • Your text alignment should be set to the ‘Justified’ option; this is the most widely used text-alignment that most readers will expect.
  • Instead of using the “Tab” button to indent a paragraph or sentence use “Paragraph” rules when indenting. This will help you to avoid complications when copying & pasting your text into another form or publishing platform.
  • Be careful when using page breaks, you don’t want to create a blank page between chapters in your book.

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For in-depth training that will show you the step-by-step techniques for formatting, interior design and layout checkout our Comprehensive EBook and Print-On-Demand Publishing Masterclass.

WEEK 9 & 10

QUALITY CHECK REVIEW & PREPARATION FOR PUBLISHING

Now that you’ve completed writing, finalizing your book title, editing, designing the cover, formatting, interior design and layout you’re almost ready to publish your book. But first you must do a quality check, review it by reading it again from cover to cover to ensure that the finished product is ready to be published.

  • Of course your book files will be in an electronic format so you can review these files by accessing it on your computer. The cover file and the manuscript file should be separate. Ensure that your file formats meet the requirements of the publishing platform you will use to get published. If you are publishing your book in both ebook and print book formats ensure that you have a separate files for each, since they are formatted differently.

  • Look at your book cover, ensure that you’re satisfied with the final result. Make sure that the cover size meets the requirements of the publishing platform and that all text and graphics are within the margins of the print-bleed lines.

  • Go through your book again from cover to cover, the editing stage ensures that it is error free but you still need to read through it again since this is the final copy that your readers will see. Also ensure that your formatting, interior design and layout look professional.

  • Now that you’ve fully reviewed your work and ensured that it’s perfectly prepared for publishing you can move on to the other fun stuff, like getting paid for all your hard work!

Set Pricing, Set Royalty Rates, Get Book ISBN Number

WEEK 11 & 12

Submit for Publishing, Get Approved, Get Published
For more information on writing and self-publishing that will give you an in-depth, step-by step / OR to receive comprehensive training/  Take our Online Writing & Publishing Masterclass to learn more. It covers How to develop a writing strategy and get productivity tips.

What you will learn in this Masterclass

For more information on writing and self-publishing that will give you an in-depth, step-by step / OR to receive comprehensive training/  Take our Writing & Publishing Masterclass to learn more. It covers How to develop a writing strategy and get productivity tips.
©2017 The Self Publishing Studio
Created by Renee Allison Media