How You Can Publish 4 Books in 3 Years – stop reading! Go to the first part of this blog now, How I Published 4 Books in 3 Years.
If you just came here for the first time, welcome! I’ve been a self-published author for three years and I’ve blogged the whole time.
But you want to know how I did it. My first post covered publishing Zombie Turkeys, my first book. (Psst! If you want a free copy, go here. This link is only good for a limited time.)
I left off that post mentioning my second book, My Undead Mother-in-law. Here’s the story of that publication.
First, I didn’t take time off after Zombie Turkeys came out October, 2016. I entered November NaNoWriMo and wrote 50,000 words of MUM (as I like to abbreviate it.)
I finished up the book in January and sent the book to my editor, Dori Harrell, as with Zombie Turkeys. Then I contacted my illustrator Sean ‘Fuzzy’ Flanagan. He stressed the covers should look similar, so people can see this is a series. He created another fantastic cover.
Like before, the back cover is a scene from within the book. In this case, the first chapter family meal with the zombie family, the Newby’s and the normal inlaws. Did you notice the back cover is a parody? Compare it to this famous Norman Rockwell painting.
Fuzzy also created unique chapter icons, like this next one:
You Can Publish 4 Books in 3 Years – The Process
At this point, I’m getting a rhythm to working with my editors and illustrator and Amazon. I used over a hundred step project plan for Zombie Turkeys. For you, I’ve boil it down to:
- Write as much as you can every day until you’re done with the first draft.
- Then edit your first draft. Remove all grammar and spelling errors. (I use the free version of Grammarly).
- Next, hire an editor. I hired Dori Harrell.
- Also get an illustrator, like Fuzzy Flanagan.
- Then you’ll need a book format editor like Rik Hall. He puts your final manuscript into a professional format for print and ebook publishing.
- Now you can upload your manuscript and cover to Kindle.
- Consider this optional step: print out an author copy to check. I did that with Zombie Turkeys, but not the other books.
- Finally, you can publish it. Plan a date two to four weeks in the future for time to generate buzz and interest.
- Don’t forget to hold a launch party on the day of your book’s availability. Choose a library or bookstore and advertise it. I also advertise online by creating a Facebook event for each book launch.
- You can now buy posters and promotional material for selling at book conventions.
- Finally, sell your book at conventions. I’ve gone to Chabanacon, PennedCon, Archon, and Quadcon.
- Start writing your next book
What’s Next? Last Notes
My goal is to publish a book every nine months. A successful author said he writes four per year in a series and releases them every month for four months. I may try that in the future.
Would you like that? How about if I wrote four volumes of my Secret Supers series and release them monthly? Would you like that? Let me know. I’ll send you a free short story for your response.
