How to Publish Your Own Book: My Complete Indie Publishing Guide
I am often asked to give people advice on publishing their own books. I thought it might be a good idea to share the most obvious information right here on the blog so I can easily share the info in the future. I will update the links if anything changes. The content in this post is state-of-the-art for indie publishing in 2026. Bear in mind that these are simply my go-tos. Specifically, I’m sharing a) sites and software I use to publish my books, and b) sites and software I don’t necessarily use but which I know to be reputable.
A Book or a Career?
First things first: before you start, you need to be able to answer one important question. Are you interested in publishing a single book, or do you want to write for a career? If you want to do the latter, it makes sense to learn how to do it yourself. If you’ve got only one book in you, then maybe it’s worth hiring some book packaging firm a stupid amount of money to get your one and only book out in the world, just so you can say you did it.
Key Publishing Paths
Before you get started, it helps to familiarize yourself with all the way that books are published. The best source I know is Jane Friedman’s chart, “The Key Publishing Paths,” which is available free on her website. She updates this on a regular basis; the current version is the 2025-2026 edition. Download your version here. Definitely take the time to read her article.
Copy Editors
I’m assuming that you are capable of writing your own work, and don’t have a problem using your software of choice to do so. Once you have a finished book, you will want to find an editor of some kind. There are so many different types of editing that it makes sense to familiarize yourself with the differences between, say, developmental editing, line editing, copy editing, proofreading. When people ask me how they can find editors, I always advise that they create an account at Reedsy.com. It’s free! And once you have login credentials, you can navigate to their (free) Reedsy Marketplace, where you can search for editorial professionals of all kinds. Ghostwriters, designers, marketers, editors—you get the idea. There are lots of people you can hire to do exactly the kind of work you need performed. Yes, you will get marketing emails on a regular basis from Reedsy, but you can easily opt out of those. I stopped sharing the name of the copy editor I personally use to edit my books because she is semi-retired and is not taking on new clients. I do offer developmental editing, coaching for nonfiction books and proposals, and you can connect with me via my contact page.
Book covers
Every book needs a cover, and every potential reader judges those books by their covers. It’s a fact of life. So you don’t want to skimp on this, and you don’t want to simply hire a friend who does graphic design. Even if they are a longtime professional graphic designer, they may not have experience creating book covers, which is what you want. There are lots of great options out there, and I will simply share some links.
In general, before you can hire a designer, your book needs to be completely finished, because the designer needs to know the length of the finished book in order to design the print edition—paperback or hardcover. They will also need to know which platform you intend to use to print your book, and your desired trim size. Yes, you can simply hire a designer to create an ebook cover for you, which does not require giving them all these specs. But honestly, in 2026, it makes sense to publish your book in as many versions as possible: ebook, paperback, hardcover, large print. (I would hold off on audiobooks or translations until you have more experience.)
You can buy pre-made book covers, or commission a custom cover. I do a mix of both.
For premade covers, I have used GoOnWrite in the past. He’s an excellent designer who now uses AI-generated images to create his work. If that is a problem for you, look elsewhere.
For truly professional custom designs, I recommend Damonza, which is a firm that uses a term of designers to create covers in different genres. I have also hired BookFly Design and Jason Gurley, who were excellent. All three are top-flight designers, and they will cost you. I have also used Mulan Jiang, who has lovely style that might suit your work as well. Check her out. My earliest book cover design was the marvelous Jeroen ten Berge.
If you’re looking for more affordable options, check out 100 Covers or MIBL Art.
BOOK FORMATTING
To publish an ebook, your book must be designed and generated into an ePub file. To publish a print book, you need to design and generate a PDF of your book’s interior. You can hire professionals to do this for you via the Reedsy Marketplace, or you can learn how to do it yourself. Reedsy offers a free formatting tool here. You can also subscribe to another formatting tool called Atticus ($147 for lifetime access), or Vellum ($249 for lifetime access). I have used all of them. I love Vellum but it is Mac-only. If your book is not complicated and you ask nicely, you can hire me to design both of the files you need. See my contact page to get in touch.
PUBLISHING THE BOOK
Yes, you can spend an awful lot of money to publish your book. But you really don’t have to. I encourage you to learn how to handle all of these things yourself. It’s not that hard to hire a freelancer, and all for-hire “publishing companies” you can hire to handle the creation of your book are doing exactly the same thing: they hire freelancers to do covers, copy editing, formatting, and so on. Learn to do the same thing yourself, and save yourself some money.
I use Amazon KDP to publish my ebooks and print books (paperback and hardcovers). It’s easy, and in a matter of hours, your book will be available on all of Amazon’s worldwide stores. But you should not stop there. Take your ebook file and publish it to a ton of other ebook stores and library systems using Draft2Digital. (You cannot use Draft2Digital to publish to Amazon and GooglePlay. You will need to upload to those directly.)
Now, what I just described is the easiest route to getting your book out in the world: use Amazon to create the print editions, publish your ebook, and use D2D to pub the ebooks to all the other major platforms.
But if you really want your paper book to be available throughout the world, you ought to consider uploading the paperback to IngramSpark. They are the platform Big Five publishers use to make books available to bookstores all over the planet. But they do have a reputation for having practically nonexistent customer service, and being somewhat complicated for newbies. Which is why so many people use Amazon KDP. It’s really worth researching this carefully before you leap.
ISBN Numbers
You will need ISBN numbers—universally recognized book identifying numbers—to publish your books. You need one per format, which means that at minimum you will need two: one for the ebook, one for the paperback or hardcover. If you are based in the USA, you have to buy these from Bowker. In the UK, you buy them from the Nielsen ISBN Store. If you live in Canada, you get them free—lucky you!—from the Canadian government.
REGISTER Your Copyright
Once you have published your book in any format, you should register your copyright. I only know the American system—sorry!—and as soon as I pub the ebook or paperback, I complete the online form at the U.S. Copyright Office, pay my fee, and upload a PDF of my manuscript. Your book is copyrighted instantly the moment you write it, but registering the final document provides you protection if you ever need to sue someone who has infringed upon it.
Yes, you can hire me—but why would you?
Lastly, yes, I can help guide this process for an hourly fee but I’m really about showing people how easy it is to do their own. Seriously, I have published some of my own books for under $200—cover design and copyedit included. Ebooks have cost me $50 for a cover. Yes, some of my more lavish novels have cost about $1,000 to publish. So when I hear about new authors hiring book packaging firms to publish a single book for the low, low price of $2,995 or $6,995, I get angry. You don’t need to spend that much. Learn to do it yourself once. I promise you that once you see how easily it can be done, you’ll want to do it for any and all books you create.
And because some of you have asked, use my contact page if you want to talk about how I can help you.
