Publish My Writing! (Fine, I’ll Do It Myself)

*** This post is from my 2024 Presentation. I redid the presentations in 2025 and recorded them. You can find them here and here. ~Kolby

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Here are my speaking notes from my presentation “Publish My Writing!  (Fine, I’ll Do It Myself)” from my Phoenix Fan Fusion Presentation this weekend, for those who didn’t get a handout. Pardon any typos. Kolby @ After Dinner Conversation

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Publish My Writing!  (Fine, I’ll Do It Myself)

Presented by:  After Dinner Conversation

www.afterdinnerconversation.com

1. The Part Where I Tell You Not to Do It

   1. “If you had a crystal ball, and could see that you were going to write your whole life, and you would never get famous, never make a living at it, and never see your book in a bookstore, would you write anyway?  Only if the answer is yes, should you start.”

   2. From Big Publisher Lawsuit

      1. They published 58,000 Titles

      2. 90% sold less than 2,000 copies

      3. 50% sold less than 12 copies

   3. Four million books released per year

      1. 1.7 million self-published

   4. Literary Magazines (1,000 Literary Magazines)

      1. Ten Print 10,000 Copies

      2. Seven More Print 5,000 Copies

      3. The Rest Print FAR Less

   5. For Literary Magazines, of those that (1) Pay Authors, (2) Don’t Charge For Submissions, (3) Aren’t Affiliated w/School or Single Rich Donor.  (Less Than 10)

   6. Self-Published Genre Writing Makes Money

      1. Main:  Romance

      2. Secondary: Mystery, Science Fiction, Fantasy

   7. “Readers” aren’t a bell curve.  1% of people do 90% of all reading.

2.  How To Get Published?

   1. Write, and write, and write.

   2. Become a slush pile reader

   3. Write to market/write your passion?

   4. Learn genre themed and lengths

      1. 50K-100K (Novel)(Length Depends on Genre A Bit)

      2. 14K-40K (Novella)

      3. 50k-80k (Young Adult Novel)

   5. Find agents who publish your kind of writing.

      1. Agents specialize in genres

      2. Find them online/social media/etc.

      3. They want “the same, but different.”

      4. They check how many social media followers you have.  They really do.

      5. (Almost) nobody cares about your MFA.

   6. Find literary magazines that publish your kind of writing

      1. They don’t specialize as much, but do have themed issues.

      2. The top literary magazines rarely pull from slush piles, even though they say they are open to submissions.

   7. How To Find Literary Magazines

      1. Duotrope

      2. Chillsubs

      3. Submittable

      4. 100% chance of a submission they don’t publish being rejected

   8. Follow submission guidelines

      1. Don’t sweat your cover letter, just don’t have typos

      2. Wait (Sometimes for months)

      3. Simultaneous Submissions?

      4. Pay to submit?  ($3-$5 is standard.)

3. Nevermind, I’ll Just Do It Myself

   1. Beware the “Vanity Press” You Should Never Have to Pay To Get Published.

      1. “The only people who got rich during the California gold rush were the people selling the pans.”

   2. Tiers of Self-Publishing

      1. Entry Level Blog (Prose And Pose)

      2. Publish Regularly on A Website (evergreen Review)

      3. Publish Digital On Amazon

      4. Create A Substack (Or Some Other Paid Platform) (After Dinner Conversation)

         1. Paid (Subscribers Pay $5/Month or Unpaid)

   3. Publish print/digital via Amazon, Draft2Digital, or others.

4.  Steps To Publishing Print/Digital

   1. Create The Book Interior

   2. Create in anything, save as a .pdf

      1. We use Word

      2. Fancy people use Adobe InDesign

      3. Whatever you use, have a checklist.

      4. Use the built-in conversation formatting tools

      5. Vellum (Mac)

      6. Atticus (PC)

   3. Use a copy editor!

   4. Create Book Covers

      1. Photoshop or other photo software

      2. Save as .pdf

      3. Sizing Depends on Size and # of Pages (Amazon Calculator)

      4. Get an ISBN? (Not really needed, as Amazon/Draft2Digital will give you one)

      5. Get Library Congress Control Number?

   5. Create a Digital and/or Print Book?

   6. Tier One – Print On Demand

      1. Amazon (Bookshop.org)

      2. Draft2Digital.com

   7. Tier Two – Do Print Runs (250+ Print Runs)

      1. Bookmobile (Mixam)

   8. Order a Proof

   9. Order Copies to ship to people

   10. Or Do Authors Copies w/Amazon POD

   11. Get Book Reviews

       1. Send out Advance Reader Copies

       2. Work with paid services

       3. Paid to find you readers for the ARC

          1. NOT paid reviewers…

       4. Amazon/Goodreads/Etc

   12. Do it again… and again..

       1. 20BooksTo50K

5. How Do People Find Your Book/Website?

   1. SEO

   2. Social Media (Taco Bell Quarterly)

      1. Follow/Unfollow/DM’s

   3. Bookfunnel.com

      1. Our Website Links

   4. Email Distribution Lists

      1. Mailchimp, etc…

      2. We use the one built into squarespace.

   5. Buy Ads

      1. Facebook Ads

      2. Google Ads

      3. Amazon Ads

   6. The “I’ll post on my social media page/to my list” for a fee all suck.

      1. https://www.thefussylibrarian.com/ isn’t bad…

   8. Other Useful Website

   1. CLMP.org (Professional Organization Website)

   2. Zapier.com (Action Automation)

   3. Shutterstock (Purchase Photo Rights)

   4. Alliance of Independent Authors

   5. Kindlepreneur (https://kindlepreneur.com/secret-vip-page)

   6. Publisherrocket (https://publisherrocket.com/)

   7. IngramSpark

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These were meant to be my speaking notes, so there are for sure typos as this was meant to just jog my memory while speaking. You can always email me at editor@afterdinnerconversation.com