All of you know the old adage, “It takes a village to raise a child.” Likewise, it takes a “team” to produce a great book. So I ask “Who’s on your team?”
The majority of authors I work with have day jobs that support their book-writing addiction. Their funds for book production are sometimes limited because of family needs and just plain paying bills. The costs associated with self-publishing may come as shock to some but it’s important to understand the investment mindset of publishing a book.
Yes, you need an editor, one who edits books in your genre and can offer the specific type of editing your book needs. Grammar, punctuation, comprehension, flow, etc. And yes, it is a large expense. However, consider the investment mindset here. You’ve worked so hard to create this book. You’ve put in hours and hours of writing, rewriting, reorganizing, removing, changing words and doing your own editing. Why wouldn’t you want to get the best editor for your book you could find to make it shine brighter than the other books in your genre? You’ve worked hard and you deserve to have the best possible version of your book presented to your audience. You need an editor on your team.
Next is the book cover. We all know books ARE judged on their covers. We are a visual society. Facebook posts garner more views with graphics, picture or videos. Twitter engagement is higher with photos and videos. Instagram was created specifically as a visual social media platform and see how that turned out? You need an eye-catching, well-designed book cover to catch your reader’s eye! Again, an investment in your book’s success. You need a book designer on your team.
You want your readers, to “read” your book, right? That’s the entire reason you spent so much time and effort to string all those specific words together on the page. If your book’s interior is not created for “reading” i.e. weird, hard to read fonts, too condensed spacing, hard on the eyes and all of the other issues that make a badly formatted book, your reader will bolt. You need to make your book’s interior just as eye-catching as the cover. A well-designed book interior entices the reader to spend time in its pages without getting eye fatigue. You need an interior book designer on your team.
How about marketing? Do you know how to market your book? Have you invested the time to learn all of the possible marketing trends, how to use them to promote your book and how to set up a timeline to optimize your book’s introduction to the world? If you have, go you! If not, you need a marketing team member too. While all of the above team members serve to create your book for release to the world, to your readers, a marketing team member helps you find your readers and sets your book up for the best possible introduction to the world. You need a marketing team member to launch your book so the world can find it!
Summary:
Your Team needs to have:
- Editor
- Cover Designer
- Interior Designer
- Marketer
As a self-published author, you should also have a budget that factors in the investment in each team member. And as a self-published author, you can make the decision of scheduling each team member’s contribution to allow you to manage your money and cash flow. So, take your time and research costs, plan your release timeline and create a budget. You will be making the biggest investment your book’s success by creating a solid and well thought out publishing plan.