Publishing Your Book: Platforms: Part Four

fear11 After writing a book, many people want to know how one goes about publishing a book. A well-known author once said recently that “it’s no great feat to get one’s book published—it’s no great mountain to climb.” He is right, but his opinion is subjective. To you, reading this blog, it is a huge mountain to climb to get your book published. There are many paths you can take up that mountain, but it is still a huge feat.

There are a few things to consider before pressing that “publish” button. That’s what we are going to talk about this week. The last minute problems that crop up, or get forgotten, as writers rush to get their book onto the market. For example, how often do you think about keywords? Categories? How about author name? These might seem like easy things now—but authors all around the world have forgotten to fill in the metadata before they hit the publish button—and those authors have been cramped by these problems throughout their book publishing run.

Keywords

These seem like gobbledygook, meaningless things when you first see a section to select keywords. What is a keyword? Well, take a major publishing platform like Kindle, and you will see that there is space for seven keywords. These keywords are how readers find your book. Many authors just overlook this spot on the page and don’t fill them in. That would be a mistake. Take some time, think about what search terms people will be using to search for your book. Is it a Western? A horror novel? A book about bamboo sticks? What is it? Fill in the space with words that will help you sell books.

Categories

This is a crucially overlooked part of the publication of a book. People tend to find the biggest category that applies to their book, and then just add it to the metadata. But normally, you get to pick two categories. Spend some time going around Amazon and looking at the different category opportunities out there. Look to see where similar books to yours have been placed. It’s a good idea to note that the smaller categories will give you more exposure. Why? Because it will take you less sales to get to number one in a small category, and then once you’ve hit number one, the momentum of being at number one will hopefully keep you there.

Dr. Princess Fumi Hancock, DNP, MA, BSN
Your Vision Midwife, Lifestyle Entrepreneur
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