I Held My Published Book for the First Time. Here Is How You Can Too.

The physical books arrived from Remember Her Publishing and Kendra Tamika opened them on camera because that moment deserved to be witnessed. In this episode she unboxes the full catalog including She Who Commands: Where the Deep Begins, then walks through every step she took to publish her titles as a solo creator with no agent and no traditional publisher. From manuscript to ISBN to KDP to IngramSpark to ACX to Goodreads. The complete self publishing roadmap from someone who actually did it.

Find all books at rememberherpublishing.com. She Who Commands: Where the Deep Begins is available on Amazon now.

Layered Love Gourmet


Remember Her Publishing


Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Hi everyone, welcome to Layer Love Universe with Kendra Tamika. Me, myself, and I. Okay, so before we get started, I wanted to do an unboxing, but I wanted to show you guys the books that I got a few weeks ago before I had to update the new set of books for the East with my LLCCN. Library of Congress number. LCCN is the number. So I did publish all of these myself, and we're gonna talk through step by step how to self-publish today. So I just want to show you the book that I self-published and that I have and that I'm so proud of. You know, the book that started it all was my remember her memoir book. So this is a journal. The book itself is in one of these boxes that we'll unbox here in a second that I had to get the new set of books. But this is the journal, this one is hardcover. I also have this in paperback. I gifted it to someone, so I don't have it with me right now, but I also have this in paperback. Let's go through the other titles, and they did a pretty good job. So this is Bake It Branded Sell It. So if you listen to my other podcasts, you know that I'm a pastry chef by trade, and I've done that going on 20 years now. 20 going on 20 years, and it's 2026, and I just want to point out the color difference. So later on in the publishing game, I learned about CMYK color, and I downloaded this artwork in CMYK color because I wanted to see the difference since these were just the books I was getting. I wanted to see the difference in the actual color. I actually think I like the regular color download better, but it's your preference. You can do both. So this is the Bake It Branded Sell It, the Complete Guide to Building a Profitable Food Business from Home to Retail. So this is a guide. This is the book, and then this is the action guide. So the action guide is in a different color, and it's a pretty hefty book, so it kind of walks you through the whole entire process of starting the way I we started the my bakery business from home, and then in turn turned into a pudding business, and then did that in we got on the stores of Central Market and mom and pop stores all over Texas. This was the method that I used, method that I created. I started this method. Wow. So I published all of these between last year and this year, but they've been written over the course of years. I just didn't one, I didn't know how to self-publish on my own. I thought I had to get a publisher. You know, you see how oh, I got a big what is it, upfront cost, so I can publish my book. So I thought I had to get all that. So once I learned how to do it last year, I just went full force. I said 2026 is the year y'all will hear me. Y'all will hear my voice. So this was kind of how I go through any big project that I'm doing, whether I'm using the scrum method or I use the 100-day method. So I just call it the 100 method. It has a book that kind of explains the actual method, and then it has the transformation plan. So you'll see me do this in real time. I'm going to use this method to build my social media platform, build my YouTube platform starting in June. And we'll be you'll be seeing me every single day for 100 days, and we'll walk through this method every single day together. So that was that two books there. I homeschooled my daughter, she does a curriculum online, but I found that so when I went to high school, was it middle school or high school? I can't remember. We had home at courses. We learn how to cook, you know, different things, sewing and different things in the classes. They don't really do that anymore. So I created this because I wanted to create a system that pairs with YouTube videos, where whether it's homeschool, kids can go through this with their parents and just watch the YouTube video and actually follow along with the lessons. It's a homeschool, a home economics curriculum, and it's called Life Made Daily. So this one I made this finish, gloss finish, not the matte finish, only because I know that kids will be handling it, and I didn't want to make it matte because matte seems to get dirty and oily faster. Like when you touch it, it gets kind of dirty and oily faster. Excuse me. This so these are just the books I've had, and then we'll unbox all the rest of them before getting into the step-by-steps for publishing. So this it pairs with a book, and this comes from my agile background, scrum background. I created a book called the Pause Clear Lead Method, how to lead with emotional intelligence. I think we're missing a lot of that nowadays. We'll leave that there. So this is the facilitator guide. It kind of walks anyone going into an agile space step by step, it pairs well with the book, or you can use it separately. Daily, I don't know, daily, daily like meetings and things like that kind of walks you through the whole process of leading the agile team, but leading with as opposed to a dictatorship style, leading with emotional intelligence. So those are the books that I already had. So now let's unbox the books that I got this week. So I got the last set yesterday, and it has my new series, my new my fantasy series in here. So I'm excited to see that. But I had to order three of each book. This one I already opened, so I know what it is. Three of each of these copies because I had to, when I first published, I didn't know anything about the Library of Congress number that she would get so that libraries can carry your books in their system. I didn't know that I had to get a library of Congress number. And in order, after you get the number, you actually have to put it on the copyright page. So I had to wait till I got approved for the number, then update the copyright page and then reorder. But they have a thing, a process called after you get the number and get approved and your book is published. They have a process called where you have to send in a deposit of two of cop two copies. I can't talk today. Two copies of each book. So I ordered three of each book that I'm going to show you today. I just don't know what's in what bag. So you might see a couple of them twice. So this came from the series. So the way my collection started, I started with somewhat of a memoir, kind of my a little bit, it tells a little bit about my story as I was older. So maybe between 28 to 40, right? It tells that story. And then it kind of guides me, guides you through how I came back to the place where I found myself again. And some people say with I don't know if the uh flamingo thing is true, but you know how they say the flamingos get their pink back after they had their children. So for me, it was remember her and how that's my I got my pink back story, right? And I it kind of have like devotionals and things like that questions for women, if they're in a place where they feel like they just can't get out, or they forgot who they were and they're trying to get that person back, right? Where they had their self-esteem, their self-worth, and all of that. So I created after I created that memoir, I wanted to write something, a series that my daughter can pick up at her age, because the memoir is really for the woman, right? I wanted young from little girls to young adults to be able to pick up something in their age range. So this one is the she rose. The for the girl who knew, for the girl who knows who she is and has to fight to stay that way. So this one is for the girls 14 to 18 years old, and these are fictional. So these are fictional characters, fictional stories, something I would have liked to hear when I was around that age. Different scenarios that girls around that age go through. So that's She Rose, and there's two more in there somewhere, so we'll see. These I haven't opened yet, so that was the only one I opened. I wanted to do the unboxing with y'all because I'm excited. So I'm just gonna drop these on four. But today we're gonna get into one creating 15 titles, same same title. 15 titles in one year. No publisher, no traditional publisher, no agent, no team. This be in my thoughts on paper. Okay, so this one is she arrived. This was for the young woman who's figuring it out, and as you can see, she's a little bit older. So this one you can tell, like she's a 14 to 18 like teenager. This one is for the 18 to 25 year olds. This is one of my favorites. So, and my daughter has locks, so I wanted her to see herself as she got older in these books, so that's why all the girls on the front has locks and it was made in her image and everything, all of it is dedicated to her. So, this is she arrived. So, this is after the she rose, and then it's she arrived. So 14 to 17 or 14 to 18, 18 to 25. Let's see if I don't have to open all of them. Uh-oh. If I don't have to open all of them to get to all of the titles. See if I can find. Okay, so this is She Remembered for the girl who was just beginning. This one is for the 10 to 12 year olds, and this is my daughter's age, so this is the first one that I gave to her and that she's reading actually right now. So I'll show you all four of them. And then I'm I wrote the children's book. I have two of them, and I'm just waiting for my illustrator to be done with the illustration so I can get those published and out. So I only have the oh, she arrived. This one she arrived, so that one's there. Let me see. I want to make sure. So one, two, one, two. Okay. When I get three, and that's all three of those. So these smaller packets, I believe, was just the three. So I won't open the smaller packets with you out because these are the same. She remembered, she rose, and she arrived. So these are the three that I have. The children's, the little girls book will be out shortly. I'm trying, I'm waiting for my illustrators to get that published. So that's this series. It's called the Remember Her Girl series. So it's a derivative of the Remember Her memoir. So that's that. I'm just excited about this because this one, these are so close to my heart because I made them with my daughter's image in mind. All right, so here's a big box. Let's open this. Let's open this box up.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Let me turn it this way so when I pull this part up, you don't see my you don't see my andres, maybe. So exciting. Okay, sorry. Don't cancel me. That was just stuck in my head.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

Okay, so here is Remember Her. This is the memoir. And I am gonna read a passage out of this at the end. This was one of the books that kind of catapulted my whole author career as publishing. Once I realized how easy it was to publish this one, I just went full force. So I want I want everyone to know that you have a story to tell, and people are out there that need to hear it. So get to writing, get to writing and publishing. This is the 100 method book. We already went through the actual book that I had. So this is the one that I had to get with the updated LCCN, and then two copies are automatically taken because I had to send those over to the Library of Congress. So I had to update the actual copyright page with the LCCN. So that's the 100 method. This is the I hope me hitting that mic is not messing up the sound. This is the pause clear lead book. It is a pretty hefty book just on leadership and emotional intelligence. This book, I can tell you a little bit of how this book even came about. I started writing this book about three years ago. Right after my divorce, after the pandemic. Well, in the midst of the pandemic, I guess. This was, I guess, four years ago, because this was I started writing this in 2022. When I was going through my agile journey, and I started to bump up against leadership that just had no emotional intelligence, right? And I put this book on hold, and something happened in this last year. I'm not gonna pinpoint a date, where I just got a really toxic leader, and I was like, you know what? Let me finish that book. Let me finish that book because I think it's needed. This I subtitled it the A Modern Leadership System for Emotional Intelligence, Clarity, and High Impact Decisions. I think when you're in upper management, taking care of the people that work for you should be of your utmost. Outside of making these high, high energy decisions or high impact decisions, making sure you take care of the people that work for you because toxic leadership can literally lead to messing up a whole entire culture. So just keep that in mind. And it comes with the facilitator guide that I show you guys earlier. This is another book that's close and dear to my heart. This is like a devotional, and this will go into the kits that I have for NICU families. It's while you wait. One of the things that I went through when staying with my daughter in the hospital, I was we were there for about 10 months. It's you're doing a lot of waiting. And in the midst of that waiting, your mind can tell you things that you probably don't need to hear. You go through a phase of why me, why did this happen to me? So I just wanted to give back in a way where I think parents that are one, even if they're not in the hospital, that are going through something with their children, especially that young. My daughter was just born. We were in NICU, she was attached to tubes, they didn't know she was gonna survive. She flatlined on the bed several times. But I think having something, and this is not the only devotional on the market. This was just something I wanted to create it to create to give back. You can flip through any of these pages, you don't have to go through it on like a day one, day two. You can flip to any page. And my goal is hopefully when you open the book, you find something you need for that day. Like today, it says you're allowed to break down. That's probably what I needed to hear today. Because you know, you can't hold everything together. Let me read you it. Strength is not a constant state. You are not meant to hold everything together all the time. You are not meant to carry this without feeling it. There will be moments when it all spills over, when the tears come, when the weight feels too much. Let it. Releasing does not make you weak. It makes space for you to keep going. A breakdown is not a failure. It is your body saying, This is a this is real and I am feeling it. You're allowed to fall apart and still be someone who shows up. Both things can be true. And then I have a whisper and a moment at the end of each, they're not poems, but you know, at the end of each devotion. The whisper is I can feel this and still keep going. And then the moment is what are you holding in that needs to come out? And after each like paragraph, I have a blank page so you can write, and it's just like that for every day. But I think that that would be helpful because I know it was helpful for me. And dun- I I have I don't have copies of this one, so I have not seen this one. So I'm so excited. I'm so excited for this one. Let's let's not make a mess. Let's start there. So anybody that knows me knows that I am a sci-fi girly. If it's not sci-fi, then it's comedy. I don't want to watch born drama, I don't want to watch things that take too long to get into, you know. But the theme amongst all of my books are reclaiming your power. And I wanted to put that in a sci-fi kind of mystical, mysterious book. So I'm in the process of creating book two and book three, so this is gonna be a trilogy, but it is She Who Commands, is gonna be the name of the trilogy. This book is Where the Deep Begins, and I'm so excited, I'm so excited about this book. So the girl is the young woman, or she's a woman. Her name is Tandra, she's 40 years old, she's um a protagonist. In she was born in New York, she is a nurse at the hospital out there. But her bloodline holds three. Should I say I don't want to say mysterious, but she she holds three different bloodlines within her that she's had to hold and keep away from humans or the mundane worlds all her life. And she's getting into a point where she's starting to see that it's just not her in the world, she's not just alone, or just the people in her circle that knows who she is, it's not just them. There's so much more of her kind out there. So hopefully, you get it and you get into it. Two of these are gonna go to the Library of Congress, of course, and I got two just so I can read one and mark it up, and then I can give someone give someone one or do a giveaway. But yeah, I'm so excited for this one because I love going into a world, especially with everything going on. Sometimes you just want to take a step back and just go into a world that's not the world right here, you know what I'm saying? So, and then you like my new little plant. This is gonna be our plant for the podcast. Her name is Alice, my daughter named her. I was giving she was Mother's Day gift from my big sister, and it matches our colors, pink and green. So, okay. Now that we've got through the unboxing, let's go through what we're here to talk about today. So, 15 titles, one year, no traditional publisher, no agent, no team, just me, my laptop, and my very strong opinions about how things should look and a system I built by making every mistake first. So you don't have to. Today I'm walking you through every single step I took in order with the actual tools and the actual resources, because I genuinely cannot stand when people make this seem more mysterious than it is, because for the longest, I thought you literally had to go to a publishing imprint or you know, to get your books published. It's so easy now. It's not that mysterious, it's a process, and processes can be learned. This is the video I needed three to five years ago, and I didn't really find how to publish self-publish without pouring a whole bunch of money into it, so I made it. So let's go. Let's talk through all the steps that it takes to publish your own book and get it out to the market, get your story out there so people can hear it. There's someone out there who's going through the same thing that you went through or going through the same thing that you're going through now, and they need to hear it. Quick context before we get into the steps, because I think the why matters. I wrote my first book, a memoir called Remember Her because I had been carrying a story for years. We talked about, and we'll read through the passage as well. I needed to put it down to kind of complete that healing cycle. I don't think healing is linear, and I think I'm still going through it, but I needed to put it down on paper and get it out because it just was on my heart and my spirit for so long. When I finished the first draft, I had a decision to make. I could spend potentially years submitting to traditional publishers and hoping that someone said yes, or I could take Ownership of my story and publish it myself. So, as you can see, I chose myself, and what I found on the other side of that chaos is that self-publishing constellation prize version of being a published author. It is a completely legitimate business decision that gives you full ownership of your work, full creative control, and a direct relationship with your readers that most traditionally published authors would honestly envy. And they just don't have, right? What it requires is just knowing the steps, which you're about to know. You're welcome to the steps. I'm going to teach you the steps that I took. And if anyone out there is self-publishing and they took different steps, just let me know. Okay, step one. Finish the manuscript. Everything starts here. If you have to do one draft, two drafts, three drafts, four, just get the manuscript finished. Because nothing else matters until this happens. Excuse me. Finish it not perfectly. Just finish it. A messy complete draft beats a perfect, incomplete one every single time. You're listening to the person who is an overthinker and sometimes a perfectionist. So take it from me. Just get it done. Because once you get it out in the world, you'll realize how many lives you can actually touch. You cannot publish a book. You are still writing it in your head. So you have to finish the manuscript. I use the framework that I built, the 100 method, and I use that to kind of map out kind of my plan and use those 100 days to at least get a draft out there, right? So the 100 method to finish most of my catalog, 100 minutes a day toward one goal for 100 days. That is how the majority of these books got written. In small protected windows, windows of time that I refuse to let life eat up. It works. I have the 15 books to prove it. Step two, edit your work. Then you would read your manuscript out loud for the first page to the last before you do anything else. Because sometimes your ear catches what your eyes miss every single time. Then at minimum, get one solid editing pass from someone who is not you, not your mother, not a family member, unless you have an editor in your family. Because you know, sometimes our close family and friends thinks everything we do is amazing and brilliant. So you want actual useful feedback. So you want someone that you trust that has a good ear, and they can actually go through and read the book and edit with you. So that is useful feedback. So a developmental editor looks at structure, a copy editor looks at line level errors. You do not have to have both, but you need at least one. Do not skip this to save money because your reader deserves essentially a polished book that your name is on it. But don't think too much into this part because I want you to one, finish the manuscript. Finish the manuscript and just get it out there. So step three is formatting your interior. Your manuscript needs to be formatted for print before it goes anywhere. For KDP, you can choose specific sizes, and they have like a KDP calculator where you can actually format per the size and things like that. So the right trim size, the right margins, the right fonts, page numbers, headers, all of it. So KDP, like I said, has the free interior templates on their website. Download the one that matches your trim size and build your manuscript inside of it so that'll be easier when you get to the end. So this one step will save you hours of reformatting from reformatting frustration later. Trust me, I went through this on this book and then I learned on the rest of them. You would export it as a PDF when you are done. So that's kind of what KDP needs. I'm still going through the Ingram Spark process, but I've already uploaded one book, so I know what that process looks like. And the good thing about KDP is once you format it for KDP, it'll pass on Ingram Sparks. So step four, design your cover. I utilized Canva for the majority of my designs. Um, it was very helpful. Your cover is the most important marketing asset your book has. I need you to hear this and take it seriously. So I had to bring my vision to life, but I want you to understand that it's the first thing anyone sees. It is what makes someone stop scrolling and click or keep scrolling and forget you ever existed. I designed most of my covers, like I said, in Canva Pro. KDP does have a cover calculator on their site that gives you the exact dimensions based on your page count and trim size. Make sure you use it because it does come in handy when you're going through the approval process of KDP. Fonts, cover, spine, and back all in one file exported as a PDF. Then spend time on this part because this part becomes the most tedious. A weak cover will cost you more in lost sales than a good designer will have cost you up front. So make sure your cover kind of emotes what you want for your book. Step five: get your ISBNs from Balker. I know some people, if you want to go the completely free route, Amazon does provide you ISBNs, but you don't own those ISBNs. Now Amazon owns that version of your book. So I would suggest you get your ISBN from Balker. And ISBN is your book's unique identifier in the publishing world. KDP will give you a free one, but it lists KDP as a publisher of record and it doesn't list you or your publishing imprint as the publisher record. So if you're building a publishing house with your own name on it and you want your own ISBM, go to myidentifiers.com, which is the Balker site, and buy them there. Each format needs its own. Paperback, Hardbook, ebook, and audiobook are all separate ISBNs. Plan for that when you buy. So plan out what how many books you're gonna write and the different formats and how many you would need because Balker does have packages. I found out that they have a 100 ISBN package, which I should have got, but I end up buying the 10 packs twice, and now I'm still gonna have to go get the 100 pack. So the 10 are 295, I believe. And the 100, if you're gonna write a lot of books, saves you more money up front. It's 575. So I have all of my all of my ISBNs registered under my publishing imprint, which is remember her publishing, since this is the book that started it all. So that's why I named my publishing house. Remember her publishing. Step six, apply for your library of congress number. This step do not skip. Most self-publishers do not know about this step. I did not know about this step initially. That's why I had to wait to get approved and then reorder more books so I can send it in. But this is a step most self-publishers skip, and I cannot figure out why because it's free. And it doesn't, no one really tells you about your library of Congress number. Or I didn't find anything that told me to get the library of Congress number, but it gets your book into the library system. So even the like Libby where people can read the book for free, it gets your books into there as well as into libraries. So go to loc.gov and apply for a PCN, which stands for pre-assigned control number. Before your book publishes, puts your LCCN on the copyright page so that librarians, educators, and institutions can look through the database and they can find your book. It signals that your book is a real published work. They take, they go through that database and they're able to order it, whether it put in the library, put it in schools, if it's something like a curriculum or anything like that, put it in schools so that way more people have access to it as opposed to just in the stores. And it can live on in libraries. I I know I love going to libraries and just smelling the books. I like the smell of new books, old books. I just like the smell of my goal, my dream is one day to have a library room with a fireplace, like that old school, dark, mysterious library room with books from this generation and then books that they're trying to ban. I want all the books, but I want to be able to go in there and smell the paper. Yeah. Okay. Anyways, step seven. You would upload it to KDP if we're going to be utilizing KDP. There are other ways to self-publish your book, but I found that KDP for me was the easiest and fastest. And then going to the other ones. But if you want to do KDP, you would upload to KDP, go to KDP.amazon.com, create your account if you already don't have one, upload your interior PDF, and then you would upload your cover PDF. You would create these separate. Fill in your book details carefully because it will allow you to kind of launch a previewer so that way you can look at it to make sure everything is in the red lines, and when you get the book printed, nothing is too close to the spine. So you'll have that, but you'll be able to you'll do your title, you'll fill in all your book details, your title, your subtitle, your author name, your description, keywords, categories, your keywords and categories essentially how people find your book on Amazon and how the readers find your book on Amazon when they're kind of searching through. So kind of take some time and research and do not rush through them. Use the KDP's royal calculator to figure out your pricing before you set it and then order your author-proof copy. I did not go the route of ordering an author-proof copy because I didn't want that line across it that says not for sale. So I just waited till it was approved to be published. I made sure everything looks good in the preview previewer, and I waited for it to be approved to be published, and then I ordered author copies, which you get for just the base price. They take a little bit longer, but I prefer to do that than getting the author-proof copies. But you can always get the author-approved copies. Just so if you're concerned about how your book will actually look, and you're concerned about if it's going to be formatted correctly, you can add or uh you can order our author-proof copy. Why can't I talk today? And you can kind of see it and feel it in your hand to make sure that it's actually right. And then you can go ahead and publish it if you feel like it's right. Okay, so step eight, set up Ingram Spark for wide distribution. KDP puts you on Amazon, but Ingram Spark puts you everywhere else. Barnes and Nobles, independent bookstores can find you there, libraries will find you there as well, international retailers. So when you after you set up your Amazon KDP, go to Ingram Spark and set that up. When you set up your titles in Ingram Spark, uncheck the Amazon distribution option since you already have it handled in KDP. So that channel exclusively, and you don't want the contracts to conflict with each other. Step nine, claim your Amazon author central page. I did this a little bit later in the game, but once you get your books published approved, go and claim your Amazon author central page. So you would go to author.amazon.com and claim your author page. It's absolutely free. You add your bio, your photo, and you would connect all the books of yours that are published on Amazon. You would connect them to that page. So instead of having to let someone know about each and every book, you can just send them to your author page and they can use that in your catalog. So they all appear under your name. This is essentially your storefront on the world's, I guess they would call it the world's largest book retailer. Most people set it up once and forget it. You'll keep it updated every time you publish something new. Don't forget that. Sometimes it auto-updates. I've realized with two of my books it auto-updates, but you always want to just double check it, double-check it when you publish a new book. So step 10, claim your Goodreads author profile. I just learned about this one, so I want to make sure I tell you about it. So Goodreads is where readers live and talk about your books with other readers. So you would go to goodreads.com, you would create first, you would create a reader account, then you will apply to the Goodreads author program to claim your author profile. You have to go through an approval process, but once you are approved, your books will show up under your profile and readers can follow you. Add your books to their shelves, leave reviews on it. It's completely free. It is high traffic. So there's no reason for you not to be there. I just got mine set up. I just got approved for my author page because I found out about that one late in the game. You know, so and then step 11 if you want to do audiobooks, you would set up your audiobook on ACX. ACX has Audibles Publishing Pat Publishing Platform. That's a tongue twister. And it is how your book gets on Audible, Amazon, and iTunes as an audiobook. So you would go to ACX.com, you would you can narrate yourself, or they have a button and a link where you can, I guess, pitch for other narrators. You would listen to their voice and pitch for other narrators through their marketplace. So if you go exclusive distribution, the royalty rate, I believe, is 40%. Well, I know it's 40%, yeah. You would download their technical spec sheet before you record a single word because your audio files have to have specific requirements. They will reject it if it's not met. So one thing is you have to be like in a soundproof room. You have to have a good microphone. So you can narrate your own books if you would like to do that, but you can also hire someone who already have all these things, these things in place to record audiobooks. So that is a whole nother revenue stream sitting on claim. You don't want to leave that one on the table because a lot of people nowadays they want to listen to the books as they drive or while they're cleaning the house, and they don't want to sit and read a book. So you want to definitely make sure you go in, even if you're not ready to narrate or find a narrator, go in there and just claim all of your titles because you don't want someone else to claim your title and try to narrate that book for you and kind of gain revenue off of that. Step 12, you would add your books to your own store because Amazon handles the mass market, but your own platform, you can kind of start creating relationships with your readers, your customers. I on one of my sites, I sell signed copies exclusively where petitioning to be a speaker as well. I sell signed copies. I actually have a package with pause clear lead, and then I also have a package with the remember her and the remember her journey. Those are signed. So you can sell those separately. You can do it through Shopify, you can do it through a stand store. What are the other platforms that are out there where you can just kind of create your own page and sell your books because you can always order them as author copies, so you can get them wholesale essentially through Amazon KDP or through Ingram Spark once you get it all set up. But you can't really do signed copies through Amazon, so that's why you want to kind of have something separate to where people can come directly to your site and get something that they can keep and cherish for a lifetime. But yeah, it's something Amazon, it's something that Amazon literally cannot replicate. No algorithm can do what a book signed by the person who wrote it does. That is a premium product and belongs on your platform and on your own platform where you're kind of benefiting from that and you're kind of building those relationships with your readers where you set the price, you keep the margin. It also is a way to have that direct, you know, you want to have that direct transaction with your reader that has nothing to do with anyone else's algorithm. I want to tell you what building this catalog actually gave me, not the inspirational version, the real version. It gave me a publishing house. Remember her publishing for me is a real imprint with a real identity and a catalog that I can say that I grew, right? Every time I finish something new, for me, that's an asset. That's an asset that will carry on for years to come. Something that I built, something that came from me. I cr I call it creating different worlds for the fiction series. And it has a life of its own beyond any one title. It gave me credibility that open doors I did not even know existed. I'm walking down the path of becoming a speaker and gaining speaking opportunities, media inquiries, collaborations, all of it. So it moved me into a whole different space and moment from just keeping all of the stories to myself and then bringing them out into the world. One, it it's my goal is whoever reads finds a little joy and happiness, right? I went from unpublished to published with a body of work behind me, not because the work changed who I was, but because it made me visible what was already there. So it gave me proof, proof that what I know is worth sharing, proof that my story has value when it is given from a structure and a cover, a spine, and a place on its shelf. I can't wait to I see my books in stores, and um, so many people will be able to read and kind of just whether they find joy or just make them think a little bit more about something, help them move past a certain place in their life, help them in their career. So that proof is available to you too. Whatever the book is that you've been living in your head, whatever story you have that you keep almost starting up, the steps are learnable, the process is doable, and there is a reader out there who needs exactly what you're carrying. The reader is waiting.

SPEAKER_00 41:44

The reader is waiting.

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That was gonna make me emotional because I've heard so many stories already from people who found value in Remember Her. So don't do like I did and wait them, make them wait too much longer. Before I let you go, I do want to read you something from the Remember Her book. I want to read you the introduction because this was the book that started it for me. This is why I published, not because someone handed me permission, but let's read the introduction. First, I want to read you the dedication. So, like I said, this series, the remember her series, and the remember her girl girl series, the remember her girl series, I can't talk, was catapulted from my daughter. So all of these books are dedicated to her. For my daughter who came into this world fighting before she ever took her first breath. You taught me strength before I understood what it meant. And for every woman who has ever forgotten herself while trying to love everyone else, may this book help you remember. Alright, so this is the introduction. You didn't lose yourself, you forgot her. Somewhere along the way, a lot of women disappear. Not in dramatic ways, not overnight. It happens slowly, quietly, respectably. You become the supportive partner, the responsible daughter, the dependable employee, the mother who holds everything together, you become the woman who everyone can count on. And one day you wake up and realize something is settling. Everyone else knows who exactly who you are supposed to be. Except you. This book is not about becoming someone new. It is about remembering the women you were before the world told you who you needed to be. Because the truth is, most women do not lose themselves in one moment. They lose themselves in a thousand small decisions, a thousand quiet compromises, a thousand times choosing people. Peace over truth. And if you are honest, you have probably felt it before. That quiet voice inside you that whispers, This is not the life I imagined. For some women, the awakening comes through heartbreak. For others, it comes through motherhood, burnout, loss, or simply waking up one morning and realizing the life they built does not feel like it belonged to them anymore. For me, it began in a hospital bed. Before the marriage, before the divorce, before I understand, before I understood what it meant to choose myself, that was the moment I first realized something inside of me had disappeared. I just did not trust myself enough to listen. And if you are holding this book, there's a chance you know the feeling too. This book is for the woman who feels like she has spent years being strong for everyone else. The woman who has survived things she really talks about. The woman who sometimes wonders when it'll finally be her turn. You do not need permission to reclaim your life. You do not need approval to become someone new. And you definitely do not need anyone's blessings to step into your power. You only need one thing to remember her. The woman who you were before the world convinced you to forget. And with that, I just want to say hopefully that everyone who gets this book finds value in it. That decision to remember you is available to you the moment you choose to make it. If this gave you something useful today, share it with a specific person in your life who has a book they almost keep writing. That is the most valuable thing you can do with this video. Just remember new videos every Wednesday right here on the Layered Love Universe. I know this one is a little late, but they will be coming earlier. I will see you next Wednesday.