A lot of veterans want to publish a book. Often, it’s a memoir with stories about their military service. Some veterans might have dollar signs in their eyes, assuming their story will be a best seller, or inspire a great movie. Other veterans just want to combat how uninformed civilians can be about the realities of military service, or set Hollywood straight.

Other veterans want to do it because it gives them a leg up professionally. Entrepreneurs, personal coaches, trainers, therapists, consultants, and 100 other professions can benefit from having published a book. It lends them authority and prestige in their professional domain, and becomes something they can price into services or otherwise sell to customers or prospective clients.

Unfortunately, no matter why a veteran might want to publish, most don’t really know where to start. How do you get from the idea of a book to holding a copy in your hand?

Step 1: Writing a Book

Drafting an actual 60k- to 120k-word book is hard, even if you’ve trained as a professional writer. If you’ve never had any formal writing training, you’re going to need some help. That said, there are three basic steps to writing—outlining, drafting, and revising. Each is important, but the good news is that there are no real rules about how to do any of these steps.

You might not even do those first two steps in that order! Whatever gets words on the page the easiest for you? That’s the right way. It doesn’t matter if you write it out by hand under a tree, type it in a coffee shop, or talk into your phone with a speech to text tool while you’re on a hike. They’re all perfectly valid ways to work.

As far as what happens in each step? Outlining is when you assemble your ideas, and start thinking about how you might organize them. Drafting is when you don’t think too much about writing well, or being clever, you just try and shut your brain off and get words onto the page without judgment. Revising is when you bring all the judgment and bring the book up to publishable-quality writing.

The Big Tip For Each Step of Writing

Outlining: This doesn’t have to be something overly formal. In fact, for a military memoir, it might just be a list of stories you’ve told to friends and family a thousand times already. Stories you know you want in the memoir, listed in an order that makes sense to you.

Drafting: The biggest struggle most new writers have is generating words for a first draft. The best way to overcome this is to not think of it like you’re “writing”, but to think of it like you’re “talking”, or telling a story to a friend or loved one. Just put it on the page exactly as you’d tell it to them when its just the two of you in your favorite place.

It doesn’t matter if that line wouldn’t go in a book, that’s not your problem to think about while drafting, that’s a problem for revising the book later. Don’t worry about making more work for yourself in the revising stage. The goal of drafting is just to make it to the revising stage, not to try and outsmart or shortcut the revising stage altogether. That doesn’t generally work.

Revising: Drafting is about plopping down a giant pile of raw clay. Revising is when you start actually sculpting. There might be some parts that happened to come out great in the first draft that you want to keep, but, especially if you’re new to writing, odds are most sentences are going to need some attention to be publishable. Being able to revise your own writing and actually make it better is what generally separates amateur writers from professionals.

The very best tip for how to revise your own work is to read it out loud. It turns out your ear, and the parts of the human brain associated with hearing language, is really, really, really well trained at recognizing what “sounds” right and wrong in the English language. Reading out loud literally activates different parts of your brain than when you just read words on the page. You will be shocked how many errors you find by doing this slow through your entire manuscript. Your ear is the single-best tool you have for revising your own writing.

Getting Help Writing

Struggling to outline, draft, or revise your book? There are a lot of ways to get help!

Join a Writing Group: These can be great places to upgrade your skills and get feedback from a safe test audience. A quick search for “veteran writing groups” yields a number of options for online writing groups, while your local community center might have other options near you for in-person groups. It might take a minute to find the right group for you, but this is a great option even if you don’t think you need help.

Hire A Ghost Writer: Ghost writers can help you get your ideas on the page and up to a publishable level. Hiring a ghost writer might cost between $20,000 and $40,000, often split between an upfront fee and a per-word rate. However, ghost writers aren’t mind readers, and they haven’t actually experienced your life. You need to tell them about it, in detail, for the project to have any real value at all. When it comes to military memoir material, they’re also going to get little details wrong you’re going to have to correct if you want it to have any authenticity at all.

Hire an Editor: If you have what you think is a finished manuscript, and want to pursue traditional publishing, this is a recommended course of action. Even if you make a traditional publishing deal, odds are they’re going to pair you with an editor to make changes to the book (the publisher will just be the ones to pay for it in this case). Hiring your own editor might cost between $1,500 and $6,000 depending on the editor and how much work your book needs. Two great places to look for an editor are ACES and the EFA. With some digging, you can find an editor with a military background for a fair rate.

Use AI: Don’t have AI draft your memoir. It honestly can’t do it with any accuracy unless you’re very famous and there are hundreds of thousands of pages of information about your life on the internet to draw from, and even then, it’s likely to just make some random stuff up. However, AI can still provide some support. Copying and pasting entire chapters into an AI like Claude and asking the AI to “is this writing of publishable quality?” or “how would you describe the quality of this writing?” or “how can I improve this writing to publishable quality?” can output really useful feedback on your work and give you a starting point to begin the work of revising.

Step 2: Getting Published

So, you’re done writing, and have a polished, ready-for-publication draft of your book. Congratulations! Something like 80% of Americans want to write a book. Of those who start, something like 97% of people never finish. Celebrate finishing your book, it’s a major achievement. The next step is publishing it, so the audience can get their hands on it.

Before you can publish memoir material detailing your time in service, if you’ve held a security clearance, are still active-duty, or recently separated, it’s mandatory you get approval from the military before publishing your book. This process can take 30-45 days, and mostly exists to ensure there isn’t any classified information, or a violation of operational security. Your service branch’s office of public affairs can generally point you in the right direction to begin this process. It’s possible they’ll request you redact some material, change some names, etc.

Once that is out of the way, though, there are three primary means of publishing a book—traditional publishing, pay-to-publish, and self-publishing. Each one has its own strengths and weaknesses, and which one you pursue, or pursue first, largely depends on the goals and target audience you have in mind.

Traditional Publishing

This form of publishing involves you signing a contract with a publisher, and then the publisher pays you an advance, which today is often broken up into three or four separate payments. Advances are usually around $10,000 for a first-time author, excepting already-famous people. Once signed, they take over everything related to publishing the book, for better or worse. An example of a successful traditionally published military memoir might be Daneilla Mestyanek-Young’s “Uncultured”, or Remi Adeleke’s “Transformed”.

What Kind of Books Use This: Any sort of book might use this if the publisher is convinced it has broad appeal to its audience. A genre military fiction book, non-fiction memoir, or even self-help or business books use traditional publishing all the time.

Strengths: The biggest strength of traditional publishing is that there is a giant machine that is now going to use their vast wealth of connections and institutional knowledge to market, sell, and option your book. They will ensure the book is in ordering catalogues for retailers, give you a well-crafted book page on various websites, organize a book tour, podcasts, and otherwise leverage all their connections built just to sell books like yours.

If your goal is to have a NYT best-selling book, or see your book optioned into a movie or TV show, or just be able to make a living as a writer, this is generally still the highest-percentage chance of that happening. And if it does happen, the publisher and your agent both know how to negotiate with the studio and get a generally better deal than you probably could on your own. There’s also the opportunity to get a multi-book deal and royalties and otherwise build a career.

Keep in mind all those outcomes are still rare. Most books sold through traditional publishing earn about $10,000. That is the most likely outcome, but the ceiling is much higher for those that get lucky.

Weaknesses: You lose a lot of creative and business control over your book for the period of time you sign away that license to the publisher. If you decide you don’t like the cover they chose, or you think they’re marketing the book wrong, you don’t have much recourse. If a studio decides to option your book to make a movie, and then that studio selects directors or actors you think are just plain wrong for it, you don’t really get a say in that (we should all have such problems).

Further, it is incredibly competitive and difficult to get published. You often need an agent, and getting an agent is also incredibly competitive and difficult to secure. Each of these hoops requires sending out query letters, samples, making changes to your book, and more.

Finally, if the book doesn’t sell out the advance you get paid upon signing with a publisher, you might have to pay back that part of the advance (check your contract). Most writers put advances in some sort of super-low-risk investment, while they wait to see if they “earn out their advance”, which is to say, the book sells enough copies that the advance is covered. Once a book does sell out its advance, the book starts earning the author royalties on each sale.

How To Approach This: This is a long process where you start searching for agents that work with authors making books like yours, and that work with publishers that publish books similar to yours. If you’re a veteran writing a memoir. In that case, you might look at publishers like Javelin Literary Agency, Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency, or Aevitas Creative Management, all literary agents with a strong track record of publishing military memoirs. Look for their submission guidelines, and draft a query letter. You may have to do this several times at several different places before you find success.

It is possible to directly shop the book to publishers with a query letter, but there is a lot of luck in getting through the slush pile to a real editor. Agents can bypass a lot of that and get your manuscript directly to the right acquisitions editor with some hype behind it.

Pay-To-Publish/Hybrid Publishing/Vanity Publishing

There are many companies that, if you pay them anywhere from $500 to $10,000 dollars, will perform some of the services of a traditional publisher. Typically, this is limited to proofing, laying out, and printing your book. It’s generally then on you to sell the printed copies. While some of these businesses are legit enterprises, many are predatory scams, so beware. A good example of a successful vanity published military memoir is “No Ordinary Dog” by Will Chesney, which started as a hybrid/vanity published book before being acquired by a publisher to meet demand, or “Black Veteran Entrepreneur” by “IRON” Mike Steadman, through Manuscripts.

If anyone is promising you’ll make a lot of money from this, that’s a red flag. Learn about some other red flags here. However, with the right business model, selling books to clients can increase your profit margin at your existing business. And there is the occasional exception if something really catches on fire the same way a wholly self-published book might. Of course, if that happens, there is almost always a traditional publishing deal signed to meet demand.

What Kind of Books Use This: This form of publishing is very popular with small businesses that package the book with services for a client. Anything in the self-help field, like coaching, wellness, or fitness, to consulting or business leaders and a million other professions rely on this form of publishing. The typical idea is that new clients get a copy of the book priced into initial services that to read between sessions. The quality of these books is all over the place, but most people don’t actually read them cover to cover. Their purpose is generally to lend authority and prestige to the person who wrote them to give their business an edge.

Strengths: If you already have your book written, this type of publishing happens very fast, and the only barrier to entry is money. You don’t use an agent or hope a publisher picks you. You also get complete creative control. Some services might have some resources or packages that can help with aspects beyond printing.

Weaknesses: You generally have to front your own money, typically $1,000-$5,000, plus the cost of printing (which might get crowd-funded, or you might be on the hook for it). You are essentially buying a print run of books. You also then have several boxes of these books you need to store somewhere. Selling the books rests entirely on you. Be careful what you sign. If it feels at all sketchy, google the publisher name and “scam”, or check to see if the publisher is listed on

How To Approach This: It’s best to search around. If you’re an entrepreneur, talk to peers who have used a service before, preferably one they used within the past few years, but at least 6-12 months ago. Internet search the publisher’s name with the word “scam” added to see if anything pops up. You have to be really wary approaching this sort of publishing. You can check this watchdog list for good potential publishing partners.

Self-Publishing

This sort of publishing is where you do everything. In recent years, this has become easier than ever, with great online platforms where you can sell your book. These platforms then take a sizable chunk of the money for each sale. However, it requires a lot more knowledge and effort than traditional publishing. A good example of a successful self-published military memoir would be “Murphy’s Law” by Jack Murphy, which began as a wholly self-published book before securing a traditional publishing deal.

What Kind of Books Use This: Any sort of book might use this, but generally its fiction that traditional publishing wasn’t interested in, or for authors who really want to retain full creative control over their work and its presentation.

Strengths: It’s free, and faster with fewer hoops to jump through than traditional publishing. You retain complete creative control over every aspect of not just the book, but any licensing deals (though odds are you’ll have far fewer opportunities that way).

Weaknesses: You are limited to the skills you have, and the people you decide to contract to shore up those skills. That means you can either learn how to edit, revise, proof, and lay out your book. Organize the distribution plan, which might be entirely digital on platforms like Amazon, Apple, or Barnes & Noble Press, or you might decide you want to buy a print run to bring to conventions to sell at a booth. It’s all up to you, but that means it’s all up to you. You’ll have to educate yourself about a lot of aspects of publishing beyond the writing.

How To Approach This: Find a community of self-publishers to bounce ideas off of and learn about best practices. Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, Barnes & Noble Press, Apple Books, Kobo, and Spines are all great self-publishing platforms. Your first instinct might be to put your book on all of those platforms. For the initial release, this probably isn’t the best choice. It means your sales get diluted across multiple platforms (making it hard to crack the top rankings), and also, you might find you get paid better per sale if you’re exclusive to a single platform for the first year.

Step 3: Promoting Your Book

You did it, you published your book! It’s available for purchase somewhere. The final step is supporting the book with some promotion. If you have a traditional publisher, they can do a lot of the work in this step, but it’s always ultimately up to the author to build their own audience and help their audience find their book. How do you promote a book? There are several ways:

Podcasts: Email people who run podcasts related to the subject matter of your book. See if they’ll have you as a guest, or offer them free review copies of your book to discuss on their show.

Tour/Signings: This is something more often handled by publishers and agents, but there’s no rule against organizing your own book tour, release party, or book signing event. Small, independent bookstores are the most approachable. Depending on the subject matter, public libraries might also have an interest, especially around Veterans Day and Memorial Day.

Social Media: You have friends and followers on social media. Presumably they like you. Some might like you enough to buy your book. Let them know it exists and it’s out every day for the first week, a few times a week for the first month, and once a week or so the rest of that first year. Join groups related to the subject matter of the book, and if the topic comes up in conversation, let those folks know about it, too.

Email Newsletters: If it’s your first book, you probably don’t have your own newsletter. That’s okay! There are tons of email newsletters related to the subject matter you just wrote a book about. Find them, email the newsletter owner, and let them know about your book! Write them a story that they can just copy and paste into their newsletter to let their readers know about your book.

Are You Writing a Book to Launch a Life in Business or Politics?

Having a book is a great way to start a political career, or boost your professional career. While you’re waiting on that publishing deal, IVMF has programs that can add rocket fuel to your political or professional trajectory!

If you’re an entrepreneur, or want to learn how to build a business around your brand as an author, check out IVMF’s Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans (EBV). This 30-day online course culminates in a 9-day residency at one of eight college campuses, and will teach you everything you need to know to get started.

If you’re interested in politics, check out The Veterans Program in Politics and Civic Engagement (VPPCE).  Built to teach veterans what it takes to run for political office, VPPCE will help you explore if politics are a viable option.