I offer a helpful tool to improve the quality of your book and guide you in finishing your project on time, lowering your stress.
Whether you are a first-time or seasoned author with multiple books, crafting a polished and professional book is a complex process. As a seasoned book author and ghostwriter of many technical books, I gained significant experience in the book writing and marketing process.
In recent years, I have also had the privilege of mentoring numerous aspiring authors and guiding them through traditional and self-publishing. In addition, I guided indie authors in marketing and selling their products using various methods and documented a case study about my success.
I helped some essay writers, bloggers, and storytellers to become book authors. I shared my insights in an interview by editors in 2022. I also developed a guide for writers of this platform to convert their stories to e-books. My secret to being a prolific author is using my time efficiently and leveraging productivity and creativity tools.
One of my productivity tools is creating quality checklists, which I also shared with the contributors of my publications as documented by our editors and curators and also turned into a YouTube video by our media coordinator.
I have received requests from proteges and contributors of my publication ILLUMINATION Book Chapters about a practical, step-by-step tool that simplifies the book creation process and helps manage time and effort effectively.
To address this, I developed a comprehensive quality checklist that ensures every aspect of your book is polished, from the initial concept to the final manuscript. This guide covers key elements necessary for producing a professional-quality book, whether it’s a non-fiction or fiction project.
I designed this checklist to help authors navigate that journey with greater ease and efficiency, ensuring that their manuscript meets high standards across both e-book and paperback formats.
I want to share this resource with the broader writing community to help more authors bring their ideas to life in a structured and stress-free way. The checklist is designed to be printed in A4 format, making it a convenient companion during your writing process.
I will also create a comprehensive document explaining each point in this checklist to guide aspiring authors, so stay tuned to my writing profile here, blog posts, and Substack profile which includes my Content Strategy, Development, & Marketing Insights.
An A4 Size Printable and Comprehensive Checklist for Book Authors
Though originally created for non-fiction authors, the checklist can easily be adapted for fiction writers looking to streamline their publication process. You can customize this checklist for your needs, goals, and aspirations by adding relevant items or removing irrelevant ones. You may copy and paste the following section to a document and print it. If you publish it, please cite the original on my website so others can find it quickly and see my revisions based on feedback.
✅ 1. Research & Planning
This section lays the foundation, ensuring the book’s goals align with the audience’s needs after scheduling daily time for each chapter as I did.
- Target Audience: Before writing your book, clearly define your target audience and their needs.
- Market Research: Study similar books in your genre and capture best practices.
- Purpose & Goals: Ensure the book’s purpose aligns with audience expectations and aspirations.
- Outline: Create a detailed chapter-by-chapter outline to share with the publishers, editors, or reviewers.
- Fact-Checking: Verify the accuracy of data, statistics, and references.
✅ 2. Writing
This section focuses on progress, clarity, structure, and accuracy to maintain reader engagement and trust.
- Schedule: Allocate specific times and stick to your schedule unless an emergency happens.
- Introduction: Ensure a compelling introduction that sets the tone, style, and context.
- Clarity & Simplicity: Keep it simple and use clear, concise, and impactful language, avoiding jargon.
- Structure & Flow: Ensure logical flow between sections and chapters.
- Voice & Tone: Maintain a consistent voice, tone, and style throughout the book.
- Chapter Objectives: Ensure each chapter fulfills its intended purpose.
- Accuracy: Double-check facts, figures, and any technical details while writing each section and chapter.
- Footnotes/Endnotes: Ensure correct placement and formatting for any citations.
- Conclusion: Craft a strong conclusion that summarizes key points and offers value to readers.
✅ 3. Proofreading and Self-Editing
This section is essential for eliminating errors and refining the text to ensure readability and consistency after the first draft.
- Developmental Editing: Review for overall structure, content flow, organization, and content accuracy.
- Proofreading: Check for grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors.
- Line Editing: Focus on sentence structure, style, and readability.
- Consistency: Ensure consistency in terminology, tone, and tense.
- Fact Verification: Cross-check any remaining facts, names, or dates.
- Formatting Errors: Identify and fix typos, misaligned text, or stray characters.
Check out this practical guide for the importance of self-editing to guide you.
✅ 4. Design (Interior & Exterior)
This section ensures both e-book and paperback versions are visually appealing and formatted correctly for their respective platforms.
- Cover Design (e-book & Paperback): Ensure the cover is eye-catching, relevant, and adheres to editorial and publishing guidelines.
- Title Page & Copyright Page: Include proper copyright information, ISBN (for paperback), and publisher details.
- Table of Contents: Ensure the Table of Contents is accurate and linked for e-books.
- Font & Typography: Use professional, readable fonts (beware of differences between print and digital).
- Images & Graphics: Ensure all images are high-resolution, relevant, copyright-free, or properly licensed.
- Formatting (e-book): Ensure proper formatting for different devices (Kindle, ePub, PDF, etc.).
- Formatting (paperback): Ensure correct margins, pagination, headers/footers, and paragraph spacing.
- Chapter Titles: Ensure chapter titles are consistent in style and hierarchy.
- Footnotes/Endnotes Placement: Ensure they appear correctly for both formats.
✅ 5. Metadata & Book Description
This section boosts discoverability and sales through optimized titles, keywords, and categories.
- Title & Subtitle: Ensure these are clear, relevant, and optimized for searchability in publishers’ databases and websites.
- Keywords: Select appropriate and SEO-optimized keywords for discoverability on e-book platforms.
- Categories: Choose correct and relevant categories for both e-book and paperback.
- Book Description: Write a compelling, keyword-optimized description.
- Author Bio: Provide a concise, impactful, and relevant author bio with a professional photo.
- ISBN: Obtain separate ISBNs for e-book and paperback versions, especially libraries, to purchase them.
✅ 6. Proofing Final Versions
This section catches any last-minute issues in the digital and physical formats.
- E-book Preview: Preview the book on various e-readers (Kindle, tablet, mobile).
- Paperback Proof: Create a PDF version of the paperback copy and check for any layout issues or print errors.
- Cover Preview: Ensure that pagination and the cover look professional in both formats and prints correctly.
✅ 7. Compliance & Legal
This section ensures all permissions and copyright requirements are met, protecting you legally.
- Copyright Registration: Ensure the book is registered with the appropriate authorities and libraries.
- Permissions: Obtain permissions for any third-party materials (quotes, citations, images, borrowed content, etc).
- Plagiarism Check: Use plagiarism detection software to ensure originality of content and prevent any claims related to prior art.
- Disclaimers: Include appropriate disclaimers where necessary (especially for professional advice, health, or financial content).
✅ 8. Beta Readers Feedback
Beta reader’s feedback offers valuable insights from early readers, ensuring the book resonates with its audience and addressing blind spots the author or editors may have missed.
- Selection of Beta Readers: Choose beta readers who match your target audience and/or have expertise in your subject area. You may use online forms or writing platforms like Medium, Substack, Vocal Media, etc.
- Clear Instructions: Provide beta readers with specific guidance on what feedback you are seeking (clarity, flow, tone, style, accuracy, pacing, etc.).
- Feedback Deadline: Set a clear deadline for receiving feedback.
- Tracking Feedback: Create a system to track and organize feedback (spreadsheets, documents, calendars, etc.).
- Analyzing Feedback: Evaluate feedback for common issues or areas of confusion.
- Implementation: Decide what feedback to implement and update the manuscript accordingly.
- Follow-Up: Thank beta readers for their time and ask any clarifying questions if needed.
✅ 9. Marketing & Distribution
Marketing & Distribution help reach the intended audience and maximize the exposure of books.
- Distribution Channels: Choose appropriate distribution channels (Amazon, Apple Books, Google Books, Draft2Digital, etc.).
- Pricing Strategy: Set appropriate pricing for both e-book and paperback formats differently.
- Launch Plan: Create a launch plan that includes marketing, social media, press releases, YouTube videos, blog posts, and Substack newsletters.
- Review Distribution: Send out advance review copies to generate early reviews from loyal readers who can leave testimonials.
- Pre-order Setup: If available, set up pre-orders for both formats to increase the visibility of the book and enhance your revenue.
✅ 10. Post-Publication
This section ensures continued success through monitoring reviews and ongoing promotions.
- Reviews Monitoring: Monitor early reviews and respond to feedback where appropriate.
- Updates & Revisions: If necessary, plan for updates or revisions based on feedback, adding them to a backlog with revision history.
- Royalties & Payments: Monitor sales for intended royalty payments.
- Promotion: Continue ongoing marketing efforts (Facebook or Google ads, guest blogs, interviews, Substack newsletter, etc.).
- Accounting: Keep records of sales and expenditures for tax purposes.
You may check out my marketing plan for a self-published book.
Conclusions and Key Takeaways
Using quality management checklists for book authors ensures consistency, accuracy, and adherence to editorial and publishing standards, which boosts the quality of written work. You can customize this checklist for your needs, goals, and aspirations by adding relevant items.
Checklists prepared by experienced authors, editors, and content curators can help writers maintain a structured process, reducing errors, missed details, inconsistencies, and deadline issues, lowering stress, and enhancing productivity and creativity.
Quality checklists serve as a guide for ensuring clarity, following style guides, and meeting deadlines. This tool and approach can improve the reliability and professionalism of the content, streamlining revisions and enhancing reader satisfaction. Ultimately, this tool can facilitate accountability and higher productivity by keeping book authors focused on critical tasks.
If you created and published such checklists, please share the links in the comments section so that others can benefit from them. If you are a book author and want me to review your books, you may contact me via my website. I also enjoy interviewing book authors. Here is the recent one with links to other interviews I conducted.
Thank you for reading my perspectives, and I hope you have a happy and healthy life.
I recently authored a book titled Substack Mastery to make it a valuable resource for freelance writers and content entrepreneurs. I share the chapters for beta readers for free on multiple platforms. Interested readers can find them through the following links on this platform.
Preface of “Substack Mastery” for Beta Readers, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapters 12
Many thanks to beta readers who started leaving honest feedback on this evolving book on Goodreads. If you enjoy and benefit from this book, I’d appreciate leaving honest feedback on Goodreads, as the Amazon version is not ready for review yet.
If you want to purchase the book at a reasonable price or gift it to someone you care about, you may preorder it via various Amazon markets. If the editing process is complete on time, I can get it published faster. The funds generated from this book will be donated to the management of the Substack Mastery site for the ILLUMINATION community. This education site also amplifies the newsletters of freelance writers.
Substack Mastery: Insider Secrets from a Content Strategist & Seasoned Author: Learn the Basics…
Substack Mastery: Insider Secrets from a Content Strategist & Seasoned Author: Learn the Basics, Stay Motivated, Grow…www.amazon.com
Community Building on Substack Bridging with Other Platforms
Integrating Substack with Medium is a great idea. To this end, as a community builder, I created a philanthropic organization that will empower creators, freelance writers, and content entrepreneurs with a commercial arm. I documented the strategy and high-level plan in a story. Please feel free to ask questions and provide feedback. Refraining from perfection, I choose a progressive path.
Here are our draft service definitions for creators, freelance writers, and content entrepreneurs. We will explain the details in our upcoming newsletter. Here is an invitation from a founding member.
If you are a writer on Medium and Substack, we have a new publication called Substack Mastery. You are welcome to join and share your Substack experience with your fellow writers and discerning readers. ILLUMINATION-Curators curate, feature, and promote newsletters of our contributors in collections like this one. Being part of a community can bring many benefits, such as a fast-growing audience.
Substack Mastery Featured Newsletters: Episode 12
Curated newsletters of writers contributing to the Substack Mastery publication on Medium for joyful collaboration and…medium.com
For advanced writers, we also have a publication called Curated Newsletters, which replaced the former ILLUMINATION-Curated. As I withdraw from the boost program, I now allocate more time to support writers in extending their services to Substack or other platforms.
If you are a writer, you are welcome to join my publications by sending a request via this link. I support 32K writers who contribute to my publications on this platform. You can contact me via my website. I also have another profile to write and curate tech stories. Friend Links to My Sample Boosted Stories for Non-Members of Medium.
New Submission Guidelines for ILLUMINATION and Curated Newsletters
You are welcome to join the ILLUMINATION Community on Medium and Substack and our education tool, Substack Mastery, curated by ILLUMINATION-Curators. Here is the Importance and Value of Medium Friendship for Writers and Readers
Join me on Substack, where I offer experience-based content on health, content strategy, and technology topics to inform and inspire my readers.
Get an email whenever Dr Mehmet Yildiz publishes. He is a top writer and editor on Medium.
dr-mehmet-yildiz.medium.com
This story was initially published at DigitalMehmet.com. My blogs and website offer free access to inspiring and educational stories for freelancers and content entrepreneurs. Membership Tiers and Benefits of ILLUMINATION Substack Mastery Community. Please use this portal to contact me with inquiries and feedback. You can also read this chapter on my Substack.
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