My Trials and Tribulations of Self-Publishing

Recently, I published my first book with Kindle Direct Publishing and Amazon. And although a lot of "experts" tout how easy it is to make money, many of them don't go into detail about how much work is involved with self-publishing.

Especially from the perspective of someone who doesn't have a lot of time on his hands. That's probably the biggest investment when it comes to self-publishing, by the way: time.

Writing the Book

I spent several months writing the short book. The reason it had taken me so long was that I am involved in a lot of projects. I am the content marketing team lead of a web hosting company, manage a couple of YouTube channels, and operate several blogs.

Needless to say, I don't have a lot of time at my disposal.

Sure, some people can crank out a book in less than a month or two. But it's far more difficult when you have a slew of other responsibilities, like children.

Not to mention that I recently completed a challenge where I had written 90 blog posts in 30 days - all of which were more than 1,000 words each.

At any rate, I was finally able to finish writing my tale and was ready for the editing process.

Editing the Book

Perhaps one of the most important elements of self-publishing is editing the work. After all, you don't want to put out something that appears unprofessional or is difficult to read.

Now, the Internet is full of professional editing services and freelancers who will do a good job at editing. But what if you don't have the $400 to $4,000 dollars some of these people and businesses charge?

Do you save your pennies and wait until you can afford to dump the money into your book? I've seen many authors put their books on the back burner for several years to save up for these expenses.

To be honest, I really didn't want to wait to save my money. I have entirely too many things going on, and I'd probably forget all about the book over time. That's something I really didn't want to happen.

Part of the process of self-publishing my first book was to see how much I could manage for free. Mostly, this was an experiment that I am documenting on the blog and YouTube channel.

So, I had my best friend (an avid reader) go through the work while I fed it through the free version of Grammarly several times.

That's when I found that I overuse the terms "really" and "actually" an awful lot.

As an app, Grammarly works relatively well for what I needed. In fact, I use it constantly on my own blogs as it works seamlessly in WordPress. Plus, the Chrome extension works well in Vocal's editing environment. Though, it doesn't make the autocorrections as it does in WordPress.

I read through the book numerous times with a fine-toothed comb. After a few weeks of this, I felt that it was ready to save and upload to KDP.

Though, I would like to point out that a writer should never edit his or her own work. I only did so this time as part of the "free" aspect of self-publishing.

Creating the eBook Cover

Again, the Internet is full of designers ready to whip out a book cover. In fact, a lot of "experts" on YouTube suggest using designers on Fiverr's website. Remember, though, I planned on doing everything I could for free.

So, I took to the free version of Canva to create the book cover.

One of the best things about using Canva is its ease of use. After about half an hour, I downloaded a cover that I thought fit the book relatively well. Especially since I drove up to Lookout Mountain to get a good picture of the Denver-Metro landscape behind me.

Unfortunately, it was incredibly hazy that day, so you can't really make out any of the city's landmarks. It was still a good picture of me, nonetheless.

On the upside, I did go to school for graphic design and already knew a bit of what I wanted.

Uploading to Kindle Direct Publishing

After writing, editing, and creating the book cover, it was time to upload the materials to KDP. This was probably the easiest part of the entire self-publishing process.

For this, I used Amazon's Kindle Create app. This lets me convert the book into a KPF file, which is what Kindle Direct Publishing utilizes. However, I plan on using a different app as I would also like to publish the book with Barnes & Noble.

Though, I do need to point out how Kindle Create, the app to convert your book to KDP's format, is a bit wonky. It's definitely not a writing platform. However, it does have a lot of neat tools for adding things like the dedication, about, prologue, and other pages.

Anyway, the actual process of uploading your book to Amazon is relatively simple. It's just three, quick pages about your book and how much you want to charge. And although Amazon says it takes up to 72 hours for the book to go live, mine was up within four.

Overall, I think I probably spent around 30 minutes from the moment I imported the DOC file into Kindle Create to when I finished the setup in KDP.

Marketing the Book

No one is going to buy the book if they don't know it exists. And I can safely say that marketing and promoting the book is probably the most time-consuming, pain in the ass, stressful part of the self-publishing experience.

Sure, there are a lot of free tools you can use to help spread the word about your book. But, it's still going to take time away from your day to run all of those promotions and marketing strategies.

For someone who already has a lot on his plate, it's a slow-moving process. At the moment, I'm only able to dedicate enough time each day to explore one opportunity.

For instance, I was able to add the book to the sidebar of my website yesterday. Today, I plan on setting up the author page on Amazon.

Eventually, I plan on using Amazon's advertising system for KDP. It works much like Google Ads whereas you pay for clicks to visit your author page or books. Using a bidding system, it all comes down to how much I'm willing to spend per click and what my monthly budget looks like.

I can see why a lot of writers will pay for someone else to run the marketing campaigns. Not to mention the fact that I've never done this before and am mostly experimenting with what works best.

Well, at least my readers and viewers appreciate the effort.

What's Next?

I'm nowhere near being done with the marketing aspect of my book, and there is still much to do. But overall, it was an exciting process. Do I believe I'll make that "mad money" with self-publishing? No. But I can say that I finally finished writing a book to the point of publishing.

That, alone, was worth the entire experience. I'm 45 years old and have never finished a major writing project until now. The amount of pride and self-confidence I received was well worth every painstaking moment I spent creating this book.

And this is just the beginning.