Finishing a manuscript is one of the most rewarding achievements for any writer, but once you are at this stage, what’s next? You may have spent many weeks, months and even years in composing your book, but that was only the beginning, getting it published and successfully published that is, can be a daunting challenge for anyone, even if this isn’t your first time.

So, here are nine steps that you should consider once you’ve typed ‘The End’ on your manuscript:
 
One - Editing and Revision:
Before submitting the manuscript to publishers (traditional or self-publishing upload), it is essential to edit and revise it thoroughly. This includes checking for grammar and spelling errors, refining the plot and characters, and ensuring the overall coherence and flow of the story.

If you want to do this yourself, put the book down and give it a couple of weeks before you review it, getting some distance can help you to look at it again with fresh eyes, and there are plenty of software options to help you do this. But it must be said, getting a professional to edit your book is a far better option and usually leads to better results in polishing your book.

Self publishing a book with IngramSpark is a very popular choice for many authors, with their great distribution and wide printing options along with the ease of use of their service, it’s easy to see how they are one of the biggest self publishing options.

But how much does it cost to publish your book with them?
​
Well, setting up your new account with IngramSpark is free (as you’d expect) and they have just recently started to offer free ISBNs for US customers (however, these free ISBNs are for their own platform only, so if you are publishing on other services too, then you will need to purchase your own ISBNs to be safe).

For many authors Ingram Spark is their first choice when considering a print on demand service, their finished product always tends to be high quality and they offer very expansive distribution of author’s books. Each time we receive a completed book from Ingram we’re always impressed with how it’s been finished (especially when you compare it to some of the other more popular POD providers).

The design and exporting process however is a little different to many other publishers, but it’s still pretty straightforward all the same, the main things that you’ll need to consider is in using one of their excellent templates and ensuring that the ink levels are adjusted to meet their stands of 240%.

Creating a book cover design for Ingram Spark is a little more involved than some other publisher’s requirements, and this is where the use of Adobe products is helpful (and a necessity for the designer).

Here at JD&J we use both InDesign and Photoshop when creating a book cover, we tend to create the artwork for the book cover design within Photoshop and then compile the cover itself within InDesign, we do it this way as the two work well together and Photoshop gives more scope for the artwork element within the book cover design.

One great thing about Ingram is their use of templates, now you don’t have to use them, but we’ve found it better to do so and it can be a great way of checking the specifics of the layout before upload.
​