I've written my book – what comes next?

You’ve written your book. You’ve got hundreds of words in front of you. What happens next after writing your book?

Last Friday I had a client in this situation. She was feeling overwhelmed, and wanted a step-by-step process to get her book to her publishers within the quickest time possible, but she also wanted to create a brilliant book.

As this isn’t the first time I’ve gone through this process with a client, I thought this would be a great blog post to share my advice with you!

What you’ll find as an author (later on) is that writing your book is actually the easiest part, even though you might not feel like this at the time. Then when you have all of your notes in front of you in chapters, it’s time to bring it all together. This suddenly feels difficult to do when you’re up against deadlines and you’re not sure which part of the process to do next.

So here are the things that you need to think about at this stage:

1. Edit the book yourself

Before you give your manuscript to anyone else, you’ll want to pull together your writing to make sure it flows and make any alterations. From my experience, there are a few things that you can do to make self-editing easier.

• Check different things with each edit. First you might be organising the flow of your words, then later you might check for sense, grammar and typos.
• It’s important to double check facts, names and other quoted information.
• Print out your book to read rather than reviewing it from the screen, especially during the final edits. Then find somewhere quiet to read them, and I prefer to make notes in a coloured pen so that I notice these later when I update the electronic copy.
• If something feels a bit clunky, read this bit aloud, and then you are more likely to realise how you can make your message clearer.

2. Finalise your book title and sub-title

For many people, trying to decide what to name their book causes problems. They spend so long thinking about it, that it slows down the writing of the book.

From my experience it’s either something that grabs you early on, or you may still need to finalise this at this latter stage. If this is the case, ask for feedback from contacts and clients. Don’t try to be too clever with your title, or at least make sure the sub-title captures the essence of your book and who it is for.

3. Ask your friends, colleagues and other professionals to give you feedback

As the author, at this stage, you’ll probably be too close to your book. I always seek a small group of people to review the book for me, pick out anything that doesn’t make sense and I ask for suggestions to improve it.

For my first book, my Dad read it from cover to cover and picked up on my grammatical errors, and you may know people who can help you with this too. Then you can do the final edits.

4. Get your book professionally edited and proofread

Even though other people may have read your book, I believe it’s essential to have a trained professional to do the final review. There’s nothing worse than picking up a book and seeing a plethora of typos on the first page. Although this adds cost if you are self-publishing, this is part of your brand, so a professional book is essential.

At the edit stage, your editor/proofreader will pick up on things that don’t make sense, needs explanation and make suggestions for improvements. Then they’ll check for things like consistency, grammar, spelling, and style, as they are trained to do this. Check out the SFEP website to find someone suitable, or ask me for the details of the lady I use and recommend.

5. Organise your cover design

You may have already done this if you have something specific in mind, but if not, this is the time to get a designer involved. When it comes to your cover, remember that you’ve only got a few seconds to make a great first impression with your prospective reader.

Whether you use a stock photo, get a bespoke design, or use photographs, just think about what your image will look like on a thumbnail, i.e. on your website or Amazon, before you approve it. Ideally have something that is simple and easy to understand. You might not even need an actual image, and words may get across your message to your readers. Again, feedback from others is ideal if you have a couple of designs to choose from.

6. Arrange your foreword and endorsements

Although having a foreword is not essential, you may choose to ask someone to write this endorsement for your book. If you have a high profile person in mind, then don’t delay in asking them. You may also want to tell them why they are the perfect person to write the foreword.

When I asked Rachel Elnaugh (formerly of Dragons Den and Red Letter Days) to write the foreword for my second book, I just sent her a tweet and she came back with an immediate yes!

To speed up the process, if they want to see your entire book, I’d personally send them the manuscript before it has been professionally edited, but you may choose to wait until later on. But at the very least, ask them now. If you have a couple of people in mind, could the other people write you a review for your inside cover?

7. Write your acknowledgements page

The most difficult thing about writing your acknowledgements page is worrying about missing someone out! If in doubt make sure you include a catch all just in case, thanking everyone who has contributed to your book, life and work. Think about the key people who have been involved in the book, without whom it probably wouldn’t have been possible.

8. Write the copy for your back cover

When someone picks up your book and flips it over to your back cover, you want to grab their attention from the first to the last words on the page. I’ll often work one-to-one with my clients to help them to write this, as it can be hard to see what makes your book stand out.

Think about the following:

• Who is it for?
• What are they going through?
• Why should they read it?
• What will they get from it?

Also include a short bio, and you may choose to put a longer ‘about you’ page in the back of the book. You only have space for around 150 words on your back cover, so make sure it is succinct. You may also choose to include a picture of you and a couple of reviews too, although this is not essential.

9. Get it published!

Once you’ve had all of your work edited and proof-read, you’ll be ready to get it typeset, the final cover design created and the first copy of your books printed!

How long does it take?

Another client asked me last week.. How long does this part of the process take?

I believe that as long as you get the right people on board, you can do all of this in a couple of months. You’ll find your own edits take a bit of time, then you’ll want to give other people a couple of weeks to give you feedback, unless you’re up against a tight deadline.

The reason for writing this blog post is to help you with all of the steps, where they fit in to make it easier to follow. As long as you don’t miss one of the steps, it won’t be long before you have a copy of your book in your hands!

Let me help you

The reason why I work with my clients on their books, is that I can guide them through all of the processes that take them from the thought of writing a book to actually selling it.

To find out how I can help you through one-to-one services or my events coming up in 2016, then here’s the link to find out how I work, and please contact me to arrange a chat.. There’s not much point in doing it yourself and struggling, so let me make it easy for you!