Freelance scribbler exploring worlds real and imagined

The Steps (and Team) to Self Publish Successfully

I've resisted the idea of self-publishing a book-length manuscript for many years. Not out of any sense that traditional publishing is “better”—it's more that the process of self-publishing has always felt a bit overwhelming. What I've realized recently, though, is that I already use a lot of the same skills for my other projects, like producing the issues for After Happy Hour and publishing the prompt journals for Scribble House. This has brought me around to a new outlook on self-publishing my fiction. Yes, the process is a lot of work, but I'm slowly gaining confidence in my ability to do it, and am tentatively building toward self-publishing a book in the first half of 2026.

With this new goal on my radar, I've been doing a lot of research lately into all of those skills beyond just writing well that you need to be a successful self-published author, and figured it might be helpful for other folks contemplating this question. As I see it, there are four big-picture steps beyond the writing stage that each require their own sets of skills.

Step 1: Prepare the manuscript.

Any manuscript goes through various stages of editing before it's ready to release into the world. During the traditional publication process, a lot of other folks will step in to help with that process. This starts even before a publisher sees it, if you're working with an agent. At minimum, you'll have an editor giving the book a line editing and proofreading pass, and they may also suggest structural or developmental edits early in the process. Someone else's reputation depends on this, aside from just yours, so there are multiple people committed to making sure the book that's released is showing its best face to future readers.

As a self-published author, you're on your own. This makes having outside editors a non-negotiable. Paying for developmental editing is the fastest way to get a manuscript from rough draft to print ready, but input from skilled beta readers who are knowledgeable about your genre can get you to the same place. I'm lucky in that I have a group of other writers whose opinions I trust, many of whom edit professionally. That said, I don't expect these folks to give the manuscript the kind of fine-toothed-comb level of line-by-line attention they put in when they're getting paid about it. This is why, even though I work as a professional editor and I have a solid workshop group, I do plan to pay for professional line editing before self-publishing my fiction. It isn't just about whether or not I have the skills. I'm too close to this work to see it with full objectivity.

Any book that you want to self-publish should have gone through at least beta reading and copyediting from someone other than yourself before it goes to print. I would also say these two levels of editing should come from different people, for the same reason I don't trust myself to be the only line editor for my book. Once an editor has read through your book from a developmental standpoint, they're also very close to it, and may miss the finer points of the prose as a result.

Step 2: Layout, formatting, and design.

Formatting a book for self-publishing is very easy if you have the right tools (or understand how to make the not-as-ideal tools work), but there is a learning curve for anyone who's starting completely from scratch. There are two big areas you need to think about here: the interior layout, and the cover design.

Formatting a manuscript for self-publication isn't the same as formatting it for submission, but it's not super complicated. For most books, you can produce something that's functional very quickly even just using a program like Microsoft Word. That said, if you've never laid out a book for publication before, it's smart to study up a bit before you start. Little details like page numbers, text justification, how section breaks are formatted, and the book's front matter (table of contents, title page, etc.) really do a lot to make a book feel professional, even if they aren't things most readers consciously think about. All that said, this is one area where I think just about any writer can DIY things if they have a few hours to invest in learning. If you don't care to learn, you can hire book layout experts, and some editors offer formatting along with services like proofreading.

Cover design is a different beast. I did a post on designing covers a few weeks back that goes into some of the intricacies of it, but the gist is: it can be complicated, and if you get it wrong, you can actively hurt your book’s chances of selling. Because of that, if you've never done it before, I would strongly recommend hiring someone to do it for you. Not just an artist to create an image for it (though you can do that, too) but somebody who specifically designs covers for books in your genre and can send you a file with the right dimensions and format for your publishing method.

Step 3: Publication and distribution.

Self-publishing can mean:

...that's what's great about self-publishing: you have all the options, and it's up to you to decide which works best for your book and budget. Think about where you expect to find your audience and how you plan to sell the book. For instance, working with a printer can get you higher-quality books, often at a lower cost per book if you order in a high enough quantity—but if you plan to sell online, that means you'll need to handle shipping yourself, something that's baked right in when you sell through a POD platform.

There's a similar give-and-take with handbinding. There's an extra level of artistry involved that can be very appealing for readers, and it's a way to get very beautiful, distinctive books at an affordable price, but it's far more time-intensive and you'll need to distribute them to readers yourself. Of course, that may not be an issue if you plan to mostly sell your books at in-person events like readings or festivals.

Distribution can also include selling your books in bookstores, although this can be a challenge for self-published authors. Some bookstores are willing to order books from certain self-publishing platforms, like IngramSpark, but they aren't likely to just stumble across your book—if you want to be on their shelves, you're going to need to take the initiative to let them know that you exist. Which leads nicely into...

Step 4: Marketing and promotion.

Yes, traditionally published authors are increasingly expected to be active with the marketing and promotion of their books, too—but they at least have help. Even a very small publisher has some strategy for selling their books: a network of followers, connections with reviewers and booksellers, and/or a presence at literary events. Those are all things that can help your book find its way to readers beyond your circle.

Some amount of skill in marketing or promotion is necessary for any author who wants to actually sell copies of their book. Those skills don't need to all be yours, though. Hiring a book promoter or marketer can give you a similar set of connections, fans, and followers to what you'd get from being published by a press—as long as you hire the right one, and figuring out who's actually good at marketing your kind of book can be very tricky when you don't actually know what good marketing looks like (something I've experienced first-hand, as I've been perusing potential marketers).

Marketing can get very expensive, very quickly, but it doesn't have to be if you figure out how to be smart about where you pay for help. The advice I've gotten is to start by listing out two things:

...focus your energy on the things in the first column and, if you're hiring someone, look for somebody who's an expert in those areas where you're weak. For instance, I don't think I'd hire someone to write a newsletter for me, because I’ve done that before and know it’s within my capabilities. Where I struggle is with social media and digital marketing, and that's where I'll focus if I decide to hire someone to help with marketing.

The timeline to self-publishing

One last thing that I've been thinking about as I start this process: a lot of people praise self-publishing for its quicker timeline compared to traditional, but I think this can also be taken too far. There's a reason book publishers have such long release timelines. It leaves space for multiple editing passes, to order print proofs and make sure everything looks right on the page, to send the book out for reviews, organize launch events, or set up readings and workshops that can help you generate publicity.

Getting a self-published book into readers' hands takes a lot of skills beyond writing, and developing those skills takes time. I think a lot of writers rush to self-publish, and I'm hoping to avoid that mistake by targeting a 2026 release date. Maybe by then I'll understand how BookTok works.

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