David Gaughran has recently released the fourth edition of Let’s Get Digital: How to Self-Publish, and Why You Should. I devoured the third edition while preparing Duck and Dive for publication, so I can’t wait to see what new material he has in this edition.

Let’s Get Digital is packed with practical advice. It gave me the tools and confidence to take on the big, daunting beast that is publishing, and get my book out there. David discusses how authors aren’t just writers, but publishers and marketers too. He makes it clear that writing a good book is up to you, but for the other aspects he explains every step along the way, suggesting where might be best to focus your time, effort and money. The information is succinct and easily accessible, covering a huge range of topics about the world of digital publishing and providing advice you can use, without being prescriptive.

Let’s Get Digital: How to Self-Publish, and Why You Should does exactly what it says on the tin. David covers such a vast range of topics that I don’t know how to summarise in any way other than a keyword vomit. Let’s Get Digital covers the various forms of editing, beta readers, covers, blurbs, taglines, getting a good cover designed, formatting, uploading to retailers, pricing, metadata, keywords, categories, distribution (wide or exclusive?), Amazon, Kindle, KDP Select, Barnes & Noble, Nook, Apple, Kobo, Google, Draft2Digital, Smashwords, readers, Also Boughts, selling, sales, mailing lists, blog tours, platform building, advertising, group promotions, boxsets, websites, blogs, social media, marketing strategy…

According to my Kindle I made 73 highlights while reading this book. I tend to reserve highlighting for things that really stand out for me, rarely getting more than ten in a book. There’s just so much useful information here.

If you’ve written something and are even vaguely considering publishing independently, I’d recommend reading this book. David’s giving away the latest edition for free, so why not give it a shot? He links to all the relevant digital retailers where you can ‘buy’ it on his website. I can’t recommend it enough.

And if this is all just too many words, and you’d rather sit back and listen… David has been interviewed on The Bestseller Experiment, see EP184: David Gaughran – How Amazon Works for an introduction to his work. Also of relevance is the interview with Caimh McDonnell where David is mentioned a bunch, see EP275: Deep Dive – Great Newsletter Content with Caimh McDonnell.