My journey in self-publishing my debut novel 2024 | Part 1/2

I made it a goal to publish my debut novel this year 2024. I wrote this blog to share to my friends and future writers who wants to self-publish. I hope it helps.

One of the things I wanted to share is a checklist of what needs to be double-checked. I had to redo multiple things, reformatting and re-conversion because of edits I needed to do.

Before publishing, it's good to really, really polish all of these. (Although this may vary from country, personal preference and genre I believe).

Things to double check before starting the publishing process:

1. Make sure there is nothing else to edit and/or revise in your manuscript to avoid re-publishing the e-pub version or being confused with which copy is final.

2. Make sure to add all the inserted content you need to add (such as Acknowledgments, Dedication, About the Author, Sneak peek of your next book/other works, Advertising/links to your other works, etc. (For the same reason as above).

3. Make sure to properly format the Table of Contents (TOC) as it’s very important when publishing in e-book format. (Take note that TOC is different between printed and digital format. I can't help with printed version yet, as I've only published e-book).

4. (Optional) Make sure to already have a book cover prepared and inserted in your final manuscript. (This is just my personal preference).

5. (Optional: If you want to add ISBN) Make sure to insert all related ISBN of your book (digital, printed, etc.) in your final manuscript.

6. Don’t forget to add Title Page and Copyright Page (depending on your country/local rules for ISBN application, mine it’s required).

7. Don’t forget to add Publisher/Published by, Publisher, Address, & Contact Information within your Copyright Page (depending on your country/local rules for ISBN application, mine it’s required).

Suggestions for Copyright Page:

1. Copyright and year and Publisher (if self-pub, the publisher can be your pen name)

2. DRM (Digital Rights Management)

3. Author email (I saw it from one of the books I was reading and I thought I wanted to do it too, maybe receive fan mail from it hahaha)

4. Legal disclaimer (This is a work of fiction…)

5. Credits to editor and book cover editor (I think this is optional, but I input myself / my website lol)

6. Advertise yourself a.k.a. Author Page (I think also optional, but good way to market yourself to link your Author Page–you can use your Author Page from Floppi Pages, you can tell me to revise it if you want to)

7. ISBN (not sure if it’s ALL the ISBN or just one, but since I only have one format for publication--epub--I only inserted one ISBN)

8. Publisher, Contact Details, Published By

9. Trigger warnings (I think also optional, I mostly read it from books that has heavy or hardcore NSFW content (such as gore, sexual content, etc.)

These are important preparations to lessen the hassle and confusion when you tap into the publishing process of your novel. (I personally struggled because of the constant back and forths of my manuscript, adding this and that, editing this and that, etc.).