We like challenges! Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? But our last publishing project almost failed.

We pulled it off, but there were some moments of pure panic.

If you want to test your stress tolerance, try self-publishing a book in print and e-book format in a two week time frame.

All in-house.

Cover design, interior book design, conversions to all the major eBook formats, developing a media kit and marketing materials, and so forth.

I don’t recommend it.

This venture into dangerous waters left us out of breath with our heads barely above water. Thank goodness no sharks were present as we rolled out the book: Shark Tank MOMpreneurs Take A Bite Out of Publicity: How 5 Inventors Leveraged the Media to Build a Business and How You Can, Too.

Looking back on the whirlwind process, it was quite exciting. Luckily, the author gave us a good manuscript to work with. The copyedits were minimal, saving a large amount of time. But it wasn’t the copyediting that caused the headaches.

There are so many tiny details that go into self-publishing a book that may not seem obvious. They are detailed and time consuming and quite necessary for a professional end product.

Here is a glimpse into the process:

• Create the perfect cover design – colors, fonts, layout, imagery, etc…
• Back and forth between the designer and the author until her vision was realized. (And it looks mighty fine!)
• Once that was completed, the graphic designer and the copywriter coordinated on fonts for the interior to make sure everything matched
• In the meantime, the editor was navigating the tedious process of interior design – matching fonts, proper alignments, pagination, proper justification, and the many other details that go into formatting a lovely interior to a book
• All the while, we maintained in continuous dialogue with the author
• Revisions and more revisions
• Once the manuscript was finalized, we moved forward with the process of uploading cover and interior onto the publishing platform, getting approval, and inputting all the details for the book
• Media kit preparation and distribution – including sell sheets, social media posts, author biographies, press releases, book sheets, press Q&A sheets, etc…
• Conversions – word, pdf, .mobi, .epub, color versions, black and white versions… we covered it all!

Weaved into all of that were all of the little extra details – purchase an ISBN, consider copyright information, and consider any other platforms from which to launch the book.

There is a lot more behind the scenes work to publishing a book than just writing a great piece and sending it out. How and where to market it? How to sell it? What’s the best way to include affiliates and through what program? And so forth.

Launch day arrived. Finally, we were all able to collectively sigh as all versions were uploaded, accepted, and we could hit “publish.”

We did it!

Virtual high fives from coast to coast.

But, we learned a valuable lesson: plan on at least 6 weeks minimum for a good publication process. Obviously, it can be done faster, but with the many details and elements to be considered, the more time the better for a perfect product.

Or, if you need it done in two weeks, we can do it, but it’s going to be expensive! 🙂