Anyone looking at my resume would probably not consider me employable. And yet every job I’ve worked has informed what I do now in my life as a solopreneur. Once I finally decided what I wanted to be when I grew up (at 50), I decided to publish a book.

The book had been inside me for about twenty years. Over those years it grew from a simple cookbook to a repackaging of a culinary school curriculum for the home cook, a meal-planning tool, and a message about bringing mindfulness back to the kitchen and to the table.

I spent much of 2014 writing the book and teaching cooking classes, which doubled as a testing laboratory for most of the recipes. And then I got stuck.

I played a role in my husband’s and bosses’ book projects for years, serving as unofficial editor, proofreader, and indexer, so I was familiar with the writing and book proposal processes. The sticking point was that I had almost no platform to speak of and very few connections in the publishing world.

Enter Self-Publishing

Self-publishing has become a huge industry in recent years. Numerous courses and webinars can tell you how to do it, and myriad self-publishing platforms are at your disposal. When I surveyed them, I discovered you could self-publish a physical book using offset printing for anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000, the difference being what suite of services you require, from simply printing to editing to design to publishing to marketing and distribution.

As with anything, you get what you pay for. I have seen numerous samples of self-published works done with these online platforms, and I knew right away this was not the sort of quality I demanded of and for my own work. Let’s be real: if you buy a cookbook, it must have beautiful pictures, it needs to lie flat on the counter, and it needs to stand up to daily wear and tear.

Add to this the fact that a large part of my book is about the importance of buying local and supporting small, locally owned businesses, and I was really stuck. I don’t recall who gave me this advice, but I was told that many locally owned bookstores will not carry books self-published by Amazon’s CreateSpace, which is probably the largest and least expensive self-publishing platform around. This information was validated when I approached my favorite indie store and the first question was, “Did you self-publish with CreateSpace?”

But part of my integrative nutrition health coach training is in positive mindset and manifesting your intentions, so in October 2015 I put my intentions to publish out to the Universe . . . and I didn’t have to wait long!

Watching It Happen

I had been fortunate to be introduced to Chad Allen’s online work as a creativity coach through a colleague, and I stalked him online for a few months before hopping onto a webinar he hosted about writing a compelling bio. I was even more fortunate to win a free coaching session with him and from there, deeply inspired by the session, moved on to hiring him to be my support in self-publishing.

I’m sure I was a somewhat “alternative” client for him as self-publishing is not officially his field, but I think my desire to self-publish in a way that was similar to commercial publishing may have convinced him to take me on.

The most significant lesson I learned from Chad was to treat my project holistically—that is, as a part of my professional and personal life, not the be-all end-all in and of itself. He also shared with me how the publishing process normally flows, and we made some progress on fitting my square peg of a book into this round hole. Then he set me free to make it happen.

And happen it did: I often tell my clients, “Be very sure of what you ask the Universe for—she will deliver in spades.” You have to be ready.

Having met with Chad and put my intentions out in a much clearer fashion, it was almost like sitting back and watching the project unfold rather than struggling with each step. An entire village grew up around the project in the space of one year:

• A friend agreed to edit the book, and another member of my village—the one who initially started the “When are you going to write a book?” idea— agreed to test every recipe (she kindly refers to it as her own Julie/Julia project).
• Through a photo shoot my son did, I connected with Chuk Nowak, whose talents as a photographer made my modest home-cooking recipes glow and who used my home and kitchen ware for his work, saving me money on food styling and rentals.
• Through a cooking class I had donated as part of a school auction, I connected with a woman whose husband is a graphic designer: Sean McDonald gave my book the clean, professional look I was seeking.
• I met the owners of a local print shop, CMYK Imperial Printing, at another cooking class, and they gave me excellent advice as well as a great price on the printing of the book.
• Christian O’Grady and Victoria Zegler of FYT Productions created a stunning promotional video (see below) that features two of the farmers who made the book possible and feed my family: Tomm Becker of Sunseed Farm and Salomon Jost of Salomon Gardens.
• Tomm further introduced me to Thomson-Shore, a local company that serves self-published authors with a variety of services.

It’s been a marvelous process and a wild ride this past year. Fl!p Your K!tchen is out, and I think it’s beautiful! I sold out of my first modest print run the night of my book launch party and have sold more than 50 percent of the second run solely through my own promotional efforts.

I have spent considerable time building my platform (Chad has many connections who can help with advice on that score), and while still small it has grown by more than 225 percent in 11 months.

Costs + Benefits

Because I’m not a famous author with a publishing deal and an advance, the project was funded step by step by my health coaching practice, which is still relatively new. Amazingly, over and over and just when I was wondering where the next payment to a team member would come from, a new client would show up or I would be invited to do a workshop and the money would flow in. Some of my team worked for barter (health coaching and/or copies of the book), which was also extremely helpful. The entire production process ended up costing me around $7,000 (including barter).

The benefits of self-publishing have been significant:

• While I have to prepay for each print run, the books now make a profit of approximately $1,000 per month, creating a small but steady passive income stream for my business.
• One of my goals for Fl!p Your K!tchen was to create a beautiful book, and I consider the cost well worth it when I see how professionally it turned out: I have had publishing professionals exclaim over its quality.
• Another goal was to support my health coaching practice: having a book published goes a long way in building credibility and expert status. In the past few months speaking opportunities have multiplied due to the book.
• Publishing the book has allowed me to move from one phase of my business (teaching cooking classes) to practicing what really feeds my soul: health coaching. I still teach menu planning and cooking classes, but they are part of a larger project in which I help clients discover what diet and lifestyle choices suit them best. The secondary food they learn to prepare for themselves becomes a part of a more holistic view of the primary foods—relationships, career, sleep, physical activity, spiritual practice, —that nourish them in every part of their lives.
• In addition to serving the general public and my clients, the book was also created to serve my colleagues in the health coaching, physical training, and alternative/preventative health care world. Many practitioners fully recognize the value of eating a diet of whole foods cooked from scratch, yet many lack the skills, time, and resources to provide their clients with the tools to carry out this “prescription.” I’m now making valuable connections with colleagues who are becoming affiliates of the Fl!p Your K!tchen™ project! In a sense the book is creating a tiny and ever-widening ripple in the world—something that validates my sense that I have found my calling.

Want to Self-Publish?

Following are my takeaways from the process. I offer these in hopes they will smooth your path:

1. Write your manuscript . . . and know when to stop. I could have put much more information in my book, but Chad wisely suggested I leave something for the revised, expanded edition by a traditional publisher (wink) . . . or the next book! We resolved the issue by creating a cliff-hanger in the afterword.
2. Write your manuscript . . . then leave it. Chad opened my eyes to the importance of this, advising that if I kept playing with the text, the book would never be done. There comes a point when you need to leave the text with an editor and turn your attention to how the book will look—from design to actual construction—before you go back to revising and proofing stages.
3. Welcome your village into the project and create your team. When you speak about your book project with love and enthusiasm, your tribe will be drawn to it and will keep the momentum going. Keep in mind that the momentum should be a pulling, not a pushing energy. Some tribe members’ energy is more of the dragging variety. Your team should be pulling you toward your goal, not dragging you off to their own agendas.
4. Value the work—your own and that of others. Whenever you can, pay professionals for their work, and try to pay them their standard rate. This sort of respect and abundance flows back to you, energetically and financially. If you barter, make sure you are giving as much value as you are getting: this, too, will create positive energy.
5. Regularly celebrate yourself and your team. Celebrate the small goals reached as well as the final product—the small rewards will fill your soul on the journey. And perhaps even more importantly they will make the project as much about the journey as the final product, avoiding what I call “post party depression”—that feeling of “Is that all there is? Now what?” at the end of a long road.

Perhaps the most validating part of my project is that, having reached the “end” (who am I kidding, there is so much left to do!) and published the book, I am only looking ahead, and there is no sense of let-down, only of possibility.

Question: Do you have any questions for Liza? How has this blog post been helpful to you? You can leave a comment by clicking here.