I recently launched [a new book](http://amzn.to/2BJMpVP). After publishing [one book](http://www.amazon.com/Design-Hackers-Reverse-Engineering-Beauty/dp/1119998956?tag=kadavyinc-20) with a traditional publisher, then being [rejected](https://writingcooperative.com/im-a-best-selling-author-i-failed-to-get-a-book-deal-6702c7509c1a) to write a second, I was still reluctant to try self-publishing. So far, I’m glad I did.
What I love about being an [independent creator](https://medium.com/@kadavy/ive-been-a-self-employed-independent-creator-for-10-years-i-don-t-recommend-it-a2ecc92d81a9), is I never stop learning. While self-publishing this book, I learned many new skills, but got to use many other skills that I’ve built over the years.
If you want to be an unstoppable self-publishing force, here’s what you need to know.
*****
#### Writing
The “writing” part of publishing a book is the most obvious. It’s the thing that people focus on. They want to know how long it took you to write, or how long the book is.
By “writing,” I don’t mean spelling, grammar, and punctuation. I mean writing something that people want to read and enjoy reading.
I’ve come a long way in writing skill since I published my first blog post thirteen years ago. My only formal training has been sketch writing and storytelling at [The Second City](https://www.secondcity.com/) in Chicago.
But I got my most valuable training over the past couple of years right here on Medium. Seeing what resonates with people through applause, comments, and highlights (and getting an occasional grammar lesson from a reader) is a great training program for writing.
#### Book Positioning
Book positioning the most underrated skill amongst aspiring authors. If you’re going to go through all of that work to write a book, it’s nice if someone wants to buy it.
I cringe to think of the titles and book ideas that I had on the road to publishing my new book. They were self-indulgent and unfocused. They were hard to categorize.
Remember that your book is a product. People are looking for something very specific when they buy your book. It could be to escape. It could be to learn something.
There are more complex reasons under the surface of why someone buys a book (and recommends it to friends). It could be to have their beliefs confirmed. It could be to make them feel good about themselves.
I don’t know of one killer resource for really nailing book positioning. I learned it—and still learn it—through a combination of things:
* My first recollection of realizing I needed to learn book positioning was while reading literary agent David Fugate’s [How to Publish Your Book](http://unconventionalguides.com/publishing.htm). It talks about writing a book proposal, which you should do in some form whether you self-publish or not. (David was the agent for Andy Weir, author of *The Martian*.)
* I had an amazing conversation about book positioning with [Tucker Max](https://medium.com/@tuckermax) [on my podcast](http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/tucker-max-podcast-interview/). We really got into the psychology of why people buy and recommend books.
* Tucker helps many authors publish books through his company, Book in a Box. He published a short guide describing their method, in which he explains [book positioning](https://www.amazon.com/Book-Box-Method-Groundbreaking-Publish-ebook/dp/B014EUTYGM?tag=kadavyinc-20) very well.
* I also learned a lot about book positioning by hiring [Ryan Holiday](https://medium.com/@RyanHoliday) to review an early book proposal. His comments were very insightful and informative.
* I learned the most from [being a connoisseur](https://medium.com/the-mission/if-you-make-a-thing-become-a-connoisseur-of-that-thing-e6255d8597e7) of books. When you browse Amazon, look at the title, description, and author bio. Ask yourself what the book promises. Use the number of reviews and ranking to estimate how well it sells. Download the Kindle sample and see how they set it up in the beginning. Read cultural sensations such as *Eat, Pray, Love* or *The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck* and ask yourself why they sold so well. All of this adds to your book positioning knowledge.
#### HTML/CSS
I had never considered my former career as a web designer would be so valuable to self-publishing. I had never considered that HTML and CSS were being used to format Kindle books.
But as I first opened up [Sigil](https://sigil-ebook.com/) — which I used to format the Kindle version of *The Heart to Start—*my HTML and CSS knowledge came flooding back to me.
I initially learned HTML and CSS through building websites, but there are [web design books](https://designforhackers.com/blog/best-web-design-books/) that can teach you as well. If you want to add this skill, the best thing you can do is have your own website and break it a few times.
#### Typography
One of the big things that separates a self-published book from a book published by a big publishing house is the quality of design. Very few people have the skill to make a book really sing through beautiful typography.
Even if you use a piece of software such as [Vellum](https://vellum.pub/) to help you out, there are finer details such as getting lines of type aligned across pages and avoiding widows and orphans that take more subtle skill.
My typography skill came from my college education as a graphic designer. The best resource is Robert Bringhurst’s [Elements of Typographic Style](https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Robert-Bringhurst/dp/0881791326?tag=kadavyinc-20). I also covered typography extensively in my first book, [Design for Hackers](http://www.amazon.com/Design-Hackers-Reverse-Engineering-Beauty/dp/1119998956?tag=kadavyinc-20)*.*
#### Page Layout
This ties in with typography, but getting that typography to work on a page-layout program is a whole skill in itself. How do you import the content? How do you manage the various styles so you don’t make yourself prone to mistakes?
I used my ancient copy of Adobe InDesign CS5 to lay out *The Heart to Start*. Again, I learned this through my education as a graphic designer, and of course by doing. There may be other programs for doing page layout (such as Vellum) but I can’t imagine any of them being as robust as InDesign.
#### Voiceover
One of my secret motivations for reading my articles on my podcast, [Love Your Work](http://kadavy.net/blog/archive/love-your-work/), is that it has allowed me to practice reading for a future audiobook. The quality of narration on an audiobook can make or break it (the best performance I’ve heard was [Dion Graham reading Miles Davis’s autobiography](https://www.amazon.com/Miles-The-Autobiography/dp/B00740L5DK?tag=kadavyinc-20)).
As a bootstrapped self-publisher, I don’t want to give up profit to a narrator. But, I don’t want to be another author slurring his way through his own book.
Vocal performance—yes, even “just talking”—is an endlessly complex art. I only touched the tip of the iceberg by taking a couple levels of voice lessons at [Old Town School of Folk Music](https://www.oldtownschool.org/) when I lived in Chicago. I still continue to do warm-ups and exercises before each recording.
My training in voice is also supplemented by performance classes such as the acting classes I took at the now-defunct ActOne in Chicago, and improv at The Second City and other places.
I have warm-ups I do from my classes, but there’s [a series on YouTube from the National Theatre](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc-_hoG4nec) that serves as a great start. To learn voice, there’s no substitute for voice lessons with a local professional. The added bonus is you get better at karaoke.
#### Audio Engineering
Not only do you need to do a good reading for your audiobook, you need to be able to capture the sound well. ACX, the exchange through which you publish on Audible and other places, has exacting standards for their audio.
This is probably my weakest skill in the stack, but I think I can get by (I have yet to edit my audiobook). I’ve learned through making stuff, such as online courses, and my podcast. I’ve also accumulated the proper equipment and learned about how to capture noise-free sound.
#### Marketing
If you can’t market your work, it’s hard to imagine anyone actually reading it. Yes, you have to write a great book for it to sell, but you need to get it in the hands of those first readers.
To publish [The Heart to Start](http://amzn.to/2BJMpVP), I used a combination of email marketing and social media skills that I’ve built up over the years of working for startups and building my own things.
I even used marketing to fuel my own motivation: I set up an email list and landing page in the beginning, promising to send readers a chapter day as I wrote it.
Many people struggle with marketing their work because they worry that it’s sleazy or inauthentic. But if you have your positioning down, then your work supposedly helps someone in some way. Isn’t it selfish to not try to get that work to people?
*****
Admittedly, this is a lot of different skills for one person to have. I happen to like doing all of these things, and I find the variety stimulating. If you hate the idea of doing any one of these things, then you might need to leave some budget to hire someone. But never underestimate the power of learning. Never stop learning.
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***The Heart to Start* will give you a new mental operating system for overcoming fear and self-doubt. [Buy it now on Amazon »](http://geni.us/F6eL)**