Ep 145: Quick Wins For Self-Publishing Authors

Today I'm sharing 5 quick wins that make self-publishing feel simple, not scary, and show how small moves can build sustainable momentum. By the end of these 5 steps, you will have:

• locked in a clear (and easy to pronounce over and over again) working title
• chosen a credible publishing company name
• and understanding of ISBNs and taken the first step toward purchasing yours
• selected a trim size that best fits your word count
• gathered cover inspiration that guides your final design
• drafted dedication and acknowledgments pages 

Want all this in writing, step by step? Just go to publishaprofitablebook.com/jumpstart to get the 5 quick wins delivered directly to your inbox, one day at a time

✍️ You've Been Thinking About This Book Forever. So let's start writing (for real this time).
 
No incense, inspirational playlists, or fancy mantras. Just a clear, doable plan to get your nonfiction or memoir draft written in 33 days. 

👉 https://www.publishaprofitablebook/writethebook

Chapters

• 0:00 A Hair-Dryer Idea Sparks Momentum
• 3:45 Why Quick Wins Beat Overwhelm
• 5:25 Quick Win #1: Lock Your Title
• 10:26 Quick Win #2: Name Your Press
• 14:45 Quick Win #3: ISBNs Made Simple
• 22:07 Quick Win #4: Cover Vibe And Trim Size
• 30:51 Quick Win #5: Dedication And Acknowledgments

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:11

Hi, everybody. All right. Welcome to this week's episode. This is, we're just going to call this not on my bingo card today, this episode, because I wasn't, this wasn't in the plan. But this morning, when I was drying my hair, which doesn't happen a lot, but when it does happen, I feel like it puts me in this meditative state where I get some what I think are good ideas. I started thinking about the fact that for me, I love the idea of quick wins. And I know that it's such a buzzword, which makes me not like it. But one of the things that I like about quick wins, if I think about my own house, is how often I will put something off. So for me, a great example is putting things on my steps and thinking, well, when I go upstairs, I'll take it upstairs. But I just walk right by it, like every time for weeks, still sitting on the stuff. So the quick win for me is walk up the steps, grab the damn thing, put it in the laundry or in my room, wherever it goes. And now I've checked that box. Like that's the quick win. And there are a lot of other things that feel so overwhelming to me, like booking appointments or I don't know, let's use booking appointments, that it just like weighs on me. Like it feels like this really heavy thing that's going to take all this time. And then I just do it and it takes 17 seconds. And I think, why did I, why? Just why? So all this got me thinking, okay, in the self-publishing space, what are some quick wins that I can, I know I can help people achieve in order to help show you how truly simple the self-publishing process is. So I've come up with five quick wins. And because this is all a work in progress, but hopefully by end of day, if you go to publish a profitable book.com forward slash jump start, all one word, jump start, you can sign up to get all of these delivered to your inbox one day at a time with more, a little bit more detail than I'm going to give in this podcast. But nevertheless, I wanted to find a way to give you the five things that possibly are weighing the most heavily on you that actually can be checked off the list very quickly and help you go, oh, that wasn't quite so bad. Again, in an effort to show how simple simple and easy are two different things, but really the self-publishing process is simple. And in many, many cases, it's easy. If you know what boxes to check and what to fill in, which is something that I go into much more detail on in Publish the Damn Book already, that's what makes it easy. And what makes it simple is simplifying what feels like a kind of a complicated subject, but which absolutely unconditionally is not. So in today's episode, I'm gonna give you these five things and I'm gonna assume that you're listening while you're driving or vacuuming or trying to tune out whatever's going on. Hopefully, you cannot hear the landscapers in my neighborhood right now because it is going to be 93 degrees in Phoenix again today. We are almost at November, folks, and I've had enough. So I have my windows open and my slippers on. I if sweat just, if you're watching this on YouTube and sweat just starts dripping down my forehead, please don't mention it because I'm in full denial. And my quick win for today is pretending that it's actually like sweater weather and that Lowe's can be justified for having all of their holiday decorations up. Okay, let's hop right in. So, quick win number one, let's lock in your title. Now, no one panic. The thing is that this is like naming a child. So until it's on the birth certificate, and sometimes even when it's on the birth certificate, people change their name. Like, I think one of Kylie Jenner's kids was once named Wool for something like that. So, like it's you can do it. But having a title that you feel 80 plus percent great about helps to give your book the sense that it's a real book and that it's coming to life. So, how do we do that? I have a little quick four-step process for this. And this works whether you're writing fiction, nonfiction, or memoir. So the first thing you're gonna do is brainstorm. Just take five minutes and write down every idea that comes to mind. Some authors, like I've worked with a couple of authors who knew even before they started writing their book what the title was going to be, and they were not taking suggestions or notes. There was no deferring from that, like that's what the title was going to be. Come hell or high water. And that's totally fine. That those folks are in the minority. It's like going to college and knowing exactly what you want to be when you grow up. It some people go in and they know I'm gonna be a doctor, I'm gonna be a nurse, I'm gonna be a soil researcher. Most people don't. So if you're in that category, you're not alone and you're completely normal. So just brainstorm. What are some ideas? If you're writing nonfiction and you want to have a clever title, like the word spark or it's something, it's gonna be important that you have a subtitle that clarifies. So if your title is clever, you want your subtitle to lend clarity. What will the reader see in that subtitle that'll make them go, that's what I need, or that's what's for me? Memoir is a little bit different because memoir, actually, memoir and fiction are different because lots of times with memoir, you'll either have a subtitle that'll say a story of this, this, and this, or it'll just say a memoir. And with a novel, most of the time they don't have subtitles, sometimes they do, but um, it'll just say a novel. So it's like, what is the essence of the story that you're telling if you're if you're writing fiction or memoir? And if you're writing nonfiction, do you want to be clear in your title and even clearer in your subtitle? Or do you want to be a little bit clever? Like, do you want to bring your personality into it? So just write everything down that you're thinking for five or so minutes, and then consider your reader's reaction. And what I want you to consider is a completely cold audience. What I mean by that is a reader who has no idea who you are. This is not a friend or a family member or a colleague or an acquaintance who's even going to hear about you through word of mouth, or maybe it's someone who will hear about you through word of mouth, but does not have the compunction to just go buy the book because you wrote it. So think about what their reaction will be when they hear that title. Does that make them think like, this sounds really interesting, or I need that, depending on your genre? Well, how does how would your title land subtitle land for a potential reader? Next thing is practice saying it out loud, especially if you have a subtitle. Hand in the air. I did not fully think about this when I titled my fifth book, Enough, which the subtitle is The Simple Path to Everything You Want. Okay, on its own, that would have been okay. But did I stop there? No. So it's The Simple Path to Everything You Want, a Field Guide for Perpetually Exhausted Entrepreneurs. It could have been either of those. If I could go back and do it again, I would have picked one or the other. I probably would have picked the latter. But and could I go change it now? Sure, but I'm not going to. It's so long that when people ask, oh, what's the title of your book? I mean, I have to regurgitate that whole thing. It's exhausting. Um, and it's a lot. Further, if it's if there's a lot of alliteration in your title, whether it's your title or your subtitle, and you're gonna trip over it. It's it's helpful if your title is something that you're super comfortable repeating because you're going to be saying it a lot. And so you don't want to get tongue-tied and you don't want to say, well, how long do you have in the case of my book, Enough, aptly named, given that the whole thing is just, I mean, my third book was titled You Cannot Be Serious. And there are so many reasons that that phrase goes with that book. At any rate, say them out loud, make sure they feel comfortable, and then just pick a front runner for now. You don't just stick with it. You might change it or modify it, like change it completely, modify it as you get closer to your publication date. Maybe even as you start working with an editor, your editor might make a suggestion or two. That happens, like I want to say all the time. It's incredibly frequent, common that that happens, but it's just something that makes your book feel more real and like it's coming to life more. So that is quick win number one. Quick win number two, give your publishing company a name. I swear, if there were two things about self-publishing that really cause authors to think this process is much more complicated and cumbersome and overwhelming than it is. It's the publishing company aspect and the ISBN, because both of those feel for different reasons very undoable. Let's talk about, we're gonna talk about the ISBN in uh quick win number three, but let's talk about the publishing company. If you are going to be an indie author, you are going into business with and for yourself. Now, the degree to which you're doing that, you get to decide. I'm not suggesting for one second that you have to become a full-fledged, like Amazon-sized business. You don't, and you probably won't. The importance of having a publishing company as an indie author really is to separate, it's two things. One, it's to separate your personal from your professional assets in the event that somehow, for some reason, you were sued for anything, like libel, slander, intellectual property infringement, who knows? But it's separating your it's protecting your personal assets. That's the first thing. The second thing is our goal here is to be able to blend in with all of the traditionally published books. And one of the best ways to do that is to not have a sign across our metaphorical forehead that says, I am indie published or I am self-published. And the way that we do that is by assigning a publishing company name to ourselves that is not Elizabeth Press. It also is not independently published, which is the publishing company name that would show up on Amazon if you were to use their ISBNs and therefore name them the publishing company. So while I don't recommend using your name or something that clearly identifies you as the publisher, you can absolutely find symbolism. So my publishing company is Finn Phyllis Press. Finn was the name that I was quite determined to name my fourth child, and I did not win that battle. That's fine. His name suits him perfectly and not Finn. And then Phyllis was my grandmother's name. And so I just combined the two, Finn Phyllis Press. What I did not anticipate was how often people would ask me, how do you spell that? So something I would take into consideration. I don't know that I would do it any differently, but I would take it into consideration were I to do it again. But you can use names of, I mean, anything that feels symbolic or fun to you. This is not a place to overthink it, but just identify something that doesn't scream self-published, but that also allows you to form a publishing company, which I'm not an attorney or an accountant, but forming and how you form a company is very dependent on what state you're in. I'm in Arizona. It's very simple to form an LLC, a single member LLC. It costs me under$100 to do. And getting an EIN, which is essentially your company's social security number, is completely free. So talk to an attorney or an accountant if you want to get a lot more of the details on what that all means and how to do it. But for now, just think about what you want to name your publishing company. Make sure, and then once you decide on like two or three or one, make sure it's not already in use. So you can do a simple Google search or you can go to your state's, whatever your state's corporate commission website is, and do an entity search to see if another publishing company exists with that name, because you won't be able to register that if that's the case. And then write it down. Like write it down where you can see it often, put it up on your wall. I mean, just start making it like this is again you bringing this whole thing to life and also realizing, okay, that wasn't quite so hard. So now your book has a title. We've got, we've had two days here or two steps. Your book has a title and a publishing company. So let's move on to quick win number three, the ISBN. I mentioned in the last quick win that it's the publishing house and the ISBN that get people so tripped up. So all ISBNs are assigned to a publishing company. It identifies the publishing company as the publisher of record. But every book has an ISBN. If you turn a book over, you'll see a barcode in the lower right-hand corner. The barcode itself is not the ISBN. The ISBN is the 13-digit number that sits right above the barcode. And the barcode, the ISBN is embedded within the barcode. So when you go to the grocery store and you scan your favorite box of or carton of ice cream, you scan the UPC code. The ISBN is your book's UPC code, essentially. So it's how bookstores and libraries and anywhere else that would need to identify your book, it's how they identify your book, is via the ISBN. Now, for right now, you can do one of two things. Thing one, this is the most simple route, is go out to myidentifiers.com. Do not ask me why their URL is myidentifiers.com and not balker.com. I don't know because the company that you are logging into, the database that you're logging into, is that of Balker, which is the US ISBN agency. So you'll go to myidentifiers.com and just set up a free account. That's the lowest hanging thing I need you to do today. It's free. You're going to set up account, an account. You do not even have to assign a publishing house name to it yet. You will ultimately do that when you start assigning the ISBNs that you've purchased to a book, but you don't have to do that today. Just get your account set up. Simple. If you want to take it a step further, you can go ahead and purchase a package of 10 ISBNs. This is what I recommend doing because one ISBN costs$125. So two ISBNs would be$250. And you can get 10 ISBNs for$295. So do the math with me. That ends up being about$29 per ISBN instead of$125. And the reason that you need more than one, and probably even more than two, is that each version of your book requires its own ISBN. So your paperback needs one, your ebook needs one, your hardback, if you have a hardback, needs one, your audiobook would need two. If the book ends up being translated into another language, that would need its own ISBN. If you change the, like you, you probably won't end up using more than four, maybe five at most per book, unless you get a bunch of translation rights happening. But it's still more efficient to buy 10 than it is to buy, well, certainly to buy three, but it's more efficient than to even buy two because you're just spending the extra$45 and now you have 10. So if you want to do another format, meaning you want to do a hardback in the future or you want to translate it into another language, or you want to write and publish another book, you have those ISBNs at your disposal. So you could buy your package of 10 if you wanted to. And if you wanted to even put in the name of your publishing house, if you're like if you're set and you know what it's going to be and you know that it's available to be registered as a company, you can do that. Just don't assign the ISBN to your book yet. That's one of the last things that I end up doing because once you assign an ISBN to your title, if you change the title at all by even one letter or space, you have to you can't change it, is the bottom line. You would lose that ISBN and you would have to then use another one. So it's kind of like throwing one away. So it's one of the last things I do in the publishing process is actually registering my book with an ISBN or assigning an ISBN to my book. But going ahead and purchasing, certainly getting a free account at myidentifiers.com is a great thing to do today or for your third step. And then if you want, go ahead and buy your 10 ISBNs. And now you have them. Okay, step four or day four, depending on how you're doing this. And again, if you want to get these to come to your email with more explanation and more sort of walkthrough steps, you can go to publish a profitable book.com forward slash jumpstart and just fill out the quick form. It's just your name and email, and I'll send them right over to you. Okay, so number four is find your cover vibe. I'm getting tired of the word vibe, people, and choose your trim size. Trim size is the size of your book. So the most common trim sizes for fiction nonfiction memoir are five by eight inches, five and a half by eight and a half inches, and six by nine inches. When people say, Elizabeth, just tell me what to choose, I say go with five by eight, unless your book is more than 70,000 words, in which case go to five and a half by eight and a half. There's not a big difference between five and a half and eight and a half. You can grab a book off of your own bookshelf and measure to see what the difference is. Find a book that's five by eight, find one that's five and a half by eight and a half, set them next to each other, and you're gonna go, that's not that much of a difference. It can decrease the book's page count a little bit if you have, again, more than 70,000 words, which can be helpful for a lot of reasons. It's more portable, it's less expensive to print. So in some cases, I say, okay, go up to five and a half by eight and a half. I rarely suggest a six by nine just because of the portability of it. But if you really want a six by nine, like go with a six by nine. Like that's not going to make or break anything. So decide on your trim size because when you work with a cover designer, one of the first things that they are going to and should ask you is what's the trim size? Because they have to design the cover with the right margin settings. When you format your interior or when you have someone else format your interior, they also have to know your trim size because your pages have to be formatted such that you don't have paper sticking out of your cover because the interior and the exterior all has to match. So, whatever size you decide on, you want to make sure that your cover designer andor your interior formatter are aware of those. Or if you're doing your interior formatting yourself, you want to make sure that the template that you're using is for the same trim size as the cover design that you're having done. So you're going to decide on a trim size that should take less than 30 seconds. And then what I encourage you to do is start a cover inspiration folder. So, for this, what you're going to do is walk around your house and look at your bookshelves or go to a bookstore or go on to Amazon.com. Like, let's make this easy and identify five to 10 covers that you absolutely love. They do not have to be the same genre as each other, and they do not have to be the same genre as your book. Just identify five to ten covers that you love and that would compel you, you think, to buy that book or to check out that book, even if you didn't know what it was about. And once you start doing that, you'll be able to notice some similarities. Maybe they're really bold and they have bright colors. Maybe there is a painting on the front of a lot of them. Maybe they're very artistic. Maybe they're simple. You'll start to notice because you will be you're drawn to some of the same things. So you kind of start that file and similarly find three to five covers that you don't like. You might not find these in your home, but you could go out and they could be New York Times bestselling books for it doesn't matter because covers are subjective, but find what you don't like. So even in, you know, I hear a lot of people say in the romance category, there's a trending trend right now of sort of like these, I don't know what you call it artistically, but they're almost like caricatures of the characters. And some people love it. They're basically very simple illustrations, and some authors can't stand it. So neither's good or bad or right or wrong, but decide, like, yeah, I don't really like this or I really like this. And don't think that just because something is trending now that it means you should do it, or certainly that the trend will continue, because it probably will not, which also doesn't mean it would be wrong to do. But once you start gathering that, those ideas of what you like and what you don't like, you will be able to give those in addition to your trim size to your cover designer. And it will really, really help him or her nail some of the initial drafts out of the gate because they'll be clear on you like this style, you do not like, they'll know what to go toward and stay away from from the very first round of drafts. So all you're doing here is collecting direction and inspiration. That's it. But again, it starts to help when you're putting it all together: title, publishing company, ISBNs, cover design, it starts to really feel real, which can also be scary, but that's okay because first of all, it's just part of it. And second of all, when we take things in really small steps, we can allow ourselves to just let the dust settle on the scary stuff and then move on to the next thing. So the fifth quick win, and this is probably the favorite, the favorite of everyone with whom I've ever worked, is write your dedication and or your acknowledgement page. To be clear on the difference, the dedication is usually, well, it's it's pretty much always right up front, and it's brief. It's like one line or three lines most for everyone who's ever felt afraid of snakes. I don't know why, I don't know why that's the idea that came out of my head, but it's a general thing for my mom, for Roger. Like it's just brief. It's you dedicating the book to someone or someone's. The acknowledgments typically go at the end of the book. And that's a much lengthier thank you to anyone you want. Anyone who's helped you bring this book to life, who's believed in you. It might be your second grade English teacher, your parents, your friends, your partner, your editor, your Starbucks barista, your dog, like your beta readers. It doesn't, it can be 10 pages. They're usually not, but that's just that's why we put it at the end, because people who aren't mentioned don't often read it. I love to read it because I love to see the kind of the community that helped bring a book to life. Like I like to see that and give recognition to that. But I prefer to do that after I've read and appreciated the book, not at the very, very beginning. I just want to get to the book. So this isn't to say you can't put it at the beginning, but sit down and write this draft. The dedication can be more difficult because it's shorter. So sometimes people are like, well, should I thank my kids or should I thank my partner? Or should like, what should I do? And there is no should. So that one, if you said, well, which one should I write first? I'd say write your acknowledgments first. Because it's really fun. And when you get to the end of it, it makes your heart feel so happy because it serves as a reminder of the people who have been there for you who maybe don't even know they were there for you. Like in one of my books, I did thank four to five Starbucks baristas by name because they got me through the day in one way, shape, or form, whether I was writing or just wrangling kids, because at the time I was doing both. So sit down and just let that flow out of you. Now, does that mean that it'll be perfect and you won't think of someone later? No. Most of the time, the authors with whom I work, you know, two days before the book goes live, they're like, oh my God, I forgot Aunt Judy. And we figure that out. But sit down and write that because again, it also helps to remind you who you're doing it for. I mean, first and foremost, you're doing it for yourself and for your reader. But there are people who have encouraged you and nurtured you and supported you and edited you and brainstormed with you. And so I don't know what it is psychologically, but like getting into that mental space of reconnecting with them and thanking them, sometimes lights are real fire under people. And when they go back and read their acknowledgments, many times people cry or get very emotional. They feel excited, they feel proud, and they feel super grateful. So that's why I, it's not that I kept this one for last or keep this one for last at all. It's just, it's a great way to end your five days of quick wins. So for having been felt, you know, paralysis by analysis and overwhelmed, and oh my gosh, can I actually do this in five days, in less than 30 minutes a day, you can now have a working title and subtitle, a working publishing company name, an account with the ISBN agency, yeah, trim size decided upon, ideas for your cover design, and your acknowledgments and or dedication written. And that's like a good bit of it, frankly. The key is recognizing that the rest of it is no different from this. There are more steps involved in some of the processes, but it is still check this box, fill in this thing, this is how you do it, then click submit, then wait three days, then click approve. It's so linear. And whether you are traditionally publishing, hybrid publishing, or self-publishing, the process is by and large exactly the same. And I love so much that when people are on the other side of self-publishing, how often they go, that was not so bad. Like I might even do that again. Unfortunately, it you can't convince someone of that until they are in that space. And surely you've had things in your life where you thought, like, I could have never known that this was going to be this simple until I just did it. So if you're committed to continuing to explore self-publishing, then again, head over to my website or you can DM me on Instagram and just DM the word jump start, and I will send you the form. It's name and email, and then I'll send you over all five days of this. So you can take it one day at a time instead of trying to figure these things out as I imagine you are right now while you're driving down the road. And now you're kind of like, oh my God, am I talking about my publishing company or am I and where do I write this down? And can someone take notes? So that's it. That's it for today. And I hope that's helpful. I hope that the quick wins help you get momentum and just keep moving. And as I've said, for 20 years, it's not about taking huge leaps every day. It's just about continuing to move the needle a little bit. Slow and steady wins the race. I'll be the tortoise all day because by the end, I'm not completely exhausted. So I look forward to chatting with you again next week. I'm actually interviewing a, I think, a thriller writer next week. So I'm very excited about that and excited to share the conversation with you. Okay, talk again soon.