Smartphones are no longer what they used to be. Before now, the primary function of a phone was to make and receive calls, send and receive messages, but the narrative has changed.
With technological advancements and new upgrades, smartphones now allow users to perform a variety of dynamic tasks.
With just your smartphone, you can start writing and publishing books like a pro. You don’t need a laptop or expensive gadgets before you start publishing your books.
So before we get started, let’s briefly look at the must-have tools that are needed to publish a book.
Tools You Need on Your Phone
- For writing (Google Docs or Microsoft)
- Editing (Grammarly or Quillbot)
- Design (Canva)
- Publishing platforms (Amazon KDP, Draft2Digital)
Choosing a Reliable Writing App Like Google Docs
Google Docs is a free editing software that allows you to edit and store documents.
With Google Docs, you can write and format texts according to your preference; you can also add a table of contents after you are done with writing.
Another great feature of this app is that it automatically stores your document in the cloud via Google Drive so that you can refer back to it anytime that you want.
Grammarly for Editing
Grammarly is a writing tool that helps check grammar, vocabulary, spelling, writing style, and errors.
You can use Grammarly’s plagiarism checker to see if any portion of your work has been marked for plagiarism. This advanced feature will help you to stay unique by making the necessary adjustments.
The software has a premium version that gives you access to extra features that you can’t get with the free version. However, you can start with the free version.
Canva for Book Cover Design
Canva is a web-based graphic design platform that offers a wide variety of tools—many of which are free. It’s an excellent choice for authors looking to create professional book covers without advanced design skills.
The platform provides thousands of pre-made templates that can be customized to match your book’s theme and style. Even if you have no prior design experience, you can still make high-quality covers.
Thanks to its user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, you can easily adjust existing templates or start your design from scratch. You can also manually set your book cover dimensions to match publishing requirements.
Platforms to Publish Your Book
You can publish books on Amazon KDP for free. KDP, which stands for Kindle Direct Publishing, allows authors to publish their works at zero cost.
Another platform used by authors is Draft2Digital, a well-known platform for independent authors. Whatever choice you make is dependent on your need or preference.
Aside from these two platforms, other digital stores allow you to publish your work at no cost.
Planning Your Book
Just like every other business out there, you cannot just write anything out of the blue. You need a structure for your book.
The following touchpoints build the structure of your book:
- The intended audience of your book
- The title of your book
- Book cover Design
- Your Book Introduction
- Number of pages
- How to edit and format your book
- Marketing and promotion
The Intended Audience of Your Book
Before writing any title, it is important to research the interests of your audience what they love to read about and who they are. This will help you to streamline your book title to their specific needs.
It will also help you to understand if the market needs your book. For example, you would need to research the market if the topic of your book already interests people. A free tool you can use to gauge your audience’s interest is “Google Trends.”
Google Trends provides clues about whether people are interested in a topic. Learn how to use Google Trends here
The Title of Your Book
You want to make sure that your book title sparks curiosity and, at the same time, hits the nail on the spot. A bad title can knock the potential of your book.
This is where you need copywriting skills. Keep it simple but powerful enough to stir your readers’ emotions and grab their attention.
Your Book Introduction
Your book introduction is the second most important section. Why? Because it serves as the window through which readers glimpse the value your book provides.
If this section is jeopardized—poorly written without a clear message that addresses pain points, solutions, or important insights. Your readers will stop there because people have a short attention span!
You would have to bait them continuously, gradually building momentum until they see the need to list your book in one of their collections.
Book Chapter
Do you want just five chapters, 15, or 20? Then outline it for clarity. A chapter is a section or a main division of a book. A chapter will typically end with a page break.
Adding a page break at the end of every chapter solves the problem of overflow. This means that your write-up will not spill over to the next chapter. So you should add a page break at the end of every chapter of your book.
How to Edit and Format a Book With Your Smartphone Using Google Docs
You can hire an editor or edit your book by yourself. You should also stick with a simple font that is easy to read. Fonts like New Times Roman, Georgia, and Sans Serif are great for writing.
This is a video tutorial on how you can edit and format a book with your smartphone using Google Docs.
Watch the video here
Book Cover Design
Your book cover is what people would notice even before they think about reading your book. The cover of your book is vital to your success in book publishing.
Trust me when I say that you don’t want to mess around with it. You can use Canva to design your book cover, but if you do not have a good knowledge of graphic design, you can head over to Fiverr to hire a professional graphic designer to create your book cover.
With just $5, you can have a professional-looking cover design for your book.
Marketing and Promotion
Opt for social platforms that have your target audience. For example, if your book is a corporate book that talks about job hunting, LinkedIn might be a suitable platform to promote it.
You also need to show people the process it took you to write the book because that is a powerful marketing technique that converts. Here is how you can promote and market your book.
See this post to learn how you can market and promote your book.
I hope you found this helpful.
