Self-publishing can feel confusing when you first look into it.
There’s a lot of information, a lot of different opinions, and it’s not always clear what actually matters and what doesn’t. I find most people aren’t worried about whether they can publish a book. They’re worried about getting it wrong.
The reality is, the process itself is manageable. But there are a few areas where the detail really matters, and these are the points where people tend to get stuck.
If you’re planning to self-publish, here are five things that are worth focusing on.
1. Don’t rush the editing stage
It’s very easy to feel like your book is finished once you’ve written the final chapter. But in reality, that’s just the point where editing properly begins.
Working through multiple drafts is important, but so is bringing in other people to review your work. It’s extremely difficult to spot your own inconsistencies, whether that’s continuity issues, unclear sections, or small details that don’t quite line up.
You don’t need to aim for perfection. But you do want to make sure that nothing pulls the reader out of the experience unnecessarily.
2. Choose your publishing setup early
Before you upload anything, it’s worth deciding how you actually want to publish your book.
For example, are you going to use Amazon KDP on its own or combine it with a platform like IngramSpark? Knowing this will affect your ISBN decisions, your distribution, and how widely your book can be made available.
These aren’t things to work out halfway through. If you leave them too late, you can end up having to go back and change things.
Taking time for decisions at the start makes the rest of the process much smoother.
3. Take care with your metadata, not just your manuscript
When you come to upload your book, you’ll be asked for categories, keywords, and your book description.
It’s easy to treat these as admin tasks, but they’re actually a key part of how your book is discovered.
The words you choose here should reflect how your reader would search for a book like yours, not just how you would describe it. Looking at similar books in your genre can be a useful starting point.
This is one of those areas where a small amount of thought can make a noticeable difference.
4. Keep your formatting simple, but get it right
Formatting can feel more complicated than it needs to be. But what matters most is consistency.
Using templates, setting your margins properly, and making sure chapter breaks and spacing are clean will give your book a much more professional feel. Small layout issues can stand out more than you might expect, even if a reader can’t quite explain why something feels off.
It’s worth taking the time to check everything carefully before you publish.
5. Plan your marketing before your book goes live
There’s often an assumption that once a book is published, people will start to find it. But publishing your book only makes it available. It doesn’t automatically make it visible.
Even a simple plan can help here. That might be a few social posts, speaking to people in your network, or looking at local opportunities to promote your book.
It doesn’t need to be complicated, but it does need to be thought about in advance rather than added on afterwards.
Extra Help
Self-publishing is not one single step. It’s a series of smaller decisions and actions that build on each other. Once you understand what those are, the whole process becomes much more manageable.
If you’d like more guidance, I’m running a practical three week online course with The Percival Guildhouse, where we go through the full self-publishing process step by step.
You can find out more here: https://percival-guildhouse.co.uk/how-to-self-publish-properly
