How to Self-Publish Without Going Broke

1: Have a Plan

Author note: I want to take a moment to thank you for reading this. Please note this is not the final draft so the exact content may change as it's currently undergoing a professional edit. This is to give readers an early glimpse of my new self-publishing guide. Sadly Wattpad's format doesn't play nicely with hyperlinks. However, the full eBook will contain all the hyperlinks including bonus resources. Stay tuned.

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With all things in life, we need to design and follow a plan if we want to accomplish anything. Without a plan, our wish just becomes a mere dream. But when we create a plan, our wish can become reality. The best time to draft a self-publishing plan is as early as possible.

A lot of variables go into how successful your book will be, and some of those variables are out of your control. For example, you can't control someone's preference for a certain writing style, topic, sensitivities, or given mood, all of which can affect their purchasing habits. By focusing on what you can plan, you're able to provide the absolute best position for your book to succeed.

Most writers have already planned out how they will write the book, like setting up a timeline or storyboard. In the infancy of your story, you started with an idea before you wrote it. Then you built on that story idea by outlining the plot, the transitions between each scene, then the main and side characters, their story arcs, and then any world-building (if this is fiction). If your writing is nonfiction, you did your research on the topic from reliable sources, gathered the facts, and determined how you wanted to organize the information coherently and logically.

This is something I expect most writers would do in varying degrees of detail. If you planned out your story well, it will help you iron out most content and structural issues. However, the thrust of this chapter is on planning how you will sell your book. Let's assume you already planned out the actual story and now you are thinking about taking that next step to self-publish. If you're reading this book and are already writing or nearing completion of your story, now would be a critical time to formulate a plan for self-publishing. The planning stage is the first and the most important step in the publishing journey.

Unfortunately, this step is often glossed over or skipped altogether by new writers, including myself. This can be a very grave mistake for writers. Rushing through the process often results in many careless mistakes being made. The result is often a half-baked book that comes across as unprofessional, cheap, and poorly written to readers. This will cost you in lost revenue and poor reviews, not to mention untold frustration. After seven years of being in this industry, I know firsthand the struggle to make sales because I hadn't planned out how I would execute each step in the publishing process.

As a writer, I challenge you to do two things. First, you need to back up for a minute and set goals for yourself. Is your goal to land on the New York Times best-seller list or support yourself full time from your writing? Or maybe your goals are more modest. Perhaps you see this as a side venture or a way to make extra cash on the side. Your goal for your book may differ from the next writer. After all, success is how you define it. If you have an ambitious goal, start with smaller goals. They can serve as benchmarks that make reaching a larger goal more attainable.

Whatever goal you decide on, you need to make a plan and put it in writing. Without a concrete plan about how you will reach your publishing goals, you may flounder in this ever-changing, competitive market. It then becomes critical to have a clear vision of who your book is for and how to get it in front of your readers.

During this early publishing stage, you should be able to answer the who, what, where, when, why, and how of your approach. Let's look at some of the most important questions that you would want to answer before you get too far along in the process: