Congratulations! you just wrote your first book. You’ve done 10 percent of your work. Now comes the hard part: doing what needs to be done to get your book into the hands of readers.
- Do you know that an unknown self-published or small-press author only sells about 250 books on average?
- Where do you go once your friends and family have bought copies?
If you’re a first-time author, you probably didn’t know how much work it would take to sell your book. Don’t get down on yourself. Here are some tips I’ve picked up as I’ve gone along.
7 steps to go through after you wrote your book
Let the Book Rest
After you wrote your book, you and it both need a break. This is because you are the one who wrote the book; you can’t look at it from any other angle. You don’t know what’s good, what’s bad, what needs work, and what’s good the way it is.
Letting your book sit for a few weeks or even a month gives you time to get a new perspective and begin to see what your book is about or what it needs to become.
And if it’s hard for you to take a break, keep in mind that working on your book doesn’t mean you have to stop writing books or getting better as a writer.
Go to your favourite coffee shop if you’re feeling restless. Think about new book ideas or read some of your new favourite published or best-selling authors. Listen to your favourite writing-related podcasts.
If you want to see the entire book for what it is, you need to put it down for a while and come back to it with fresh eyes and a clear mind.
Check out your book
Before editing, you should read your book from beginning to end. This is the 2nd step in getting a better view of your book. It takes a lot of time, but it will save you a lot of time in the long run because you’ll know exactly what you need to fix in your next draft.
While you are writing, ask yourself the questions below and write down your answers:
- What’s left out?
- What’s extra?
- What should be changed?
Dream
When you go through your book, some parts will almost certainly surprise you with how good they are because most of the rest are so bad. But mostly by how different you wrote is from what you thought you would write.
Some things might make you sad after you finish reading your book. But this is also a chance to start dreaming again.
What might your book turn into? How could you make it something different?
Rewrite and change the structure
You’re ready for the second draft of your book now that you have a good idea of where it is and where you want it to go.
You don’t just fix typos on your second draft and make sentences flow better. It comes down to structure.
This is when you fill in the holes you found in your draft by writing new sections. This is when you get rid of the parts that weren’t important and fix the parts that didn’t make sense.
This portion can feel like digging through your book to find the treasure hidden beneath the surface.
Once your book has a good overall structure published it with Alpha Book Writers, you can start to polish it.
Depending on how comfortable you are, you might decide that you can self-edit this. If you’re unsure, don’t be intimidated to ask for direction and advice from a developmental editor.
Get Some Help
After your second draft, it’s good to start letting other people read your book, like beta readers or an editor.
Before all this, your book wasn’t enough about you; if too many others worked on it, you’d lose some of your vision. The second draft of your book lets you put more of yourself into it.
But once you’ve done all the above, you’re ready to create a team to help your Book Writing Services get to the next level. (And look for any typos you may have missed.)
After you’ve done all these things, your novel is ready to be proofread, checked for grammar, and polished.
Write an outline
When you’ve finished making changes to your manuscript, it’s time to write a summary. If you want to get an agent or a traditional publisher, you only need a synopsis. You probably don’t need a synopsis if you plan to self-publish.
A one- to three-page summary of your whole story is called a synopsis. Don’t be shy here. Spoilers don’t matter to the agents and editors you’re talking to. In your summary, you need to tell the whole story.
Write a query letter
After you’ve written your synopsis, it’s time to compose a query letter. Again, you don’t need this unless you send it to someone. If you want to publish your book, you don’t need a query.
A query letter is indeed a one-page sales memo. It tells the agent or editor who you are and your story. It also asks if they would like to read your manuscript. The goal is for the person you have sent the letter to ask to see your manuscript (or at least part of it).
In other phrases, the query letter is a sales pitch to persuade an individual to agree to read your pages. If they ask you for those pages, your letter works. If they don’t ask for pages, or if none of the people you have sent the letter to ask for pages, then you have an issue with your query, not inherently with your manuscript.
Conclusion
Whoa, congrats! You just wrote your book and all the other steps after that. Writing a book is a really big achievement, and you should be proud of yourself that you wrote a book. I hope that these steps will help you with your book after you write your book.
