Business of Writing: How to Publish a Book

by Monique Campbell

How to publish a book

Publishing a book is more accessible than it’s ever been. While there are gatekeepers that remain in existence, deciding which books get to see the light of day. There are also other means. Other modes to get you to your desired goal of seeing your book published and accessible to readers.

If you’re the person who is thinking about writing a book. In the process of writing a book. Or has just finished writing a book. There are three primary means you should consider when it comes to publishing your book: traditional publishing, self-publishing, and hybrid publishing.

Traditional Publishing: Is where you tend to work with literary agents to secure deals with established publishers. If you’re working on a non-fiction book you need sample chapters and a proposal ready, but if you’re working on fiction, you need to have completed the entire manuscript and have a synopsis ready as part of your query letter. Literary agents are your first point of call. They’re the facilitator in getting your manuscript solicited for receipt and review by traditional publisher. Gatekeeper number one. Your first task is getting a literary agent to see value in you and your literary contribution. Your query letter should be both professional and seductive, provide a clear grasp of your story premise and its target audience. You need to occupy a completely different, logical, strategic part of your brain that differs from the intuitive, free-flowing, creative side you once occupied to create your book. You can see why detachment from this process makes sense for most.

If a literary agent sees enough value in your work, they will sell your work into a network of genre-based editors within traditional publishing houses who are primed for seeing and establishing commercial success. Gatekeeper number two. The seeing part is key, as they’ll need an established barometer in which to measure the likelihood of success. i.e. see an alignment with an established author in the same genre showing opportunity, or see a large independently developed audience ready to be monetised.

The business side here involves contract negotiations, royalties, advances, and distribution. You sell the rights to your work in exchange for a percentage of the sales (royalties) and possibly an advance payment. Often those rights can leave you owning between 5% and 15% in revenue gained from your book sales, as royalties. Though 10% of something is always better than 100% of nothing, the idea of getting 10% of something for your hard sweat and tears is a tough pill to swallow.

I did actually try the traditional publishing route, even secured a literary agent. However after a few years of trying to land a deal with a publisher, my entrepreneurial mindset kicked in and I opted to do it myself through self-publishing.

Self-Publishing: With platforms like Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and Barnes & Noble Press, you can independently publish your books. This requires handling all aspects of book production (editing, formatting, cover design), distribution and marketing. The upside is that you keep a larger percentage of the profits, up to 70% on KDP, but there are also upfront costs and marketing responsibilities.

The upfront costs come in the form of editorial, formatting, and graphic design services, the printing and distribution of printed books, and then any PR & marketing services once the book is published or soon to be published. I used Reedsy.com, a peer to peer platform connecting over 1million authors with over 3,500 professionals. And Amazon’s KDP for print on demand services, which can be more costly reducing profit margins, however the reduction in upfront printing costs in the early stages of publishing while building demand serves well in managing and keeping initial outlay costs to a minimum.

Publishing independently, or self-publishing as I previously put it, means you will inevitably take on the role of a publisher in this process, which for me looked like:

1) Select editorial service (structural, developmental, copyedit, or line-edit) – brief a selection of editors based on their experience and genre of interest matched to your editorial requirements. Provide an overview of you, the project, main characters, synopsis, target market, sample of your work, deadline etc. and submit to receive quotes with an outline of professional background and interests.

2) Editing rounds – pending the editorial service selected, there will be at least 2-3 editorial rounds where the editor will make tracked editorial changes, rewrites, omissions and comments for the your review and approval. This should be a collaborative effort, and is the perfect opportunity to challenge and question your written work, in whole or in part, with a professional objectively skewed towards publishing standards and market appeal.

3) Approval – once happy with the final product, approve and move to drafting a synopsis and query letter for professional editorial review.

4) Select book design services – like with editorial services, brief a selection of graphic designers based on their experience and design style. Some graphic designers design images from scratch, others manipulate images. I selected a graphic designer who manipulated images, and we leveraged AI to create our baseline image that he manipulated to become the book cover of Once Bad Intentions. He also did the book formatting, so it was a win-win! But on a serious note, the professionals I chose to work with was not only based on their previous experiences and interests, but also on how they engagement with me throughout the procurement process. That they understood their services were up for my procurement. I was a buyer, and they were sellers, and they did a great job in selling the value of their services, most notably because of the ease of engagement with them for their services.

5) Publish – once print and ebook covers, manuscript and format design, are finalised as complete, set up book for publication across all key platforms: Amazon KDP, Barnes & Noble Press and Apple Books for Authors to distribute your book with, and access, their respective marketplaces.

Hybrid Publishing: This is a middle ground between traditional and self-publishing, where you might pay for certain services (like editing or marketing), but still retain more control and a higher percentage of royalties. There’s a lot of question marks about this approach. This article on Jane Friedman’s website, a writer, author and business strategist for authors and publishers. The article, written by Meghan Harvey, Chief Strategy Officer at Girl Friday Production, sums up all considerations, including the ethics, of hybrid publishing.

On one hand, if you’re taking the financial risk, paying for core services then there’s a negotiable advantage to you taking the majority of the royalties, which self publishing allows for. On the other hand, hybrid publishers enable access to brick and mortar retailers at a national level. Gatekeeper number three. If the idea of seeing your book in brick and mortar books stores is a value add to you, and forms part of your intention to write and be published, the hybrid publishing approach may work for you, however you should be cautioned to negotiate your royalties based on your level of upfront investment and its associated risk.