The Right Order to Do Things
This resource library covers nearly every individual task in the self-publishing journey in real depth, but depth across hundreds of articles creates its own problem: knowing where to actually start, and what genuinely needs to happen before what else. This article is the map. It won't replace any individual article's detail, but it should answer the question new authors ask most often: "okay, but what do I actually do first?"
Stage One: Write the Book
Nothing else in this list matters until there's a finished manuscript. This sounds obvious, but it's the single most common place authors lose momentum, getting pulled into cover design, marketing planning, or business setup long before there's anything to sell. The Writing Tools section covers the actual software (Scrivener, Atticus, Plottr for outlining, Grammarly and ProWritingAid for line-level editing) that supports this stage, and AuthorFLOW's word count and production tracking, covered in that same section, helps build the daily habit that gets a manuscript across the finish line.
Draft the manuscript to completion, a full first draft, before investing serious time anywhere else on this list
Run it through your own revision passes, then arrange for beta readers or developmental editing, covered in this resource library's Marketing section's ARC Teams and Beta Readers article for the reader-recruitment side of this process
Professional copyediting and proofreading, while not exhaustively covered as a standalone section here, should happen before the manuscript moves to formatting, since reformatting after late-stage text changes creates unnecessary rework
Stage Two: Business and Legal Foundation
This can run in parallel with late-stage drafting rather than strictly after it, but it needs to be settled before you publish, not after. The Setting Up Your Company section covers forming a publishing entity, the business and legal scaffolding that should exist before money starts changing hands.
Decide on a business structure (sole proprietorship, LLC, or otherwise) and complete any required registration, covered in depth in the Setting Up Your Company section
Choose your author name or pen name, covered in this resource library's Basics section, since this decision affects branding, copyright pages, and account setup across everything that follows
Set up the accounts and infrastructure (a dedicated business bank account, accounting practices) that make the financial side of publishing clean from day one rather than tangled later
Stage Three: Turn the Manuscript Into a Book
This is where the manuscript becomes an actual product: cover, formatting, metadata, and the technical assembly covered throughout the Creating a Book section.
Commission or design your cover, ideally started well before this stage so it's ready when formatting begins, not as a bottleneck afterward
Format the interior for both ebook and print, using the file format guidance covered in this resource library's companion cheat sheet article, producing a properly structured EPUB and a print-ready PDF
Assemble front and back matter, covered in this resource library's Anatomy of a Book and Table of Contents articles, including the back matter space many authors underuse for newsletter signups and audiobook cross-promotion, both covered in the Marketing section
Acquire your ISBN, decide on KU/wide distribution strategy, and finalize retailer metadata, categories, and keywords, all covered in this resource library's Basics and Publishing Wide sections
Stage Four: Build Your Platform
This should start well before launch day, ideally months before, since an author platform with zero existing audience makes every later marketing method in this resource library meaningfully harder. The Creating Author Website section and this resource library's reader magnet and email-list-building articles in the Marketing section are the core of this stage.
Build an author website, even a simple one, with an email signup as its central goal, covered in depth in the Creating Author Website section
Create a reader magnet and start building your email list well before launch, covered in this resource library's Marketing section's Reader Magnets and Funnels article
Establish a presence on the one or two social platforms where your specific readers actually spend time, rather than spreading thin across all of them, covered in the Social Media section
Stage Five: Launch and Market
Everything in this resource library's Marketing section, all thirty-plus articles covering core methods, the international addendum, audiobook-specific tactics, and genre adaptations, lives here. This is intentionally the largest stage, and the one this resource library devotes the most depth to, because marketing is an ongoing practice rather than a single task to check off.
Build a coordinated book launch, covered in this resource library's Marketing section's dedicated launch-as-a-system article, rather than treating launch day as a single isolated event
Layer in the paid and organic methods relevant to your genre and budget, covered across the Marketing section's core toolkit
Treat marketing as continuous, not a one-time push around launch, covered in this resource library's closing article on building a long-term marketing plan
Stage Six: Expand and Sustain
Once a first book is published and finding readers, attention shifts to what makes a career rather than a single release: audiobooks, translations, backlist marketing, direct sales, and the operational systems (ScribeCount's tracking and analytics chief among them) that let you see what's actually working.
Consider audiobook production, covered in the Audiobook Creation Guide section, and the audio-specific marketing methods covered in this resource library's Marketing section
Build a direct sales presence once you have enough of an audience to make it worthwhile, covered in the Direct Sales section
Track everything through ScribeCount, covered in the Features section, so decisions about where to invest further time and money are based on real data rather than guesswork
Conclusion
Self-publishing has no single correct path, and plenty of successful authors have deviated from this exact order for good reasons specific to their own situation. But for an author asking "what do I actually do first," this sequence, write, establish the business foundation, produce the book, build a platform, launch and market, then expand, reflects the order that creates the fewest dead ends and the least rework. Use it as a map, not a rulebook, and dive into the specific article for each stage when you get there.
- Randall