Ready to start your DIY Publishing journey?

Here’s a quick overview of the steps involved in getting your book out into the world. You can also drill into any task to get more details on how and why.

• Write the book. 
  I know, it’s obvious but I don’t recommend starting any of the below until after the book is fully written.  You never know how long it’s going to take you or what’s going to change until the end.
  
• If this is your first book, there’s some work you need to do in order to set yourself up as a publisher and protect your privacy.
  
• If this is not your first book, I recommend starting with ebook formatting.
  It’s basically stripping everything away and setting up a few simple standards. 
  
• You also will need to write your synopsis to post on Goodreads (even before you publish) and to use when publishing your book.  You may also want to do some research into keywords for the novel to make your book easier to find.
  
• Think about what you want for your cover.  Reach out to a designer, buy a pre-made cover or if you’re designing it yourself get to work!
  
• Now drill into the front and back matter for your book.  If you are going to use a reader magnet or link to other works and get your copyright page in place.
  This should all happen in your formatted ebook document so that, again, you can use a few style rules but otherwise keep everything as simple as possible.
  
• Once you’ve got the book top to bottom then upload it to your ebook distributors with your synopsis, author bio, keywords and cover.
  
• And finally if you’re also doing a print version, you now need to update your cover for paperback format.  And create a new document that you can format for your print copy.

Ta-Da!  You’re a published author!

Want a worksheet to download and easily move through each step?  I’ve got something even better for you!  Check out our book publishing template board on Trello.

You can copy the board as many times as you need to systematically track the publishing progress for each book.