Lean Publishing Tip of the Day: Why You Shouldn't Worry About Hitting the Publish Button

Self-publishing a book can be a daunting challenge, not just with respect to the amount of work and thought and emotion and hope that goes into writing it and preparing it for publication, but also when it comes clicking the button to finally make it public.

With some platforms, and some publication processes, "hitting the publish button" really is in some senses an irreversible commitment, especially if you or your publisher are paying for a big bulk print run, you've got a nationwide bookstore-based launch day, or you've done a lot of pre-sales for release on a specific date, or you've spent a lot of money on a big co-ordinated advertising campaign tied to a series of talk show appearances, and big newspaper or magazine book reviews lined up.

But of course, that's not the case for most books, including both self-published and company-published books.

In fact, for most books, the big challenge is getting your book - and yourself as the author - noticed at all.

That's why publishing early and often is something we focus on at Leanpub. Getting your work out there in front of people as soon as possible, including publishing the first version of your book when you've finished just the first chapter, is one of the best ways to get noticed.

By publishing earlier, you start building your audience earlier - there's a lot more to the "lean publishing" philosophy of course, but in a sense, it's just that simple.

By making it easy and efficient to release book updates to our bookstore and all your current readers, we don't just make serial publishing easy - we also make it easy to change what you've already published.

That's a big reason you don't need to worry about hitting the publish button. People will let you know if there's an issue, and on Leanpub, you can easily correct a mistake in basically as long as it takes you to type out your correction and do one click.