How To Publish Your Book – Without Spending Any Money – Part 3

By Word Ninja

Part 3: Publishing​

In this third article in the series, I describe how you can package your completed book for publication without spending money. These tactics may not be ideal, but they’ll serve until you can afford professional services.

Alpha and Beta Reading​

• While writing your manuscript, build a trusted group of author colleagues, and exchange alpha reads with them.
• For beta reading, you can enlist author colleagues, as well as readers well-read in your genre.

Editing​

• Once the story is as good as you can make it, self-edit the text for clarity, conciseness, and reader engagement. Take advantage of the free versions of online editors (such as Grammarly, Hemingway, and Pro Writing Aid). But don’t trust machines if their suggestions don’t sound right to you. They make mistakes—so double check.
• Exchange copyediting with a trusted colleague and make the corrections. Then, exchange proofreading. It’s important to keep these steps separate.
• Once you’ve corrected the manuscript, listen to the text using text-to-speech (in your word processor or on a mobile app). This is a great way to discover skipped or transposed words that the human eye might miss.

Formatting​

• Download KindleCreate from Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) to format your manuscript. Consult the help pages and tutorial as needed.
• Export the KPF and EPUB files. Use the KPF file on Amazon (for both eBook and print books). Use the EPUB everywhere else.

Book Description​

• Download this workbook from Celia Kyle on crafting a book description.
• Check out this blog post from Reedsy.
• Study the short descriptions BookBub writes for their feature deals.

Cover​

• Study the covers in your genre. Perform a web search on “Amazon top 100 [your genre].”
• Use Canva to create a free eBook cover. Search the Canva templates for “book cover [your genre].” Select a free cover template sized at 1400 px wide or larger.
• Don’t use the template as-is! Swap out the image, experiment with colours, add or remove elements, modify the fonts—make the cover uniquely yours.
• Ask author friends to critique the cover.
• Download the final cover in JPG and PNG formats.
• For the Amazon print cover, use the Cover Creator in KDP with the eBook cover as the base. Publish a print book only at Amazon for now.

Publishing​

Now, you’re ready to publish! In the next article, I’ll discuss marketing tactics.

Written by Word Ninja

Sample book cover created for free in Canva