I’ll be doing a longer writeup of the process, but here are some of the tools I used: Luckily, the quality of digital tools for self-publishing is pretty good now.

Trying to embrace the spirit of my book anywhere I can.Īnother thing you “can just do”? Put your name as publisher.Ĭool! #4 How much did this all cost? How much will you make? That and I thought that only having one book cover was very “default path” thinking. #3 Why are there two different covers for paperback and hardcoverīecause the publisher submitted two options I really liked. So I put in that extra 20% to take it to the next level. But I knew that I wasn’t done yet and could do better. This is what led me to hire multiple editors to help me, hire a designer for a book cover and proofread and edit it about 100 times throughout the process.Ĭould I have shipped something a few months ago? Yes. The reason most people end up attempting to publish something that looks and feels like a book is that as soon as you level up the complexity you can see that producing something pretty close to a book from a publisher is possible. #2 The reason it is so complex is also because of personal preference Luckily, she had a lot of great ideas and suggested I take a little more time. I handed things over to an amazing editor Paula Trucks-Pape, near what I thought was the “end” of the process. The number one thing I’d do differently is starting working with an editor much sooner. Knowing what I know now, I think I could do it in 6-9 months.

I was too optimistic and in the first months, I kept pushing out the publishing date.įrom idea to publishing, it took me about 13 months. Quickly, I realized that the level of complexity of a longer piece (let’s say >10k words) was an order of magnitude different than putting out a long essay. I estimated this would take me about three months. I decided to write a book with the mindset of I will throw together some blog posts, edit them, smooth the rough edges and hit publish. 📕Ten Quick Reflections On The Process #1 There is a big gap between publishing blog posts and “writing a book” Order other places like Apple, B&N, etc.Order Hardcover on Amazon (looks to be 3-4 weeks).Order Paperback on Amazon (2-3 days delivery).Pre-Order Kindle E-Book (launches Tuesday the 17th).Buy digital files immediately Gumroad (pdf, mobi & epub).Paid Boundless subscribers (paywalled post, linked here).

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