Every now and then, I get a call or message asking if I can help a friend with their publishing journey. Sometimes, it is someone with an idea of a book in their head. Some other times, it is a person with a first draft. In rare cases, I hear from people with finished books considering publishing.

The conversation is predictable and always ends with me promising them links to resources to get them started. So, I figured I might as well make a post of it.

With Why is my Hair Curly? my path to being traditionally published was a shortcut. I did not have to take the long route of querying, getting an agent and then finding a publisher to take on my work. This was a book commissioned by a publisher. Typically, the process to being traditionally published looks like this.

Fiction:

1. Write your book. Read, reread, edit and shelve it for a few months.
2. Pick up shelved book, read it aloud, revise and polish until you feel like you will puke if you see it one more time.
3. Work on query letter (kind of like an elevator pitch) to agents who will be your champion of not just this book but any future work as well. So, take your time finding agents you want to work with. There are plenty of resources online on how to find an agent. Hint: this involves knowing how to write synopses, revise and resubmit your manuscript multiple times and facing endless rejections. It is not for the faint of heart.
4. Yay! you have an agent. Now, your agent does all that you did except with publishers this time around.
5. At some point you have an offer from a publisher that involves an advance (monies paid upfront against potential earnings from your book). Now, you work with a schedule. The publisher now wants more edits and the process of going back and forth happens until the book is scheduled for publication. This process takes year(s).
6. During the wait to publication, you (the author) work on your social media presence, figure out ways to market you and your book.
7. The publishers marketing plan may involve interviews, store visits, school visits (kid lit) and, book clubs.
8. Your book is published and now, you get to market some more.

Non-fiction – Memoir/autobiographies

This looks a little different as in you do not write the book ahead of time. Of course, you may write it but be prepared to rewrite or redo large chunks of it based on publisher input. The biggest thing here for non fiction is that you are the brand. Your social media presence, your committed followers matter. Your market matters a lot.

1. Write your book or an outline of it in any case. You must have few polished chapters ready to go.
2. Write your book proposal. There are plenty of resources online that explain what a book proposal is and what goes in it. Hint: You need to know your competition well and also how to market yourself. You are the brand here.
3. Query agents with your book proposal. Brace yourself for rejection time and again.
4. Once you have an agent, now the real work of writing your book happens.
5. Your agent now queries publishers with your book until the magic happens and a publisher signs on to publish your book.
6. Your market yourself and your book even more now.

With traditional publishing, as an author you turn in your manuscript and the publisher then figures out the timeline, works with cover artists, marketing and social media to help you and your book become a success. I am aware even with traditional publishing there are differences between small presses and the big ones.

With self publishing the process is similar, except, you get to do all of the above yourself.

For my book Hindsight, I wrote the draft in 2015. I then queried, got rejected too many times to count, shelved the book and, eventually in 2019, decided I would do it my way. I found an excellent editor Kushal Gulab in India who worked with me in identifying structural and logic issues with the book. Ideally, I should have followed it up with a line editor to polish the work and eliminate grammar and typos but I decided to do it myself and it shows. I also hired Santhya Shenbagam to do my cover art and help me with getting the book ready for publication.

What does that mean? The manuscript typically is a Word document. This now needs to be formatted so that when printing the file, the sentences get cut off properly, the text does not bleed off the edges and when printed, the book reads like a book and not a document printed off a printer.

Now, that the book is formatted, the next steps begin.

1. Get ISBN numbers to associate with each version of your book. One each for paper back, hard cover and eBook. Most print on demand services will offer free ISBNs but if you decide to publish through multiple services like Amazon’s KDP, IngramSpark and, Notionpress now you will have multiple listings for each version of your book. For tracking purposes, it helps keeping the same ISBN across different platforms.
2. During the formatting and getting ready for publication part of the book, you embed these ISBNs in the respective copies. This is key because when you upload your document during the ‘publishing’ process one common error is “ISBN mismatch” if the ISBN you entered does not match the ISBN embedded in your book.
3. With each service you use, the process is similar. You fill in details of your book, pick out SEO terms that identify the target market for your book, upload the cover page and interior separately and submit.
4. Each service you upload to will offer a proof copy you can have mailed to you. You can “publish” your book at this point which makes it available for readers to buy. However, resist the impulse to have the book live and wait for your proof copy so you can look at how the book is when printed and catch typos and mistakes that will only appear to your eyes at that point.
5. Review the proof, if happy with it, let the book go live.
6. Take a moment to acknowlege the journey and your effort. Celebrate.
7. Now, take a deep breath and get into the business of promoting and marketing your book. This can be done in many ways (internet is awesome in telling us how to do things). It is exhausting but, much needed. Email lists, messaging, social media are all great at spreading the word.
8. Talk to your local book stores and libraries about how to get your book out in physical form locally.
9. Sign up for book fairs and book events locally.
10. Find book clubs that are willing to read and discuss your book and offer to join the discussion.

There are many ways to do this but the harsh truth is that not all likes, comments and cheers from friends, family and followers will translate to sales.

To compare, my book Why is my Hair Curly? came out during the first wave of COVID. It had excellent marketing. Over three years, it now has about 200 odd reviews on Amazon and elsewhere. It is in bookstores. I did many, many events for the book. In cold, hard cash terms, I still earned only in three figures for that book.

Hindsight has been out for two weeks now. I am yet to reach 50 orders. Very likely, if I sell 100 copies over its life it will still have been all I ever expected out of it.

I hope this was helpful.