Self-Publishing | Read Write Collect

Bookmarked How To Make A Book Come To Life by Steve Brophy (Hedge School)

Welcome to part two of my self publishing journey. Part one is the hard part. Climbing that mountain requires consistency and plenty of will. Part two, although easier, was completely uncharted territory for me. Writing and editing writing is familiar. Understanding the process required to take that edited piece and bring it to the world was challenging. Hopefully this helps provide a little light for you on your own journey. I will share with full transparency the whole process. It is not the only way to get a book into the world, it is just the path I walked this time. Be sure to check out Part 1 to help set the scene.

Steve Brophy reflects upon the technical aspects associated with producing a book, including purchasing an ISBN, selecting art for the cover and choosing a platform to publish the book. Brophy also shares a link to Ron Vitale’s post on using IngramSpark.

Bookmarked Self-publishing – Cory Doctorow – Medium by Cory Doctorow (Medium)

Unless you feel you can figure out how to market your book, unless you want to devote as much energy to that marketing plan as you did to its authorship and production, unless you are prepared to sustain your marketing effort through constant iteration and refinement, you probably shouldn’t self-publish.

Cory Doctorow reflects upon the monopolisation of the book publishing industry and the perils associated with self-publishing. He shares some of the lessons that he has learnt along the way:

I’ve evolved a checklist for would-be self-publishers that makes success more than a matter of pure luck.

Observe the publishing fortunes of books whose audiences you imagine to be similar to your book’s audience;

From these observations, formulate a falsifiable hypothesis about how you will reach a similar audience;

Based on this hypothesis, formulate a plan to get your book to that audience;

Execute your plan, and measure its progress by comparing your book’s performance to your hypothesized performance;

As new data comes in about where your hypothesis was mistaken, revise your hypothesis and make a new plan, and execute that;

Go to step 4. and repeat.

This won’t guarantee that you succeed, but without something like this, you will almost certainly fail.

Cory Doctorow https://doctorow.medium.com/self-publishing-41800468bcfe

I am intrigued to how this differs in Australia or if it is the same all over the world.

Doctorow also shared a reading of the piece on his podcast:

Replied to Chris Aldrich by

Chris Aldrich (BoffoSocko)

Started playing around with PressBooks for WordPress tonight. Some interesting and useful book collaboration, editing, and production tools hiding in here.

You thinking Of PressBooks for your IndieWeb book?

Replied to Using the Design Thinking Process to Write a Book (A.J. JULIANI)

Yet, there was something I wanted to do with this book that made it different. During the navigation ideas phase, I wondered what it would be like to give the book away for FREE to teachers and leaders all over. Now, folks would still have to pay for shipping, but with printing costs as low as they are, I wondered how this was possible.

I had a number of really bad experiences of sending books out to teachers free. The organization and fulfillment of this process were tough for all involved.

Thanks for sharing the process AJ.

I’ve always wondered about self-publishing, but always from a digital perspective, using Gumroad or some other platform. I had never thought of physically publishing something and giving it away. I obviously need to explore this in more detail.

Syndicated at Read Write Collect