Start Here: How to Self-Publish Your Book
by Jane Friedman
The best free orientation document in the topic: the rare piece that explains the difference between DIY, author-services and hybrid publishers honestly, including what each costs. A publishing-industry veteran's overview of the self-publishing landscape, comparing DIY platforms, author-services companies and hybrid publishers, then walking through ebook and print-on-demand production, ISBNs, distribution choices and the costs each path carries.
More resources on Self-Publishing & Book Marketing
The Creative Penn
Weekly podcast and blog by author-entrepreneur Joanna Penn, with interviews on writing craft, self-publishing, book marketing, audiobooks, and running an independent author business. Listeners learn how indie authors publish, distribute and sell their books and build lasting income from their writing.
The Creative Penn Podcast
Joanna Penn's weekly interview show, running since 2009 with more than 880 episodes, covering self-publishing mechanics, book marketing, audiobooks, direct sales, rights licensing and author business decisions, usually with working authors and industry practitioners as guests.
Newsletter Ninja: How to Become an Author Mailing List Expert
A practical treatment of author email lists: choosing a reader magnet, setting up automated welcome sequences, writing newsletters people actually open, cleaning inactive subscribers, and using the list to drive launch-week sales rather than passive announcements. The mailing list is the one marketing asset an indie author owns outright, and no free source treats it at this depth.
Strangers To Superfans: A Marketing Guide to The Reader Journey
A framework for book marketing built around five stages of a reader's journey from first exposure to advocacy, diagnosing where conversion breaks down: cover and blurb, sample pages, series hooks, back-matter and mailing list capture. Book marketing is the half of this topic most infested with course funnels; this is the rare treatment that reasons about reader psychology and conversion structure instead of a channel-of-the-month.
Let's Get Digital: How To Self-Publish, And Why You Should (Fourth Edition)
Gaughran's end-to-end guide to publishing independently: hiring editors and cover designers, formatting, pricing, retailer choice, metadata, keywords and categories. The ebook is free at every major retailer; the fourth edition reflects current store mechanics.
Amazon KDP Help Center
Amazon's own documentation for Kindle Direct Publishing: manuscript and cover file specifications for ebook, paperback and hardcover, ISBN handling, pricing and royalty tiers, KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited terms, category and keyword rules, and content guidelines. Third-party KDP tutorials go stale within months and are the single largest category of slop in this topic. Reading the operator docs directly removes an entire class of bad information.