How I self-published my book (part 1)

In February, I published my chapbook of poems, Sex Is From Mars But I Love You From Venus. Pink, cute, available as an ebook, and most importantly—available at your local bookstore by request (the isbn is: 130460608).

If you’re buying the ebook to anywhere or the paperback to the US, Canada, or the UK, the best place to buy it is here on my website.

For more country options and for Kindle, buy it on Amazon.

For more country options you can also buy it at the Lulu Bookstore.

If you request it at a bookstore or library, you are officially My Favorite Person.

Now, let’s talk about publishing. There are multiple routes if you’re considering publishing a book—traditional publishing with a publishing house or self-publishing. (We’ll talk about traditional publishing in part 2). And when it comes to self-publishing, many people go with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KPD). I’ve heard good things about KPD and maybe will use it someday. I instead used Lulu for my first book because I have a Shopify website and it links to Lulu, meaning I can sell my book directly from my website AND from Amazon and other global distributors. I make significantly less profit from Amazon sales than I do from sales from my website or the Lulu bookstore. So, if you’re hoping to be an Amazon author sensation and/or you don’t have a Shopify website, I would recommend KPD over Lulu.

I created a free account on Lulu and started creating my book. After selecting “print book” for product type, you need to select “publish your book” for your Goal. This way, you can sell it globally.

Your ebook and print book are separate publications with separate isbns. In this post, I will just focus on the print book.

For the formatting of the book, I hired someone on Fiver for $35. Next time, I will do the formatting myself on Google Docs. My PDF was 5.5 x 8.25 inches (Digest size), Standard Black & White, 60# Cream, Paperback, Matte Cover.

I hired a friend of a friend, Lala, to do the cover design and she created something totally original and amazing. The book cover is another PDF and Lulu gives you the exact dimensions it needs to be. If you’d rather do the cover yourself, you can in Canva. Just set the exact dimensions and then download the finished cover as a PDF.

In the Design section of Lulu, you can see a preview of the book. This was really helpful with the editing and formatting of SIFMBILYFV.

After the design, set the prices for your book, review, and publish. Once you publish it on Lulu, it will be immediately available for your customers to buy at the Lulu Bookstore and you can start selling it on your Shopify website. For it to be available everywhere else, you have to order a proof copy to yourself and then approve it. Once you click yes, I approve the proof copy, you need to be approved for Global Distribution, which takes 6 to 8 weeks. I wasn’t notified that I was approved, I just checked Amazon daily and then one day it was there.

For your Shopify website, download the Lulu Direct app in your Shopify account and upload the same cover PDF and interior PDF and connect these uploads to a product in your store. Then it’s essentially dropshipping—Lulu prints the book when it’s ordered and ships it to your customer. You don’t have to store boxes of books in your living room.

Overall, Lulu has been very helpful and the quality of each book has been flawless. I have noticed some books purchased from Amazon are a lighter pink, but I haven’t seen or heard of any issues with the orders from Lulu Direct. And it’s been empowering and fun to sell my book myself, which is why I’ll likely self-publish my other collection in progress, “Portrait of a Person Who Pushes Love Away in Fear of Losing It.” Meanwhile, I am so happy to have made the finals of the Write Bloody Publishing contest with my OTHER collection, “Good Girl and Other Yearnings.” I’ll find out those results in July. Wish me luck! If I win, POAPWPLAIFOLI (lol, I clearly like long titles) will stay in incubation while I focus on “Good Girl and Other Yearnings.”

Next week, for my paid subscribers, we’ll do part 2 about traditional publishing, agents, reading periods, and contests.

Thanks for reading this! It was a lot! As a little reward, use the code selfpublishing for 10% off the paperback OR ebook of Sex Is From Mars But I Love You From Venus.

I hope this was helpful. Please ask questions in the comments if you got em!