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How to Write and Publish a Book in Nigeria

How to Write and Publish a Book in Nigeria
Writing a book is fun if you know how to publish it. There are many potential authors in Nigeria waiting to be noticed, with their manuscripts piled up  in their cup-boards because of lack of funds to publish their books. 

Apart from freelancing and blogging, book publishing is another way of earning a living as a writer.

What Is Book Publishing?

I'll explain book publishing in two ways:
- the traditional publishing, and
- the self publishing

The traditional publishing: This is the first type of book publishing. It involves a publisher and the author. In this case, a publisher offers a contract to an author, then he prints, publishes and sells/distributes the book to the retailers and booksellers.
In this case, the publisher buys the rights to the book and pays the author royalties from sales made.

Steps Involved In Traditional Book Publishing

- Find a publishing Agent. 
- Identify right category for writing.
Submit proposal: If the book you want to publish is a non-fiction, you need to it with three sample chapters plus each chapter's synopsis.
If it's a fiction, you'll have to submit the complete manuscript.
- After the above steps, you have to write a query letter which will be sent to the potential agents.
In the query letter, mention the following:

  • Your book's synopsis
  • the summary of the chapter
  • the expected audience for your book, and 
  • a bio or description of yourself.


The self-publishing: This is the publication of your book without the involvement of any publishing company or media. If you have a great book idea and can write very well, you can independently write and publish a book professionally. 
The time you have to write the book, the type of book you are writing and the processes involved in the publication are different factors that affect the order and time it'll take to complete the steps stated below.

Steps Involved In Self-Publishing

- Develop your book idea. If it's awesome to you, then it'll be awesome to your audience, if not...
- Research on the idea to make sure it's viable to be a full book
- What is your target audience? they are the most important people in your book publication process.
- Create an outline for your book and make it as detailed as possible.
- Research on the book and start working on the manuscript.
- Have your manuscript edited. It'll be best if you hire a professional editor to curate the book.
- Choose an option for self-publishing. You an choose the Print-On-Demand option and then hire a publisher and/or printer.
- Apply for ISBN. You can visit www.nln.gov.ng if you are a Nigerian to find out more on it. You can visit isbn-international.org to get your countries' agencies if you're not a Nigeria. Also, in some cases this step might not be handled by you. it depends on the  method you choose for the book publishing.
- Set your books cover price.
- Design your manuscript's interior pages.
- Design your book cover. You can hire a graphics designer if you don't have the required skills.
- Plan a comprehensive marketing and advertising campaign for your book
- Begin pre-selling your book. This includes:

  • Distributing press materials
  • Contacting book distributors
  • Putting it out in book shops
  • Advertising it through the media.
- List your books with online retailers
- PUBLISH THE BOOK
- Begin the shipping process
- Continue promoting the published books

The steps involved in self-publishing is cumbersome, but the proceeds are much better than the traditional publishing. At least, you'll have the full rights to your book.

More On Publishing:

What Is ISBN?

ISBN means International Standard Book Number. It is a thirteen-digit number that is used to identify a book (Monograph books or E-publications) for commerce and supply. It is unique to every book.

Advantages Of ISBN

- It is used by publishers, booksellers and libraries for ordering and listing of books.
- It helps in the global ordering and distribution of books.
- It aids compilation of bibliographic databases such as cataloguing of books-in-print.
- It is essential for the running of P.O.S in bookshops.



Differences Between Traditional Publishing and Self-Publishing

- In traditional publishing, the publishing company takes care of the bills involved in the whole process while in self publishing the author handles the bills.
- The publishing company promotes the books to the audience in traditional publishing while the author has to do that in the case of self-publishing.
- Self-publishing is good for people who are have good marketing strategies because.
- In traditional publishing, the company owns the book and only pay the author royalties on the profit generated from the books while in self-publishing the author takes 100% of profit.

However, in the both types of publishing, the author still has the right to decide the format the book will be published in in, ie printed, e-books, audio-books, dvd, cd and many others.

Thanks for reading along, which of the following do you prefer? Please drop them in the comment section below and share this post to your friends to help them.
If you need any help, please contact us we are always there to aid you.

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