6 steps to start selling your first fiction book on Self-publishing platform

Imagine, that you’ve written a brilliant novel—perhaps an epic space adventure featuring a wobbly-legged robot with a penchant for sarcasm, or maybe a post-apocalyptic romp through a world where household appliances have taken over. Either way, you’re convinced it’s positively marvelous and that the universe should know. But how do you actually make money from this scribbled masterwork? Fortunately for you, it’s not like it was 20 years ago when the only route was convincing a publisher—often a person named Nigel with a perpetually unimpressed expression—to plough through your manuscript, after which you waited for approximately seven galactic cycles, just to get rejected in a letter that began with "Dear Author, Thank you, but..." These days, thankfully, there are self-publishing platforms where you can seize destiny by the scruff and throw your book directly at readers' faces. Here’s how you can go from obscure scribbler to obscure-but-published scribbler in six easy steps.

Step 1: Create a book cover and title

Now, you might have heard people muttering "Don't judge a book by its cover," and you might think that’s profound. It isn’t. The sad truth is that most people judge books almost entirely by their covers and quite possibly the font of the title. Your cover and title need to reach out, tap a potential reader on the shoulder and promise them a very good time indeed. The cover and title are, in fact, about 50% of your book’s success—though the other 50% can include anything from caffeine consumption to sheer luck.

Designing a book cover can be thrilling, terrifying, or just an excuse to procrastinate a bit longer. If you're an artist, you might draw it yourself. If not, maybe ask your friend—the one who once drew a semi-recognizable cat. You could also hire a freelance illustrator from somewhere like Fiverr or Upwork, or use a magical little gadget called Midjourney, which lets you fiddle with templates until something vaguely suitable emerges. To boost your inspiration, you could look at other book covers in your genre. Don't copy them, of course; just find out what everyone else is doing and then try to do it a tiny bit better. Or at least not worse.

Step 2: Write a short book description

Once you've got a smashing cover, it’s time to write the book description—that tiny paragraph which stands between you and a reader clicking "Buy" or, indeed, wandering off to watch cat videos. This, incidentally, is where you condense all your book’s glorious complexity into one or two brief, tantalizing paragraphs.

You’ll find that writing something short takes vastly longer than writing something long. That’s because every word must actually do something, like a well-trained circus flea. Write it, rewrite it and then rewrite it again. Ask friends if it makes them curious or just deeply confused. Either way, you’ll be one step closer.

Step 3: Sing up on Self-Publishing platform

To self-publish, you need a platform and there are plenty of them. Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, for example, is the biggest, the loudest and the one that comes with all sorts of mysterious algorithms to help or possibly hinder you. As a beginner, it’s generally a good idea to start with one platform and figure out how to swim before throwing yourself into all available oceans.

Signing up will mean providing basic information like your name, email address and proof that you do, in fact, exist somewhere in this universe. They’ll also want your bank details so they can send you royalties, which is basically code for "payment you’ll get after Jeff Bezos has taken his bit." Not to worry, though; every little helps.

Step 4: Format the ebook

Formatting your book means taking your magnificent manuscript and turning it into something readable. Self-publishing platforms tend to be picky about formats—think of them as etiquette-obsessed aristocrats of the digital world. Most like Word documents, some accept PDF or ePub and others insist on languages that were probably invented by particularly cruel Martians.

You’ll need software, like Microsoft Word, which has been torturing writers for decades but remains oddly essential. If you’re feeling brave, you could try tools like Scrivener or Vellum, which sound more like fantasy novels but are actually quite handy for formatting. Once formatted, you upload the thing and hit “Preview,” where you’ll realize that, despite everything, page 53 still refuses to behave. Don’t panic—you’re almost there.

Step 5: Set your book price

Now for pricing. You might think, “Nobody is going to pay for a book from an unknown author, so maybe it should be free.” This, however, is incorrect. It turns out that people are equally uninterested in free books from unknown authors—particularly when they have the option of buying something they've heard of. Most self-publishing platforms don’t let you offer books for free anyway, since they're allergic to not making money.

The trick is to set a price low enough to attract curious readers but high enough to prevent them assuming your book is dreadful. Study similar books and pick a price that seems reasonable. Remember, you’ll get royalties—which sound like payments from a benevolent queen but are really just percentages that will make your math teacher proud.

Step 6: Get the reviews

Congratulations, your book is now out there in the wild. The problem is that it’s a very big wild, full of other books vying for attention. Enter: reviews. This is where you call upon every friend, relative, or slightly-acquainted coworker to buy your book and leave a kind word or two. Reviews make people think that others have read your book, which, in turn, makes them think they should too.

Once your friends run out, you can try social media, bribe people with charm, or enter the murky world of paid reviews (although this is a risky game, since fake reviews can be detected by algorithms that may or may not be smarter than us). In any case, reviews will slowly roll in and with any luck, one or two strangers might even enjoy your work enough to tell others—and before you know it, you've got a tiny legion of fans and an inexplicably happy author smile.

See also: Top 5 eBook self-publishing platforms