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If you want to write and publish a book about your life, or part of your life, you will need to follow some simple steps: 1. Writing the story – or telling the story verbally. 2. Manuscript assessment and self-editing. 3. Tagging images. 4. Copy editing. 5. Designing your self-published book. 6. Printing and/or epublishing.

Note that most editors, designers and printers with whom you will need to engage to produce a self-published book can work with you entirely online.

1. Writing the story – or telling it

First you need to write your story down. Or, if writing is not your thing, you can tell your story to a scribe, or into a recorder, and get it typed up. The result will be a draft manuscript of your typed story.

You can tell your stories in order you like, although if you have told them in any old order, you should afterwards move the different stories into chronological order, as this is going to make the next stage easier for you and your editor.

If you are a story teller – a talker – rather than a writer, that is fine. You can hire a scribe to type as you speak. Or you can hire a life stories coach or life stories writer to ask you questions and record or type your stories. Any recordings can be either converted to text via voice-to-text or a human transcriptionist can type them into accurate transcripts. Call us if you need any help with this.

2. Manuscript assessment and self-editing

Before beginning this next step you will need to be sure who the audience is – who do you intend to read your life story or memoir? Friends and family only, or the general public? And do you want it to be available for purchase online?

Anyone who writes their story down for the first time, or tells their life stories, for a book that they want strangers to read is going to miss some details that the reader is going to need to know. They are going to say some things in their book that the reader will find confusing because they don’t know the background of the storyteller. They are going to assume the reader understands them, when the reader may not. They are not going to realise how to make their story so engaging that the audience will read it to the end.

Once the content has been written, it’s important to hand the manuscript over to an editor or life story writer to do a manuscript assessment. They will point out what needs further explanation or clarification, what is really interesting so should be expanded on by the storyteller, and anything that may pose a risk such as potential defamation issues, breach of copyright or offensive language risk. They will look review the structure of the memoir or life story and suggest any changes required to make sure the content is presented in the best way for the particular story being published or to improve the reader’s engagement. This may include suggestions to move some parts of the story to another place, change the chapter/part structure or change the tense.

Then, either the writer will address those issues within the manuscript; or, if the client is a storyteller who wants the editor  or life story writer to make the required changes to the manuscript, they can work with the editor or life stories writer scribe to verbalise those details while they are typed in.

Once all those issues have been addressed the content will be finished and the manuscript will be ready for copy editing, except for the tagging stage.

3. Tagging images

If you don’t intend to include any images in your book, you can skip this step.

If you want to include any images or photos in your story, they will need to be “tagged” in the manuscript, and a caption written for each one, prior to the copy editing stage. For instructions on how to do this, go to Tagging.

4. Copy editing the manuscript

An editor who has not yet seen the manuscript is the best person to do the copy edit because they will be able to edit it with “fresh eyes”. To find out what happens during the copy editing stage, check out both these articles: Rough copy edit, and Final copy edit.

Once the final copy edit is finished, the manuscript will be ready for design.

5. Designing your self-published book

If you want to self-publish a professional-looking book, you will need to get a designer to design it for you. They will collaborate with you to do the layout  or typesetting of the inside pages, including any images you want to include, and design the cover, all as per the specifications of the printer or epublisher.

To know what to expect at the design stage, go to: The design stage.

If you want a publisher to publish your book for you – that is, you would hand the manuscript over to a publisher who then organises and pays for the design and printing, and publishes it for you – you do not have to pay for the design, and you may not have any input into how your book is designed.

Note: it is rare for a publisher to selected a manuscript by a first-time author for publishing. Be very careful when browsing the numerous so-called “publishers” in the online self-publishing industry; some are legitimate publishers but others are unethical companies and/or scammers. For information that will help you avoid being ripped off go to: Comparing different types of publishers/publishing.

6. Printing or epublishing

If you have no experience in self-publishing you may find it easier to ask an experienced self-publishing services provider to manage either the whole production of your book, or this end-stage of working with the designer and printer to finalise the printing and/or epublishing of your book. If you’d like us to give you some free advice about this, you are welcome to contact us here.

If you want to epublish your book, make sure your designer has designed books for epublishing previously, so they can guide you through the steps.

If you want to manage the printing of your self-published book yourself, you will need to become familiar with terms such as GSM (thickness of paper), specifications, dimensions, spine width, and the terms for different types of paper and paper finishes. Some printers are more helpful than others in helping your learn about printing. If you would like us to refer you to a particularly helpful printer, you can contact us here.