In today’s Publetariat Dispatch, The Book Designer Joel Friedlander talks strategy and planning with respect to publishing.
In the May/June issue of Writer’s Digest, you’ll find my feature article on “Publishing Strategies for Savvy Self-Publishers.”

Here’s a brief excerpt where I talk about getting specific with your approach to publishing:

Understanding your own goals and expectations is the most  important thing you can do for yourself. You can’t set off on a journey  if you don’t know your destination, it just doesn’t work very well.

One way to think about this is to identify three things:

1. Who is your ideal reader?
2. What kind of books does she buy?
3. Where are most of those books sold?

If you can answer this ultra-simple set of questions, you’re well on  your way to figuring out the end goal of your book publishing, and your  answers to these questions will come into play later on [in this  article].

 

The article discusses:

• Four strategies to consider,
  1. Evaluate your options
  2. Putting together your publishing team
  3. Seek support and assistance from the self-publishing community
  4. Turn yourself into a marketing machine
• Links and resources for each strategy
• Writers who blog about their own publishing
• Should you do everything yourself?
• What kind of book should you publish?

You can get the magazine printed on real paper at major newsstands. Writer’s Digest also has an online store where you can purchase a PDF of the article.

Some of the inspiration for the article was drawn from the work I did putting together the presentation I talked about here:

Self-Publishing Strategies in 18 Slides

I’ve often said the most urgent need in the indie community is for  author education. There’s nothing else that can save you countless hours  of research, frustration, and the pain of making the wrong choice for  your book. That’s one of the reasons I was glad to have the opportunity  to write for a magazine with exactly those readers.

But I’m curious. Do you read magazines aimed at writers?

This is a reprint from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer.