Once upon a time, if an author wanted to publish their own book chapter by chapter, the closest they could get was serializing it in a magazine or newspaper. That’s how classics like Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas first saw print. But even then, those authors still had to answer to gatekeepers in order to share their work with the world.

Now the Internet has made it extremely easy for you to become an indie author and create your own book online. There are tons of fiction platforms out there where you can post each chapter of your book as you write it. Sites like Fictionate.Me even give you the opportunity to earn cash along the way.

As great as the artistic and financial freedom are, it can be stressful trying to post your book online chapter by chapter. I personally posted my very first book many years ago on FictionPress.com. I learned a lot about what you should and shouldn’t do in the process of creating your own book online—largely by doing the things you shouldn’t do.

Here are some of the lessons I learned that have helped to make the process of posting chapter by chapter less stressful and more enjoyable.

1) Outline

When I first started posting my epic fantasy novel on FictionPress, I had no outline whatsoever. I just brainstormed a vague idea and ran with it. This was a good thing in some ways. If I had spent longer trying to figure out the inner workings of my story, I might never have worked up the courage to self-publish it in the first place.

But after having written a ridiculous number of inconsequential scenes that I ultimately ended up cutting, I can say that creating an outline ahead of time is extremely helpful. You don’t have to get crazy detailed with it—just having a rough beginning, middle, and end in mind for your story will help tremendously when it comes to keeping your story engaging and avoiding hitting a wall.

I have personally found it helpful to write a few chapter outlines in addition to a rough outline. You don’t have to write too many; I tend to shoot for 5-10, but as few as 3 will give you a valuable roadmap when writing those first few chapters.

2) Write Ahead

When I first started off posting my novel online, I wrote every single word of it right into FictionPress’s text editor and published it as soon as I was done writing. Later on, I found myself wishing I could go back and make changes to those first chapters, but I didn’t want my readers to be confused/annoyed by edits. So I was pretty much stuck taking my story in a direction that wasn’t ideal.

After that, I began writing ahead. I sat down and cranked out the next 3 chapters of my story and tried to maintain that distance between where I was and where my readers were. This gave me a chance to make sure I felt good about the direction the story was going in before I posted a chapter. I also got the chance to read over each chapter a few times. This way, I was able to catch issues and errors that I didn’t notice in the initial writing.

However, you’ll never be able to catch all those problems on your own, which brings us to our next section!

3) Find a Critique Partner

I started reading manuscripts as an intern for a literary agent when I was still in college. I would go through children’s and young adult books, picking out narrative inconsistencies and grammatical errors. I continued reading for that agent after graduating, this time for pay, and have edited many more manuscripts on a freelance basis in the 12 years since.

However, despite all that editing experience, I am downright terrible at editing my own work. My ability to catch errors just turns off—I know so well what I intended to say, that I don’t see the mistakes. Luckily, in my early FictionPress days, I had readers who would point these errors out to me. Now I have a wonderful critique partner who not only catches little typos but big issues like inconsistent worldbuilding or slow pacing. I rely a lot on her feedback, as well as those of other trusted readers I’ve found over the years.

There are lots of ways to track down a critique partner. One great method is to foster a relationship with another author who publishes on the same platform. You can get in touch by commenting on their work and/or shooting them a message, and start trading chapters with one another. Author Maggie Stiefvater also has a Critique Partner Matchup, which is basically a virtual corkboard where you can post a request for a critique partner (this is where I found my own critique partner). You have no idea how much it will help to have an extra pair of eyes on your work before you publish.

4) Have Fun

As mentioned earlier, the process of creating your book online can be an anxiety-producing one. When you don’t have readers, you stress about getting them. And once you have some regular readers, then you start to stress about keeping them happy. It can be very easy to forget that writing is your favorite thing in the world, and for it to all to begin to feel like a chore.

So try to focus on the positive. Thanks to the wonders of technology, you are able to push your book out into the world with just a click of the mouse. You can connect with readers halfway across the world in a way that never would have been possible just a few decades ago. Remember that as you post your book online, and just relax and enjoy the ride.

Author’s Bio: Jillian Karger was born in Ohio but has lived in and around New York City for over a decade. Since graduating from NYU in 2009, Jill has had a long string of jobs doing things like scouting books to be adapted for film and researching trivia questions for “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”.

She has done freelance writing as well for sites like Cracked.com, and had her Twitter jokes featured on BuzzFeed and funnyordie.com. Jill has also self-published two novels on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Jillian-Karger/e/B07B894DNW).

Follow her blog posts about books and writing advice, read books and publish them for free at: https://www.fictionate.me.