A year in review: My mistakes

It’s been a bit more than a year since I started this adventure of self-publishing, and I thought I would give a recap of what I’ve learned. I started my experience in April of 2020. Like many of us, COVID gave me some free time as I no longer had a two-hour commute every day to work. Since then, I have published three novels (Island of Stone, Slaying of the Bull, and Dawn of the Lightbearer, if you’re interested) and an assortment of low-content books (mostly to learn about keywords and other mechanics, and to help defray costs of marketing my novels). I started as a complete novice. I didn’t have a webpage, I wasn’t a blogger, and the only social media presence I had was a personal Facebook page that I rarely visited. I think I’m a reasonably intelligent guy that’s been around the block a bit, so I thought to myself, how hard could it be? If others can do it, so can I.

First things first, I needed to finish my book. I revisited an old project, Island of Stone, and got it to a place where I was happy with it (my blog details a lot of this story). The novel went live via Amazon on March 31, 2020. While doing that, I researched and read everything I could find on self-publishing. There is a plethora of advice for success in this endeavor, and I’ve read my fair share. Some of it is fantastic, and some not so much. The critical problem is that most of these people have had great success and are excited to share this with the world. They seem like experts because they have had this success and thus their advice travels far. Some of it was undoubtedly the result of good writing chops, but much of it was probably luck. Their path thus comes across as if it were a breeze becoming a successful Indie writer and their recipes for success simple, but basically, they were lucky. The timing was right, they already had an audience, or they stumbled on a topic that became in vogue and the fortune flooded in. For 99% of us, that will not happen. You don’t hear so much from this large majority that struggle. Their lessons hurt, and thus, they are not as eager to shout out to the world. But what they’ve learned is probably much more valuable than what the best sellers learned. You may say, “but they were not successful, so why should I listen to them?” I would say, yes, they may not be on a first name basis with the New York Times, but they often know the reasons why they were not successful, which is gold because they are things you can avoid. Errors are the best teachers and they’re even better if someone else made the error. Also, remember, someone can win the lottery and say they were successful at winning the lottery, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us can do it, right? The rest of us have to build our fortunes the old fashion way with time, lots of work, and even more mistakes. No one is an expert here and if they say they are, they’re lying. Even the big publishing houses, those around for hundreds of years, still don’t know the magic sauce that will make a book a best seller. For them too, it is trial and error- just at scale.

Your first step is to build an audience. The biggest takeaway I’ve discovered from bitter experience is that this will take much longer than you initially thought, especially if you are starting from zero. You must have patience. I know, you’ve spent so much time and energy creating this thing, and you want to share it with the world! I hear you. But you’re setting yourself up for failure if you don’t have an audience. If I were to do it all again, I would have spent the entire year focusing on this task rather than releasing a book to cricket chirps. It is soul-crushing. I made the mistake of creating the art and then trying to sell it when it should have been selling the artist so there was an eager group of customers ready to buy what I was selling. Building a potential customer base is vital. Start a website, write a blog, create social media accounts (all of them, including dedicated Facebook and Linkedin accounts), and interact with a community. I know, many writers are introverts (myself included) and this may hurt, but remember, this is your dream and it’s worth the discomfort.

An audience will not appear overnight. I currently have just under 4,000 Twitter followers (my current goal is 10k- I don’t know why). It took experimentation, learning how to create marketing material, and over a year of interacting every single day to get to that point. Recently, my website crossed the 5,000 view mark, I have 222 followers, and my last blog post got about 70 views in three days. Are these great numbers? No, not particularly, but it took me more than a year to get there from nothing, so hopefully, it will show you the timescale. As with anything, some will be more successful and some less, but I know how much effort I put into it, and I’m happy with the numbers. It is certainly better than where I started.

I would also make sure that your book is as perfect as possible with the resources you have before publishing. This may seem obvious, but if your doing this on a shoestring budget, it will be harder than you think. This point is more important for your first book than any other. It is your first impression, and if it is lacking, it will hurt you in the long run. Here too, I made a mistake. After reading all the glory stories, I was so excited to release my book that I rushed it. That first day, I remember I was doing my nightly push-ups thinking, “if I could sell just a thousand books, that would give me $2,000!” Ha! How naive I was. It would be endearing if it weren’t so sad. I finished my push-ups only to see a text from a friend pointing out a typo. I didn’t even have a chance to enjoy the feeling of accomplishment. As I mentioned, I have three novels out with about one hundred low-content books, and I have not yet reached $500 in total revenue. Many of my books were given away- the result of sage advice. It didn’t seem to work. My novels were just added to folders of hundreds of other free novels and forgotten. The last douse to my hubris is that currently my best-selling book is a low-content Sasquatch Tracking Log book- a good idea, but certainly not the novels that are filled with my blood, sweat, and tears!

Remember, like all customers, readers can be cruel. They don’t care if you’re an Indie writer, and they can care less that this is your dream. They expect a certain level of polish, and if you don’t have it, they will let you and the world know instantly. They will not shed the tiniest bit of concern if you never sell a book again and would probably feel justified in their cruelty. I’ll give you sympathy, but they will not. So much of a book’s success is from the first few months after the release. It is then that the algorithms work in your favor, especially if you’ve never published before (their trying to hook you with a bit of success) and your social network is most likely to support your work when its fresh. You don’t want to waste that moment as I did. Make your novel as close to perfect as you can. If you’re selling on Amazon, you will need good reviews, and nothing will create a negative review faster than giving a troll the means of attack. If you can, build a group of stout and trusty friends ready to submit praise because you’ll need this light to fight the dark.

Convert your mindset from an artist to a businessperson. I know this is good advice, but admittedly, I’m still working on it too. Creating is great, selling your creation, not so much. Artists, regardless of the medium, have a hard time marketing their work. We all feel like what we have to sell might not be worth it- imposter syndrome is rampant. Our stories are part of us, and it’s terrifying to put that out there on display to be ridiculed- and this will happen no matter how good your book. Even the most notable and best-selling books have negative reviews. You have to find the essence of your work and learn out to sell it. The story is part of you and thus may seem self-explanatory, but sometimes your audience needs some hand-holding. They need a little whiff of the spice to make them drool. Concentrating that essence and getting them to take a bite is hard, and as an Indie writer, you will likely be doing this on your own. Get help where you can find it including advice from industries outside of publishing. Keywords are still a great mystery to me- not the idea, but the execution, but luckily they are vital for all internet commerce so there is a lot of help out there.

Lastly, everything will work against you. Competition is fierce. Readership is decreasing. Marketing and promotion can be expensive. Your friends and family will not always understand. And, as a dreamer, the arena is filled with predators trying to make money off your dream (or outright steal it from you). Amazon (or any vendor) is not your friend. They will value the reader over the author any day. You will face platform issues, formatting issues, negative review issues, etc., and KDP customer service, if they even respond, will be of no use to you. All I can say is be pleasant and don’t give them a reason to vent their ire on your excellent work. As a supplement to my advice to make your novel perfect, the more you make corrections on your manuscript, book cover, or description and press re-submit, the more likely you will run into Amazon KDP issues. I can’t stress enough. They will not be your friend! The less interaction you have, the better you’ll be.

Yikes! This blog makes self-publishing sound like a nightmare, and I won’t lie to you, sometimes this last year was indeed a horror story. At times, I almost gave it all up. There will be some dark days- like that first less than rosy review. But, I will tell you now that I’m glad I didn’t listen to that little devil. Am I successful? It depends on how you measure success. Am I a famous author? No. Did I make a lot of money? Again, no. But gosh, I did learn a lot, and for me, that’s what life is all about. The best trait of us writers is that we keep pushing forward. Sure, we may bitch and moan or throw a tantrum from time to time (yes, it’s ok to vent sometimes), but we don’t often give up completely. We all have a story inside us that begs for flight. We may crumple the page and say, never again- until that next tale flutters to life. There is magic in that and a certain nobility, and know dear reader, although writing a novel is often a solitary journey, you are not alone.

Cheers!