Category Archives: Self-Publishing

Most authors use beta readers to help them prepare their book for publication. It’s extra work and takes more time, but this is a step you won’t want to skip if you want your book to be as good as possible. How do you get beta readers? What do they do for you?

Beta readers go by several different names

• Beta readers
• Street Team
• Advance Readers
• Launch Team
• Book Crew
• Review Crew

I call my beta readers “Advance Readers,” because they read my book in advance of it being in its final form (more about that later).

What do Beta Readers Do?

Authors not only use a variety of names for their beta readers, but they utilize their beta readers in several different ways, depending on what they need most.

Do you :

• Need feedback to help you decide what to cut and what to keep?
• Welcome proofreading from those who excel at spotting typos?
• Have specific questions you need to have answered?

I personally have my team of Advance Readers read an early version of my book. I ask for feedback, both specific and general and make a lot of changes based on their responses. Then, once the book is ready to publish, I send my beta readers a final copy of the book so they can see the finished product. At that time, I ask them to post a review on Amazon and Goodreads.

There are some drawbacks to my method

The chances of my beta readers reading the book a second time (when they get the final copy) are slim, so I risk getting a review based on a less-than-the-best version. To minimize this, try to have your book in fairly good shape before you send the first copy to your beta readers. I always think mine is looking pretty good and then discover a multitude of problems after I’ve sent copies to my beta readers.

The thing I gain from this method is the insight of my readers. They often see things I missed, so I can fix those issues before the book goes to print.

There are 4 basic methods that a beta reader can use to give you feedback

1. Call it as they see it

This method works well with Microsoft Word’s Track Changes feature as well as the equivalent in Google Docs. Your reader can make any notes they want as they read. You will get lots of detailed observations and proofreading notes with this method.

2. Chapter by Chapter

With this method, your reader will make some observations at the end of each chapter. This is especially helpful when you have specific questions such as whether “this chapter” even belongs in the book. One of the great things about it is that it doesn’t feel overwhelming to your beta reader, yet they will be giving you useful feedback.

3. The Big Picture

This is my personal least favorite, but it’s still better than nothing. With this method, many things bet forgotten or left out of the feedback. This is especially good if you are confident in your editor and just want to know if there are any glaring problems. It is also perfect when you are looking more for a review than for feedback. We will talk more about that in a future post on launching your book.

4. You can answer specific questions

Often writers have certain things they want to know. Should this chapter be cut? Should I use this ending, instead? Etc. These are often very professional, seasoned writers who are checking out a few nagging issues. When you use this method, put together the questions and let them know that these are the concerns you need them to consider. Some writers prefer to ask the questions after the reader has finished the book in order to get big picture answers. This is often thought to better mimic the actual reading experience. How you approach it will depend on what you need most.

A note about working with family members

It’s fine to have family members be part of your beta reader team. Be aware of how honest they are being with you, though. Sometimes when we are close to someone, they hesitate to give us the brutal honesty we need at this point on the process. If they understand that their honesty is crucial, you will probably be fine.  This is like my favorite example of letting someone walk around with spinach in their teeth. You aren’t being nice if you don’t say anything.

Create a tracking sheet

This will help you keep all of your beta readers on track. Some things to record on this tracking sheet are:

• Who did you send a copy to?
• Have you sent a reminder email after 2 weeks?
• Have you received their feedback, yet?

I also like to create a folder in my email in which to keep any correspondence with my beta readers. If someone doesn’t follow through, you will want to remember if you use them as a beta reader on another book that you might not be able to count on getting a response from them. Some writers choose to draw a line in the sand after 1 or 2 experiences like this. I tend to be a bit more lenient. Sometimes, life happens.

I love my Advance Readers! They make such a difference in the quality of my books. Do you use beta readers? Have you ever been a beta reader? I’d love to hear about your experiences!

What are YOUR thoughts?

I’d love to hear in the comment section, below. I appreciate my readers as well as the writing community. To show that appreciation, I use Comment Luv. Just leave a comment below and your latest post will get a link next to it. Thank you!

About Heather Erickson

I am an author, writer, and speaker and homeschooling mom of 3. Since doctors diagnosed my husband, Dan with stage IV lung cancer in 2012, I’ve focused my writing and speaking on helping cancer patients and their families advocate for themselves and live life to the fullest, in spite of their illness. My goal is to help people face cancer with grace. My books are available at Amazon.com:

The Memory Maker’s Journal 

Facing Cancer as a Friend: How to Support Someone Who Has Cancer

Facing Cancer as a Parent: Helping Your Children Cope with Your Cancer

I also blog about living with cancer at Facing Cancer with Grace.

Today I will be exploring Amazon Author Central. What is it? How do you set up an Amazon Author Page? What can it do for you and your audience?

Let’s start with Amazon Author Central. What is it?

Amazon Author Central is your go-to place as an author who is selling books on the world’s largest online bookstore. There, you can find links to tools you can use as an author to write your books and sell them on Amazon. You can find the reviews people have left for your books as well as your sales statistics. I think the most interesting and useful thing on Amazon Author Central is your Amazon Author page. Here is an overview of what you and your readers can find on your Amazon Author Page.

Readers will find:

• Your profile, including your profile picture and your website address(es). You can also include video, such as a book trailer if you choose. There is also a follow button so that your readers can get your latest posts and be notified when you publish a new book.
• Your books and their prices. These are found at the top for quick reference.
• Your Blog Feed. Yes! Your posts (or at least the first couple of sentences and a link to the post on your site) will automatically appear on your Amazon Author Page, within 24 hours of posting on your site. It’s a great way to connect readers to your website(s).
• Your book details. These include the formats your book is available in, their prices, and how many stars reviewers are giving each book (on average).

Here is a screenshot of my Amazon Author Page to give you an idea of what it looks like, overall. You can also go there to see it for yourself.

How do you set up your Amazon Author Page?

It’s actually quite simple. Amazon does a great job of walking you through the process. And, if you have any problems, they respond to email questions within 24 hours. I am going to give you a super simple overview of where things are on your Amazon Author Page dashboard, to make the process even easier.

Here is a screenshot of my Amazon Author Page dashboard. I’ve circled some things to pay extra-special attention to.

Starting at the very top of the dashboard is a link to your actual page (sorry, I didn’t circle that). This is handy because your page will look different from your dashboard.

Under that is your Biography. This will show up under your profile picture on your Author Page. I’ve circled the link you can click to either edit your bio or delete it completely.

Directly under your Biography is where you can list your blog(s). This allows your feed to show up on your Amazon Author Page within 24 hours of it being posted.

To the right of your Biography, is your Amazon Author Page URL. You can share the URL with your readers by using the social sharing links or copy/pasting the link wherever you like.

Under the URL is your Profile Photo. This is what readers will see when they come to your Amazon Author Page. It will also show up directly on your book’s sales page (which incidentally includes a link to your Author Page).

Finally, In the bottom right of your dashboard is where you can upload video.

Adding Books to your Amazon Author Page

Now that your page is set up, You will want to add your book(s) to your page. Doing this is usually straightforward. Go back to your Amazon Author Central Dashboard. Not your Page dashboard. If you can’t recall how to get there, just click this link, and log in.

Next, click on the tab at the top that says “Books.” You can see in the screenshot below that “Books” is underlined in orange.

Once you’ve gotten to the page where your books will be, you will see a message asking if there are books missing from your page. Click the orange button that says, “Add more books.”

Next, type the title, author name, or ISBN into the search box to automatically find the listing on Amazon.com.

It will pop up like my book did, here.

When you see your correct book, click the orange button beneath it that says, “This is my book.” You will immediately see the following:

“Your book was successfully added. Please note that it may take up to 24 hours for the book to appear in your bibliography.”

Some important things to note

Once you add a book to your page, it can’t be removed without an act of Congress. So, if you aren’t sure you want your book on your page, wait to add it. This policy is in place in case someone want’s to get an old/used copy. That being said, you can make an appeal to Amazon, and if you have a good reason, they will remove it.

I hope you’ve found this informative. Amazon has fantastic tools available to authors. The Author Page is one of my favorites. Yet, many authors don’t set theirs up. It takes very little time and can lead readers to find other books you’ve written or will write in the future.

• Do you have an Amazon Author Page? Feel free to add it in the comments (I will check my spam folder to make sure none get lost).
• If you don’t have one set up, what’s stopped you from doing so?
• If you aren’t an author, have you ever looked at an author’s page on Amazon.com?

What are YOUR thoughts?

I’d love to hear in the comment section, below. I appreciate my readers as well as the writing community. To show that appreciation, I use Comment Luv. Just leave a comment below and your latest post will get a link next to it. Thank you!

About Heather Erickson

I am an author, writer, and speaker and homeschooling mom of 3. Since doctors diagnosed my husband, Dan with stage IV lung cancer in 2012, I’ve focused my writing and speaking on helping cancer patients and their families advocate for themselves and live life to the fullest, in spite of their illness. My goal is to help people face cancer with grace. My books are available at Amazon.com:

The Memory Maker’s Journal 

Facing Cancer as a Friend: How to Support Someone Who Has Cancer

Facing Cancer as a Parent: Helping Your Children Cope with Your Cancer

I also blog about living with cancer at Facing Cancer with Grace.

In today’s post, I will be giving you a behind-the-scenes look at me putting together my next book, Facing Cancer as a Parent: Helping Your Children Cope with your Cancer. Today, it’s all about making your book look good with the right formatting.

Making Your Book Look Good starts with no formatting at all

I’ve found this to be incredibly important. To help you see the transformations process that happens when you are making your book look good I have taken some screenshots of my manuscript along with some hints.

Putting Your Best Font Forward

With print projects, I often forget about the importance of font until it’s time to publish. Then I scramble to make it more visually appealing. Originally the paragraph font was Courier New, 12 pt. with the lines at 1.5. The chapter headings were 20 pt.

It was boring and screamed, “self-published!” So, I decided to play around with it. I recommend looking at other professionally published books in your genre to see what they are using.

• After a little trial and error, I decided that Cambria was the font to go with for my non-fiction book. This change, alone, made a big difference.
• I then decided to change the font to 11 pt. and chapter headings to 18 pt. in the print copy of my book.
• I reduced the line spacing from 1.5 to 1.2.  Seeing the proof copy confirmed that this was a good decision.
• Still, something else was missing. It needed a little pizzazz. The subheadings needed to stand out without being obnoxious. I decided to simply go bold. I used these headings sparingly.
• The chapter headings were 18 pt. bold and italicized.

Getting everything in the right (or left) place

One matter of convention (though it really is personal preference) is what goes on the left and what goes on the right. When you open a book, the page on the right-hand side of the book is called recto. The page on the left-hand side is called verso. I believe making your book look good includes keeping (most) front matter pages as well as starting all chapters on the right hand (recto) side of your book.

I put the copyright page on the backside or the verso of the half-title page. I have seen it both ways and for some reason, I like it this way. Likewise, I center it for no good reason other than I like it that way. You can also left-align it if you like.

Center the dedication page. This is important.

Choose how far down the page you will have chapter title or numbers. This is also personal preference. I chose to start mine 2 inches down. and then the content down an inch further. If my chapter title was 2 lines, the content was pushed yet a half an inch lower.

Your paragraphs should be “justified” rather that “ragged.” Ragged edges are fine for online content such as this blog post, but the smooth justified text that matched up along the margins looks far better in your book.

Wait to add page numbers to your table of contents until the very end when you know exactly what page each chapter/section will begin on. Until then, just list the chapter titles. I began my table of contents 1 inch down rather than 2 so that I could fit all of the contents on 2 pages.

Easy as 1-2-3…or Not

If there was one thing that drove me out of my mind when formatting my book for print, it was page numbers. Getting them right is a huge part of making your book look good. I finally got them (mostly) right.

Some basic rules for making your book look good while formatting your page numbers are as follows:

Front matter pages should be left blank, but you still count your pages so that you know which page number you will be on when you do start to put the numbers on the pages.

You will begin actually numbering when you are on the Foreword or Introduction (if your book has these). If you have these sections (as well as the prologue, acknowledgments, and other sections of this type) you will number them with roman numerals. My forward started on the 9th page of the book so I numbered it ix.

Any blank pages should be left blank (no page numbers). Like the front matter, count the pages so that the next section has the correct numeral in it. This is where I failed miserably, though not for lack of trying. If anyone can figure this out, I would love for you to write a guest post on this topic, for me. I got the front matter numberless, but after that, it was all downhill.

The pages in the body of your book will be numbered with Arabic numerals.

Don’t Forget

It’s important to consider your headers and footnotes, as well. Their font doesn’t automatically change with the rest of the document.

Also, use care when deciding whether or not to use bullet points. They are a benefit to web-based work such as blog posts. They can also look good in print books. E books are another matter entirely. Readers can change font styles and sizes on their devices. When they do, bullet points get thrown all out of whack. Therefore, you should never use bullet points in an e book. What I do is create my print copy first. Then I make the needed changes to create a good e book.

When your work is stylistically and visually consistent, it will look more professional and will give your readers a better reading experience.

*Incidentally, as a rule, I spell numbers out except on web-based media where numerals are more eye-catching.

Coming soon!

Facing Cancer as a Parent:

Helping Your Child Cope with Your Cancer —->>>

I’ll be out of town this week and my internet might be unreliable. I would still love to hear your comments on your experience in formatting books, blogs and anything else you can write. I will definitely respond as soon as I return!

What are YOUR thoughts?

I’d love to hear in the comment section, below. I appreciate my readers as well as the writing community. To show that appreciation, I use Comment Luv. Just leave a comment below and your latest post will get a link next to it. Thank you!

About Heather Erickson

I am an author, writer, and speaker and homeschooling mom of 3. Since doctors diagnosed my husband, Dan with stage IV lung cancer in 2012, I’ve focused my writing and speaking on helping cancer patients and their families advocate for themselves and live life to the fullest, in spite of their illness. My goal is to help people face cancer with grace. My books are available at Amazon.com:

The Memory Maker’s Journal 

Facing Cancer as a Friend: How to Support Someone Who Has Cancer

Facing Cancer as a Parent: Helping Your Children Cope with Your Cancer

I also blog about living with cancer at Facing Cancer with Grace.

I am big on using an outline in my writing process. Since (for now) I would like to avoid the whole pantsers vs. plotters debate, I will focus this post on outlining your non-fiction book. There are several reasons I recommend outlining your non-fiction book …

Outlining your non-fiction book will help you come up with ideas

Think of it as a method of brainstorming. You are getting all the ideas that have been swirling around in your head, out and onto paper. Some of these ideas will work and will be worth exploring deeper. Others will seem disconnected from the group. Maybe you can use them for another project, but they really don’t belong in this particular book. You can identify these easily because they don’t fit anywhere on your outline.

During this process, you can see what decisions you need to make

For example, in Facing Cancer as a Parent, I included a section called Ages and Stages. In it I cover how children from 0 to 26 years old react to, and cope with, a parent’s cancer. That’s a big span of ages! So, I broke them down into brackets: Infants, Toddlers and Preschoolers, School Age, Preteens and Teens, and Young Adults.

Outlining your non-fiction book will help you organize your thoughts.

As you plan your book, you will see patterns emerge from your outline. By identifying these patterns and developing them, your book will go from a bunch of disconnected thoughts with a common theme to organized ideas that naturally flow from one to the next. Outlining your non-fiction book is the most efficient and practical way to achieve that.

You will have your Table of Contents

You will want to pretty your outline up with clever chapter titles and page numbers, but after outlining your non-fiction book you will have a basic table of contents.

How to do it?

No, I won’t bore you with the same outlining rules you learned in the 4^th grade. In fact, you don’t even need to remember your Roman numerals. Instead, we will look at form and function.

1. Remember when I said that outlining was a lot like brainstorming? That’s the first thing you’re going to do. Write down your main idea and then all of the things you would like to say to your readers about that idea. You might do this in the form of a list or as a mind map. Use whatever method you like best.
2. Look for the patterns in your ideas. Start to rearrange your ideas in a logical way.
3. Decide if you will have chapters grouped into larger sections or if you will simply have chapters follow one another in succession. Either way, they will need to flow, logically.
4. When you are ready to create your table of contents, you can write clever section/chapter titles. Wait until your book is ready to publish before you add page numbers. If you make any changes to your book the numbers can get thrown all out of whack.

See? No Roman numerals necessary. Do you have a different way of organizing your books or blog posts? I would love to hear about it in the comments below!

What are YOUR thoughts?

I’d love to hear in the comment section, below. I appreciate my readers as well as the writing community. To show that appreciation, I use Comment Luv. Just leave a comment below and your latest post will get a link next to it. Thank you!

About Heather Erickson

I am an author, writer, and speaker and homeschooling mom of 3. Since doctors diagnosed my husband, Dan with stage IV lung cancer in 2012, I’ve focused my writing and speaking on helping cancer patients and their families advocate for themselves and live life to the fullest, in spite of their illness. My goal is to help people face cancer with grace.

My books The Memory Maker’s Journal and Facing Cancer as a Friend: How to Support Someone Who Has Cancer, are available at Amazon.com.

I also blog about living with cancer at, Facing Cancer with Grace.

According to one survey, 81% of people believe they have a book in them.  Unfortunately, most people don’t[i].  They might have a story in them, but a book is another thing, entirely. A book is written for an audience. In the past, publishers have asked the questions that ensured whether or not a book would likely sell. Writers answer these questions in the form of a book proposal. With the ability to self-publish, no one is asking these questions.

Today, most writers:

• Don’t know what sells
• Overestimate the demand for their book idea in an already saturated market
• Overestimate their ability as a writer
• Don’t realize how much time it takes to write, edit, format, publish, and market their book
• Are often too satisfied with a low-quality book

How can you know whether or not your idea for a book is worth pursuing?

Start where traditionally published writers do, with a book proposal.

When someone is attempting to traditionally publish, they don’t invest the time and energy into writing a book until they know someone wants to publish it for them. So they write a book proposal to answer two questions a publisher will ask:

• Why should I publish this book?
• Why are you the person to write it?

As a writer attempting to self-publish, you need to answer these same questions. You do this in your book proposal. This guide is meant as a starting point for self-published writers to assess the viability of their book in much the same way that a publisher does. And it only makes sense to do this. After all, you are the publisher!

If you are trying to traditionally publish, you will want to be more precise and professional in its layout.

Start with an introduction.

• What is your book about?

This should hook your audience enough that they will see there’s a compelling reason to consider your book.

• What is its genre/category?

A great way to determine this is to go to your local library. Find a book that is very similar to what you want to write and see how it is categorized. You might need to tweak it to find the best fit, but this is a good starting point. Amazon.com can be used in a similar manner. Unfortunately, many self-published authors miscategorize their books so make sure you aren’t following someone down the wrong path.

If you happen to be writing a novel, the best resource I know of is the Story Grid by Shawn Coyne. He does an excellent job of explaining genre and how to decide which genre your book falls under. It’s much more complex than it sounds, but he gives step by step guidance to help you sort it out.

Include an estimated length as well as the number of photos and/or illustrations. Pages with images are often more expensive and will need to be figured into the publishing cost.

What about the competition?

Like the three bears, it’s important that you have some competition, but that the market isn’t overly saturated. What about that book that no one has thought of yet? You know… the really original idea.

“There are somewhere between 600,000 and 1,000,000 books published every year in the US alone, depending on which stats you believe. Many of those – perhaps as many as half or even more – are self-published. On average, they sell less than 250 copies each.”[ii]

With that many books being published each year, if no one has thought to write about something, then no one is thinking about reading it, either. So some competition is good. But, you also need to stand out from the crowd. The perfect example of this is the cancer book market. I can speak to this since I am a part of this over-saturated market.

Before writing my book, “Facing Cancer as a Friend: How to Support Someone who has Cancer,” I spoke with David Henry Sterry of The Book Doctors. He explained that traditional publishers are very leery of publishing books about cancer because everyone who has ever been diagnosed with cancer has decided to write a memoir about it and they just haven’t sold well. He was also quick to point out that there is still a market for books in this category…

But you need to stand out from the crowd

I chose to do this by focusing more on the practical advice people need when facing cancer, rather than our story. My goal was to stand out from the more sterile “about cancer” books written by professionals, by making my books very readable from the voice of experience, while focusing on the reader.

Find comparable books. It’s helpful to know what books have the same style and feeling as the book you are writing. You can use this information in your book description on its sales page, as well. “If you like “Such and Such,” you’re going to love…” Also, know what is missing from each of those books, and how your book fills the void.

Who is your book’s audience?

Narrow down who your audience is, as much as possible. It is common for writers to write their book in a generalized manner in an attempt to please everyone. Unfortunately, when you do this, you connect with no one. Drilling down to a specific audience in your book proposal results in your readers feeling like the book was written just for them. And in a sense, it was! How is your book going to benefit this audience?

Is it part of a series?

Will there be sequels? This is a huge factor in marketability. As I talked to David Henry Sterry about a mystery series I was starting, I said I planned on writing 3 books. It took place in a small town and you can only have so many murders in a small town before people start checking the water. Sterry laughed and said, “No way. Think about Murder She Wrote. There’s a murder every week in Cabot Cove.”  That’s how an expert marketer thinks. Possibilities!

Who are you?

In your book proposal, consider what makes you the ideal person to write this book. You are selling yourself as much as your book. What is your platform? This is the place from which you will market your book and yourself.  It includes your website, your social media accounts, and your mailing list. All of these connect you to your audience in a more personal way. Publishers demand a well-established platform. You will need them to get your book in front of your audience. Consider all the ways you can publicise your book and include those ideas here so that when you are marketing, you already have the beginning of a plan.

Are you consulting an expert if your subject is a specialized one?

For my book, Facing Cancer as a Parent, I consulted a child-life specialist who specializes in children who have a parent with cancer. As a parent of children whose dad has cancer, I have a level of expertise that was earned the hard way, through experience. But, when you are dealing with something as important as the well-being of children, you want to ensure the information you are publishing is technically correct, as well. Consulting an expert adds to your book’s credibility.

An Outline

I know there are die-hard “pantsers” out there, writers who fly by the seat of their pants and see where their muse takes them. The truth is until you are established as an author, a publisher wants to know where you’re going with your book. What’s going to be in it? Even though this book proposal is for your benefit as a self-published writer, you will want to plan out your book in outline form.

Start by listing your chapters and then under each chapter heading, list the subheadings, or what you will detail in each chapter. This will help you to get the flow of your book planned.

Sample Chapter

Even as a self-published writer, including a sample chapter in your book proposal, will help you to set the tone and get the formatting straight. We will talk more about formatting in a future post.

What are YOUR thoughts?

I’d love to hear in the comment section, below. I appreciate my readers as well as the writing community. To show that appreciation, I use Comment Luv. Just leave a comment below and your latest post will get a link next to it. Thank you!

About Heather Erickson

I am an author, writer, and speaker and homeschooling mom of 3. Since doctors diagnosed my husband, Dan with stage IV lung cancer in 2012, I’ve focused my writing and speaking on helping cancer patients and their families advocate for themselves and live life to the fullest, in spite of their illness. My goal is to help people face cancer with grace.

My books The Memory Maker’s Journal and Facing Cancer as a Friend: How to Support Someone Who Has Cancer, are available at Amazon.com.

I also blog about living with cancer at Facing Cancer with Grace.

Footnotes:

[i] Joseph Epstein, New York Times, September 28, 2002, “Think You Have a Book in You? Think Again”

[ii] Forbes, Jan. 8, 2013. Nick Welsh, Contributor. “Thinking of Self-Publishing Your Book in 2013? Here’s What You Need to Know.”