3 Reasons You’re Hung Up on the “Unknowns” of Publishing Your Book

At the beginning of 2016, I sent out a survey to my peeps to find out what they really wanted from me – and the results were overwhelming:

You wanted to know about the “Two Ps”: Procrastination and Publishing.

For procrastination, I’ve brought you several great resources, including an interview with Dr. Sarah Reiff-Hekking.

But as for publishing… I’ll admit that I haven’t done as many articles and tips around publishing you book as I could have.

Why?

Because 99.9% of people want to KNOW about publishing their book. But only about 15% of them are actually READY to have that conversation. Mostly because the book isn’t done yet! In some cases, a prospect wanted to jump straight into asking me all about publishing and they hadn’t even STARTED their book.

Let me make a confession:

I used to accept people into my Assisted Self-Publishing service no matter where they were in the process. Yep, even if the book wasn’t written yet! They’d pay for the publishing services and we’d wait… and wait… and wait…

I finally figured out that this didn’t help ANYBODY. Books weren’t reaching the people they were meant to reach because THEY WEREN’T WRITTEN. Holding space for publishing is all well and good – except for a lot of really cool books, I’m still waiting.

I get it:

Publishing is exciting! It’s the final step in getting your words out into the world.

It’s fun to think about.

You can dream about having your book be on Oprah’s Book Club.

You can think about claiming your moment as a Best-Selling Author.

It IS fun.

But it can also be exactly what’s keeping you stuck, in this moment, and preventing you from writing your book.

There are three reasons why you might be attracted to publishing – and allowing yourself to be stuck and overwhelmed with your book:

1. You’re “Wasting” Time

In your heart of hearts, you know that all this “research” about publishing is a stalling tactic that you’re allowing to keep you from writing your book. You’re deep in the minutia of the publishing industry – and you know, on some level, that you don’t even NEED to know this information.

But continuing to spend endless hours on Google, researching how to publish your book, allows you to convince yourself that you’re “working” on your book.

Even when you know you’re not!

2. Fears of the Future

Publishing your book is a big, scary unknown. There are so many things to consider (what type of publishing, editing, formatting, cover design, titles, ISBN, copyright, layout… the list goes on!) that it’s easy to allow the fear of not figuring it all out take over. You know there are questions out there that need to be answered – but you don’t know if there are three or three dozen.

And you’re stuck. You don’t know what you don’t know and you don’t know where to begin. So you do nothing – not researching publishing your book and certainly not writing. “Working” on your book looks a lot like talking about it to anybody who’ll listen – but no actual action.

3. You’ve Got to Know It All

The publishing threshold is out there – and you have to know every.single.thing about the entire publishing industry before you can finish your book. Any unanswered question is a bad question – and you have to have all the answers. Now.

The only thing that gives you comfort and confidence in writing your book is having a huge folder stuffed with research, details, formatting how-tos, and case studies.

The problem… every “answer” leads you to a new question. And when you encounter conflicting information… meltdown!

Everyone I’ve met is either solidly in one category or unhappily straddling two (or even three!). I totally get it: publishing IS a huge deal. It’s the manifestation of your book from the digital world – or the dream world – into physical form.

And it IS a big deal.

I was a 2/3 – and I was stuck. I like to know how all the technology works BEFORE I start any project (#3) and I was terrified of not knowing which questions to ask (#2). This meant I was stuck for a long time – unable to write.

Not a fun place to be!

And so many authors I talk to are in that same place.

Here’s the unvarnished truth:

In order for ANY publishing conversation to become relevant, you need to WRITE THE BOOK.

But the other side of that coin is that all those fears about the unknowns… they’ve kept you stuck long enough! So let’s get you moving by answering the start of those publishing questions with “Kim’s Kickass Publishing Checklist”

This 12-step checklist shows you the exact steps you need to take – and will give you the comfort of knowing that all your questions are answered! Then, if you want to take it deeper, when you opt-in, I’ve got a special offer that will answer ALL your publishing questions.

Get your checklist here >>> PublishYourBookChecklist.com

Kim Galloway
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