It's been a bit since I've last dabbled on this book but I think now is a good time to talk about how you can self publish your book. My book, Land of Armonia, is currently up and available on Amazon and Kindle for those of you interested in reading it. It is a $14 purchase, or free for those of you with Kindle Unlimited. 

So how can you do do this? First off, I can only speak from experience with Amazon Kindle, so this chapter will likely not be very helpful if you want to publish somewhere else. I will also talk about posting your stories on Wattpad a little bit, so stick around for the end to get to that.

Before you even THINK about publishing your wonderful story, you need an editor. Whether you hire someone or get a friend to edit for you, it doesn't matter. You will need another set of eyes reading this. Now, if you want a friend to read this to edit for you, it would be best if it is a friend who maybe doesn't know a lot about your story. You know, someone who you didn't info dump every aspect of your story on while you were putting it together. You need someone who can be fresh with the information and skilled when it comes to literature. The more people who read it, the better, especially if you can get a diverse pool of people to read your draft.

For me, I was in a writing internship with a Christian home school academy (though I am neither christian or home schooled) and I had my boss read it. Let me tell you, I am fortunate he took it seriously. I finished my final draft of Land of Armonia in December of 2021, but I had him reading it since May of that year. He dove deep into each chapter and would call me weekly to give heavy critique, tips, and to help fix grammatical errors, but he also told me the things he liked about whatever he'd read and what he wanted to see enhanced for better enjoyment. He and I worked hard on each chapter to refine them to perfection which took so long, it wasn't done being edited until October of 2022. 

He was definitely the biggest help because; 1. We were not close like family and the relationship felt professional and genuine, therefore, he wasn't afraid of hurting my feelings with his criticism. 2. He had his daughter (13) read it without thinking of what she wanted to change or add to it because she was my target age group and the perfect test subject. Knowing that she absolutely loved it and was practically begging me to let her see the draft of the second one so she could read it sooner was incredible for me. 3. My boss, as a person, didn't know or understand a lot of the concepts in my story such as being LGBTQ+ (a minor part of the story that I rarely mentioned), the ideas of hidden oppression, Native American culture, and so on. So as an outsider to those ideas, it really helped me to be able to explain the things I wanted to convey and how I should better explain them to reader who, like him, may not know what a chanupa is (ceremonial smoking pipe used by the natives) or why one's gender may affect their lives as a whole, even when hardly brought up.

In addition to him, I had my friends read it. Some of them have known about every part of my decision making process throughout making the story come to life since the moment I started stringing it together in 2016, and writing it in 2018. Some of them had no idea what it was, only that "I know who Amante is because I've seen your art of him and I think he's hot lol." It was harder to get genuine responses out of them and occasionally they made fun (in a friendly way) about how I described some actions or how I totally missed the opportunity to put a pun somewhere. It was all good feedback, but it was mostly positive which is, (and this may surprise you) a bad thing. You should WANT negative feedback so you know to fix it, and this is why having your friends and even you family be the only ones to read your work is not the best idea. You'll be clueless to what needs fixing. 

Have someone from your target age group/community read it. If your target audience is 10-13 year olds but the information you put in it is complex and will fly right over their heads, you're gonna need to know how to adapt for THEM. You can't make the reader adapt to you. You work around your audience. If your target group is specifically adult women but your book disturbs them, or is inaccurate to the female experience, you need to adapt TO THEM. Even if your target group is a community you are a part of, have someone else read it. You know and love everything about your story, they do not. This is why I was fortunate to have my boss's daughter read it, as my book is targeted toward 12-16 year olds specifically (though older age groups have still enjoyed it). 

Having your family read your work is a bit more sticky. For example, my dad was pestering me to let him read it because for some reason, he didn't believe anyone else' eyes had touched it. And my dad is the type of person to be harsh with criticism, so I wasn't worried about him being too soft on me. I had him read the very first drafts back from 2018 and those were literally the most vile things on this earth, and he was still under the impression that I wrote with those horrible skills and that my plot was as disgusting as it was back then. Lets jut say, he got some whiplash. I didn't actually let my dad read my final draft. And even after publishing it, he still didn't read it. Why? He's old and his eye sight is terrible. Although my demographic was geared towards young teens, it made me realize that yeah, my dad DOES want to read this really badly but he is trapped because he physically can't. The print on the paperback was too small for him, and other people with bad vision and blindness. And so I accommodated. 

Take into consideration who will be reading this. Blind people are not out of the question. That is why you need to make your book available online, not just in print, so that the reader can adjust the font size to their liking and can better appreciate what you've made. Kindle also offers audio books, which is extremely helpful. (And guess what?! So does Wattpad!) 

Ps. My mom still hasn't read my book and it's been out to the world for seven months now. Neither had my sister (her excuse is that she read the second draft so she doesn't need to. By the way, she's wrong.)

Alright, alright, I've talked enough about having editors and people reading your work for criticism. It's time to get you what you want. And that is; "How To Self Publish and Not Make Your Book a Piece of Shit," an essay. (This portion is mostly specific to publishing on Amazon Kindle)

1. Don't rush yourself. 

That's what I did. I decided it would be cool to publish my book for my senior project (a thing a lot of American schools do. Basically showcasing what you want to experiment with for your career and deciding if thats what you're going to pursue or not). I had a whole semester to do it. Four whole months is not enough, especially when you have a deadline. You may be thinking I'm crazy. I'm not, and here's why:

My boss wasn't done editing my book. I appreciated the time he was giving it so he could be thorough but late October was cutting it close. This goes to say, make SURE your final draft really is the final draft. You're committed now. Once you start the process you can't go back and change or add things to your story. It takes too much time and you'll be wasting time with proofing through Amazon.

2. Have your cover ready before you start. 

I'm about to save your life here. You need to calculate the width of your book's spine. 

Spine size = (thickness of paper) x (number of pages)

If you have, for example, 400 pages in your book (and the average thickness of paper is 0.0048 inches) then you do 400 x 0.0048 = roughly 1.6. 

This is CRITICAL for designing your cover. You need to know the height and width of the the spine and front/back of the book. I was screwed over so many times by Kindle Direct Publishing for messing this up and had my cover overlapping to the spine and the title getting cut off on the corners. You will need a lot of math for this. 

Also, make sure to use bright colors on your cover otherwise the color WILL be way too dark to be seen on your cover. Trust me. Even if its bright and doesn't look right, it will get darkened in print, especially if you use a matte paperback. It will look normal in print, I promise you. 

3. Importing your pdf.

Don't use a pdf. Ha. Sucker. I had to do this over three times before I realized that just because the pdf option is there, doesn't mean KDP wants to be nice to you and be easy. Use any of the other options it gives you EXCEPT pdf. If you wrote your work on a google doc, don't export with a pdf. Use docx. 

4. Cropping your work.

This only works if you used google docx so if you wrote on pages or that one windows application called Word, I'm sorry.

You need to go to file on your doc and select page set up. The marines all need to be set to 1. Make sure the orientation is on portrait. Set the paper size to (5.5" x 8.5") and apply this to the entire section. Viola. You just preformed book magic. This is the only way KDP all accept your import. 

5. Remember...

Remember to add page numbers at the bottom of the page and the book title/author name at the top of EVERY page. You want to look professional. And if your extra fancy, add the chapter title to the top of every page in addition to everything else. 

Add a table of contents. Google docs page numbers are not accurate so don't rely on those. This will require more math. Or you can download a docx and steal the numbers it gives you there cause those SHOULD be legitimate. Page numbers are necessary for a table of contents. 

Add an acknowledgments at the end. Make sure to thank anyone who helped you (you don't gotta but *ahem* *cough* hi there *cough* me *cough*), your inspirations, and shoutouts to anyone you want to. I literally made a shoutout to my cat for kicks and giggles. You can do whatever you want with this but the people who helped edit for you are definitely gonna want to see their names here. Always ask before putting someones name though, of course. 

Add an index for pronunciations and definitions at the end, especially if this is a fantasy novel and the names look weird and some things need a little extra explaining. 

You can also make an "about the author" page if you want to. I did not because I didn't want to put my picture in the book and I am a little embarrassed about showing myself to the world like that. Yes I am hiding behind my writing. I have a pen name for a reason. 

6. IMPORTANT!

Make SURE you order a proof every time you make a change on KDP. Yes it costs money but it will save you shame. This is to make sure your color isn't bad and your pages aren't overlapping. I had to deal with a chapter title crisis because instead of being at the top of the page, my chapters decided to be at the bottom or the middle or off to the side and it was BAD. I ordered 3 proofs just to fix that. 

7. If you are under 18...

You'll have to publish through your parents accounts. So no, you can't secretly publish a book and surprise them. Because I published mine for a project I had to get it done before the end of December, 2022, and was less than a month away from turning 18 BUT IT DOESN'T MATTER. If you're that close to being eighteen, even if its a few months away, just wait. And if its gonna be a while, use your parents. KDP is aware of this so you actually still get to put your bank information attached to the book so that all the profit goes to you and not your mommy. Don't even worry about that. 

8. Promote promote promote....

So I thought I would publish it and all 700+ followers of mine would go read it because they all seemed super excited.

They did not.

It was pretty sad.

Advertise in whatever way you can. Have your friends promote it on their social media and try to get bigger profiles on instagram or twitter or Tumblr share it around so you can get a wider audience. If your friends are stubborn and say "well I already read it so I don't have to" or "I don't read books" make them buy it anyways because the more people who do, the more likely Amazon will start offering you royalties to promote it FOR you and then you get advertisements from the company spreading across the internet, if you consent of course. Talk about it constantly. You'll feel awkward and annoying and you may not like your book so much cause its a little embarrassing now BUT STILL! I want to see it. I want to see you promoting the shit out of your book. Pin a post on instagram about it. Make a highlight reel. Gain a following. Make tie toss or reels or YouTube shorts about it because thats all the algorithm cares about and your book will be more likely to be seen if you go about it that way. Make memes even, get peoples attention. It doesn't matter if you think you're annoying. You're not. It's called doing business and consider yourself your own work boss. 

NOW FOR WATTPAD!

Wattpad will probably not care about what you publish if it doesn't have a sexual cover with the word billionaire somewhere in it and oily abs. They only want play boy, billionaires, sex, and straight relationships. I don't care that they do a pride month celebration every year, they actually don't care about the LGBTQ romances you put out there unless it's two men who have constant sex. 

So what do you do?

Build a community. 

Purposely look for other small authors who's works have less than 1k views. Read their stuff, talk about their stuff, make conversations and whoop whoop they're now reading your stuff. Small authors like to read stuff by other small authors. Share it around wattpad. Ask people to read it (but don't pester someone's message board multiple times! Asking them once should be enough and if they don't respond or say no, don't push). If you have friends with bigger followings, ask them to promote it too. Heck, I will promote it on my other profile because its much bigger than the one here. I am more than happy to help!

I can't say much else so if you have any questions or something you'd like to add, please put it in the comments.

What should I make a chapter on next?