You've Decided to Self-Publish. Now What?

 

Ten years ago I was a traditionally published author. It wasn’t easy getting that far. I joined Romance Writers of America, went to a few chapter meetings, and discovered the joys of ‘pitching’ my book to editors and agents at the conventions. Time and again I was rejected — until I pitched to this woman in the elevator that I had no idea was an editor.

But the book deal wasn't as lucrative as I’d expected. After two books were published, I got divorced and stopped writing. Instead of having time to write, I had to worry about paying bills and taking care of my two small children. I’d also stopped believing in romance, which as a romance author is a huge taboo.

Fast forward nine years. I’m remarried to my soulmate, kids are happy and I believe in romance again. So I started writing again. Then I realized, I didn’t want to send my new book to the publisher. They hadn’t made me any money, so there didn’t seem to be any point in taking 40% commission when I could get all of it (minus Amazon’s fees). I had to do all my own marketing anyway.

So I decided to self-publish. That was almost a year ago and I haven’t looked back since. Since I’d already been through the process of being published, I had a good idea of what needed to happen. The first thing I did was request my copyrights back from the publisher.

I’m not going to bore you with the stuff I did after that. Let’s talk about you.

The first thing you need to do in your journey is to realize that it’s probably not going to give you overnight success. That being said, I know plenty of authors who sold whopping numbers of books or KU reads with their first book. The funny thing is, they don’t even realize that’s a huge accomplishment. I also know many who made less than $100 in the first three months. So kick any expectations you have about how your books are going to sell to the curb.

Now, I’m assuming that you’ve written or are in the process of writing, your masterpiece. The first thing you need to do is to make sure you are connecting to readers. Yes, that’s right. Readers. Not joining Facebook groups full of other authors trying to figure out how to write. Not tweeting out blasts to #WIP and #WritingCommunity while completely ignoring the community of people who will actually BUY your book.

That is the whole point of why you wrote it, right? So that you could SELL it? You need to get in front of people who will love it and BUY.

Who is your target reader?

Answer this question for yourself. Who is going to love my book? How does your ideal reader spend their time? What hobbies besides reading might they have? What movies do they watch? Start looking for them. I promise you, they are out there.

If you’re wondering how to find them, think about how you would track down your husband’s ex and start stalking those readers. Not in a crazy way, but use the ingenuity that would have you seeking out information and hunt those readers down. They want to be found.

Start a Facebook group and start inviting them in. Comment and like posts. Join other groups where they might be lurking. Go on Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. Post about things that you also enjoy. Talk about the characters in your books. Develop that following of ‘friends’.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying to ignore all other authors or the writing community. I’m telling you to know where your bread and butter comes from. The writing community is great for helping you get there. But the majority of them don’t buy your books. They’ll be super supportive of you in every other way. Think about it. How many books can you afford to buy?

Take a Marketing Course.

Don’t just start throwing up ads willy nilly. You’ll waste more money than if you’d just tossed it into the wind. In fact, you might as well, you might get a better return! You can easily waste thousands of dollars on ads that get you nothing.

Decide what platform you want to focus on and then research the hell out of it. If it’s Amazon Ads then do some research before putting money up. Make sure you’ve got the cover that will draw them in and the blurb that will make them want to read more. Which brings me to my next point.

Be Prepared to Spend Money on Covers and Editing.

Unless you’ve taken a course in cover designing or have a really good eye for that sort of thing, leave it to the professionals. You need an eye-catching cover that doesn’t scream “SELF PUBLISHED”. I can’t tell you how many of those I’ve seen and cringed. Maybe the book is well written but readers will never know because most of them are reluctant to spend money on something that looks like it was created by an amateur.

Book covers shouldn’t be overly expensive and with a little research online you can find someone who will create something amazing for around $100 or less. There are a ton of premade covers out there too for $20 or less. My point is, you don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars on a cover. Just make sure it looks good and matches your genre.

The money should go to editing. Seriously. A good editor is worth their weight in gold. They keep you from sounding awful and catch all the typos that you’ve missed after the twentieth time going over your book. Your brain misses mistakes because it thinks it should be there, so it sees it as correct, even if it's really not.

Know the difference between editors too. Developmental editors help point out story issues and are pretty much a story coach. They ask you why Jack slept with Jane in chapter two when he is clearly in love with Jill. Unless it’s that type of book. Then, by all means, carry on.

Line Editors help make your book flow better. They’ll help you decide if you should use “said” for your dialog tags. Give you suggestions for different word choices or show you ways to change the words around that will make the whole thing read better. If this is something you struggle with, then you should spend the money and find one who works with your style.

Copyeditors are the ones who catch the commas and get the book ready for that final round before proofreading. This step is extremely important, as Developmental and Line Editors don’t focus on this. Usually, after they’ve finished with your book, you’re making so many changes that even if they did, you would have changed things anyway and they would need to be done again.

Don’t skip the Copyedits.

This is the round of editing that most Authors think of when they think of editing. Not only is it the most common, but it is also the most important. You don’t want to spend money on an editor who doesn’t know what they’re doing either.

I made that mistake. I thought hiring a cheap “editor” would be okay because I could save money. Big mistake. Huge. She didn’t catch things that I caught afterward and I was so disappointed that I refused to pay her because it was so obvious she didn't’ know what she was doing. Most editors will do the first few pages for free so you can see if they will work well for you. Don’t make the mistake I did.

Get that thing formatted!

You’ve made it through all the editing rounds and are ready to hit print. Hold up. First, you need to format that book. There are quite a few different ways to do this, and you’ll want to research the way that works best for you. There are many articles on the software to use, so I won’t go into that here. Just know that you’ll need that step for a nice, clean copy of your book.

Now, You Can Publish!

But where? Stay tuned. I’ll be talking about that in my next piece. Until then, if you’ve enjoyed this article, please like and follow me. Post a comment below with any questions you have about what I’ve written. I’d love to hear from you.