How Do I Even Self-Publish a Book?
The easiest way to publish a book is through
Amazon KDP, the biggest platform for independent authors. You sign up at
Self Publishing | Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, provide a few details and you’re ready to go. There are countless freelancers who will turn your Word document into a properly-formatted ebook and it's all relatively easy.
Unless you decide to publish a hardcover book (that requires publishing it via
www.ingramspark.com) you don’t even need to apply for ISBN as Amazon can provide you with a free ISBN for your paperback (no ISBN is necessary for a Kindle version).
If you need an ISBN because you want to have a nice hardback version of your book, you’ll have to buy it through
www.myidentifiers.com (that’s for those who are US-based, other countries have different suppliers and in some countries ISBNs are even free).
If you decide to publish your book as an audiobook, too (and you should), then you also need to sign up at
www.acx.com, an Amazon-owned company, that distributes audiobooks to all major platforms including Amazon, iTunes, and Google Play. That’s where you can also hire a voiceover artist who's knowledgeable about the ACX submission requirements.
If you want to have the widest reach possible, you should also publish your book on iTunes, Barnes&Noble and Kobo. You can also do that through
www.draft2digital.com which takes a small cut in exchange for easier distribution to multiple platforms at once. Google Play is another important player. You can sign up here:
Google Play Books Partner Center
If distributing to several platforms sounds too difficult, just ignore it for now.
Amazon will be responsible for 90%+ of your sales anyway and if you’re mostly interested in ordering author copies and distributing them yourself, it’s not worth your time to worry about other distributors.
What about cover design? You can find a professional designer on many freelancer platforms. My current favorite is
www.Reedsy.com, a marketplace where you can hire freelancers for every single step of working on your book (ghostwriters, editors, designers, marketers, publicists, and people who will help you get book reviews).