A new author and writer of a series recently asked “how often should you publish?” They said it took about a year to write the first book and another year to get the beta readers, editing, jacket and everything else together. Although, I don’t like to tell writers they need to write faster, I do have some suggestions for being more efficient with timing so you can publish more quickly.
How Often Should You Publish?
Ideally, you want to publish every year when you do a series, so you don’t lose momentum between releases. Readers of series are a ravenous bunch and as much as they love your first book, there are other writers on deck to lure them away. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to get a book out and include a teaser of the next? As the owner of Plum Bay Publishing, an indie publisher, and as an old hat in the book industry, here are my suggestiong to help you speed up your process.
5 Tips for Publishing a Book a Year Series
- Get your story out of your head and into your computer. Try creating outlines for the next book or two to help you get started faster on the next book. Think of your series as an epic adventure story. If you don’t do outlines, write a few paragraphs of background to start you off.
- After you are finished with the first draft, skip beta readers and pay a professional editor to start reviewing your manuscript. A line editor or copyeditor should be fine. You can have beta readers but if they slow you down, then getting the editing started will be faster.
- Combining the jacket design time with the editing is a good idea because you need the jacket designed before you do the interior design/digital typesetting (so if you want to add a graphic at the beginning of each chapter or use a special font, you can keep the branding consistent between the jacket image and the text).
- While waiting for the editor and jacket designer, start filling out the information on your upload platforms. Writers can set their books up on Amazon before uploading manuscript and cover files. Ingram is the same, although you will need an ISBN which you can purchase at Bowker Identifiers. You can also buy one directly from Ingram.
- Allow time for promotional efforts. While people are reading/editing/and commenting, you can start creating lists of media outlets you want to reach. You can also update your website and begin social media promotions.
The Annual Publishing Plan
Try to write the book in 6-9months and get the rest of the process done in 3 months. Then you will be close enough to a year between books. I’m not saying it’s easy, but once you go through the first one some of the learning curve in publishing is already over. That in itself can save you time.
For more information on promoting and publishing your book, check out our blog.
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. Distribution: POD (Print-on-Demand) is used by many businesses in the indie publishing world, but this method often makes distribution to brick-and-mortar stores difficult to achieve. I spoke with several different distributors at Book Expo 2018, including IngramSpark (a POD distributor) to find out how an indie publisher might be able to work with them. In general, distributors are looking for publishers who release at least ten titles per year. While there are exceptions to every rule, the increase in small publishers has encouraged companies to be more efficient and choosy about which ones they represent. A few distributors to mention are: