I’ve closed my business helping other authors with publishing, so…this page now contains only a list of do-it-yourself resources, including my favorite books/blogs/etc. on writing and self-publishing.
WHAT YOU’LL FIND ON THIS PAGE
- Publishing on Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing)
- Creating Author Accounts (on Amazon KDP, Goodreads & BookBub)
- Book Cover Design Briefs
- Website Design & Maintenance
- Creating Book Blurbs/Descriptions
- Writing Blogs
- How-To Books & Blogs (Publishing, Marketing & Productivity)
- My Favorite Writing Books
1) PUBLISHING ON AMAZON KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing)
- To learn how to upload your book to KDP, click here.
- Before or during your book upload, you will need to identify the specific CATEGORIES and KEYWORDS you can assign to their book. For more on choosing KDP categories, click here. For more on choosing KDP keywords, click here. To find out what KDP categories a published book (yours or others) is currently listed in, click here to use BKLNK. To read more about book genres, click here.
- Note: As of June 1, 2023, KDP allows authors to choose 3 categories (instead of choosing 2 categories during a book’s upload & then optionally messaging KDP to request up to 7 or 8 additional categories).
- Choosing to make your eBook available to Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited subscribers (aka enrolling your book in the KDP Select program) is a very individual choice. Here are two resources to help you make your choice: KDP’s help page and Reedsy’s blog post.
2) CREATING AUTHOR ACCOUNTS (on KDP, Goodreads, BookBub)
To learn how to create your author accounts…
- on Amazon KDP, click here.
- on Goodreads, click here.
- on BookBub, click here.
If you already have an account on Goodreads, you’ll probably convert that reader account to an author account.
To learn how to add your book (to the author accounts you’ve created)…
- on Amazon KDP, click here.
- on Goodreads, click here (for how to add your book to a series, click here)
- on BookBub, click here.
3) BOOK COVER DESIGN BRIEFS
- For The Anatomy of a Great Book Cover Design, read David Gaughran’s blog post on the topic. I recommend re-reading the part How To Brief A Cover Designer every time you submit a new cover request to your designer. As David says in his blog, “Take the time to do this right, and you will reap the rewards.”
- For more on cover design, read Dave Chesson’s How to Design the Best Book Cover in 8 Simple Steps.
- TECHNICAL NOTES. Make sure your cover image meets the minimum requirements set by sales vendors. These requirements will include image format type, dimension height and width, and resolution PPI (pixels-per-inch). The publishing world is constantly changing, but when I last checked, KDP accepted eBook covers in JPEG (or TIFF) and Print Book covers in PDF. Click here to review KDP’s minimum eBook cover dimensions (when last checked, they were 1000 pixels in height, 625 pixels in width, and 300 PPI resolution).
- The technical skills to create book covers are beyond most people’s expertise, so I recommend hiring someone who has made a career in design. I recommend designer Kim Killion, who created the covers for my Lonesome Hearts series, Gambling Hearts series, and Adella’s Enemy.
4) WEBSITE DESIGN & MAINTENANCE
- Interested in learning how to create and maintain your own WordPress website? I recommend Lisa Norman‘s course “Crazy Easy Awesome-Author Websites” available online at Margie Lawson’s Writer’s Academy.
- Need a way to verify if a website is created using WordPress or not? Click here for an app.
5) CREATING BOOK BLURBS/DESCRIPTIONS
- Read Chapter 11 “Blurb-writing Tips” in Riccardo Fayet’s free eBook How to Market a Book
6) WRITING BLOGS
- write blog content that is engaging and related to something in your books or your writing life
- edit your blog content the same as you’d edit your books
- use click-worthy blog titles
- group text into sections and divide these sections with subtitles (one long chunk of text can be intimidating to read)
- add blog tags
- add pictures (from paid sites like DepositPhotos or free sites like Pixabay)
- add internal and/or external links
- assign every blog to one or more blog categories for discoverability or to use as a link to other blogs or elsewhere on your website
- ask a question at the end of your blog to encourage engagement and blog comments
- promote your blog by sharing it on your social media accounts and (where appropriate) in Facebook groups (always read a group’s rules before posting anything there).
For more on the many other opportunities available in book publishing (including why authors may—or may not—choose to pursue them during their individual publishing journies), I suggest reading the following…
7) HOW-TO BOOKS & BLOGS (Publishing, Marketing & Productivity)
- Let’s Get Publishing (4 book series) – David Gaughran
- How to Market a Book – Riccardo Fayet (When I last checked, this was a free eBook. The first 3 sections ‘mindset and marketing fundamentals,’ ‘writing to market’ and ‘conversion’ discuss topics authors should consider BEFORE they start writing a story—but also DURING and AFTER).
- Full Time Author – Eileen Cook & Crystal Hunt
- The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles – Steven Pressfield
- Dear Writer, You Need to Quit – Becca Syme (not about quitting writing but about quitting the things that are not helping your writing journey).
- Atomic Habits – James Clear (website, newsletter, Instagram page)
- The Kindlepreneur Blog – Dave Chesson
- The BookBub Partners Blog – BookBub
8) MY FAVORITE WRITING BOOKS
- Goal, Motivation & Conflict – Debra Dixon (when last I checked, the print book—unless you are willing to buy a used print book at a possibly inflated price listed by 3rd party other than the author—was only available from the author’s website but the eBook was available from Amazon)
- The Complete Writer’s Guide to Heroes & Heroines: 16 Master Archetypes – Tami D. Cowden, Carolyn LaFever & Sue Viders
- The Emotional Wound Thesaurus + the others (Writers Helping Writers 6-book series) – Becca Puglisi & Angela Ackerman
- Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need – Blake Synder (I especially love chapter 6’s ‘Pope in the Pool’ & ‘Save the Cat’ techniques)
- The First Five Pages – Noah Lukeman
- Plot & Structure: Techniques for Crafting a Plot that Grips Readers from Start to Finish – James Scott Bell
- Revision & Self-Editing: Techniques for Transforming Your First Draft into a Finished Novel – James Scott Bell
- A Writer’s Guide to Active Setting: How to Enhance Your Fiction with More Descriptive, Dynamic Settings – Mary Buckham
- Romancing the Beat: Story Structure for Romance Novels – Gwen Hayes
- The Heroine’s Journey: For Writers, Readers & Fans of Pop Culture – Gail Carriger
- The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller – John Truby
Need more answers? Well, there’s always Captain Jack Sparrow’s savvy words about rum…
