37 Comments

Thanks for writing and sharing your experience, Brian! Very helpful article.

Expand full comment

Thanks for giving me the platform to do that, Winston!

Expand full comment

As also a self-published author, I can't stress how true all of this is lol. You can transfer most of this knowledge to paperback books and nothing will change. Thanks Brian for putting it all in one post for people to see.

Expand full comment

Thanks, Victor! It's great to have this confirmation from other self-published authors as it helps new authors trust the process is going in the right direction.

Expand full comment

Wow, thanks so much for this comprehensive guide! Bookmarking this for future use :-)

Expand full comment

You're welcome!

Expand full comment

Great help here! Thank you.

Expand full comment

You're welcome!

Expand full comment

Great stuff, Brian. Very useful to have this outline aggregated into a single post.

Expand full comment

Thank you, Johnathan, I'm glad it was helpful. I knew going in that I wanted to capture the info and share it broadly, and it's nice that Winston's community has been so receptive.

Expand full comment

Here's a couple of additional useful resources (I'm not affiliated, just a satisfied customer):

1) Publisher Rocket plus other useful templates and tools for Self-Publishing authors : https://kindlepreneur.com/tools/

2) How to recognise and deal with KDP / KU scams : https://kindlepreneur.com/amazon-printing-scams/

Expand full comment

We spent a lot of time getting our book ready to publish, and finally made it during the heart of the pandemic when we had some extra time. It was agonizing!

This probably would have been really helpful, Brian.

Expand full comment

But you did it! And that's what matters most. Next time around you'll have all of the resources at your disposal and be a veteran publisher. 😁

Expand full comment

I bought Atticus earlier this month and it's up there as one of my favorite purchases for writing so far.

Expand full comment

Thank you for sharing, Patricia! I know it helps when writers make the right choice when recommended software.

Expand full comment

This is a great primer. Particularly on ISBNs and copyrights. This is where your take true ownership of your work as an indie writer.

Expand full comment

Thank you, Vince, I'm glad it was helpful.

Expand full comment

This was extremely informative and helpful. Thank you, Brian! It's also one of the most well-edited newsletters I've read.

Expand full comment

Thank you, Marisa! You can also thank Winston for that, who is the well editor. 😁

Expand full comment

Great breakdown of a process I completed in January. After paying an editor and cover artist to do my art (both are friends and I designed the cover using Canva), I'm still waiting to break even, but it's so rewarding to have the book in my hands. Working on my next project now and I'm planning to use the same process again.

Expand full comment

Congratulations on getting through that process, Sarah! Even if you never broke even, publishing your own book is a huge accomplishment. 👊👊👊

Expand full comment

Thanks! And I think my husband would like me to at least break even to justify the work away from family 😉

Expand full comment

Extraordinarily helpful Brian, not least because I trust the author! I’m going to bookmark it.

Expand full comment

Thanks, Tom! Any time you got a question about the process I'm happy to discuss.

Expand full comment

Can you see where the sales occur? Like, can you tell if your mom bought ten copies, or if traffic came from your substack post, or do you just see total numbers?

Expand full comment

If you run a promotion on Amazon for a book you can see if sales originated from that promotion. For regular sales they don't give you any referring source information or user data, most likely because it would violate privacy. I only know the source if someone told me they bought a copy.

Expand full comment

Congrats! 🎉

Expand full comment

Thanks, Michael!

Expand full comment

This is stellar! I've been through most of what you write about and wish I had this as a reference at that time. Well done.

Expand full comment

Thank you, Finlay!

Expand full comment

Hi Brian, thanks for the info. I'm preparing a book and was wondering if you have a recommendation for font type/size (for the main story text)? I did another book a couple of years ago with Calibri 11.0 but not sure if that's the best choice. What do you think?

Expand full comment

Hey Victor, for the print copy, usually the size of 11-12 is good, depending on the font. I will usually print one page and compare it to books I own to determine if it's in the right size range. I used a serif font called Palatino Linotype because it's a popular, easy to read font. Amazon recommends the following fonts in their help documentation, which you might find useful:

https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G202145450

For a sans-serif font, I think Calibri is just fine, but you might also consider Open Sans, which can be downloaded here:

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Open+Sans

For the ebook I chose to use Bookerly because that's the default Kindle font, and users can choose to use it over the author's supplied font. Hope that helps!

Expand full comment

Oh, this is helpful for my next project!

Expand full comment

Brian, thanks a lot. I downloaded Open Sans. That's a good one. 11.5 seems to be just right. The Palatino is nice too, but I tend to like sans-serif more. Thanks again, you set me on the right path!

Expand full comment

Don't forget that for eBooks the eReader will determine the font and text size according to the user settings.

Expand full comment