Explore articles on self-publishing, book design, launch strategy, and book marketing from a team that has supported authors since 2015.
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Self-publishing strategy
Clear walkthroughs for planning the book, the launch, and the reader journey.
Design and production decisions
Guidance on covers, formatting, and the details that make a book look market-ready.
Marketing and platform growth
Practical advice for visibility, promotion, and turning attention into sales momentum.
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Strong starting points for authors who want high-signal guidance before moving deeper into the archive.
How to edit a book yourself: rest the draft, then work in seven passes from big to small, from structure and scenes down to sentences, consistency and a final proofread of the formatted pages.
How to write a picture book: find a child-sized idea, keep it to roughly 500-750 words, leave room for the pictures, plan your page turns across 32 pages, and know the print rules if you self-publish.
Article index
Browse the latest publishing advice, design guidance, and author education content.
How long it really takes to publish a book: about three to six months from finished draft if you self-publish, stage by stage, plus how long KDP and IngramSpark take after you click Publish.
How to edit a book yourself: rest the draft, then work in seven passes from big to small, from structure and scenes down to sentences, consistency and a final proofread of the formatted pages.
How to write a picture book: find a child-sized idea, keep it to roughly 500-750 words, leave room for the pictures, plan your page turns across 32 pages, and know the print rules if you self-publish.
How to order KDP author copies and proof copies, what they cost per copy in the UK and US, which Amazon store to order from, and how long to allow before a launch or event.
An ARC is a free advance copy of your book sent to readers before launch so they can review it on release. How self-published authors make ARCs, find ARC readers and stay inside Amazon's rules.
Everything that belongs on the back cover of a book: the blurb, the ISBN barcode, a short bio, praise, the price and your imprint, plus what Amazon KDP and IngramSpark need for the barcode area.
A plain-English walkthrough of every KDP report — Dashboard, Orders, KENP, Promotions, Pre-orders, Month-to-Date, Prior Month's Royalties, Royalties Estimator and Payments — with update cadences checked at Amazon's help pages.
Show, don't tell means letting the reader feel a moment through action, senses and dialogue instead of labelling it. Here is what it means, with before-and-after examples, and when telling is better.
How to make a table of contents in Word for your book: Heading styles, an automatic TOC, chapter-only lists, and the difference between a clickable Kindle TOC and a page-number print TOC.
How to write a book from first idea to finished draft, with a simple daily plan for writing 50,000 words in November and what to do with your draft in December.
CMYK or RGB for your book cover? What KDP and IngramSpark ask for, why bright screen colours go dull in print, and how to check and convert in Canva, Photoshop and Affinity.
Matte or glossy? How each book cover finish looks and wears, which genres tend to use which, and exactly what Amazon KDP and IngramSpark offer for paperbacks and hardcovers.
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