Having shepherded over 10,000 titles through the process since 2009 (including many award winners!), we at FriesenPress know what it takes for authors to successfully self-publish a book.

Since our founding, we’ve seen the self-publishing model evolve from a last resort to the top choice for many writers who want to share their books with the world on their terms. This route allows you to publish much more quickly while retaining creative and ownership control compared with traditional publishing — not to mention higher earning potential on the copies you sell.

Although it’s never been easier to self-publish, it’s inaccurate to say self-publishing a book in 2024 is easy. As you’ll soon learn, there are many steps involved in publishing the kind of professional-grade product that readers expect.

This guide is intended as a primer to highlight the crucial pieces you’ll need to plan for so you can start your self-publishing journey with eyes wide open—and avoid the most common pitfalls for first-time authors.

First, let’s look at the three most popular self-publishing options available to you:

DIY

DIY (Do It Yourself) is the most saturated avenue, usually by using a hands-off self-publishing channel like Amazon or IngramSpark. DIY expects the author to also wear all of the other project management hats needed to create a successful book: cover designer, illustrator, book designer, marketer, copyright specialist, distribution manager, and promoter. Are you willing to do everything alone — especially if that means your product’s quality suffers?

Hybrid

These small publishing houses split the cost with their authors to produce a book with professional advice and support. Hybrid publishers typically accept queries, like traditional publishers, and greenlight those authors they think will be a good fit for their brand. This usually involves a contract that requires signing away rights to the book (usually on a set number of years), split royalties, and an expectation that the author will pay up front to cover some (or all) of the publishing costs for things like cover design and editing. Is the trade-off of temporarily losing rights, income, and being tied to the imprint’s choices for the book worth it? 

Publishing Services

Publishing services companies (like FriesenPress) provide vetted professional support and guidance. They can advise you of the impacts of your choices so you can navigate the full publication process, provide polished and effective editing, illustrations, and design services so that your book looks as good as any traditionally published book—but you retain the right to make all creative choices around your book’s development and you retain all rights to the contents.

Whichever path is best for you, you’ll need to navigate the path from manuscript to printed book. Let’s get started!

The first thing you’ll need before approaching any self-publishing option is a finished (or just-about-finished) manuscript. You’re creating a commercial product, which has different guidelines from a free blog post or a thesis submitted for a university course. This means:

1. The majority of the content must be written by you (and/or your co-author). Distributors screen for content duplication on their platforms and may remove books that duplicate too much content that is already published (and copyrighted).
   
   

2. If quoting external sources (including other books, interviews, studies, poetry, etc.), you need to specify who you’re quoting and provide citations. In some cases, you may need express written permission from its creator.
   
   

3. If you use generative AI tools, like ChatGPT or Midjourney, to generate content for your book, you’ll need to disclose this source for distribution and copyright claims. As of this writing, AI-generated content cannot currently be filed for copyright. 
   
   

4. Review your manuscript as a reader would: Does it flow? Is it as clean from errors as you can make it? You’ll have much clearer eyes for making improvements if you take a break (weeks to months) after writing and before revision.
   
   

5. Consider asking beta readers to bring in fresh eyes and a second opinion about what’s working and what isn’t. Give yourself enough time to implement any feedback or changes. 

Once your manuscript is as complete and as clean as you can make it, it’s time to bring in the professionals. 

Our recommendation: It's all too easy to get stuck in a cycle of revision in the name of making your manuscript “perfect,” but that cycle can prevent you from moving the project forward. In the words of philosopher and author Ryan Holiday, “think progress, not perfection.”

With the glut of hastily produced, poor quality books on the market, engaging in editing will not only give you a better chance with reader reviews, it will also establish you as a serious author of quality books. Professional editing will also open up opportunities with certain sales venues (like schools, libraries, and conventions) that would otherwise remain closed. 

1. Whether you’re going DIY or with an assisted publishing option, finding the right fit is crucial. The editors at FriesenPress are all required to pass an exam based on Editors Canada’s EAC guidelines to uphold an expected industry standard of accuracy. In addition to a potential editor’s accreditation, confirm their specialization in genres, turnaround times, rates, and the types of editing they provide to ensure they’re a good fit for your book. Starting with a manuscript evaluation can be a great way to get feedback and assess the needs of your manuscript, as well as get a glimpse at how an editor will approach your text.

2. Edits should be performed in Track Changes (ideally in Microsoft Word) so that you can see every change the editor makes. This enables you to learn from the process so you can strengthen your writing skills on this and future books. It also ensures that if you have any concerns about the recommendations, you can reject the edit and make an alternate change. Good editors should strive to preserve the author’s unique voice, while ensuring the language is appropriate for your intended audience.

3. If you have questions about the edits or want to discuss possible solutions, you should have the opportunity to discuss the project with your editor, either over the phone or in a written consultation. Confirm how much coaching support (if any) is available with your chosen editor. 

4. Anticipate multiple rounds of editing. Some editing passes focus on structure or development, others focus on mechanics and style, and proofreads ensure previous editing decisions have been consistently applied. Only so much can be caught in a single pass by even the most skilled editor, so more rounds will result in a cleaner finished product. Getting a different editor for that final proofread will also get fresh eyes on the project to provide the most robust, thorough editorial support.

Our Recommendation: An accredited human editor who understands the rules of English grammar, syntax, spelling conventions, punctuation usage, audience needs, and genre conventions — and when breaking those rules can be used to best effect — will ensure your text is professional but still sounds like you.

Once your manuscript is complete and sparkling, it’s time to make it look like a book. As there are a number of tools available that can auto-convert your Word DOCX file into a submittable file for print-on-demand publication, should you use them or invest in a professional layout?

1. Autoconversion tools can’t assess the best fonts for your target audience, inset design features like drop caps or chapter headings, identify wonky scene breaks, or place images or visual elements. Proper design software, such as the industry standard, InDesign, provides far more control and elegance when building book files. However, the results will only be as good as a skilled designer’s knowledge of InDesign’s powerful tools.

2. Your intended audience’s expectations should inform your design choices. Who your target audience is: their age, demographic, and reading habits. Do they prefer full colour interiors or black & white? For format: hardcover, paperback, audiobooks, and/or eBook? Which trim size is most common in your genre? Depending on these choices, your printer will have specific file formats and technical requirements in order to print your book well. This includes a minimum 300 DPI resolution, CMYK colour profile, and sufficient bleed on all files.

3. Design a stellar book cover. Not just the visual hook that grabs reader’s attention, your cover is also the foundation of your branding and marketing efforts. Colours, fonts, and graphics can be carried over to websites, promotional materials, and social media posts, so you’ll want to make sure your cover is strong enough to anchor all your efforts. You may need different versions of that cover, too, to work for each edition you choose to release, including paperback, hardcover (either casebound or with dust jacket), eBook, and audiobook.

4. Depending on your audience’s reading habits, the size, spacing, and style of the text should be chosen to match. This might include adjusting the size of the margins, styling running headers and/or footers, proper indentation for chapter/scenes starts versus body text, call-out text, text-wrapping for visual elements, and the flow of pagination (especially if you have front matter or back matter, like acknowledgements, maps, appendixes, or an index). 

In short, the entire book’s design, from obvious elements like the cover to miniscule details like line spacing, needs to be carefully thought out to ensure a professional finished product.

Our Recommendation: For a beautiful book you can be proud of, a professional book designer provides not only top-notch skills but also knowledge of the book publishing industry that can help advise you on all of your design choices.

Your book design’s work doesn’t stop there. If your book is launching a career, whether as a consultant or the author of a series of children’s books, your branding needs to be cohesive. Likewise, you’ll need to have all of the search engine optimization (SEO) data set up to point to the right product. 

1. Your ISBNs (International Standard Book Number) are unique to each format of your book; retailers will use this number to order stock, enable point of sale, and track interest in both searches and sales. You’ll need a unique one for each format of your book.

2. Your BISAC codes (Book Industry Standards and Communications) provide one to three categories, appearing either on a book’s copyright page or back cover, that tell a retailer which shelf your book belongs on. In this digital age, it’s possible to be simultaneously “shelved” in more than one category. 

3. Your book’s keywords should be words or brief phrases that potential readers might search if looking for a book like yours. You want them specific enough that they’ll narrow the field (i.e., “cooking” could bring up cooking utensils, cooking shows, cooking traditions) but general enough that someone has searched for that term before. Your keywords should be uploaded to your book listings and your website. 

4. Your other metadata includes all the nitty-gritty of your product: its trim size, distribution options, pricing, wholesale discounts, book title, subtitle, series title (if any), author name, contributor name(s) (such as illustrator or co-author), publication date, page count, printing format, about the book blurb, about the author blurb, testimonials, thumbnails, “look inside” previews, etc. 

Be sure to carefully review all of your metadata to ensure you correct embarrassing typos or missing information. While you can, as a self-published author, submit corrections, rebroadcasting your information can result in disruptions to your book’s availability, accessibility, and online rankings.  

Our Recommendation: We can’t understate the importance of ensuring your book is released with full and complete metadata to aid in your discoverability. It’s one of our specialties at FriesenPress and well worth taking the time to research and get right if publishing independently.

Most indie authors will be using print-on-demand (POD) technology to keep overhead costs down. This means when one book is ordered, that book is printed, packaged, and shipped out to its buyer. However, indie authors also have access to traditional presses who can create bulk print runs of books. You can take advantage of both POD and bulk printing. Here’s how: 

1. Distribution channels (sales avenues that make your book available to retailers) work almost exclusively with POD books. How many stores does your distributor supply? How many countries? Some distributors may have exclusivity clauses that restrict your reach or prevent you from republishing your book on other channels. Don’t forget: you’ll need to manage distribution for all of your formats. Audiobooks or eBooks may use different channels than print books.

   
   

2. POD printing can produce variances between books. Every press mixes ink a little differently, has its own calibration settings, and uses its own stock of paper that may absorb the ink with slight variations. If your project requires extremely specific colour values (such as in a photography book or art catalogue), you would be best served with an offset bulk printing done with a dedicated printer. 

   
   

3. Bulk print runs also give you access to custom book features, like spot gloss or foil covers, gate-fold map inserts, coated interior paper for popping colour, coloured end pages, ribbon inserts, and much more.  Though these books will not be in general distribution, you can differentiate yourself from other indie authors with a beautiful print run to use in pre-orders, book crates, or in-person events.

   
   

4. Consignment works best with bulk ordering. If you order a high enough quantity of books from a printer (typically 500+ books), your base unit cost drops. That means, if you keep your list price the same, you can earn a much higher profit to compensate for your greater involvement. If you have planned for many in-person events, this option is highly advantageous.

   
   

5. Pricing depends on a number of factors, including the aforementioned design choices, the volume of stock you order from the printer, distribution costs, retailer discounts, and how much royalty you want to earn. One of the benefits of self-publication is that you control (almost) all of these factors.

   
   

6. Once you know your book’s unit cost, set your prices — both how much to charge for it (list price) and how much of a wholesale discount you offer to sellers. Balance this with the perceived value to a reader (keeping your book in a suitable price range for its length, genre, and format). 

Our Recommendation: As a part of one of Canada’s largest independent book printers, Friesens Corporation, we’ve seen countless examples of authors leveraging both POD through our relationship with Ingram (who supplies over 50,000 retailers) and bulk book stock printed by our award-winning Friesens presses to make the most of sales opportunities — and profits.

Once your professional product is complete, it’s time to publish! But before you officially press that button, make sure you are setting your book listings up for success. You only get one chance to debut your book!

1. To get it into readers’ hands, consider a variety of sales opportunities: online bookstores (like Barnes & Noble and Indigo), digital marketplaces (like Amazon), physical bookstores (either through direct orders or on consignment), libraries, schools (if applicable), local stores that cover a topical interest (such as tourism shops, doctors/dentists’ offices, cafés, art galleries), and in-person events (like conferences, readings, or corporate seminars). Ensure you list your book on your target readers’ preferred buying platform(s).
   
   

2. Each distribution channel manages royalties separately; some have a minimum threshold before they’ll pay out. Consider consolidating your distribution with a single distribution partner — like Ingram — that offers best overall fit. Not only will this make sales opportunities easier to discuss with potential retailers, it also funnels your royalty earnings into a single point of collection to simplify your bookkeeping. 
   
   

3. Retailers need incentive to stock your book instead of the other options available. Without providing a suitable trade discount (the industry standard is 55%), retailers don’t earn a profit for selling it, so why should they put in the effort to list, order, stock, and sell your book?
   
   

4. Manage your book stock. The harsh truth of publishing is that not every book sells. Sometimes a book is misprinted or gets damaged in shipping or sits in a window display too long and gets bleached. Other times, a retailer over-orders stock to ensure they don’t run out only to have buzz die down and a lot of extra books taking up space. When this happens, retailers need to get rid of those extra books, but that requires the labour of culling copies from the store, packaging them for return, and shipping them off to the distributor. This industry expects the publisher to foot that bill, and if you’re self-publishing — that’s you.
   
   

5. To let a potential retailer know you’ll take care of returns, purchase returnability status with your distributor. This is a flat fee you pay annually to cover the costs associated with reimbursing retailers for unsold copies and compensating the distributor for handling those returned books. By having your books set up as returnable, you encourage a retailer to take a chance on your book.

With these pieces in place, retailers will be far more likely to give your book limited (and coveted) shelf space. 

Our Recommendation: The FriesenPress Account Center displays your worldwide channel sales from Amazon, Indigo, B&N, and more into one easy-to-view dashboard so you can keep track of units sold and your royalties earned.

And now you’re ready to press that Publish button!

Whew — what a marathon publishing a book is! 

The self-publishing world asks a lot from an author. You need to either become an expert in writing, editing, graphic design or illustration, book layout, printing specifications, project management, distribution, sales, accounting, promotions, branding, and marketing . . . or you can prioritize which pieces of this puzzle you have the aptitude, time, resources, and passion to focus on, and hire professionals to manage all the pieces you can’t shoulder. 

The good news is, you aren’t walking this path to publication alone. If you found this primer helpful and would like this level of support every step of the way, FriesenPress is here to provide vetted professionals for every phase of production. We provide a personalized coaching experience to answer any questions that may arise on your publication journey, curate specific resources to help you make informed decisions, and offer up-to-date industry advice to help you best achieve your goals.