The first step for a self-publisher after you’ve finished writing a manuscript is to hire a developmental editor, who gives you advice about “big picture” issues in your book, whether it’s fiction (where they might talk about whether characters are complex, dialogue believable, the plot tight) or nonfiction (where they might give advice about the length of each section, their order, and if the whole thing is making sense). Instead of marking up your document, most developmental editors leave comments along the edges of the pages such as, “Have you thought about…” and “Maybe you should try…” In fact, some developmental editors don’t leave comments at all, but rather prepare a five- to twenty-page summary of all their thoughts about the entire book put together at once. Sometimes this advice involves humongous changes to the manuscript, such as eliminating an entire chapter or melding two characters into one, so most authors take these notes back and make any changes needed to their manuscript before starting the next step of the process. This is about the only part of the process so far that can’t be aided or replaced by so-called “AI” large language models, so must be done by a human.

Next you hire a copy editor, who does the job most people think of when they think of the term “editing,” a close-in and meticulous look for errors when it comes to what editors call GUPS (grammar, usage, punctuation and spelling). This person makes their proposed changes right in the document itself (usually in either Microsoft Word, Google Docs or Libre Office), while the feature “track changes” is on in that app, so that you can review each proposed change afterwards and manually either “approve” it (in which case the text will get changed to the editor’s suggestion) or “reject” it (in which case your text stays the same as it was before). Apps such as Grammarly are getting better and better at simple copy-editing needs, although a trained and certified human is always your best bet for now.

Once both rounds of edits are approved, the manuscript is considered “locked down,” which means that no more changes to its actual content can be made, so that the “production” of the book can proceed. It heads to your interior designer, who takes your word-processing file (such as Word) and converts it into a much more complex book-layout file, using industry-specialty software like Adobe InDesign and Quark XPress. This person makes your eventual paperback book look exactly the way it’s going to look, including all the page numbers, the front and back matter, the correct amount of blank pages needed at the beginning and end, etc. It’s still typical to hire someone for this, but in just the last few years there has been the rise of user-friendly book-layout software, most famously Scrivener (which I use), Atticus and Canva, so self-publishing authors might have some luck actually learning the software themselves and saving quite a chunk of money.

The ebook version of the book must be designed at this point as well. Many interior designers offer this as a free service when they make the paper copy; but since they’re primarily paper designers, they typically make the ebook the same way the author can make it themselves, by using one of a plethora of free apps that exist. Amazon itself, for example, makes a pretty great ebook designer app, while I myself using the open-source Calibre. Ultimately an ebook is nothing more than the same HTML and CSS files of a website, so if one really wants to, you can take a week of your life and learn how to build EPUB files completely from scratch like a full-time coder does, which gives you ultimate control over how your book will look and behave on all the various electronic devices out there.

At the same time, a cover artist is also hired, usually a different person than the interior designer; their sole job is to design an interesting and eye-catching front and back cover for the book. They deliver detailed, high-memory files ready to be sent directly to the fussy four-color printing machines at the book factory. There is a growing trend among self-publishers to use AI such as Midjourney to create cover art, and this still remains a cheap way to generate a sometimes very dynamic image itself; but remember that it also has to be laid out in the very precise, often maddening measures of the printing industry, with four-color separated files that work perfectly, and that AIs don’t provide troubleshooting for these issues if you have problems like human cover artists do.

Finally during production, an author may or may not decide to produce an audiobook, which involves at minimum an engineer, a voice artist, or someone who does both. Like the designer, they’ll deliver specialty files to you at the end of the process; and like the designer, there are a growing number of automated alternatives for this, some of which work okay but all of which you should be wary of and informed about.

At the end of production, the designer unites their interior with the cover artist’s cover, delivering what’s called a “post-production proof” to you, usually as a high-memory PDF file. At that point you hire a post-production proofreader, who does one last look at the entire manuscript one more time, now as its finished PDF, not only trying to find every last typo in the body text, but also looking for errors in the front and back matter like the title page and copyright page, the headers and footers, and the page numbers. Any good designer will include one round of final small changes like this as part of their fee, but you should check with them in advance anyway.

After the final changes, the finished files now need to be uploaded to Amazon, both as a Kindle ebook and a CreateSpace paper book. This is a fairly simple process, and most authors can learn to do this themselves after a weekend of online tutorials, but you can also always hire someone inexpensive like a college student to do it for you.

Congratulations, your book is finished and available to the public! But don’t forget, that’s only half the process of self-publishing; now comes at least an entire year of marketing and promotional work.