5 Easy Steps to Self-Publish a Book in 2025 | Self-Publishing Tutorial

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The one thing I will always maintain as an author is that anyone can publish a book! Yep. Anyone. Yes, that also means YOU, silly, not just everyone else. Self-publishing (also referred to as indie publishing) has made a MASSIVE uprising in the last two to three years. With the droves of people flooding into the book communities on TikTok and Instagram, indie books are being found and read more than ever! There's so much less stigma about "self-published books" and the average reader is far more likely now than ever before to not even be able to tell the difference, much less care. I'll talk more about that side of things in another post, and keep this one simply HOW to get your book to the "publish now" button. That's the easy part! So I hope you find this self-publishing tutorial helpful and hopeful!

Step #1 - You gotta finish that book first, bestie.

While this may sound obvious, you have to finish writing your book, my friend. If you're here on this post to procrastinate finishing that book, let me just say I get it, but the rest of these steps are meaningless if that manuscript lives on your computer unfinished forever. Why aren't more people authors? Because of this step right here. So many people come up to me saying, "Ahh I always wanted to be an author, but I have so many unfinished stories I just gave up on." If you can get that book done, you're ahead of like 98% of people. I worked on my first book for over five years. I kept putting it off, procrastinated it, doubted it. I'd tell myself, well it's not like it'll ever get published so what's the point? When I learned how ACCESSIBLE and SIMPLE self-publishing is, it lit a fire under my butt to actually finish! I felt so much drive to get it done because for the first time publishing felt ATTAINABLE. Hopefully this post will give you similar hope.

So. Finish your book. If you're struggling with the ins and outs of actually writing your book, I will share tips for that in another post. But for simplicity sake, let's just say all you needed was a blog post to tell you to finish your book. Check! So get that book in its best possible shape. The editing process can be daunting. Get a professional to help (more on this in step 3). I can also share editing tips in another post, but get it as clean and sparkly as you can before moving to step two.

Step #2 - Find Beta Readers

Let's say you did it! You finished the book! Proud of you, friend! :) This next step is really fun. You are going to want to find what are called "beta readers." These are people who are willing to read your (preferably as edited as possible) manuscript and offer feedback before it's actually published. This step is a lot of fun because these will be your first fans of your book and it feels so good to get those emails from your beta readers swooning over the characters you knew they'd love or being shocked by the plot twist like you hoped they would! These emails are FUEL. It made me feel excited and driven to get to the finish line! It's nerve-wracking though, for sure, to be sending off your work to be (gasp!) read by someone.

So where do you find these beta readers? For my first book, I wasn't as involved in Bookstagram or Booktok back then in 2021, so I paid for a couple beta readers using the website called Fiverr. And I also sent it to a few close friends and family members who I knew would give me gentle feedback. It was almost more nerve-wracking to me for my family and friends to read it than strangers!

The second and third time, I found most of my beta reader team by posting on my own social media (I had a larger following at that point) and also posting in a Facebook group for my genre (YA). If you do FB, make sure you're reading the group rules carefully before posting. I made it clear in the post that I was only looking for people who loved my specific genre, so I could get feedback from my target audience. I sent them each a Google form that had some questions they could answer while reading, after reading, or ignore and provide feedback in their own way, just to give them an idea of the kind of feedback I was looking for. If you want to see the questions I asked, here's the form! (If the link stops working please let me know in the comments). The feedback you're looking for will obviously depend on your own book, but that can give you some ideas!

However you accumulate your first initial readers is up to you, but take a deep breath, press that send button, and hang in there until you get your first feedback! (Don't worry, they'll love it).

Step #3 - Save Up and Get your dream team together

While you're waiting for that beta reader feedback to come in, start hiring all your peeps! Cover artist, interior designer or illustrator if applicable, editor, personal assistant if you feel like you'd need that for the business side of things, marketing team, honestly sky is the limit on the team you can put together. In traditional publishing, they have the freedom to make your baby nearly unrecognizable with a team they select for you, but the BEST part about self-publishing is that you get to decide everything! I loved my books staying true to my vision from start to finish.

This part is going to be expensive, I won't lie to you. Don't rush it. If you need to wait a year or more to save up money, I promise it will be worth it versus DIYing it or going cheap. Many other blogs will tell you you can just do everything on your own to save money. As your friend, I lovingly tell you don't do it! *unless you are a professional artist or a professional editor of course.

Canva is going to tell you that you can do your cover yourself. Don't do it.

Generative ai programs will promise to make you beautiful art and no one will even be able to tell. Don't do it, and this is a huge no-no in the book community. Ethics aside, you could risk ruining your reputation by using generative ai on your cover.

Your own grammar instincts will tell you you don't need an editor, that you've read your book hundreds of times, that there's no way there can still be typos. Don't listen to yourself. Get a professional.

Long story short, if you want your book to be held up next to a traditionally published book by a reader who adored them both and didn't know yours was self-published, you have to invest in a professional team.

But still be careful not to overdo it on your first book. I'll be honest, on my first book I overdid it a bit, and it took a long time to see any profit. My next two books I knew better about what I could personally afford to skip the second and third time. For example, I spent too much money on things that didn't end up paying off like adverts in library catalogues and magazines, Amazon and Instagram ads I didn't really know how to use, submissions to several awards organizations. But something I've never regretted spending good money on are my covers and editing.

If you can only afford to spend on two things, get yourself a really good cover artist and a really good editor.

I found all my team through a website called Reedsy. This post isn't sponsored by them, I'm just a happy customer. They have any kind of professional you could need and the hiring process is secure and smooth. Here's what it looks like. You can filter what you are looking for, look through portfolios, read through reviews from other publishers, and make the choice on who you want.

I'd caution against using Fiverr for a cover artist or character artwork, as in recent years there have been a HUGE amount of "professionals" there claiming to do original art but actually using generative ai instead, unbeknownst to the customer, and then their book would face backlash in the book community. People in the book community realllyyyyy hate ai, trust me!

Miblart is a great and affordable option for book covers. Many cover artists also offer pre-made covers, which is another option that can accommodate a wide range of budgets. Instagram is a great place to find people too, just beware of scam accounts. Instagram (and Threads) is great place to find editors too. You can do a Google search like this and lots pop up to look through! *This may be an unpopular opinion, so I'll say it with caution haha. All I will say is I'd be very... careful about "book coaches" or people selling "publishing courses" because everything you need to know is already available for free on the Internet. You'll want to try avoiding extra expenses for your first book.

One thing I do think is totally fine to do yourself is your interior! Reedsy has a free book-interior feature that is really convenient and professional-looking. You can either write your whole book in their program or copy and paste your chapters in.

It's also possible to format everything in Microsoft Word for free, too. It's a bit harder to get it to look professional, but still doable. Pull a few books in your genre off your bookshelf to see what you like about their chapter headings, the fonts, the page number placements, etc., and then just duplicate that in your own way. I did the layout of my first book myself in Adobe Indesign by watching countlesssss hours of YouTube videos and had many hours of tears when I couldn't figure out why it wasn't working. The second time I used a program called Vellum which I LOVEEE. SUPER RECOMMEND. You can throw your word doc in there and it'll spit out a professional layout in minutes. It saved me so much time and headache. It was a one-time fee of $249. I wish I would have just used it from the start. I went back to my first book a year later, and threw my Indesign interior out, because it looks so much better from Vellum. Vellum is only for Mac unfortunately, but I've heard great things about Atticus for Windows users.

This step may seem daunting, but it's really fun seeing your words start to come together and become a real book! Seeing your name on a beautiful cover, seeing the interior all formatted and looking like an actual book. It's really exciting and encouraging.

STEP #3 - Get your ISBN

This part isn't as much fun, sorry. I feel like ISBN's aren't talked about very much. I had no idea I needed to obtain my own ISBN's until I got to that step of uploading my book to publish and I was like uhhhh. It took a lot of trial and error. Here's what I didn't know: every VERSION of your book will require its own ISBN. Hardback needs its own ISBN. Paperback needs its own ISBN. Ebook? Audiobook? You guessed it. They need their own ISBN.

The website you're going to use for your ISBN's is Bowker . If you can swing the extra cost, I strongly recommend getting the 10-pack, which is $295. Otherwise, they are each $125. See, told you not very fun. When you purchase your ISBN's, it'll look something like this.

I would wait to "assign title" until you have officially used the ISBN on your publishing platform (Amazon KDP or IngramSpark). You will just need to have those numbers ready to copy and paste before you get to that step.

step #5 - Amazon or "Wide"?

This part is actually easier than you think, although it can feel very daunting! So you have two decisions to make. Ingram Spark or Amazon KDP? "Wide" or Kindle Unlimited? You'll need to have at least a mild preference selected earlier in the process because your cover artist will need to know which template to use for your cover layout, but you can ask for both to be safe if you aren't totally sure yet. Well, let's say it's TIME. You've got all your files and you're ready. Here's a rundown of your options:

IngramSpark or Amazon - These are going to be the two main players in the game for self-publishing your book. There are other options too like Draft2Digital, BookVault, Barnes and Noble, which are all worth looking into as well to see what fits YOUR needs, but IS and KDP are the most popular. They are all very similar and the printing costs and qualities are all very comparable! And yes you can do both!

You'll probably like the sound of IngramSpark if a priority for you is making it available for libraries and bookstores to purchase your paperback and ebook (they will not find it themselves, that will depend on YOUR marketing strategies). If having a traditional hardback book with a dust-jacket is important to you, you'll need to upload to IngramSpark, as KDP does not offer that. It's free to upload there now (it used to cost per ISBN), but be aware they may charge a fee to revise your files once they have been uploaded. Yes, your book can still be bought on Amazon if you publish on IngramSpark but you have to click to enable the distribution network when uploading. It will appear on its own on Amazon to be purchased after a few days.

If you really want to just get this step done and publish your book ASAP, and all the extra options don't really matter to your goals, you'll probably want to upload to Amazon's KDP. While yes, if you choose IS, your book will appear for purchase on Amazon (if distribution is enabled), there is a certain comfort I received from publishing it directly there and not just trusting it would show up, if that makes sense. I have also heard unconfirmed speculation that Amazon prioritizes "its own" before other third parties, but this could be a rumor only. I uploaded to both and I personally found Amazon easier and more user-friendly, and they actually had customer service I could contact (for a long time IS was email only support). But I wanted dust-jacket hardcovers so I do both every time.

What about your ebook? This is where you have to decide if you want to be "wide" or exclusive to Amazon. There are pro's and con's to both. If would like to be able to use your ebook as a giveaway freebie, or be able to sell it directly on your website, or if you want to use it as an incentive for people to sign up for your newsletter, or if you want Kobo readers or iBooks readers, you'll want to keep it wide. Which basically means you upload your ebook to both IS and KDP along with your paperback/HB but you do NOT enroll the ebook into KDP Select (Kindle Unlimited).

If you want your book to be available for free to readers who subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, your ebook can't be anywhere else on the internet, for free or for purchase. Don't even try. You don't want to risk it. Anyone can still purchase your ebook and read it on any device, Kindle or not, but only through Amazon. This is such a genre specific decision, so really consult with other people in your genre because some genres do better on KU than others. Romance tends to do well on KU. Romantasy tends to do well on KU. But it really does just depend on your goals. I will say for me personally, MOST of my income is from Kindle Unlimited (I write YA contemp. romance) page reads. It's been good for me. But I know people who do very well wide too, it just may take more marketing work to get it seen by all those people you're wanting to reach!

So to recap!

Get that manuscript DONE! Get your team and build a real book. Get your files, get your ISBN's, and go upload!!! You really can do it, even if after this you still feel overwhelmed, please message me or DM me for a personal "you can really do it!" and I'll hype you up! Don't get discouraged. Get that book out into the world, there are readers waiting for it! Leave a comment with what you'd like me to cover next! Thanks new friends!