Should I Self Publish A Political Biography?

What You Need To Do Before You Self-Publish A Book

I cannot stress this enough – before going very far down the decision making process trail, first determine what goal you political biography serves.

For most local candidates the real goal is to give voters the chance to get to know them better, to learn about their platform and experience, and to elevate themselves to expert status as compared to their competition.

Because these are typically the goals ebooks can be a great format for these books. They can be downloaded and read instantly and are virtually delivered, free to store and mostly free to produce. Self-publishing is a great way to do this.

However, consider all your publishing options before deciding to self-publish your book. There are many ways to get the word out about your political platform today.

Traditional publishing might be what you are dreaming about, but self publishing is also a great option with print-on-demand services available. E-books are also a great option because the price of production is so very low.

When people dream of being traditionally published, they often get excited about the prospect of a book advance. While it might be nice to receive an upfront payment for your candidate bio book, it’s important to understand how advances really work. First, the amount isn’t as much as many people imagine. If you’re getting a publishing deal for the first time, you’ll probably receive an advance of around $5,000 to $15,000 dollars.

Unless you rubbed elbows with someone famous, or did something truly historic I would not recommend going this route. An ebook is what I would say most local politicians should consider.

How to self-publish a book

When you’re ready to jump in and learn how to self publish a book, writing is the easy part for most campaigns. After that, there’s lots of easy-to-use resources to format your book and get it on amazon and other sites that sell books. It’s the steps that come after publishing that can make all the difference in how much money you make, if that is a part of your goal.

Ok, let me get all self-helpy for a minute. Write this on an index card: “I am a bestselling author.” put it on your fridge. Look at it every day. If you believe wholeheartedly you can achieve something, then it absolutely will happen. I promise. You’re an organized, driven person who has just written an entire book. You can absolutely put in the work and follow the steps required to publish it. You know there are infinite resources on self-publishing and marketing waiting for you on the web.

It will become hard though if you don’t begin with some guidelines in place. Having a predetermined writing schedule and system will keep things nicely in order and moving forward. Time management is key.

Self-publishing comes with plenty of perks, but the biggest might be the ability to get your story out there as soon as you’re done writing it. Writing a book takes considerable time and effort, so it can be frustrating to wait months or even years trying to find publishers to take on your project. By choosing the self-publishing route, you can skip the steps of finding an agent, submitting a book proposal, and going back and forth with the publisher about edits, contracts, payments, and other details. Instead, you’ll go straight to getting your book out there in the world.

Publishing is a journey, and it’s easy to get lost in all the noise and confusion. We are here to carry the load and show you the way.

Should You Self-Publish Your Book?

I strongly believe everyone reading this has the content inside of them to write a book. If you want to stand out in a world of other political candidates, you need to underline your expertise. Publishing a book is not just putting your thoughts on a blog post or in a speech. A biography gives people the chance to make notes or jot down questions they want to ask. It allows them to underline and dog-ear pages. It gives them something they can show others and involve them in the political process of discussion before voting.

I think self publishing is of tremendous value to readers, writers, and the publishing field.

Freedom, control and ownership: your book is your own and no publisher can tell you what to put in or how to position it. Maximum profit: 100% of your sales income comes directly to you. Time: you are working completely to your own timescales. Low risk: you can spend virtually nothing (though professional editing and cover design is strongly advised) except your own time.

We can help you develop a strong concept that really connects with your audience.

Ready to be a published author?

Are you wondering if you should self-publish or traditionally publish? you’re not alone. The same question is on the minds of many candidates I meet, regardless of their career path or how established they are. When I began working in the publishing industry in the mid-1980s, a stigma surrounded both self-published books and self-published authors. Not so any longer.

As a candidate you don’t have to worry about book promotion or marketing unless your focus is making money. What you will want to do instead is figure out how to get the most bang for your effort using social media. Your book will help you do just that. I recommend every one running for a local office start by outlining their political bio. This helps with web design for your campaign and social media. It’s symbiotic!

Content marketing becomes a breeze with a book to use as a guide. Once you’ve put forth the effort to write it you have an untold number of predetermined talking points you can confidently refer to.

Book self publishing is the ultimate solution for authors, experts, and change-makers who are ready to professionally turn their manuscript into one gorgeous book. Once your ebook is finished and available on your site, you will still want premium-quality book printing and binding services so you can finally see your book on the bookshelf. Short run and POD print services allows you to have both.

This provides photo ops with your book and instantly makes you an expert in the eyes of your constituents. It’s human nature. After spending over 30 years in the publishing industry and serving hundreds of self-published authors and companies, I know exactly what I’m talking about.

Press releases can also be distributed fairly inexpensively which will keep you on the top of the newsfeeds, giving you an edge over your opponents.

Does that mean if you’ve ever self-published that you’ve already shot yourself in the foot for ever getting an agent or publisher? no, certainly not. Nothing in publishing, or life, is ever that black and white. There are plenty of authors who started their careers in self-publishing and successfully moved over to traditional publishing, even those who didn’t have great sales.

Publishing Advice For Political Candidates

Our company helps make the publishing process not only efficient but enjoyable as well. The publishing agents are all quite adept at their jobs, and they make sure that the publishing process goes as smoothly as possible.

It used to be that the only way to publish a book was through a literary agent and a traditional publishing house. It was a highly competitive market, saturated with thousands of query letters and writers hoping their manuscripts would stand out from the crowd. Since then, multiple new opportunities have risen for authors to get their books published thanks to the rise in self-publishing. Once considered inferior in the publishing industry for delivering half-baked books, self-publishing has stepped up its game to prove that anyone with a great idea can become an author.

Managing the distribution process is another big hurdle for authors. This is the phase that brings the book from the printer to the reader. You’ll need to choose whether to focus on reaching the audience through bookstores, word-of-mouth, or an author’s sales page. If you have a platform and an established online presence, you can publish and distribute through your website. For a more relaxed budget, you can distribute your books through established and renowned retailers.

What about the book cover?

Who is going to create your book cover? who will design the book layout itself? (canva has a good blog post on designing book covers here, including templates). As always, the best result is possible if you’re willing to pay for a professional designer’s time. For each task involved in self-publishing your book, ask, ‘do i feel confident enough to take this on? or would i feel more comfortable handing it over to someone else?’.

Book formatting will be determined by your outlets (such as Amazon’s KDP) and your finished project (like an ebook vs a kindle book or print on demand).

A simple email letter with an image of your book can be an effective promotional tool to your friends and family. Encourage them to forward the notice to their friends about your book or create a signature line which includes a link to purchasing your book or a small graphic of the cover.

Here’s what I love about self publishing

Writing a candidate autobiography is an event. It shows your best curated thoughts and it shows potential voters what the most important things are on your mind are right now.

You don’t have to just write one either…I heard you groan! But, if it is appropriate to break things down into say civil service, military service, political experience, etc. You could do it, appealing to different demographics. Either way you will want to highlight major influences, endorse other candidates you work well with or who have similar platforms as your own, and show how you are independent from the pack.

There are many free publishing tools available. You get to keep all the royalties if you simply distribute on your website and you can build an email list! You can use it to get the vote out or make announcements to your tribe about events, protests, etc. It can become an effective channel for sharing information.

Costs can be kept down in these ways which means you don’t have to worry about tools and programs very much, just on writing. Editors can be very helpful and might cost a bit if you don’t have someone you trust to read your work.

Before you self-publish a book create an account on KDP

Self-publishing has quickly become the go-to standard for the majority of authors to get published because: it’s fast. You can self-publish a book in a few weeks or less, while it takes up to 2 years or more to get a book published through traditional channels. It’s easy and financially smart. You can do it yourself by following a few steps. I promise. It doesn’t take as long as you think!

You don’t need to pay thousands of dollars to a self-publishing services company to publish your book on amazon. It’s totally free to create all your accounts and publish your book on amazon. To self-publish an ebook on amazon kindle, just create a kdp account at https://kdp.amazon.com/en_us/

“What You Need To Do Before You Self-Publish A Book”

Whether you are indie publishing, traditionally publishing or doing some mix with an ebook and print-on-demand, your book will still be legitimate. What matters most is that you connect with your audience and this may best be done in a more casual tone that many candidates adopt.

It doesn’t have to be formal to be legit. It just has to communicate. Consider this the first thing you need to determine before you self-publish or even put pen to paper.

A political bio can be a shortcut to voter confidence

If you’re going into this with little knowledge of the publishing process, doing everything yourself will be very difficult. You’ll need to know where your skills lie, how to deal with vendors, and know how to stick within a budget. Remember, publishing a book is never free, especially with diy. You’ll have to consider the cost of everything from book printing to obtaining an isbn numbers to copyrighting your work, unless you make an ebook as we suggest.

We also offer a myriad of great add-ons that will make the book publishing and marketing process so much more effective and easy. These can be shortcuts to your voter base on social media.

Ways To Promote Your Book

You probably shouldn’t be working on your website, designing your own covers or promo images, doing your bookkeeping, figuring out facebook advertising, or anything else that is subtracting from the momentum that matters most to your campaign. But, your book should be all you. A ghost writer can help, but remember to outline your reason for running and why you want their vote. Trusting people to help you get elected is fine, but don’t let them be your voice.

You want as much of your marketing to be done on autopilot as possible. The aforementioned add-ons can help with this. There are many ways to get free book promotion ideas for your books.

Success will be determined by a few things. Keyword research when promoting in social media, press releases and blog posts will be essential.

Author Services for Busy Politicians

When you get picked up by a publishing house, you’re signing over the rights to your book. It’s quite possible that their editor will make you change stuff you don’t want to change—including the title. When you hire your own editor, you have the freedom to decide where to draw the line. It is still your book. Personally, I like being able to choose the cover of my book, and the price, and where it’s distributed. This is another reason to use an ebook as your main media.

Along with editing and proofreading, book cover design is one of the most important components of a successful self-published book. Professional cover artists understand the importance of good design for capturing reader attention. Readers do judge a book by its cover. As for layout and interior design, if you are blessed with talent in graphic arts, layout, and creating. Mobi or. Epub files, you can do your own design. Kindle’s guidelines are published on their site. If you’re not so blessed, kindle support can walk you through it all, but you’ll have no control over the cover or the interior design.

The single best way to determine the retail price for any book is to look at comparable books: visit the category on amazon where your book will be sold. What are the prices of top-selling books? do this based on format: kindle ebook, paperback, hardcover. If you do write a series of books you can treat book one as a marketing tool for other books in the series.

We offer author services specifically designed for busy professionals and politicians who want to self publish their biographies.

What Happens After You Write Your New Book

Offers for interviews, tv-show appearances, and business opportunities might come rolling in. If you are creative you can create a working relationship with certain media outlets that might have you on again and again discussing various topics from your book. Having your words in front of them makes it easy to quote you, check your stance or point of view on things. An ebook is a file you can send them easily for reference.

How To Promote A Self-Published Book

Despite the many benefits of self-publishing, it comes with a few drawbacks as well. Though the road to getting your book out there is much easier when you go with the diy option, a traditional publisher has the upper hand when it comes to actually generating sales. Managing publicity for a self-published book is much tougher without publishing professionals with years of experience and hundreds of noteworthy contacts at their disposal. It’s unlikely you’ll see your book on the shelves at a bookstore, reviewed in a magazine, or named on a best-seller list without the help of a traditional publisher.

When you’re ready to promote your book, book bloggers are the cyber soldiers that will lift you up to amazon’s best-selling sky. Some book bloggers are reader-reviewers, others are fans of authors, and some promote free e-books published on amazon, like bookbub or freebooksy. Use a combination of their services.

You’ll want to get some good number of reviews of your book if it’s listed on Amazon. It might even help to give some copies to people to review. Their opinion isn’t everything, but feedback is nice. However, the main reason for getting reviews is it helps your book rank and reach more potential readers/voters. Who knows they might even buy a physical copy if you offer it.

With self publishing, you own all the content and you can use it however you like. You can republish portions of it on your blog. This brings in extra traffic, grows your blog, and helps promote your books all at once. You can also move content into apps, custom guides, and several other side projects that might not have been possible with a traditionally published book.

A purely digital publication has the added benefit of being able to copy information and offer links directly citing other sites, candidates, voting records, etc. Imagine a link to a Youtube video where your competition has derailed.

Your book is polished, published, and hopefully pulling in readers already! but that doesn’t mean your work is done — far from it. The final step of how to publish a book is marketing it to the fullest. You’ve already gotten the ball rolling, now consider a launch plan. Press releases, tours or readings allow you to connect with authors and readers. Guest-posting to promote your book isn’t just for your launch plan! even after you’ve launched, continue reaching out to relevant blogs, especially those written by other authors who might want to cross-promote.

Most importantly; however, is that you keep your name, your record, your platform before the voters. A politician biography is a great way to do it. Asking, “should I self publish” is a big part of that.