How I Self-Published My Book In 4 Months

Breaking down the world of publishing, from a CPO turned author

For many people, myself included, it feels like quite an intimidating process to write and publish a book. After all, writing research papers and English Literature papers scarred many of us for life. As an engineer by training and product leader by trade, I did not consider myself a writer. I authored plenty of product specs, review documents, and culture memos, but not long form books.

I also soon learned that a traditional writing and publishing journey with a big 5 publisher takes 2 years (yes you read that right). And yet, in just 4 months, I wrote and published The Uncommon Executive: Breakthrough to the C-suite as a Minority. This post is about the process I went through, and the lessons learned along the way. 

Why are you writing a book? What is the book for? 

The first decision to make on this journey is the why behind the book. Why are you writing it? Some common reasons for non-fiction writers include leaving a legacy, sharing knowledge, or marketing for their business. Writing a book to make money from selling the book is NOT a great business case. 99% of books don’t make money unless you are already famous or have a large following or content platform. 

I wrote my book as a marketing tool for my career coaching business, and as a way to give back to a cause I’m passionate about – seeing more minorities at the executive level. Books make great marketing tools. It gives the author a surprisingly large amount of credibility and is a great conversation and door opener. Not many people want to hear about your coaching business, but everyone wants to hear about your book. 

Ways to Publish

Let’s jump the process to how to publish as this is the second decision to make in the process. I started researching this decision while writing my book, and I thought I was being early. But truth was, I was already behind. Ideally, this is decided before you put any words on paper. You’ll see why below. 

There are three ways to publish a book: 

1. Go with a well-known traditional publisher

2. Hire a smaller hands-on publishing company

3. Self-publish

Unless you’ve got an impressive following on social (50k+) or a celebrity, going with a traditional publisher is likely not worthwhile. On the upside, you get a brand name on your book (this matters to sales so much less these days), get an advance (~$5k-$10k) and do not have to pay for publishing costs.  

However, there are some pretty big downsides: the process takes two years on average, they own a lot more of the rights and royalties, and it’s a big pain to write book proposals and find an agent to pitch your book.

There are a handful of smaller publishing companies (e.g. Scribe, Raab & Co) that offer editing and publishing services for $20k to $120k. On the lower cost end, for about $24,000, they will help you upfront to refine your target audience and book outline, and then take the final manuscript through developmental editing, copy editing, proofreading, cover and layout design, and publishing. You will do all the work of writing the manuscript. On the high end, for about $120,000, you can dictate the book to them through meetings and voice notes, and they have a ghostwriter who’ll write the actual book for you, plus all the editing and publishing. These companies generally have high-quality editors and designers on staff, move much faster than traditional publishers (~6 months from manuscript completion), and offer a much more personalized service.

Finally, there’s the self-publishing route. Most authors do so through Amazon Kindle Publishing, which publishes paperback and hardcovers in addition to ePub for Kindle globally. Within self-publishing, there is also a range of costs. You can publish a book for $0 if you do the editing, proofreading, book cover, and book layout yourself. Amazon even provides a free ISBN. However, most self-publishers still hire some professional help to increase the quality of their book. You can generally choose a la carte from the following services: 

• Book cover design (~$2000-$3000)

• Book layout design (~$1000-$1500)

• Illustrations ($~100 per black and white illustration)

• Developmental Editing (~$2500-$3500)

• Copy Editing ($1500-$2500)

• Proofreading ($800-$1500)

Editing costs vary based on how well-written and clean your manuscript is and the number of total words. Book cover and design costs vary based on number of iterations and options you want to explore.  

For me, the most valuable service was professional support for developmental editing. A developmental editor is someone you work with from almost the beginning of the process, as they are the ones who help you craft your narrative, order your chapters, cut or add to various sections, etc. A good developmental editor makes the difference between a good versus a great book. I was able to find someone who working at a top 5 publishing house doing contract work as my developmental editor – and she was invaluable to the process of producing my book. 

For copy editing and proofreading, utilizing Grammarly gets you a long way, as will beta readers and proofreading it yourself in the kindle and paperback formats. 

And finally, if you aren’t a talented designer, getting some professional help for cover design will go a long way to making your book feel more professional. While possible to do a book cover on Canva or using AI tools, the end product just isn’t the same. Also, while you can handle layout design with Microsoft Word, though be warned it is a painfully detailed and time-consuming process. 

I ended up paying ~$10k for my book and got professional support for everything I listed above. Doing over again, I would do my own copy-editing and proofreading and save that budget for marketing. 

Timelines from Writing to Published

It took me 4.5 months from starting the manuscript to launch day on Amazon, from September 5, 2023 to January 16, 2024. 

Here’s how it broke down for me: 

• (7 weeks) Sep 5 - Oct 20: Expert interviews, write first draft of manuscript, hire the book publishing team (e.g. editor, designer, proofreader)

• (4 weeks) Oct 20 - Nov 20: Developmental editing joint with Editor

• (2 weeks) Nov 20 - Dec 6: Copy editing and associated edits; Cover design & illustrations

• (1 week) Dec 6 - Dec 13: Proofreading and associated edits

• (4 weeks) Dec 13 - Jan 10: Book Layout, Additional sections (e.g. acknowledgements, about the author, dedication, copyright page, back cover etc)

Overall, I cut a two year process down to 4 months, without sacrificing quality. The part of the process that was unusually short for me was getting the first draft of the manuscript put together (though I know someone who took two weeks). Getting to the manuscript usually takes more than 6 months, up to a year, depending on the type of book and length. I was also not working at the time, and so could dedicate 4-6 hours a day to the writing process. Please budget longer depending on your availability. 

What I wish I knew

There’s a few mistakes I made along the way that I will be wiser for next time: 

• You will need a book outline, for your sanity and your editor’s sanity. I knew I should do it at the beginning, but I didn’t do it. I just started writing. Then, when I was doing editing, I needed to move content around/cut/combine, so I had to go back and create an outline to help me figure out how to best organize sections. That said, I’m not a linear thinker so if I had tried to start with an outline, I probably would’ve gotten stuck. It helped to have the core pieces of content written already, and then reorganize them in a better fashion. So, know that an outline will be needed, but when to do it is up to you. 

• “Does is age well” is a great question to ask. Often we put in content that dates the book, making it feel irrelevant in ten or fifteen years. Sometimes it’s needed to provide detailed examples, but it helps to try and make it stand the test of time. 

• There are a lot of additional sections to a book – acknowledgements, about the author, copyright page (which requires a ISBN and LCCN), book description for back cover, etc – that isn’t a part of the core content, but helpful to include in your manuscript before you go into editing. I did not to this, and ended up speed-writing a few of these towards the end of the process. 

• Book layout is an art and requires a lot of time. The part of the process that took shockingly long for me, and is still a Work In Progress after my book launched, is getting the layout right. Did you know that interior margins needs to be larger (to allow for the book finding fold)? Did you know that the ratio of font size and spacing affects how the entire layout looks significantly? Are you going to left-indent or center your page number? 

• Beta-readers are immensely helpful. The most useful advice I got from “Write Useful Books” is to get beta readers. These people read early versions of your book and provide honest feedback about the content. It is also very helpful to monitor if they get through the book or stop somewhere. Some of my best edits and insights came from this, along with the testimonials for the back cover of the book. 

Resources

Below are some super helpful tools and resources I utilized in my book-writing journey: 

• www.reedsy.com: a marketplace to find illustrators, editors, proofreaders, etc. 

• www.scribemedia.com: professional publishing service with great content for authors

• https://www.usefulbooks.com: Great content about how to write a referrable book. Also a book “Write Useful Books”

• https://locexternal.servicenowservices.com: Library of Congress submission for LCCN code required for inclusion in libraries. 

• https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/bookshelf: Kindle Direct Publishing

Self promotion

If you’re interested in my book, it can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CS7CWZNK 

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