Stages of creating a book

From the point of view of a self-published author. I can only share my journey, yet it is still what many authors go through nonetheless.

One has to start by creating the story first, because what are you going to publish if not your story. And writing it is the easiest part to some (including me) and the hardest part to others. You need a lot of thinking, mind mapping, plotting and character development to even start creating a moderate story. Of course everyone has their own way of doing so, but I start usually with my overline of the book: what is the main thing in the plot, what kind of characters do I want and need, what kind of world they live in and so on. Then I work on perfecting those details until I get a clear picture of the plot and its twists.

Once written, your story needs TONS of editing. And not only by you but from other perspectives. Many hire someone or get for example beta/alpha readers to analyse the story structure. Developmental, Structural Editing, Editorial Assessment, Line Editing, Copy Editing, Proofreading, Substantive Editing and of course Fact-checking Editing needs to be done while sort of rewriting your book. Some authors do at least 5 rewrites and include editing into those, but I don't necessarily rewrite the whole thing, rather, I change and edit things while rewriting some parts and chapters of the story. It is a long and a difficult process that requires time, patience, knowledge and help from other people.

After all the edits, you either go for a traditional or self publisher, who are going to work with you. Self-publishing is faster and easier in a sense that the company doesn't make requirements about your book's content. You design your covers and the fitting into the pages or hire others to do it for you. And then you send everything to the company which reviews and prints it for you. Depending on your contract, they send you a copy which will be published and then they publish it once you give your permission.

After that process, you need to start marketing your book and yourself EVERYWHERE possible. Mostly social media. And go on with your career by multiple different ways.

At least that's how I did it. Of course there were many complications in the process but that needs a separate post lmao.

-Catnip Karvonen

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