Category: Publishing

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:

1. Write as much as you can every day until you’re done with the first draft.
2. Then edit your first draft. Remove all grammar and spelling errors. (I use the free version of Grammarly).
3. Next, hire an editor. I hired Dori Harrell.
4. Also get an illustrator, like Fuzzy Flanagan.
5. 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.
6. Now you can upload your manuscript and cover to Kindle.
7. Consider this optional step: print out an author copy to check. I did that with Zombie Turkeys, but not the other books.
8. Finally, you can publish it. Plan a date two to four weeks in the future for time to generate buzz and interest.
9. 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.
10. You can now buy posters and promotional material for selling at book conventions.
11. Finally, sell your book at conventions. I’ve gone to Chabanacon, PennedCon, Archon, and Quadcon.
12. 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.