If you want to write a book, you are in the right place to learn and know the steps to get your book out into the world. The book writing, publishing, and marketing world is an intricate web and network of steps and processes. If you want to write a book and then have success in sharing its content, you need to understand how to market yourself and your ideas.

Since I was young, I have written stories, and it has always been my dream to write and publish a book. I wasn't sure how or if this would ever happen, but I wanted it to. While at school, I got labeled with dyslexia, and I avoided reading. It wasn't until I left school that I began to read and enjoy the pages of books. I got a job working at a bookstore and surrounded myself with books; I started a writing club that had only two members, me and a lady who is now known as Athena Daniels (She's been traditionally published and self-published and runs a book agency to help people write and publish their own books). I wrote short stories, I worked on several novels, and then I decided to go back to University to study creative writing. I built my writing skills but still needed a piece of writing I felt was worthy of publishing. I stopped writing and underwent many life changes, including having 4 children, going through 2 pregnancy losses, becoming Christian, and moving to an off-grid homestead. In isolation, I finally found my voice. I learned to turn that passion into purpose and speak the words I had been afraid to speak, the words I had kept locked inside me.

We all have stories and lessons we have learned, and these stories are unique to each of us. If only we felt like our stories were good enough to share, they could help so many people. Some questions to ask yourself:

Is the story the problem, or is it your own lack of self-worth and confidence?
If I had known what I know now about what I've been through would I have been better of?

I don't need to know you on a personal level to know that you have worth and that your life is valid. You are here, my friend, living and breathing; you exist, and that is all the validation you need. You are worthy. Put your hand on your chest and feel the beating of your heart. You are alive. Think ahead to a year or three years from now; imagine your book finished, you wrote it, and it's done. What would that do for you? Know that writing a book makes you no more worthy than you are today, and that feeling you get when you imagine having accomplished is your own feeling of purpose and fulfillment, not the intrinsic worth of your being. You have the potential to achieve your dreams, but please know your accomplishments do not determine your worth.

If you want to write something soon, the topic of your book should be something you know about, something you're passionate about. If you're happy for the process to take a little longer, you can write about something you're interested in learning. Whatever you want your book to be about you need to be able to talk about it over twelve or so chapters on various subjects within that topic, with a word count ranging from 40,000 words and above. You might find that you have two many ideas or not enough.

Here are ways to remove the blocks that might be holding you back:

Sitting down at an empty page can be intimidating, so don't start with an empty page. Start with your thoughts. Your thoughts are the seeds of your book, and they are already within you, waiting to be nurtured and grown into a beautiful story.

What is your book about?
What subject or topics could you talk about for hours?
What do people come to you for advice on?
What have you experienced?
What are some hardships you have faced?

You never start with an empty page only a space to fill with everything you have experienced and so much more.

Faced with a mountain of ideas, many people find it challenging to narrow down a topic or subject for their book after all we are complex beings with so many life experiences that we could draw from and write about. Note down all of the ideas you have and ask yourself the following questions:

Do they have similarities?
Could they fit under one umbrella topic?
Do you have one book idea or is this many book ideas?
What season are you in right now? What idea speaks to that season?

Dealing with the inner critic. The biggest demotivator is your own thoughts. Know you will face unhelpful thoughts and opinions from your own mind, and just like every other writer before you, you can and will overcome them to write. Most, if not all, of these thoughts are untrue. If you're finding it challenging, consider hiring a book coach or life coach to be your cheerleader. You could also join the Hey Beautiful Mama Community, where I aim to help mamas just like you achieve your dreams.

​Once you have decided on a topic, you need to name each chapter. I name each chapter what it will focus on. Of course, this name can be changed later on; it's merely a placeholder to get you started and make it really easy to flesh out your chapters.

You now know what your book is about and what each chapter will focus on. If you know about each chapter's focus, you can begin writing by speaking on your phone's recorder, webcam, or a mic using Audacity (open-source recorder) or Zoom. These recordings will serve as the base of your chapters, the roughest of drafts that will enable you to start with something already on the page. Keep your recordings under 20 minutes each so you can put them through audio-to-text software. There are plenty of these that you can use for free.

I generally use Converter App which is free to use.

You may want your book to be conversational, but trust me, your raw audio file to text will not be good for your book as a complete, no-editing-required piece. The audio-to-text is not intuitive or perfect, so some words may be incorrect or misspelled. To top it off, you probably said a load of 'likes' 'and so's' 'you know's' and any other things that one might usually say in conversation. Don't see that as a failure. Your recording to text is your base that now needs to be shaped and cultivated into what it should be. Add the details that need to be added and remove unnecessary or unwanted words. I recommend going through your entire book and then setting it aside for a couple of days or a week before you come back to the book for a second, third, and fourth go-through.

Once you have your manuscript written its time for editing. Hands down, Grammarly is the best editing tool. Don't get me wrong; I still recommend an actual editor, but to get the bulk of edits out of the way and save you and the editor a massive headache, run it through Grammarly. Grammarly is an AI-style tool, but please don't use AI to write your book. Only use AI to edit. AI writing is robotic, it truly lacks character and your individual voice. The whole point of writing your book is your voice.

What You Need to Know When Using Grammarly

Get the Pro version.
Break your book up into four sections, as Grammarly can't currently handle your entire book in one file.
​You don't have to use their super AI feature that "increases the impact of your text." This function isn't necessary and shouldn't be used much, if at all. Be sure to check every edit it gives you so you don't change the meaning of anything or completely remove your voice.

Now is the time to hand it off. You can ask a friend or look to Fiverr, but be sure whoever you get to edit your book is meticulous, loves reading, and is a stickler for grammar. This will be the best kind of person to read your book and get it to the quality you want. Even published books lack quality and will often have mistakes in them. As an indie or new author, you want your book to stand out from the crowd with its superior editing and readability. Too many new authors don't spend enough time ensuring their book's quality is high; this leads to poor results, little to no sales, and a stagnant writing career. We're not done. Next comes formatting

Here, you design your cover, make sure it will work and print well, and format your interior content. If you are going through a traditional publisher, this might be done for you, but if you plan to self-publish, it can be tricky. Consider hiring someone if you don't want to spend hours like I did reformatting. Before you even begin formatting you'll need to consider the different versions of your book that will be available. Will it be digital and physical, or just digital. This will impact how you design your cover. Amazon's KDP site has an area to get a template for your cover, and they have software called Kindle Create that will allow you to format your book for Kindle and Epub. Note that formatting on the Kindle Create software is less aesthetically pleasing than using something like InDesign or Affinity Publisher. I used Affinity Publisher for my book and found the software really easy to use once I found a good tutorial on YouTube. It's also a cheaper alternative to Adobe, which is always nice. Do know that you cannot export in all formats through Affinity, so make sure whatever software you use will format your book for the file type you need.

If this is your first book, you might want to consider doing an ARC. ARC stands for Advances Reader Copy. This is where you give people a copy of your book ahead of its release. If you have an online following, you could offer copies to your followers; you could take copies into book stories. You can get these advanced copies through Amazon KDP, which offers 'Not For Sale' copies of your book. This way, you can get some reviews and then build some momentum and hype about the book by sharing what your pre-readers think. You could also give digital copies instead of print; this way, the ARC process costs time instead of time and money.

Many publishing sites are also distributors like IngramSpark, however I recommend you read their terms and conditions carefully. I am not a big fan of IngramSparks TM's, so I have chosen not to work with them. There's Amazon and Lulu, Barnes and Noble Press, and Kobo. These are the main ones I have looked at, and I found their TMs reasonable. It's up to you what you think is good for your book. You might also want to consider starting your own Sole Trader Business Publishing house to add more legitimacy to your book. This does cost money but could pay off in the long run.

​I hope you have found this article helpful. Of course, there is more to publishing, distributing, and writing a book, especially if you're writing about something you're learning about or something fictional. I'll be writing more articles in the future, so send me any suggestions if you want me to write anything specifically related to books, writing, and publishing.