How To Make A Book: 7 Steps For Long-Term Success

Learning how to make a book isn’t as complex as it seems. While it does take skill, it mostly takes the right method to get it right. What if you could have that method at your disposal right now?

That’s exactly what I have for you. I learned how to make a book, published it with my co-author, then went on a snowboarding trip with friends. While we were on the slopes all day, our book Published. sold $400 worth of copies.

It was downloaded 5,274 times in the first three and a half days. In the first month, it brought in close to $7,000. That’s why today, I’m sharing our steps for how to make a book.

They’re easy to follow, straight to the point, and effective at producing a bestselling book. Plus, we’ve taught over 8,000 authors how to write, publish, and market their books over the last 10 years. So let’s learn how to make a book!

How to make a book: what you learn

• How can I make my own book?
• How much does it cost to print a 300-page book?
• Can a 13-year-old make a book?
• Is it legal to use ChatGPT to write a book?

How can I make my own book?

Going from book idea to holding a real book in your hand can change everything but starts with sitting down to do the work. There are several steps that will help you learn how to make a book that actually sells.

1. Define your why

The first step to making a book is to ask yourself why? There are several valid reasons for writing a book.

First and foremost, because you want to! You put the blood, sweat, and tears into authoring a book. Now you want tangible proof that you can see, carry around, and display on your bookshelf. That’s a good enough reason!

Some authors, especially those who identify as non-fiction experts, find that paperbacks serve as glorified business cards.

These copies are especially useful for speaking engagements or professional development events, such as conferences or continuing education courses. Passing out free books to interested readers is a terrific way to build a solid fan base as well as spread the word that you’re an author.

If you elect to sell your books at events, you can recoup some of your costs and potentially even turn a profit. Using your printed book to generate leads and make network connections is never a bad idea. If your book genre lends itself to this type of network development, then definitely go for it.

2. Write an amazing book

Learning how to make a book is about a lot more than just throwing your ideas on paper and hoping they stick. It takes skill, knowledge, and a strategy to make sure it’s done well.

Here are some steps to learning how to make a book great the first time:

• Determine what you want to write about with writing prompts
• Create a book outline you can work from to finish faster
• Learn how many words should be in your book for your genre
• Start writing your book by crafting a strong introduction
• Make sure you have all the necessary parts of a book for your genre
• Develop a writing routine that will help you write your book faster
• Focus on writing daily to finish your draft!
• Celebrate a job well done—and a finished book!

Writing a novel is no easy feat! Make sure to take your time but commit to a deadline that will keep you moving forward every day. This writing schedule should be realistic but difficult enough to require regular progress to achieve.

Save our pro-developed, pre-printing checklist so you can make sure you check all the boxes for how to make a book before clicking publish:

• Choose the size of your book
• Decide on black & white or color (Note: The prices may vary)
• Price your book properly (which we cover in our book launch post)
• Create a rough concept for your covers (discussed below)
• Decide whether to outsource your cover graphics and design
• Write your author bio for the back or inside cover
• Pick your author headshot for the back or inside cover
• Pick the reviews you want to include
• Pick your spine design and layout
• Decide whether to outsource the interior formatting (discussed below)
• Work out an interior layout (from fonts to chapters to margins)

Below is a video tutorial for writing a great book very quickly, which is one of our specialties.

How much does it cost to print a 300-page book?

No matter your page count, costs vary, but that’s what we cover next. How to make a book that fits your budget depends on your chosen distribution channel and what you invest in the process of how to make a book: writing, cover design, formatting, and a lot of other things.

3. Decide your book’s distribution channel

Not every distribution channel is the same. When you’re making a book, you have to think about who is going to print this book.

What’s the best company for printing books? The big question everyone has on their mind is: Amazon or IngramSpark? There are pros and cons to using IngramSpark versus Amazon that you have to consider.

Both Amazon and IngramSpark print your books and distribute them on Amazon. Meaning, they sell those books on Amazon without you as the middleman. They’re direct sale-to-print and they ship out from their warehouses.

That being said, they don’t offer the same perks. For example, IngramSpark actually prints hardback copies of your book, where Amazon only prints paperback copies.

Once you learn how to make a book, it’s up to your how you choose to distribute it. Both options can work. It comes down to what’s best for you and your author goals.

4. Cost to make a book

Making a book (especially as an indie or self-published author) requires getting your book cover design, formatting, and editing completed on your own dime. We call this process book production.

All of this is absolutely necessary if you want to compete with the traditionally published books that are available to buy (either in-store or online). This can add to the costs of how to make a book in the first place.

So how much does it cost to make a book and go through book production? The truth is that there are several factors that add to the cost of making a book. These costs vary based on the company or individual you use to help you, length of your book, etc.

Here are some expenses for making a book:

• Hiring a book editor
• Hiring a cover designer
• Any ads or marketing services you want to include
• Book formatting
• Time spent in the writing, marketing, and publishing phases

If you’re basing your decision strictly on revenue, then you’ll want to think about investment costs before heading down the printing path. Paperback can be costly to produce if you’re not sure what you’re doing, which is why we created a program to help you avoid those expensive mistakes.

We’ve often seen that the most lucrative path for e-authors is the combination of a Kindle eBook and an audiobook. If your goal is to make a living writing books, and you have to choose between the two, then consider pursuing an audiobook over a paperback.

(Although funding an audiobook can be pricey, and you are responsible for that upfront cost, so do the math!)

5. Your cover design

The next step on the road to printing your masterpiece is to design a good book cover. Okay, that’s a lot of pressure, but you should aim for at least a Barnes & Noble-worthy design.

Meeting with a designer can help you verbalize and align on your creative aesthetic and vision, resulting in actionable suggestions. We provide our students with a Rolodex of approved cover designers we know and trust to produce a star-worthy cover.

If you decide that you’d rather design your book’s exterior on your own, there are online programs that can help…although again, we highly recommend you not design your own book cover.

Here are some cheap resources you can get a book cover design:

• Fiverr.com
• 99 Designs
• 100 Covers

Once you know who you want to design your book cover, you also have to think about other small details for the actual printing of your book.

Some design elements you’ll need to consider are:

• Whether or not you’ll want a matte or glossy cover
• Which fonts you’d like for the title of your book, subtitles, and body
• The design of your book’s spine

Typically, books with less than 101 pages should have a completely blank spine, due to space restrictions. Books with more than 101 pages have room for a title on the spine. You know that, of course, your book will need a front cover, but you shouldn’t neglect your book’s rear.

In addition to the cover art and fonts, you’ll need to create a back cover design. Most back covers provide a brief description of the book, an author headshot and a quick bio, and an optional barcode and ISBN placement.

6. Format your book

Formatting your book pages is a finicky, technical process. It’s also a must for learning how to make a book. For this reason, many authors say that outsourcing this chore to a professional book formatter is well worth the cost. Page margins, titles and subheading, and fonts are all tough to layout properly.

Handing this over to a pro can save you a big headache. Moreover, at the end of your earning how to make a book process, a good formatter will give you a quality product.

There are major differences in book formatting, particularly between fiction and nonfiction. You’ll want to take these differences into account (if you hire someone, they will know this).

Here’s an example of a fiction book formatting from Jenna Moreci’s The Savior’s Champion:

This is the difference with many (not all) nonfiction book formats from Chandler’s Bolt’s Published.: The Proven Path From Blank Page To 10,000 Copies Sold:

If you do decide to tackle the interior formatting yourself, then there are programs that can make the process simpler (Word has downloadable templates to make the work easier).

These formats vary, depending on how many pages your book has. Make sure to experiment with multiple formats to help you decide which works best for your specific layout needs.

Can a 13-year-old make a book?

Emma Sumner published her book at just 8-years-old and goes to show anyone can have a book inside them and learn to publish.

It takes commitment to learning how to make a book, which you learned above, uploading your final product, and pressing publish. This is the final step: uploading your book.

7. Upload your book to Amazon

Once you’ve learned how to make a book and print it, the next step is to find your fulfillment house. There are many options available. Fulfillment houses pack, ship, and provide customer service for your books.

We tend to overwhelmingly recommend publishing on Amazon. Their services are user-friendly and simple to follow. This works the best, as you can curb the costs of printing more than the number of copies you need because of Amazon’s print-on-demand.

Is it legal to use ChatGPT to write a book?

Yes, you can use ChatGPT to help you, but there are some best practices for using AI in how to write a book. We recommend using ChatGPT as a tool for how to make a book, but not write the whole book with AI. One of our writers wrote an entire post about how to use, and not use, AI to write your book.

How to make a book: take your next step

There are multitudes of resources out there for learning how to make a book. Whether you want to sell your printed books, use them as pro book marketing tools, or check “write a book” off your bucket list, you can succeed…as long as you commit to the process!

This is part 4 in our book writing series. To read part 5, how to get book reviews on Amazon, click here. To help you get started in how to make a book, use our free Book Outline Generator below!