Matt: Welcome back to another episode of Publish & Prosper. This is episode number 75. 

Lauren: Yes, it is. 

Matt: That's a lot of episodes. 

Lauren: That is a lot of episodes. 

Matt: Yeah. I was talking to somebody the other day, I was at a conference in Long Beach, and the person I was talking to also has a podcast. I think they're probably ten episodes in, maybe. And they asked how many episodes we had done. I said, I think we just recorded episode 73 before I left. And they were like, 73? I didn't think that far ahead. I'm like, how long did you think you were going to do it? They're like, I don't know. How long are you going to do it? I said I don't know. 

Lauren: I think there are stats about that. I think there are stats about like, the number of podcasts that get started and then don't make it past like episode five or something. 

Matt: It's actually pretty wild, yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: I don't know if it's three episodes or five episodes. I don't remember. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: But there's also some crazy stuff that if you make it past ten you're in such a small percentage of the podcasts out there that – Anyways, I just thought it was kind of funny because when they asked how long we were going to do, I said I had no idea. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Until people stopped listening, I guess. 

Lauren: I guess so. No, but it was I actually did this the other day, too, because I was looking for an episode that I wanted to reference in a blog post. And I was like, oh, we just – it was the one that we just did on how to maximize your ROI on in-person events. And like we did that so recently. I feel like it's so fresh in my head. And first of all, we did it in November of 2024. So not that recently. 

Matt: Really? 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Oh. 

Lauren: But also that was episode number 46. 

Matt: I thought that was this year. 

Lauren: Right? It feels recent. And I just kind of looked at that and I was like, 46, like that was 30 episodes ago. 

Matt: It's crazy, it's almost like we know what we're doing. 

Lauren: It’s crazy, it's almost like time isn't real. 

Matt: All right. Well. This is episode 75. And today we are going to talk about…actually, something so basic that you would have thought we had covered it already. And I thought we covered it already. And in fact, before hitting the record button, just spent fifteen minutes going back through all our episodes just to make sure that Lauren wasn't wrong, that we hadn't covered it already.
Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: So today we're going to talk about how to actually publish your book. And now everybody that's listening is probably also going, there's no way that you haven't talked about this already. We haven't actually talked about this as its own episode. We've talked about all of the different facets that go into creating and publishing a book as their own episodes for the most part. So we've got an episode on cover design and formatting. We've got an episode on writing and good writing habits. We've got an episode on all of the other types of things that go into creating and publishing a book, but we technically don't have an episode that walks you through chronologically. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Did I use that word properly? Isn't there a different word instead of chronologically? To just denote order, not time? 

Lauren: I mean, there probably is. 

Matt: Anyways. 

Lauren: Oh well. 

Matt: That's this episode. So you've decided you want to publish a book, your book, another book, whatever that might be, where do you start? And that's what we're gonna talk about. 

Lauren: That is exactly what we're gonna talk about. 

Matt: I will tell everybody – sorry. 

Lauren: Go ahead. 

Matt: At the top of this, we're really only gonna try to touch on the actual publishing process. Again, we're gonna try to go through an order so you kind of know the steps of how and when to do things. But we're also probably gonna move at a fairly good pace. So if you normally listen to us on 2x, leave it on 1x. And if you have access to a pen and paper, you might wanna grab it just to take some quick notes.

Lauren: Notes could be super helpful, but I will also make sure that we have plenty of resources linked in the show notes. 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: I might actually even put…not – definitely not the full outline in the show notes, it’s a seven page outline, but I will put in the show notes… We're going to do this literally in step one, step two, step three. And I will outline those steps in the show notes. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So that you have that as a foundation. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Transcripts are available too. 

Lauren: Always. Yes. Yeah, if you're ever looking for that. If you're ever trying to go back and look for something that we said in a podcast episode and you don't feel like listening to us ramble for 45 minutes, which I don't blame you. There are transcripts for every single episode that we've done. So you can always use those as a resource. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: 100%. 

Matt: So again, just a few things real quick. We're only going to try and focus on the publishing process itself. There are tons of other episodes we've done for pre-publication things, sales, marketing, promotion, all of that stuff. And we'll call those out when and where we get to them. Some of these steps can be done in parallel or concurrently, right? You can be working on cover design at the same time that you're working on interior file formatting and some of the other things. There are areas where some of these steps can run at the same time. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Especially if you're utilizing help, an external designer or somebody. So just know that they don't literally, all of them don't have to be one after the other, obviously. And then lastly, this is not an overnight process for most people. Really probably shouldn't be for anybody, but it does take time. So again, as we've said in other episodes and other aspects, give yourself some grace, have some patience, understand that this is gonna take a little bit of time to do it right. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: And that's what you should be trying to do, is do it right. 

Lauren: Yes, it's worth doing right. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Especially if you've convinced yourself, or we've convinced you, or somebody has convinced you somewhere or another, that this book is going to add value to your brand. It's going to add a new revenue stream for your business. It's going to be some kind of relationship builder with your audience, whatever it is. Something that's half-assed is not going to do any of those things. If you come to the conclusion that this is worth your time to do, it is worth your time to do it correctly.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren:  Can I say half-assed on here? 

Matt: You just did. 

Lauren: Twice. 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: All right. 

Lauren: I feel like we've said worse.

Matt: Probably. 

Lauren: Probably. 

Matt: I'm amazed if we haven't, but… 

Lauren: That’s fair. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: All right. I think we got to jump right into this one. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Clock's ticking. 

Lauren: Yep. 

[6:06] Step 1: Brainstorm Your Book Idea

Lauren: So step one, brainstorm your book idea. 

Matt: Yeah, or whatever that process looks like for you. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Some people don't brainstorm. They just –

Lauren: Dream up your book idea, decide what your book is going to be about, whatever it is. 

Matt: How do you do it, Lauren? 

Lauren: Well, I – see, I don't have a business or a brand that I have decided… For me, it’s, it’s – 

Matt: So you don't have any book ideas? 

Lauren: Oh, I have plenty of book ideas. 

Matt: How does that process work for you?

Lauren: It starts with, I think it would be really cool to create a book that can be used for this purpose. Okay, what all do I need to do to get that done? Do I need to write this content myself or do I already have the content and I need to just organize it in some kind of way? 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: Do I need to start figuring out what my actual goals are for the book? I just said I don't have my own business, so I don't, you know, my goal probably isn't going to be something like lead gen, but I would love to have a side hustle that I was making a little extra revenue on. Or I would love to do something that's getting my name out there. As I'm sitting here this week, as always, we're recording episodes ahead of when they come out. As I'm sitting here this week with both eyes on the social media surrounding the Epic Universe opening, and all of the people that I follow. And I just sit there and I'm looking at it and I'm like, why have I not tried to do anything that would get me into the theme park media space? Like –  

Matt: I don't know

Lauren: You know? So maybe that's my interest in writing a book is to try to get my name out there, do some authority building, do some foundation work, but whatever it is, I need to know what that goal is ahead of time. 

Matt: So you need your book idea. 

Lauren: Yup. 

Matt: You need to know what your goals are for that particular book. Why that idea? How are you going to create the content? What are your goals for the book? You know, we've talked at length about all of these things. There are episodes that you can go back and listen to if you want to learn more about how to set the proper goals for the book based on what you're trying to accomplish, metrics for measuring that success rate, things like that. But again, this really is just the initial genesis. What's the book going to be about? What's driving you to write it? You have to have a pretty strong motivator, by the way. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Just saying oh, I'd love to write a book. And then that's your only motivator. You're going to struggle to finish a book. Like, you need to have a pretty strong goal or tie to the reason behind why you want to write that book or it's going to take you some time.  

Lauren: Yes, absolutely. And I do think that you also need to, in addition to that, you need to have a good understanding of what purpose your book is going to serve. Not just for yourself and your goals for your book, but what purpose it's going to serve once it's out there in the world. If you're a fiction author, the purpose that it's going to serve is that you are providing entertainment and that you are providing some fun content for a specific audience of readers. If you're nonfiction, if you're writing for your business, if you're writing to educate people, whatever, there's still some kind of goal your book is serving. You are kind of…trying to fill a void in a market somewhere, you are trying to bring a new piece of information or a new approach, a new idea to a certain audience of people. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And you need to know what that is before you start really getting into the writing and publishing process. You might figure it out as you're going with the writing. It's okay if as you're writing your book and as you're putting your content together, you realize, oh, the original intention that I had for this isn't quite lining up with how it's turned out along the way. So you don't have to lock yourself into something, but it is important to have a destination –

Matt: Yeah, definitely. 

Lauren: – in mind for your journey. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: We're going to jump right from there over to the actual writing and organizing, but just know that part of the brainstorming process includes doing some market research and things like that. You can go back and listen to episode 51 to hear a lot more in depth strategy and tactics around market research, audience research, things like that. 

[9:46] Step 2: Write & Organize Your Book

Matt: We figured out, okay, we want to write a book. This is what we're going to write the book on. Here's my goals for writing the book. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: You need to write the book, you need to create the content, you need to organize your content if you're going to use existing stuff. So now that you know what you're going to publish, to a degree, you really just need to kind of figure out is this all going to be created from scratch? Do I have some existing content I'm going to incorporate into here? If you're like us and you're going to be writing a book based on your podcast, do you need to pull down transcripts and organize those and sort of figure out which ones you want to use? Maybe take all your transcripts run ‘em through ChatGPT or something, and try to get yourself an outline and a summary to start with that'll really help kickstart the process. And then I think something that's really helpful once you've kind of figured out content, how it's going to be created and you can really get started on it: you need to give yourself a deadline. 

Lauren: Yes. Yeah. And it doesn't have to be something that you are hard locked in on a date that you are like, come hell or high water, I'm going to have this book published by this date. Which, it can be if you want it to be, and power to you if it is. But at the very least, you want to set yourself a goal. You want to have a deadline of, okay, I would really like to have this book out in time for this event. So what do I have to do in order to get it done for this event? And, you know, the world's not going to fall apart if you don't get it done in time for that, hopefully. But it's a good, reasonable place to say, okay, I'm gonna be here by this date. Now, how do I work backwards to make sure that I have it done for this? 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: I do also think that it's important to be realistic while you're working on that deadline as well. Not just in terms of like we said at the beginning, that this is something that takes time. It's not something that you're gonna do overnight. Also give yourself the grace of don't lock yourself in so hard that you're either committed to seeing it through all the way or you're going to disappoint a bunch of people if you don't. So like, don't start taking pre-orders for a book that you've only written two chapters of. 

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: Like. 

Matt: That's, that's a little bit different. Like. 

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Just publicly saying you're working on a book and you want to have it published by this point. Yes, that's a good level of accountability. It's a whole nother story to start taking money from people. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: That's way too soon. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: And that's also wildly different than just disappointing a few people. When you're taking money from somebody you don't produce, that's actually got a different name and that's called fraud.

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: So let's not run down that path, but some good old fashioned public accountability never hurt.

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: Yeah. I just want to make that distinction. 

Lauren: Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. Of course. I also with that, I mean things like…Lulu author Lynette Greenfield, who is an incredibly prolific writer and has actually started her own publishing imprint with everything that she knows about what she's done. She's talked in the past about part of her book writing process is that she designs the cover first. Once she has an idea for a book, she designs the cover and then she kind of like, uses that a little bit as inspiration as she's writing it. Like, she has that cover displayed somewhere nearby so that she can kind of look at it. 

Matt: I didn't know that. 

Lauren: Yeah, she talked about it, I think, in a blog post or an interview we did with her. Which I thought was really cool, because that's not something that ever would have occurred to me. And it's not necessarily something that I would recommend, but I thought it was interesting. And that's a great idea. But I also don't want to be like, you should spend six hours on day one deciding what font you want your book to be written in and what font you want to use for the heading and the chapter title and the footers. Like, let's work on getting that content out there first. 

Matt: Yeah, I think that's cool that that works for her. I think for most people, including myself, I would spend too much time messing around with the book cover. 

Lauren: Yeah.. 

Matt: That for me would be time better served writing. Because the book cover, I think, is one of the more fun parts of creating a book, in my opinion. And I know I would definitely geek out on that and just waste so much time. I think for me, that's a good incentive or reward – 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: – after either finishing the manuscript or at least getting through half of it and saying, okay, as a reward, maybe not the Disney trip yet, maybe you get to start messing around with cover concepts and get those off to your design artist and then get back to writing. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: And then when you're done, the fun part really kicks in of like, okay, are there any fun, quirky things you want to do with formatting? What are you going to do with that cover finally? Maybe you've got some concepts back from your designer. Or maybe you've got a cousin who's an artist or something like that that you're using. It doesn't matter. 

Lauren: Yeah, and this is kind of what we mean when – I think Matt said it earlier, that, you know, some of these steps can go, they can be concurrent with each other. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: You can be working on different pieces of this at the same time. And in fact, you probably should be because it's going to slow you down if you have to insist on getting every single step done, completely done before you start the next one.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: There are just some things that you need to do…like, you need to finalize certain things in order to get other things done. So like we're saying here, if you want to start thinking about your book formatting while your editor is reviewing a draft for you, if you want to start brainstorming cover design ideas while you're in the process of drafting your content. All those things are well and good, but you can't finalize any of those details out of order. 

Matt: That's right. 

Lauren: And that's important to keep in mind. 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Which is why it's a good idea to have a deadline and a plan.

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: 100%. I don't normally like plans, and I still don't like to refer to it as a plan. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: I like to call them outlines.

Lauren: But those are two different things. 

Matt: And I use an outline as a checklist. So, you've seen it. Like – 

Lauren: That's true. 

Matt: – I will literally put a check mark emoji next to each chapter or whatever. That's just my roadmap. It is my plan. But in my brain, if I think of it as no, this is the outline, which will also become the table of contents. It's just easier for me to just start checking them off and going through and writing. Maybe I'll run it through ChatGPT or something to clean it up, or give myself some more expanded concepts. But I need that outline. I need that roadmap.

Lauren: Okay, so now that's fair. And I think that it's an important distinction to make between these two being two different things. So that is, that – an outline, for sure, I completely agree with. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And… I can't remember if we've ever actually done an episode on this. But I've definitely written a blog post for Lulu before on the difference between outlining your book versus just writing it off the cuff without an outline. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: I think we did do an episode…

Matt: I don't know who does that. That's that's like, that's – 

Lauren: Wild to me. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Absolutely. 

Matt: I'm sure some people do but man, I couldn't imagine writing a whole book without an outline. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: I just don't think many people do that. 

Lauren: I couldn't either, but there are definitely people that do. 

Matt: Maybe it's more common in fiction. 

Lauren: I think it is more common in fiction. It has to be. 

Matt: if you're just creatively writing, 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Sometimes stream of consciousness, sometimes not. Like, I could see that, but –

Lauren: But I can't imagine a nonfiction writer – 

Matt: No. No, no no. That’s – 

Lauren: Yes, completely agree, for sure. But now the distinction between that and a plan. By plan, I mean have a plan in mind for the actual publishing process of your book. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Have a plan in mind of saying like, okay, my goal for this book is to be about 75,000 words, because I've done my market research and saw that that's pretty standard for the genre of book that I'm writing. When my draft is at about 60,000 words, I'm gonna start researching editors, so that by the time I have the draft done, I already have a list of editors that I'm gonna go and reach out to. 

Matt: Yeah, if you don't have some already, I mean. 

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: That's just an example that she's giving you. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: You can research editors sooner, definitely not later.

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: It's probably even better. And I don't know how busy they are these days or, you know, where you're going to go to find one necessarily because there's so many places. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: Technically. 

Lauren: Let's get into that then. Step three. 

Matt: Sure. That's your favorite, I know. 

Lauren: It is. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: So step three, after you've written, organized, whatever, put your content together in some kind of draft manuscript, time to edit and revise. 

Matt: Actually, let me back up just for one second. 

Lauren: Go ahead. 

Matt: I'm sorry. Back to step two real quick. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: The last thing is, think sometimes you and I just assume this is a given. But for everybody out there who's never done this before, you might be thinking, okay, I'm at the step where I'm going to create, write, collect, combine, curate. What am I doing it in? 

Lauren: Oh, sure. 

Matt: So you can do it in something as simple as Google Docs or a Word doc, as long as you have the ability to export it as a PDF, which you do. But there are also tools out there, and we've talked about these, we have an old episode on them, that are designed specifically for that. So you can use something like Atticus or some of the others. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: So I just wanna make sure everybody knew, like, you can use any of these market tools or even something as basic as Word. If you're gonna use a word processor like Word or Google Docs, kind of make sure you understand some of the basics of like, how to insert a new page, paragraph breaks, things like that. 

Lauren: I would also even argue that if this is gonna be the roadblock to you getting your content done, write it in something that's familiar like Google Docs and then you can always literally copy and paste that content out of Google Docs and into a more robust software for the formatting and editing part. 

Matt: You can, yeah.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: 100%. 

[18:33] Step 3: Edit & Revise Your Book

Matt: Okay, sorry, step number three, editing and revising. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Go. 

Lauren: So editing and revising is something that you should do in probably stages, and it's gonna be a mix of self-editing and outside editing, I guess? Outsourced editing? Outsourced editing, I like that better. Okay. So I'm always going to make the case for self-editing as you're writing, not a ton. I'm not saying that you should deep dive every thousand words that you write you should go back and revise them on the spot. 

Matt: Let me stop you right there. 

Lauren: Okay. Go ahead.

Matt: When you say self-editing as you write, what does that mean? Do you just mean that as you write, you go back through and you just kind of look for the basics of like, grammar, punctuation, things like that? Or are you literally writing a couple of paragraphs, then going back through and almost developmentally editing as you…? 

Lauren: So for me, I usually…the first five minutes or so of the next time that I sit down to write, I will go back and reread what I last wrote. 

Matt: Do you really? 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: Yeah. You know, just to kind of see where I left off and see…what was I doing here? Was there anything? Sometimes I'm really terrible about like, I will be three steps ahead of whatever I'm writing. So I will be writing a scene and I'll already be imagining what the next scene looks like. And then if I'm, if I didn't make a note for myself of what that picture looks like, I'll go back to jog my memory and reread what I wrote. And I won't do heavy editing in there. I won't do any kind of heavy editing. But if I read something, if I'm reading back what I wrote yesterday and I look at it and I go, oh, yesterday I couldn't think of the word for this. And I put a word in here that doesn't really quite fit. But now I remember what word I was looking for. And I change that. So not, not thorough, heavy editing, but just like, not being afraid to look back at what you wrote and be like, oh, different word here. Or oh, I realized that in a later chapter, I said that this character, his favorite color was green and over here I said his favorite color was blue. So, whatever. 

Matt: Why are you referring to his favorite color so often? 

Lauren: I don't know. It's a romance novel. So. 

Matt: Kay. 

Lauren: Who can know? But also, I'm going to argue for self-editing when your whole draft is done. And by that, I do mean actually sit down and read the entire draft and be critical with yourself. We've talked about this. We don't have to get too far into this, but order a proof copy for yourself and physically edit, read things out loud, whatever it is. Do at least one round of self editing before you consider getting other people involved. Whether those other people are professional editors that you're going to hire, beta readers that you're going to do some kind of like, they're going to do it for free or as a volunteer thing, peer editors that you guys are gonna do some kind of content exchange and edit with each other, anything like that. 

Matt: So.

Lauren: Yes?

Matt: I can't do a lot of that. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Because I find myself getting stuck in this pattern where, like you said, I might, if I go back too often and self edit things, or if I review things too often, I just keep finding things wrong, or I feel like, wait, no, I should change this. And I get stuck in that cycle. And so it gets harder and harder to keep moving and making progress. So I would argue that if you're that kind of person like me, then don't do too much self editing. It's more important to get everything on paper, so to speak. You're probably not writing on paper. But it's more important to get it all out. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: And somewhat organized in a way that flows and makes sense. And then maybe at the end run through obviously and make sure you haven't missed anything gratuitous or whatever that might be. But then get it to somebody else – 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: – and let them take a pass at it. Now again, that's if you're like me, where you can easily get wrapped up in the cycle of just continuing to keep self editing the same chapter or the same four chapters over and over, which is prohibiting you from making progress. Some people can do what you're saying and it's not a problem. They can do a quick skim and then move on to the next. But I think some of us get wrapped up and we'll just keep changing things and picking at things. So I think for those of us that have that kind of issue, it's just better to get it down, get it on the paper, get it typed out, whatever, and move on, and then come back through at the end.

Lauren: So yes, I agree with that. But I think in that case, the step that I would say, or the stage of editing that I would say you should skip, is the self-editing as you're writing, not self-editing when you're done with your draft.

Matt: Right, I would agree with that. 

Lauren: Yeah, because I would also, we have said it before, we will say it again, we will strongly, strongly recommend that you hire at least one professional editor – 

Matt: Always. 

Lauren: – if you are publishing. You don't have to run the full gamut of you're going to hire a developmental editor and a line editor and a copy editor and beta readers and sensitivity readers, but you got to have at least one of those. If you want this book to be actually high quality, we strongly, strongly recommend at least one professional editor involvement in this. That being said, editorial services can be expensive. And they oftentimes will charge in some way, whether it's by the hour or by the word count or by the number of passes that it takes. It's,  in some way, their services are determined by what you're giving them to begin with. So if you take the time to say, I'm going to do one round of editing before I pass it off to a professional editor, you might catch some things, make some changes, fix some things that they're not going to have to worry about. That'll bring the cost down a little bit for you. We've referenced in the past Editorial Freelancers Association. It's a great resource for finding freelance editors and they will also regularly share, I think they update annually, a kind of chart of this is what you should expect in terms of pricing. This is like, kind of market average, market standard pricing for – 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – editorial services. 

Matt: They put out a really lengthy PDF that you can get access to. They're usually every year, you're right. I think right now the average is probably around three to four dollars a page. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: As a benchmark for editing pricing, but that's an average and I think you can probably find editors that charge a little more and some that charge a little bit less. And I'm by no means boxing all editing into that price range, but 4-500 page book, you should expect to pay 1500 bucks.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Somewhere in there, but you should also expect very good quality editing for that. Now, you know, a lot of books are not going to be 500 pages. It just depends on what you're writing. I think the average business book these days comes in somewhere around 200 pages roughly, 225 something like that. And now, again, editing is not – I don't want to talk with everybody's wallet, but editing is not going to break the bank, so to speak. And it's worth whatever you have to do to get it done. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: If you got to save for a couple of months, if you got to use a credit card, many editors will – a lot of them are freelance, or most of them to a degree, and sometimes they'll work with you on payments or whatever that might be. Again, do your research, but it's certainly worth whatever the cost is and, in theory, should probably be the most expensive part of your process. 

Lauren: It is an investment. It is absolutely an investment. I’m having a phantom mic again it keeps, it keeps pulling away from me. It's fine. We won't go too deep into this anymore because we've done think multiple episodes – 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – probably multiple episodes about editing, including a whole deep dive into the different types of editing, how to get them done. That is episode number 20, actually, do you need to hire professional editors for your book? Deep dive into all that. So definitely go check that out, but just know that we recommend having at least one kind of professional involved in your editing process. And also as we're going through these steps, understand that this is one of those things that you're kind of locked in on. You have to finalize the interior content of your book before you can do your formatting and before you can finalize your cover design.

Matt: Yeah. And by finalize, you just mean you need to land on what you feel is the final version – 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: – the approved version. There's no more going back and forth with your editor or your beta readers. You have landed on the final heads down, locked-in version of the interior manuscript.

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yes. Because I mean, think about you're doing this, you're editing something, you're going back and forth with an editor and you finally say like, okay, I got it. I got it. This is it. And I'm sending it to a formatter or I'm using a software to format it and I'm doing all that work and then you've done all this formatting work and then all of a sudden you're like, you know what, I think I am gonna cut that paragraph that they recommended from that one page in chapter ten. I just think it's not really serving its purpose. I'm gonna cut that. You cut that paragraph and it shifts the entire content of every page of the book and all of that formatting work you did is gonna change.

Matt: I mean, that's a little drastic, but yeah, essentially. What you're saying is correct. Yes. If you go into the formatting step, which is extremely important, and you continue to make changes to the content of your manuscript, you are effectively taking one step forward and then two steps back every time you do that.

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: So, and formatting can be complicated if you're doing it yourself. 

Lauren: So let's get into that. 

Matt: We will make it easy on yourself and just go into it with a final copy. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

[27:40] Step 4: Format Your Book

Lauren: So step four, format your book. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: What does that look like? 

Matt: Hell.

Lauren: It is a difficult step. 

Matt: Hell. 

Lauren: Okay. You're probably not wrong about that. 

Matt: Pay somebody to do it. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Now, listen, it's not, it just depends on what you're doing with it, right? If you're just going to go with some basic interior formatting, which is probably 50% of books on the market, it's not that complicated. There's plenty of resources out there. We have resources out there. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: There are tools. Like I said, if you're already using something like Atticus to write and create your book anyways, they do the formatting for you. You just choose the template the way you want it formatted and it's doing the formatting for you. So honestly when I say pay somebody to do it, you could pay yourself to do it by using a tool like Atticus. And I think it's, it's less than 200 bucks for…ever, I think. Once you pay Atticus’s price, I think you just have access forever, no matter how many books you write. But anyways, it's still worth it. I mean, if you can create your book inside a tool and it also formats it for you so that when you're done, it gives you a nice clean PDF of your interior file. I mean, that's worth it. 

Lauren: Yeah. And just in case, because again, this is basic overview. So just in case this is your introduction to this process, when we're talking about formatting your book, what we mean by that is the interior design details. So everything from things like the width of your margins on your book, where your page numbers are, what font you use, what your header and footer details look like. If you do chapter titles, if you do section titles, how the design elements go into that, all that kind of stuff is formatting. It's also going to include things like your front matter and your back matter for your book. Front matter is stuff like your title, your half title page, your copyright page, table of contents, blah, blah, blah. Back matter is gonna be like, about the author, other works. If it's educational, nonfiction, you've got some kind of index or appendix, citations, whatever. We've, again, gone into depth on all of this kind of stuff in other episodes and in other content. There are some really great blog posts about different steps of formatting. So that is what all of that is. And that's when we talk about formatting your book files. That's what all of that includes. So whether you are paying a freelancer to do it for you or using a software like Atticus, or something as robust as Adobe InDesign. Or even Word, you can technically do all your formatting in Word if you choose to. I wouldn't recommend it. 

Matt: Yeah, me either. 

Lauren: But you can if you really want to. 

Matt: If you got nothing but time on your hands.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: And you're a very patient person. 

Lauren: That patience is a must for sure. But it is also, it's a very important step. And it is something that – we don't talk about this a lot. I talk about this a lot. This is one of my favorite soapboxes to get up on. Your formatting, while it may seem like a small detail, is often the number one indicator that your book is self-published. If you want your book to look professionally done, you cannot skip these formatting steps. I'm sorry. It's true. 

Matt: I'm gonna, I'm gonna push back a little bit there. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Because I can't tell you how many books I've purchased at a bookstore that came from top five top ten publishing houses where the formatting looked like it could have been a self-published book. If you want to talk about what really gives away a self-published or indie creator book I still maintain its covers all day long. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Interior formatting most people seem to be able to pull it together enough so that it looks pretty decent and legible. Now, I'm not gonna deny that we see some stuff coming through where it looks like… I forgot we're on the air, there's some things I can't say, it just looks rough. 

Lauren: It looks like somebody – 

Matt: It looks rough. 

Lauren: – exported their Word Doc as is, as it was, and it's double line spacing, and the margins aren't justified. 

Matt: But way worse. 

Lauren: It just looks weird. 

Matt: It looks like they were standing on their head with a laptop that, you know, was on a low battery, they had just took a strong hit of meth, after drinking three cans of Monster Energy drink –

Lauren: Hey!

Matt: – and decided it would be a good idea to go ahead and format their Word Doc. We have just seen some of the worst dumpster fires come through. But I will say I've seen just as many that were like, really? This is, I just paid $24 for this at a bookstore? And again, it looks like the interior file was formatted by a fifth grader using Microsoft Paint. I don't know. I push back a little bit on your statement, but. I understand where you're coming from. I just don't want people to think like, oh my God, I've got to spend more time on my interior formatting than I do anything else. You should spend time on your interior formatting. Yes. You should get help where you can, even if that means paying for something like a tool like Atticus or something. Yes. But don't let that deter you from spending more time on your cover and the editing itself. 

Lauren: Yes, I will agree with that entirely. It's not the thing that you should spend the most – 

Matt: That’s just my opinion, you don’t have to agree with it. 

Lauren: No, no, no, I do agree with that. It is not the thing. If you're ranking the importance of how much time you should spend on editing, cover design and formatting, formatting is definitely the bottom of those three. However, that being said, that does not mean that you should spend 50 percent of your time on editing and 50 percent of your time on cover design and zero percent of your time on formatting.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Just don't skip the formatting step. 

Matt: For sure. 

Lauren: Because even if it doesn't sound important to you, even if you're listening to this and you're like, what do you mean people care about what font my book is written in? It does matter. 

Matt: Well, it's not even that they care necessarily. It's when it becomes a challenge for them to read your content. 

Lauren: Sure. 

Matt: And it can, depending on font, font size, how far out are you running to the edge, the gutters of your, the margins and gutters of your pages. I mean, there are things that just affect the way people read and process and then retain the information, whether it's fiction or not. So it's not even about whether or not they actually care, it's about, is your lack of formatting impeding them being able to get through your content? 

Lauren: It's that. It is that book formatting done right, nobody's going to notice. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: But book formatting done wrong is going to stop people from reading your book. 

Yeah, or it's just – Yeah, it's just kind of gonna complicate –

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: – kind of the. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: So again, you know, it's important. I'd say it's number three in that rank of three. 

Lauren: I would agree. 

Matt: I don't think it's the thing that will give your book away as being self-published. If you don't do it, do an amazing job on it, but do a job on it. Do your best. Hire somebody if you can, use a tool if you can, but that's not what's going to give your book away as being indie published if you don't knock it out of the park. It's going to be the cover. It's going to be the lack of editing. If that's the route you go, so. My opinion.

Lauren: I will agree with the cover part. So let's move on to that step so we can talk about how important your cover design is. 

[34:28] Step 5: Design Your Book Cover

Lauren: So – 

Matt: So you're saying people actually judge a book by its cover? 

Lauren: Every single day. 

Matt: That's what I'm saying too. 

Lauren: So, step five –

Matt: Whoever came up with that? 

Lauren: Somebody dumb. We've had this conversation on this podcast before, for sure, because both of us agree. Silly idiom. 

Matt: But yeah. So, yeah. But did they – 

Lauren: Idiom?

Matt: Did somebody coin that just to be used in the context of when you're talking about a human being? Because that's the only way you ever hear it used, right? Is when somebody is talking about interactions with other humans like don't judge a book by its cover. Don't look at somebody like Lauren and just automatically think she's crazy. 

Lauren: No, actually, that's a fair assumption. No, no, no. You can, you can look at me and make that assumption, that’s alright.

Matt: I’m just kidding. There's no way that that, that saying, idiom, whatever you want to call it, was created solely about books. Like, that had to have always been created around the context of judging a human being. Because nobody has ever, I think, bought a book that had a terrible cover without already being on a purpose to buy that book. You go in a bookstore and you're looking at books and you don't have a particular book in mind that you're there to get. You're not going to pick up the book with the worst cover and go, yep, found it. This is my next read. It's just not happening. 

Lauren: Yeah, I think that's a fair point. I will say this as somebody who regularly buys and reads books that have bad covers. I'm doing that despite the awful cover design –

Matt: Cause you already know the author. 

Lauren: Because I know the author or because it was highly recommended to me or whatever. I'm absolutely not picking up a book that I've never heard of before that has an awful cover on it unless I'm picking up the book to be like, oh my God, look how bad this cover is. And then promptly put it right back on the shelf. 

Matt: Yeah. And in this day and age, when everybody's fighting for attention, it's the attention economy that we all trade in right now. And regardless of what format you choose to put your book out there in the world, whether it's audiobook, ebook, print book, whatever, you still need a really good cover. And you're going to use that as a thumbnail for certain things. You're going to use that in your social media marketing. You're going to use that on your website. You're going to use that on lots of different things. So that book cover is very important when you're trying to cut through all the white noise that's out there digitally and physically in bookstores and things. 

Lauren: Absolutely. 

Matt: So let's talk about cover. 

Lauren: Okay.  

Matt: I guess we talked about it. On to the next. 

Lauren: Nope. 

Matt: No?

Lauren: No, this is an important one. We're going to spend some time on it. 

Matt: Alright. Judge a book – judge every book by its cover. How about that? 

Lauren: Yes. And actually, that's one of the first things that you should be doing with your cover design is you should go look at a bunch of books and judge all of them by their cover. Because you want to look at them and decide what you like about them, what you don't like about them. A great thing to do when you're designing your cover is to get a good understanding of what goes with your particular genre. What are the indicators of a book that tell you that it's that genre of book? You know what I mean? 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Like, you expect horror novels to look a certain way. You expect romance novels to look a certain way. You can probably, if I picked up a book right now and showed you the cover of it, you could probably ballpark estimate the genre. You might be off the mark a little bit, but you can probably make a pretty educated guess on what the content is. And you want that for your book. You want fans of your book, or you want people that are not fans of you but are interested in your content, or interested in the type of content that your book is going to have in it to be scrolling, browsing, whatever, and see your book cover and go, oh, that looks like a book that I would be interested in reading. 

Matt: To this day, one of my most favorite covers is a book from Grady Hendrix, who's kind of a horror, supernatural writer. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: He wrote a book called Horrorstör. 

Lauren: Yes. Great cover. 

Matt: And the cover, it looks like an Ikea catalog. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: And you would never – like, if you didn't know Grady Hendrix or anything about this book, you would never suspect that this is – I mean his, his books aren't like horror horror, like traditional. They're a little more I would say suspense, thriller, supernatural. 

Lauren: Yeah, I've read Grady Hendrix. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So that's how you know, it can't be that horror because I've read –

But nonetheless, that book cover was so clever. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: And even just the writing of the title Horrorstör, the way that it was written. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Like it's one of the few examples where I've seen where it didn't follow the genre template. It wasn't dark and brooding like for a horror or suspense novel. Like it didn't give you these ominous tones of something bad's coming. 

Lauren: Well, and I think that that's – to, yes, to agree with you and to completely just contradict my own point. I do think that it's okay every now and then, to break the mold on that. Another example that I can think of actually that is also a horror novel is a YA horror novel called The Merciless, that Jen has – 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: I know, and it's a hot pink cover. But it's about a group of teenage girls that get convinced that one of them is possessed and they try to perform an exorcism on her, and so it does like, it does set the tone for the book right away. And it's even got that um, like the hardcover version of it anyway has the like matte marbled kind of cover feel –

Matt: It's textured, yeah.

Lauren: It’s textured, yeah, so it kind of looks like a Bible in a way. And then it's got a pentagram on the cover, but it's a like Barbie pink book.

Matt: I think – I don't think you're contradicting what you said earlier. 

Lauren: That’s true. 

Matt: I think what those are examples of, and that's not why I brought it up was to contradict you by the way. 

Lauren: That’s fair. 

Matt: I think what those are examples of when when really good marketing comes in – 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: – to your cover design strategy, right? 

Lauren: Which it should. 

Matt: Well. Yes and no. I think, yeah, any time you can embed good marketing into anything you're doing, you're saving yourself some trouble later on down the road in trying to sell the book, right? But I think oftentimes what happens is we go to get a cover design and we talk to a designer or ourselves if we're doing it ourselves and we're just thinking about what would really do this book justice as a cover? What's gonna look really cool? What's gonna pop? What's gonna make somebody wanna pick this book up? And in a way that's kind of marketing, right? So branding and design are part of marketing. But I think when you look at covers like the two that we just talked about, those go above and beyond. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Just good cover design with some built-in marketing. Like, that was almost a marketing first approach to the design of that cover. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Because not only did it go against the normal genre, the standard default criteria, it did it in a way that it was done solely so that they would sell more books so that people would go, oh, wait a second, that's really different. That's cool. Okay. Yeah, this book looks like an Ikea catalog, but it's actually a pseudo horror novel. Or Merciless, again, same thing. Like you would have thought you were picking up a Barbie catalog or something along those lines. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Yeah, okay. 

Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. But I do think that it's – the point of that is probably regardless of whether you're doing it because you're thinking outside of the box and trying something eye-catching and interesting, or you're doing something that is in line with your genre and other books in your genre. The point is that you need to have a decent understanding of your market in order to make those decisions one way or another. 

Matt: Yeah, 100%. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: You're right. 

Lauren: And that's so that's really important for you to do with your cover design, which is why, like we've been saying, there are elements of your cover design that you can do ahead of time. You can do this as you're doing your research for your book. You can do this as you're coming up with other ideas and elements for your book, as you're doing research for that, kind of keep in mind or maybe even keep a list somewhere, okay. This is my things I've noticed on other covers that I really like, I really like when they do this on a cover, I really like this is really eye-catching for me, I saw this book the other day and I loved the cover design and I'm gonna save a link to it here so that I can show that to a cover designer eventually. Those are elements that you can work on as you're coming up with this other content, as you're working throughout your design process. The cover is another one of those things though that you don't want to finalize your cover until you have finalized your interior file for your book, because you need to know what your final page count is on your book before you can have the exact final specs for your cover for your spine width. 

Matt: For a print book. 

Lauren: For a print book, yes. 

Matt: That's right, yeah. 

Lauren: Yes, yeah. 

Matt: That obviously doesn't apply to an audiobook or ebook. 

Lauren: Yeah, it's just a whole thing – well, I guess actually, up until now this has been format agnostic. 

Matt: Yeah. Now.

Lauren: Yes, you're right. 

Matt: That being said, so. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: You need to know total page count to do a print book cover calculation because of the spine on the book. The spine will be adjusted, obviously, based on how many pages you have in the final interior copy. Now, I realize when I said that about not needing to worry about that, if you're doing ebook or audiobook, we will always tell you it's a good idea to serve every format that you can. 

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Now, you might not do all of them out of the gate at launch date, and that's probably smart too. Stagger them out. But if you have the means, the money, the time, whatever, whoever's doing your cover, whether that's you or a designer or whoever, design for print first because it's easier to then take that and reverse engineer it to a cover for an ebook and a cover for an audiobook. And then whenever you decide to push the print version out, you have that cover done and it's just less work on your part. 

Lauren: Yes. And two things that I want to say to that, first of all, whether you are designing your cover yourself or you are hiring professional to do it, I would highly recommend that you get all of those formats at the same time that you do all of that at the same time. 

Matt: Yeah, yeah.

Lauren: Because they are going to be slightly different. And that includes if you decide you're going to do a paperback and a hardcover or just one version of those, you want to get your print cover file, your ebook cover file and your audiobook cover file all at once. 

Matt: Yeah, because again, designing for print first on your cover and then reverse engineering for the ebook and the audiobook is really easy. If you only do a cover for the ebook, let's say, and then six months later you want to do a print version, it's actually going to cost you more money and be more complicated – 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: – to create the print cover. That's always the hardest of the three to do. So better to knock it out first because it's super easy to then just pull for your ebook and audiobook from the print book cover file. 

Lauren: Right. Which brings me to my second point, which is that the thing that makes the print cover different from the other two is the spine and the back cover. And one of the biggest things that I see that's my little pet peeve when it comes to self-publishing is authors just totally ignoring their back cover. 

Matt: 1000%. 

Lauren: Your back cover is such valuable marketing real estate. And it is a huge mistake to ignore that. It's absolutely. Do not – 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: — ignore your back cover. 

Matt: Yup

Lauren: Like, that is so important. And depending on what kind of book it is, what format it is, paperback or hardcover, what your goals are, there are different elements that make up the back cover. So I don't want to go like, too deep into that. We have actually done an episode. We talked about cover design that included the different elements – 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – of the front and back cover. So you can go listen to that one if you want to. But just please don't ignore your back cover. Your back cover is really important and it's a really valuable real estate and it is important to include information on there. So please do. 

Matt: Yeah, no notes. I couldn't agree more. Our cover design episode is episode 21, by the way. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: So a little ways back, yeah, back cover is super important. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Couldn’t agree more. 

Lauren: And then yeah, your ebook cover is just basically a cropped version so that it's just your front cover and not including the spine and the back cover. And then your audiobook is just a resized version of that in a square instead of portrait. 

Matt: Usually. Yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Yup. 

Lauren: So keep that in mind as you are. And again, I don't know if we actually said this, we do probably recommend hiring a cover designer. 

Matt: We said it. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

We’ll say it again. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: If you think that it's easy to design your own cover, I challenge you to go try it. It's a lot harder than it looks. 

Matt: It's a lot harder to design a good cover. 

Lauren: Yes, yeah. 

Matt: You know, what happens more often than not is people don't put enough thought into it and they just go to Canva and they whip something up based off a template in Canva and they think it's good enough and they put it all together and then they throw it on a marketplace or something like that and then they sit back and they're waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for books to sell and they just, they don't. When you're selling in a digital marketplace and you don't have a well recognized name or brand behind you, oftentimes people are looking at the book cover as a signal to whether or not this book is a well-crafted, value-driven book. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: I mean, it's not rocket science. 

Lauren: It is literally your first impression. 

Matt: 100%. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Yeah. 

[47:17] Step 6: Proof & Prepare Your Book

Matt: All right. So there's a little half step here sort of in between the last step. If you are doing a print version of your book and at this point you've already researched what platform you're publishing with (Lulu) and you need to order a proof copy. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Lots of people – 

Lauren: And Matt’s calling it a half step, but I'm going to give it its own, I'm going to full step. 

Matt: I'm saying half step because this only applies if you're doing a print version. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: So that's, that's why I'm saying. 

Lauren: How about if I put it this way? You can call it a half step, but I'm going to call it an unskippable step. If you are printing a – if you're doing a print copy of your book, unskippable step. 

Matt: Well, yeah, but that's what I just said. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: But if you're not, then it is skippable because you're not doing a print version, so.

Lauren: Why are you only doing digital? 

Matt: Why are you trying to only make this black and white? 

Lauren: Wow. 

Matt: There's gray areas. If you're doing a print copy, which you should be. How about that? 

Lauren: There you go. 

Matt: There is an unskippable step. How about that? You need to order proof copies. You need to get a copy of that book in your hands. A physical, tangible copy of that book. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: You need to see what it looks like when it comes off a printing press. You need to understand what your book is going to look like as it hits the hands of your customers as well. So do not skip this step. It's not worth saving the $10, $18, whatever it costs you to get that proof copy. It is worth it, because you may think you did everything right. The system might tell you everything looked pretty good and then you get the book and you realize you're just two millimeters off on your spine and your text is just slightly off centered or something like that. And you're not going to see that until you get the printed book in your hands that you can make the proper adjustment. So do it. Don't skip that step. I guess the other insert half step here, unskippable especially if you're going to sell a distribution. You need to be handling things like your book's metadata and some of those other things. There's a description that you're going to need to write about your book. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Those things that you're going to need when you do put your book into distribution for retail sales. And there's some other stuff that goes into all that. have plenty of episodes you can listen to around all those topics. 

Lauren: Yes, we do. That was really just, it's going to take maybe a week, maybe a little bit longer for you to get those proof copies that you ordered. So if you decided that you wanted to do something productive with that time while you were waiting, that's a great thing that you can do. 

Matt: Be productive or get a proof copy? 

Lauren: Both. 

Matt: Yeah. Okay.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: I would agree. You could go to Disney World. 

Lauren: Definitely go to Disney World. 

Matt: That's probably a better use of your time. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Maybe you could even call it market research. Going to Disney World. 

Matt: You're going to call it market research. 

Lauren: I literally took notes.

Matt: I would hope so. 

Lauren: I took notes. I am actively working on my Epcot passport. 

Matt: All right. 

Lauren: It was a research trip. 

[50:00] Step 7: Finalize & Publish Your Book

Matt: Alright. Last step. Step number seven. 

Lauren: Last one.

Matt: Right? 

Lauren: Yep.  

Matt: You're going to finalize and actually publish your book. 

Lauren: Yay. 

Matt: Yay. What does that mean? What does that look like? 

Lauren: Well, by finalize, I mean actually look at that proof copy of your book once you have it physically in your hands and you're going to want to thoroughly review that book, you're gonna scroll through it, scroll through it, flip through it, scan through it? 

Matt: You just gave away how you like to read, although everybody already knew that. 

Lauren: That's true. But no, you're gonna, you're gonna really go through your book in whatever format it exists in, and you're gonna look for things like, is it hard to read in any spots? Are your margins maybe, you got the margins incorrect or the gutter incorrect? And actually it turns out that all the words that are close to the spine are actually a little hard to read. 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Or maybe you went too far in the opposite direction and it's too close to the edges and it looks a little funky. Maybe your spine didn't quite line up right on your cover and you thought you had the text centered on there, but it turns out you really don't. Hard to get right. It is hard to get right. Even traditional publishers, if you go look at a bookstore and you, and you find ten copies of the same book on a shelf in a bookstore, you'll see little discrepancies in how the spine is placed, like how the cover art is placed on the spine. It is hard to get it perfectly right. But that's something that you're going to want to check. You might also want to see like, you might just have some interior formatting issues that you didn't realize you didn't catch in the PDF when you were reviewing it that it looks like you actually did have one page that has a single orphaned line on it. Or there's accidentally a blank page somewhere that you inserted somewhere in the doc and it knocked everything else out of line. And suddenly your left pages are printing on the right and the right, like everything's all messed up. So you want to just go through that. You want to look through it. You want to make sure that everything looks the way that it's supposed to and that the copy that you're hopefully hordes of new fans and followers are going to buy is going to be the best possible version of it. So once you've done that review and once you've gone through your proof copy, you're going to want to make any changes that you need to make to that file. Hopefully not many, maybe even not any. Congrats to you if it's not any. But hopefully you can get that done. If you make some really major changes if there are actually things that you're like oh, I actually have to fix this entire, like shift this entire thing. I do have to like, delete content here, I have to move things around, something. You might want to order another proof copy to make sure it got fixed and make sure you didn't create a new issue by resolving the old one. But once you've done that, however many times it takes, however long it takes, once you've actually done that and you finally have a book in your hands, you're like, looks pretty good. 

Lauren: Yeah. This is it. Then that's it. Then it's time to publish. 

Matt: Then it's time to publish. 

Lauren: And you did it. 

Matt: What does that actually look like, or mean? Is there a... I know for us, there's a button you hit. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: And then you get this cool little thing that says congratulations. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: And I would imagine, I guess, maybe it's similar on other platforms. Maybe not. 

Lauren: I wouldn't know. There's only one platform I'm ever publishing my books on.

[53:04]

Matt: All right, so just a quick recap. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Step one, brainstorm your book ideas and content. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Step two, you're going to write, create, curate, organize all that content together into a manuscript. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Step three, you're going to revise or you're going to edit and revise. 

Lauren: Both. 

Matt: Hopefully you're going to also be contracting with an editor. 

Lauren: Please. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Step four, formatting of your book. Right? 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Super important. Fun. Sometimes not so much. 

Lauren: Maybe not fun, but worth it. 

Matt: Number five, design your cover. 

Lauren: Now that's fun. 

Matt: Yes. And some of these can run concurrently. That's fine. Then we said there's a half step in there, right? 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: If you're doing print, you're going to order a proof copy or a couple of proof copies, and you're going to go through that thing from cover to cover. 

Lauren: Fine tooth comb. 

Matt: Mark it up. Do whatever you got to do. Find all the mistakes. And then once you've done that, you're going to finalize your files and you're going to actually publish that book, put it into whatever distribution channels you want, add it to your website to sell it direct, tell the world about it. That's when your marketing plan kicks in. We've got several episodes that talk about that. But essentially you publish your book in seven steps. 

Lauren: Yeah, we did. 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: Yeah, we did. I do want to just draw a little underline under what Matt just said there. We did not talk about anything in this episode to do with marketing, pre-launch marketing, pre-sales, audience building, anything like that. Those are all things that you should be doing before your book is published. Those are all things that you're doing concurrently to the publishing process. You want to have a plan when you publish your book. 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: You should not be publishing your book and now that your book is published to go, okay, I should start my marketing now. That's not how that works. But that was also not the topic of this episode. So if you want to dive into how to set up your pre-launch marketing plan and stuff like that, we've got a bunch of other episodes related to that. So go check those out instead. 

Matt: Yep. Very cool. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: I think that does it.

Lauren: I think we did it. 

Matt: Oh, we skipped something. 

Lauren: What'd we skip? 

Matt: What do your bracelets say? 

Lauren: Oh, my bracelets say Professional Yapper. Clearly, from how I just – 

Matt: After you just tripped over your words? 

Lauren: – just bungled that one. Yeah. Unprofessional yapper? 

Matt: Although I would agree that is, that is very fitting for you and you should probably wear that one every day. Just if for no other reason to warn people. 

Lauren: I should just make it a bunch of different colors and I'll wear it every day. 

Matt: Maybe you should get it as a t-shirt. 

Lauren: I have it as a sweatshirt. 

Matt: There you go. Okay. 

Lauren: Yeah. It's just a little too warm for a sweatshirt. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yup. The other one says Cross the Bridge and Cosmic Love.

Matt: All right. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: There you have it. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Well, thanks for joining us. 

Lauren: Thank you for listening. 

Matt: Do all the things. Hit the subscribe and like.

Lauren: Leave us a review. 

Matt: Give us a review. Send us an email. 

Lauren: Podcast@lulu.com. 

Matt: Reach out to us on social media. 

Lauren: Please do. 

Matt: Publish your book. 

Lauren: Do it. This is the sign. If you were waiting for a sign, this is it. I've given you all the steps, all the tips. I'm going to link as much content as I can in the show notes. There literally is a character limit for how much I'm allowed to put in the show notes. So I'm probably gonna have to be a little selective with it, but know that every single thing that we've talked about in this episode, we've got at least one podcast episode to it, at least one blog post related to it, and at least one Lulu U or tutorial video related to it. This content is all over the Lulu website. Go find it, it's here for you. We've got everything you need to get this stuff done.

Matt: Perfect. 

Lauren: Great. 

Matt: Later. 

Lauren: Bye.