Wanna be an author? Well it’s actually not that hard!
Checkout this book I wrote ~6 years ago:
See that? I ordered it off Amazon Prime and it showed up at my door. And I wrote it! Now I’m a self-published author!
How hard was this? I’d say probably a 4-out-of-10 on the hardness scale. It’s actually quite an easy process. Literally by tonight you can complete all the steps to self-publish a book that can be physically ordered, has a real ISBN number and everything!
I’ll show you how here.
Now I wrote a small book (60 pages), and so I’m not going into detail about how to write some giant novel (although the process is roughly the same).
This process is for making a REAL self-published book that people can order copies of, you get a real ISBN number….and you don’t have to do any of the inventory or printing or shipping. (If you just wanna sell a PDF book you made, you can checkout GumRoad.com instead, but you won’t be officially self-published).
So if you wanna self-publish a book, follow along these easy steps, and I’ll show you how to self publish a book on Amazon for free (and where where to get a lot of the grunt-work done cheap):
STEP 1.) WRITE THE DAMN BOOK! SET A COMPLETION DATE.
A lot of people are currently “writing a book”…but most of them never finish.
Neil Strauss (9 time NYTimes best selling author said):
When someone asks me to review a book, the FIRST thing I do is ask them the exact date it’ll be done by. If they don’t have a hard date…I don’t even talk to them about it.
I totally agree. Whenever I was writing my book, I initially started it months before, but since I didn’t have a hard date to complete it by, it NEVER took form.
But once I set a hard date, I cruised through the chapters in no time.
Actually sitting down and WRITING on a schedule makes you go really quick. Watch how quickly I blazed through chapter 7 of the book when I was on a deadline:
Here’s a 43 second video of me making a chapter sped up. The chapter took about 23 minutes to write:
As you can see that actually pretty quick once I got serious about it.
STEP 2.) PICKING THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGY TO WRITE WITH.
What I mean is, what computer program you’re going to use.
Here’s my simple breakdown for this:
IF YOU’RE WRITING A BOOK THAT’S UNDER 100 PAGES:
I would highly suggest using something simple like Google Docs.
I found it incredibly powerful and easy to write the book through Google Docs over Microsoft Word. I like Google Docs because:
- It’s free!
- You can edit the file from anywhere on any device.
- When converting formats, Google Docs is fantastic at keeping things properly formatted.
- Writing in Google Docs is intuitive and super easy.
- You can easily create new images with the “Drawings” functions.
- Can rescue old text through through the “Revision History” function.
Google Docs is optimal for books books that will be under 100 pages.
IF YOU’RE WRITING A FICTION BOOK THAT’S OVER 100 PAGES:
You might wanna consider using a tool like Scrivener. This will allow you to break up chapters and organize the book. Some people have a lot of research, notes, interviews etc they pull from, and Scrivener can help with that.
Honestly when starting a book, I’d just say use something SUPER BASIC like Google Docs or Microsoft Word. Then only if you really need professional-grade software, you can upgrade to that when needed.
For now, just open up a free Google Doc and start type-type-type-type-typing!
STEP 3.) SIGNUP WITH CREATE SPACE (Amazon.com’s book service)
There’s a bunch of services you can use to self-publish a book….but there’s ONE major book seller in the world and it’s Amazon.
So Amazon owns this company called CreateSpace, and if you self-publish through them, your book can automatically be sold through Amazon as a real book or a Kindle book (mine as an example). I’ve had a great experience using them, so it’s the only service I personally recommend (It’s also the only place I’ve seen people publish books like this that actually make money).
Hardbacks, paperbacks, big books, small books….WHATEVER YOU WANT THEY CAN DO!
It’s really easy:
—A.) Go to CreateSpace.com and signup.
—B.) Start the self-publishing process (it’s free).
—C.) Follow steps till done. (I’ll cover the pre-requisites to this in the next steps).
STEP 4.) DESIGN A COVER FOR YOUR BOOK
The first ever book I published was a full 8-1/2-inch-by-11-inch book. I chose this because I was trying to duplicate the look of Gary Halbert’s book PLUS a random joke from Family Guy:
My next book was supposed to be small/compact/quick so I made it a 6” X 9” paperback book with a nice glossy front and back cover.
I first had an assistant make a temporary book cover. Then we made another and tested it. I had people on my mailing list vote for which one was better. Here’s the two versions:
The “Ten Commandments of Copywriting” book failed miserably!!
People instead liked the friendly design of the “This Book Will Teach You How To Write Better” and also the direct-benefit of the title.
842 people responded to the survey.
21% people preferred “The Ten Commandments of Copywriting” title.
79% people preferred “The Book Will Teach You How To Write Better”.
So we used that same book cover and uploaded it to CreateSpace……and despite the cover just being a regular .jpg image, it came out fantastic! I was actually surprised how professional it looked.
BUT THE EASIEST WAY TO GET A BOOK COVER DESIGNED IS BY USING FIVERR!
Just go to Fiverr (it’s a place where people will do damn-near-anything for around 5 bucks) and type in Book Cover Design. You’ll find hundreds of people with high reputations who will make you a basic book cover if you can’t do it yourself.
You might also want use this handy book title generator if you need help coming up with a title.
STEP 5.) GET YOUR BOOK FORMATTED PROPERLY.
Of the whole process THIS part was the largest pain-in-the-ass.
When I self-published my very first book, it was the same size as all electronic documents and paper: 8 1/2” x 11”. So formatting was just a matter of putting page breaks in the right places between chapters.
However when I made a smaller book, I had to re-format everything to the right size all over again. CreateSpace has templates that help you with this, but it was still a pain.
The best way to do this (once again) is hit up Fiverr!
You can get someone who does this formatting ALL DAY LONG to format it for you for cheap (hooray for cheap 18 year old Philieano and Indian labor)!!!
Checkout how cheap people will do it for:
Fiverr: Format book for Kindle.
Fiverr: Format book for CreateSpace.
Seriously…..for like $5 to $15 you can get this done. It’s mainly grunt work that’s really really really boring to do. So I’d suggest farming it out.
Also I tried simply slapping my regularly-formatted document to Kindle….and while it worked, it was riddled with lots of small errors that don’t look super professional. I would pay someone to do this part.
STEP 6.) PUBLISH TO CREATESPACE AND KINDLE, THEN LINK THEM TOGETHER.
If you want a PHYSICAL book to be sold, you must publish to CreateSpace.
If you want only a Digital book published through Amazon, you can just do Kindle.
They are still separate services even though both owned by Amazon.
Once you published on both platforms, you must link them together. Normally this is automatic, but if not, read these instructions. Pretty simple to solve.
HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO SELF PUBLISH A BOOK?
It’s literally 100% free to self-publish a book on Amazon if you don’t want to do a test order of your book first. I personally go through CreateSpace.com (which is owned by Amazon), and the only cost associated with creating your book is ordering 1 copy for review BEFORE you publish it. This cost me about $2 plus shipping (so maybe $5 total).
So while it’s not 100% free to publish a book, it’s pretty close!
INTERESTING STUFF I LEARNED:
One of the most surprising things about this book, is that I initially published it without promoting it, and it just started naturally making sales in the Amazon ecosystem!
Then in August of 2013 I made this janky book page and video and pushed the book just a little, and that started gaining traction for the book within Amazon.
I then stopped promoting the book at all, as we sell other stuff for far more money, and 6 years later I still do ZERO promotion for it, but it still sells everyday.
Every month I still make several hundred (or thousand) dollars from this dinky little book:
Here’s the best lifetime stat report I could get (sorry it’s not very detailed):
This book was initially just an experiment to see if I can published a book (it’s $3.99 Kindle). I make approximately $2.71 per sale.
With zero promotion for well over a year and priced so low, Amazon still sends me roughly $700/month for commissions of this book.
I can easily see that if people price their books at $17.99 or so and sell the same amount, it could make a pretty decent income. I actually made a book profit calculator here to see what’s possible:
So it IS possible to make some money from books like this!
Another interesting quirk I found was how Amazon deposits money in your account. Apparently if you sell a book in a different country, you get a different payment, meaning I might get 12 different deposits at the same time!
I mean it’s not a huge problem or anything, but it is funny to see random $4.57 payments from Amazon Brazil in my bank account 😂
THIS SELF PUBLISHING GUIDE IS REALLY SIMPLE…
…but that’s because self-publishing a book is REALLY that easy!
I did my first book in about two weeks from start to finish. Now it’s cool to have a book published that is automatically sold, fulfilled, and even gains reviews just by being on Amazon!
I hope you enjoyed and learned!!
Neville Medhora
P.S. See how much money you can make with a book using this Book Profit Calculator.
P.P.S. I wrote another book after this 100% in Google Docs, you can see how I did it here.
Hi Neville, there are indeed great insights to self publish the book, I have been searching for it for a long time. Keep sharing!!
Hell Yeah! I did it! After hearing your “bro” Noah interview Tucker I did it. Tucker said “you wrote the book on the subject” in his discussion with Noah about the status of having your own book……So I went to Kindle and pulled a crappy 9 pages I wrote after being taunted by James Altucher’s write a book challenge. I took the mini book and published it on Kindle! My book title is: “On the Subject” Yep, no one has published a book with this title. I got an ISBN # from an ISBN service and registered it. Now I can say “I wrote the book …on the subject” or “have you read my book… on the subject” Thanks to you,Noah,and Tucker. I did sell one copy and I am publishing another book that will sell 2 copies that I will call “my best selling book”.
Cheers! Threepm Nrg (3pmnrg, I sat next to you at Noah’s Sumo Ride dinner Uchiko)
Excellent! This is very helpful Neville!
Great post and video! I have just chipped in for another $2.71 profit and bought the book 😂
💰💰!!!I’M RICH!!!!💰💰
Damn, this post makes me want to write a book, Nev!
52 Dad Tips (from guests on Dad the Best I Can podcast). 🤔
Gonna have to go workshop this with you guys in the Kopy forums…
That’s awesome, do it! It’s basically just a blog post you upload to Amazon!
I need help making a book I still have questions what social media do you have Neville?
Great post, but Createspace is gone, it’s been merged in to KDP.
Yup, it was bought by Amazon a while ago!
Thanks for sharing this process it’s great to see!
Very welcome Jared, glad you enjoyed it :)
I have a nonfiction life-history manuscript I wish to submit to you for assessment and publication.
May I know if your company is fee-based or not and the other conditions for publication of manuscripts?
We don’t help with books, but checkout https://BookInABox.com for help on writing a full book!
Not sure if the Fiverr domain changed after you wrote this or if it was simply a typo, but the correct link is http://www.fiverr.com
Keep up with the good stuff
Fixed! I also did a whole thing on cool things you can get done on Fiverr here if you’re interested:
https://copywritingcourse.com/is-fiverr-worth-it/
I am publishing a book in the next two weeks time. It should be up there by 15th Jan. (I am serious, so you can talk to me) The first draft of the book is supposed to complete by 31st December.
I was planning to publish only on kindle. But since you mentioned about how easy createspace is, I’ll publish on that as well.!
IS THIS DONE!?? Sorry I’m asking 4 years later 😂
Thanks for the great tips, Neville. I appreciate the generous spirit with which you share your talent and tips. I hadn’t heard of Fivvr; am planning to check it out. Folks might want to consider publishing with Ingram Spark as an alternative to CreateSpace. Bricks-and-mortar bookstores are anti-CreateSpace right now–but it is definitely cheap and easy — especially for online sales.
Happy New Year! Thanks again for all the good thinks.
What if I want to write a book under a pseudonym ? can i still do it through createspace ?
Of course! I’m pretty sure you can publish under any author name you choose.
Hey man,
congrats for your book. Been reading you since the you were promoting the Kopywriting class through AppSumo. Thank you.
Neville, just got your book and I’m redoing my autoresponder series right now based on your book. Every chapter is 100% actionable. Thanks-A-Million!
Thanks for this FAB gift Neville! :))
Wishing you the BESt partner in 2016!
Go out and find that lovely lady.
The happiest holidays to y’all.
Very Nice! What about book registration and all that copyright stuff?
What do you need to register? The copyright? You can do that if you want but it’s not necessary in terms of publishing and making money from your writing.
If you’re registering the copyright, just google “how to register copyright in the US” (assuming you’re in the US).
On the topic of copyright:
In the US (may be different in other territories), you have de facto copyright on the stuff you produce as long as you can prove it. An email from you to yourself with the contents of the book and a time stamp, for example, would probably hold up in court if you had to contest an issue of copyright…
But then again, who’s going to steal your work?
Hope that helps :)
p.s. not a lawyer, but I am really, really, ridiculously good looking.
Thank you, Tom! :)
Yep. Just write your darn book or better books.
In 2013 I ran an experiment + wrote 8 books + published in 9 months.
The last 4 books, I started writing in the morning + published same day.
One book created a massive revenue stream for me, which, profit-wise, dwarfs all my other businesses.
Books can take on a life of their own.
The only way you know is to write your book(s).
Bahahaha…..damn, thassalota books David!
It really is weird how one book can take a life of it’s own….even if you didn’t intend for it to.
Nev, this is AMAZING. I am just finishing up a book that would work much better in a physical copy my readers can take with them, but I was bummed I’d only be able to offer an ebook due to the fact my wife doesn’t want 2,000 copies of my crappy unsold books in our living room.
This COMPLETELY solves my problem!
Thanks for taking the time to put this together.
Yup! I don’t have a single copy of my book laying in my living room…..rather Amazon prints them on demands and sends them out with a single shred of involvement from me (other than collecting the checks) ;)
It’s on! Well, at least I’ll start with a proposal and outline… I’ve got a story to tell, some lessons to share, and the time has NEVER felt more right.
PERFECT! Hope you get it done soon Greg :)
Nowadays you can publish many books or even go back and edit it yourself, so it’s not hard.
Oh God, Neville…. Thanks for the christmas gift.
I’ll have to publish a book next year and I knew it was possible through amazon, but I had no idea of how it worked. I was going to start the research about it this week and you’ve done all the job for me. Let’s just hope that in here works pretty much the same as in the US.
Oh perfect, then just follow this article and you’ll be done Patricia!
Make sure to SET A HARD DATE to finish your book, or you’ll never finish!
Yo superstar Neville
just bought your book last week, applied it for a Christmas launch and made more sells than usual.
You re the best to my eyes.
You definetly change my life…
Hope i get the chance to see u in person in the future.
You rock man !
Oh snap! Glad it already made you money :-)
You crack me up. “It’s mainly bitch work…” Your writing is so on point and casual, and incredibly useful. And apparently you know your shit, because I always read your emails and hit whatever links you send.
And my sales page for my web design service rocks and keeps the phones ringing because I used your instructions to write it!
It is!
I did it myself once, and it’s just sitting there making tiny edits. And in the end I screwed up a lot. Instead I’d MUCH rather pay someone slave-wage to do it for me :-P
I was planning to buy your book on Amazon, then thinking to look for it in bookstores. Now I know it’s impossible for me to get from where else.
Any thanks for your sharing, this is really good insight! I did learn something and have a clearer plan.
Perfect, glad to have helped Dean!
Dude, I appreciate you more everyday. When I invested in KK I didn’t know I’d be signing up for continuous awesomeness. Great examples and inspiration. Keep kickin’ ass, Neville.
Best,
Bodhi
Oh thanks for the kind words man!
Btw if you bought the KopywritingKourse already, then you should check back in a few weeks. In 2015 my plan is to continue to add to it! You bought it once, so you get it forever.
Is there a way of getting your book?
Amazon has stopped selling it on Kindle, and I live far far away from the United States of America.
I would gladly pay the $2.99 to you to get the digital copy (set it up via paypal or something)…
Amazon sells it on Kindle, but it might not be available in your area for whatever reason.
I would highly suggest you buy the high-octane version of this and invest in the KopywritingKourse:
http://www.KopywritingKourse.com/steal
Great stuff Neville. Super simple guide but spot on.
Stop over-thinking things and just write (and publish).
YES! It’s crazy how complicated people will make this process out to be. It’s really not.
First, your book TBWTYHTWB is great. Your writing style is fun, playful and approachable. Do you like being talked down to? No. People looking at copywriting do not want some esoteric voice to tell them how to be better. So kudos on sticking to you the voice you’ve used on your blog and courses. Second, I like how it was a “no-filler book”. People joke that a book is 20 percent content 80 percent filler to make it look big enough to justify the value of the price when looking at it in a book store. Your book= Short, sweet and actionable. Love it. I recommend it all the time. Keep rockin it.
Bahahahha…..what a great acronym!
Thanks for the kind words Kevin, this sounds like a nice Amazon review. I definitely wanted to make the best ABSOLUTELY SHORT AS POSSIBLE with zero filler.
I hate when books do that.
Smart people know that simply making a book large doesn’t make it better (in fact makes it worse because it dilutes the message).
Perfect timing, I’m publishing my book on January 1st and was just about to research the Createspace stuff.
Yes, I predicted you would need this guide, so I made it JUST for you :-P
Hope this gives you some insight into the process, plus some shortcuts (like using Fivrr).
Loved your book and this guide as well, great stuff as always Neville.
Thank you Adam, hope it helped :)
Hey Neville,
The link in the section quoted below is broken (didn’t stop me buying the book though!):
“People instead liked the friendly design of the “This Book Will Teach You How To Write Better” and also the direct-benefit of the title.”
Regards,
Rob
Oh snap you’re right……link fixed. Thanks Rob!
Your stuff is great man. I BOUGHT the book before I discovered your site…that through Appsumo…and that through Tom Ferris’ interview
I’m glad I’ve found you guys keep up the good work!
Oh sweet, you’re the ideal person I wanted! (Finding me through the book then following).
Glad to have you aboard James, and hope I can keep sending you cool stuff :-)
I’m really impressed with your book reviews, do you have anything within the structure of your book that may have helped with persuading readers to leave a review? Or maybe your fan base is simple better at participating in such things?
I think it’s a combination of fan base and the Amazon ecosystem that reminds people to leave reviews. I didn’t try to persuade anyone to leave a review. I’m surprised by how many there are (90+ at this time) too!