How to Publish a Book
Authors are constantly calling me asking me “how can I get my great book published?”
And recently I’ve read a great book by Guy Kawasaki and Shawn Welch entitled APE: Author, Publisher,Entrepreneur-How to Publish a Book that I believe every new author should read.
It’s written from the perspective of someone who has “been there, done that” and wants to share that advice with the new author or want to be author. If you are lost and in need some guidance as to where to go regarding publishing your new book this is a great starting point.
It’s an e-book that can easily be downloaded at Amazon and it is a great start for anyone who’s written a book and has wondered how the hell they’re going to get it published and “out there”?
What I really like about the book is it goes through step-by-step of “how to”and gives authors ideas on how to make a new book a success. They literally tell you everything that they did to create this book.
The APE book presents information in an easy to read format. What I mean is that it doesn’t give hypertechnical information that’s hard to follow.
It’s presented in bullet points in bold writing so you know what’s important and can get the basic idea of what they’re talking about at a glance.
There are 29 chapters and 277 pages including the glossary and the index. The chapters that I thought were particularly interesting and would be interesting to potential authors were titled:
- The self-publishing revolution
- How to finance your book
- How to edit your book
- Understanding book distribution
- How to sell your Ebook through Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Google and Kobo
- Self-Publishing Issues
- How to share on social media
- How we APEd this book
I particularly liked the chapter on social media because I’m trying to maintain a presence online through this blog. It turns out that a lot of the advice given in the book is stuff that makes basic common sense.
In 2011 the publisher of Guy Kawasaki’s New York Times bestseller, Enchantment, could not fill an order for 500 ebook copies of the book. Because of this experience, Guy self-published his next book, What the Plus! and learned first-hand that self-publishing is a complex, confusing, and idiosyncratic process. As Steve Jobs said, “There must be a better way.”
It certainly is written from a perspective of somebody that’s “done it” which gives the reader a confidence that if they follow this blueprint they can certainly succeed. Why try to re-create the wheel when you can follow someone who has already figured it out?
