What steps did H Ferdosy take to publish his book?

1. Plotting: This is usually the first step in my writing, but it didn't apply to Thirteen because it was purely pantsed from cover to cover.
2. Skeleton: Once the plotting is done, the next step for me is to write a skeletal story (again not the case for Thirteen). This is basically something like a 20k-word version of a 100k-long book, focusing only on the plot and character interactions. Here, you'll find large chunks of dialog with no tags and actions, just to get the story out.
3. Draft 0: This is where I fill in the blank and generate the very first draft that resembles an actual book. I call it draft 0 because it's word vomit meant for my eyes only. It will take a few self-editing rounds before others can read it.
4. Translation: I hear this is something some ESL writers do. For my fantasy series, I wrote the book in English from the start. But for Thirteen, there was a translation step because the original 2009 story was a blog-story in Persian. I dumped all the posts into a doc, then translated it without regard to prose and consistency (draft 0).
5. Self-editing: This involved several layers of editing. For the first few rounds, I focused on developmental editing. I experimented with different narrative formats as well as alternate versions of the story different from the original. At this stage, I was working together with writing buddies and asked for feedback. Next step was going through the book, looking for inconsistencies, and a first round of light line editing.
6. Art: Throughout the process, I created art for social media: character art, quotes, etc. For my fantasy books, I also like to commission artists I know for character art. They're good assets in book promotions on SM.
7. Beta round 1: Once this was done, I asked two fellow writers to read the story, and they gave me valuable feedback that helped me polish the story, develop parts that were missing/vague, etc. I used this form in my announcement.
8. Professional editing round 1 (developmental): After another read-through and line edits, I hired a developmental editor (from here on out, because of the political and mental health aspects of the book, it was a muddy road to find people who were good, affordable, and willing to work on this project).
9. Beta round 2: I applied 80+% of the feedback from my editor. Then it was time to get more beta readers. I actually retranslated it back to Persian and had my mom read the book as well. I also advertised the book in the writing community we had at my day job and got a beta reader there, as well as hiring one from Fiverr.
10. Sensitivity/accuracy read: Although I had most of the facts in the book from lived experience in Iran, still the life of a man in Iran is very different from that of a woman. So, I asked around until I found an Iranian colleague who had been there around the time the story is set in. A few adjustments came out of that read as well.
11. Professional editing round 2 (content and line): Once all the adjustments were done based on beta feedback, it was time for final edits. I hired a content-and-line editor I'd worked with before.
12. Proofread: I worked with 2 proofreaders to make sure nothing was missed.
13. Final read-through: I did a few more read-throughs before I considered the book ready to publish.
14. First-chapter read: This is also one of the last steps I usually take before publishing. There are people on Fiverr who give first-chapter feedback, and I hired one I'd already worked with before. Since the first chapter is the hook, I want to perfect that as much as I can (although one might argue "I'm exhausted." is not the perfect hook.)
15. Formatting: I did all the formatting of the book myself using a combination of Word, 3D software (for the figure silhouettes) and Photoshop. For the Ebook, I used the "ebook editor" of Calibre which allows you to edit the source HTML code. I'm very particular with formatting, and no software I knew could do exactly what I wanted in the way I wanted it. I even bought Atticus before realizing it was very high level (read low flexibility) in its feature set. Word is always my #1 book formatting tool. One needs to know their way around it, but once they do, there's nothing they can't achieve with formatting.
16. ISBNs: I already had bought my batch of ISBNs before and had earmarked 6 for Thirteen. I used the first 2 for the Ebook and Amazon/B&N and slapped it onto those formats.
17. Copyright: This was particularly important to me, because there's this danger for KU publishers, where their book inevitably gets pirated, and then Amazon takes down their book from KU because "it's published elsewhere". It had already happened to a few friends of mine. If that happens, having a copyright comes very handy to get Amazon off your back. Besides, since I was using a pseudonym, I figured I needed at least one book in that name copyrighted to me so I could prove in any legal setting I'm that pseudonym.
18. Cover: I designed the original cover myself, and that was probably a mistake. So, after a while, I hired a cover designer from Fiverr. These days, you have to be very careful there too because some of the artists use AI even when you ask them not to... and so did my cover designer. Luckily, I'd asked them for the source file. So, once I received it, I took out all AI layers and replaced them with free stock photos.
19. Blurb: Blurs are hard, and I knew I'd never be able to craft a perfect one. So, I hired someone to write the blurb using the synopsis of the story, and I'm very happy with the result.
20. ARCs: I managed to find 2 ARC readers. They were both people I knew from the X writing community.
21. Publishing: I already had an account on both Amazon and B&N. I submitted for pre-sale on B&N first, since B&N refuses to let you publish an ISBN if it's already published elsewhere. Since it also lets you put your paperback on pre-sale, it's good for getting the ball rolling for the American audience. I let it be approved and put on sale before I moved on to submitting it on KDP.
22. Author copies: I used to get preview copies from Amazon back when it was not possible to submit the book for a future publication date. But now that there is, I submit first then get the author copies. This way, they won't get the ugly "NOT FOR SALE" strip and you can actually sell them to readers / donate them. I also always make the point of ordering at least one author copy from each other store where I have my book (for Thirteen it's B&N and Ingram Spark) even though sometimes the shipping fee competes with the price of the book itself. It's important to know what goes to the readers looks and feels exactly as you want it to.
23. Pre-sale: I did a pre-sale for my fantasy debut, but I don't think it really worked for me. Amazon counts each sale (including presales) on the actual date of order, not on the release date. So, there are no real benefits to having pre-sales in my experience. So, this time around, I only enabled them 2-3 days before publication date. I did start a count-down campaign on my socials 13 days before the publication.
24. Promotion: What's that? Unfortunately, I didn't really push this book as much as it deserved. I'm extremely bad at this. I did do a few discount runs, some KDP ads, but none yielded as much sales as the book's own organic, mouth-to-mouth growth (which I'm still hoping will get the book somewhere in the long run).

To buy thirteen: 
https://amzn.to/442Y5lm