Last summer when I needed to learn how to make money fairly quickly online with a 1 year old and after being left by a narcissist who depleted my bank account and ruined my credit I got to work. I learned so much in such a short amount of time I can honestly say if it wasn’t for the situation my ex put me in I wouldn’t be as successful as I am today. This was my dedication to myself to build myself back up after being torn down completely.
Now the word or term ‘narcissist’ gets thrown around a lot and typically it takes for an individual to seek help to get diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. As I was learning new business methods I was healing at the same time. In constantly reading I somehow came across narcissist personality traits. It was scary how accurate every article was. I finally understood why with all that I was learning I wasn’t immediately successful at the things I applied.
I needed to heal from 4 years of being abused mentally and financially.
Once I recognized that my brain started to clear up. It was like I had this fog that was blocking me from seeing what was right in front of me. Out of the many skills I learned self publishing was the one that I favored the most. See publishing a book was something I wanted to do since I was a child.
And self publishing was listed in every passive income article that I would read. So I joined self publishing, low content making, and Amazon publishing groups on Facebook. I also found YouTube to be very helpful in teaching lessons about the process. I thought to myself, “It can’t be this easy.” But it was.
Everything you need to self publish for $0 down is at your fingertips. Accessible on your smartphone in other words. From the information to get you started to the apps to design your covers and interiors. I was on a roll with creating books. I started off with journals, moved on to low content books, next there were workbooks, and when I was ready I wrote nonfiction books of my own.
I will admit that keyword research is a skill in itself but this can be understood by watching YouTube videos, reading articles online or paying for a third party provider. You need to understand how keywords work to make your books easier to find when customers are shopping online. It’s competitive to self publish and be profitable, but with dedication to being successful you will master this if you truly want to.
To design my book covers and interiors I use the app Canva. Prior to books I used the program to create social media posts, and website media. Canva is free to download in the app store. After a year of enjoying the free version I decided to invest in the Pro version because of its added features. You don’t necessarily need to pay for the app monthly subscription if you don’t want to or have the funds.
What I like about Canva is how ridiculously easy it is to use and yet how professional your designs come out. Don’t know where to start with making a book cover? No worries, there are templates for that. Use the templates as a starting point, change the colors, change the fonts, add relative elements, but just don’t use and publish the exact templates that you find in Canva. I’ve seen so many books and journals online (Amazon specifically) where the person didn’t change anything from the templates and honestly people notice repeat covers when shopping online.
Another helpful way to get ideas for covers is to get inspiration from books you see online. Look at best sellers in that particular genre and see what works for best selling authors. I’ve learned you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, just give your product a ‘wow factor.’
I forgot to mention, you do need to know the size measurements or dimensions but this also can be found on YouTube, Amazon KPD (if that’s who you decide to self publish with), and in articles on Google or Pinterest. You literally have everything you need in your hand to get started.
After you have your book design ready it’s time to upload it. I use Amazon KDP because it’s as simple as you upload it, it gets approved within a couple of days, it’s then made available for customers to order through Amazon.com and that’s it. They print and ship for you so there are no worries about having to store inventory and go to the post office for shipping.
Here below is one of my best selling workbooks that I ordered an authors copy of. The quality is actually amazing and the image on Amazon is a bit pixelated due to their program. It’s great that they give you the option to order copies because if you do want to sell from your own website or provide your books to local stores, you can. Which are actually ways to beat the self publishing online competition if that’s something you are concerned with.
Would you like a copy for yourself? Click here to order.
Article By K. Crystal Carter
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