I am revamping an old post on how to self-publish and market your book because the need for this basic guide is just as great as when I first posted on the topic; however the publishing system has changed (i.e. no more CreateSpace), and I’ve grown in experience. As such, I’m able to offer more effective tips and tools.
I’m not a best-selling author, but I do well enough, and I’ll be pointing you to the experts who do great. My books are both indie and traditionally-published in the genres of memoir, clean contemporary romance and clean Regency romance. I am grateful to my publisher and want to keep working with them. At the same time, I think self-publishing is a great way to go and I have several more projects lined up in that direction.
(As a disclaimer, some of the links in this post are affiliate links, which means I earn a few cents if you happen to purchase a book I recommend).
Why Self-Publish?
As you probably know, self-publishing is now perfectly reputable. Sure, it feels nice to have someone else say your work is good enough to represent, or (the golden egg) to actually publish. But here are some reasons why self-publishing is preferable to traditional publishing:
– You don’t have to put your fate and dreams into anyone else’s hands. You can make it happen, and on your timetable.
– Most readers can’t tell that your book was self-published when they’re trawling the Amazon site.
– You earn up to 70% royalties (on Kindle), as opposed to about 10-15% with traditional.
– You decide when it gets published and don’t depend on an editor’s schedule. This is especially important if you have a series and you want to launch the books rapidly and obtain top Amazon ranking. This is how authors earn big money.
– You decide what will go on the cover, and you can make edits to the cover or interior as soon as you decide something is not working. When you go with a traditional publisher, you’re at their mercy for making changes, big and small. And sometimes they say no.
– Even if you’re with a traditional publisher, you still have to do your own marketing. Sure, you’ll get some help, but a lot of it falls on you. If that’s the case, why not reap a greater monetary benefit from your efforts and do it yourself?
Preparation & Publishing
Step One: Write the Book. If you’re stuck on how to plot a fictional book, my favorite quick writing guide is Write Your Novel From The Middle: A New Approach for Plotters, Pantsers and Everyone in Between
You should have a few beta readers critique the book. A beta reader is any friend or acquaintance who has a good grasp of the English language, and who will not be afraid to give you solid advice and critique after reading it. Those critiques are valuable so take as many of them as you can.
Make sure you also hire a professional editor. I know it’s a cost, but it’s possible to find affordable ones on Fiverr, for example. You can’t miss this step if you want to have your book compete with the thousands of other books out there. There’s no quicker way to tank your ratings and have the sales of your precious book grind to a halt than to receive bad reviews due to grammar, typos, or punctuation issues.
Step Two: Prep work before you publish. As an author, you will ideally already have a blog (and / or author website), a personal Facebook account, as well as a Facebook fan page. You will be on Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. (Don’t freak out if you don’t have these things. Spend 3 days per social media platform setting it up, following a bunch of people, and creating some content there). You will end up using some platforms more than others, and if you really must choose, I would say Facebook and Instagram are the most important for the author, with Twitter following close behind.
Brand yourself. The image where your book cover should go (on Amazon, FB, Goodreads, etc) should always have the image of the cover of the book. And wherever you need to put an author photo (Twitter, blog, FB, Amazon, etc), there should be one – no eggheads please. And no space for an image should remain blank. Try to use the same head shot everywhere so people recognise you.
To be more effective on Twitter, install Tweetdeck (it’s not hard) to organise your tweets so you get alerts when someone mentions you. Follow people you admire on Twitter (celebs), and follow people who will hopefully be your peers as well – those who will likely follow you back. Your little profile blurbs can mention your book, but they should be about you. Start a Facebook fan page – it’s easy! But just make one for you, the author. Otherwise, if you make one for each book, there are too many places you have to keep updated. Your tweets, FB updates, and Instagram photos should also be about you in greater proportion than your books.
For your website, it can just be static — one that features all your books with links to buy, teaser chapters, a photo or two, plus a friendly biography. However, you need a newsletter for your fans and you can put the sign-up form on your website. People do search for you when they like one of your books so make sure they find you.
For the newsletter, MailerLite and MailChimp both have free, easy to use, starter newsletters. And if you want to see how crucial newsletters are and get inspired about how to do them well, read Newsletter Ninja: How to Become an Author Mailing List Expert
If you do have a blog, post pictures, tell people about your life, do book reviews, cook! Whatever interests you. The most important thing is to build relationships. Your tweets and FB shares cannot be 100% about your book or people will block you. (I’m repeating myself, but I’ve seen lots of authors make this mistake).
Sound like a lot of work? It is. But people rarely buy books from someone they’ve never heard of.
Step Three: Hire a cover & internal layout designer. I was not crazy about the the covers I saw that were designed by the Amazon team (which you have to pay for anyway). And I don’t know if this is still true, but if you let Amazon convert your files for you for the interior layout, you can’t send it to people for review. You won’t have access to the files. Once again, Fiverr is a good place for interior design until you find someone you want to work with on a regular basis. You can get pre-made covers for pretty cheap at The Book Cover Designer and then when you find someone you like, you can continue to work with them. Often, they will also do an extended cover for the print version for an additional $40 or so.
A word on formatting for e-readers:
The files you will need are PDF for the print version, as well as for the iPad and certain other e-readers.
There is the Kindle (from Amazon) which needs a MOBI file – and then the Nook (Barnes & Nobles) and Kobo (from Borders). These two need an EPub file, though they also accept other files, such as PDF.
Step Four: It’s time to publish. This part is free. Go to KDP Amazon. Click on the button that says, “Create New Title” and start with the Kindle. There is no reason to do only kindle or only print when you can earn money on both. (Unless – like my novella – The Christmas Ruse, you feel it’s too small to sell as a print copy. Mine is only 6 chapters and I’m using it as a reader magnet, so it’s electronic copy only. More on reader magnets in the marketing section).
And unless you plan to start a small publishing company, there’s really no reason you can’t use the ISBN number provided by Amazon. It’s free (unlike Bowker, which is expensive for ISBNs). For the Kindle version, you’ll get an ASIN number, which serves the same purpose, and which is also provided for free.
Step Five: After you’ve put in the obvious information, such as title and author, you’ll need to include metadata – Amazon keywords so people can find your book, and this is also where you choose the categories for your book. There are experts for this who can give you good instruction – better than I can. Check out Mastering Amazon Ads: An Author’s Guide
Step Six: Pricing. For Kindle, I recommend choosing 70% royalties instead of 35% because I can’t think of why you wouldn’t want to earn more money on your title. However, this is not available if you’re selling your book for .99 (more on that below).
I also think you should allow for the open distribution (don’t try to limit people sharing your book) so don’t check DRM (digital rights management). This is my advice, anyway, based on the articles I’ve read. The bottom line is not to be stingy about free books, book lending, giveaways because it’s a cheap form of publicity that will hopefully lead to fans and reviews. And there will always be readers who pay for your books.
As for the actual selling price – for kindle, don’t go above $4.99. People rarely pay more unless they know the author (and even then). I’ve read that the best selling point is $2.99 (and it seems to be true for me as well). I know a lot of people who launch at $.99 for a few weeks to build a sales curve before raising their price, and that does seem to be a good tool. For print, you’re less likely to have as much success selling paperback as you are kindle so try to keep the costs down. Mine are around $10 or $11.
One last piece of advice on Kindle. I recommend going for the Kindle Select program for at least three months. It means you can’t upload your book to be made available to any of the other e-readers, which can be limiting. However, you can let people download the book for free for a certain number of days, or do Kindle Countdown deals for .99 (and you’re still earning the 70% royalties). And that will bring you right up in the page ranks of Amazon and make your book more visible. You also get Kindle Unlimited reads when your book is in KDP select and some of the successful authors I know (who earn 5 figures each month) make most of their sales in KU. I think the positive aspects of doing this outweigh the negative. However, I also understand not wanting to give Amazon that much power. You’ll have to decide that for yourself. Nearly all my sales come from Amazon so it makes sense for me to be exclusive.
If you’re in KDP Select, you can still publish print copies elsewhere, like Barnes & Nobles online. You can use SmashWords to create the paperback for other distributors than Amazon. If you’re a complete novice, let me just mention that Amazon and Smashwords are POD (print on demand). If someone orders a book, Amazon or Smashwords print the book at that time. You don’t have a to buy stock and distribute the books yourself. This is why it’s free for you.
I read that Draft2Digital will also provide print services soon, which is great because they are super user-friendly. Even for the electronic copies, if you decide not to make your book exclusive to Amazon, Draft2Digital is the simplest, easiest-to-understand system for getting your electronic book to all platforms (Apple, Sony, Kobo, Nook, etc).
TARGET YOUR AUDIENCE. A word to the wise. Make sure your cover and title accurately represent your book. And make sure your cover is easy to read and understand in a thumbnail size. You can learn all about writing to market, and market trends, and tropes by following the successful Writing Gals on Facebook, YouTube, and joining their Critique group.
Marketing
Hurrah! Your book is out there! … Now what?
Step One: If you’re not content with the beginner’s guide, and want the master’s guide, read this before you publish!
Step Two: Get an ARC team in place before your official launch date. That stands for Advanced Reader Copies. You can start a private facebook group and add people who are willing to review in exchange for a free copy. Amazon rules prohibit requiring a review, but you can see who is willing (and able) to leave one, at least. I ask people to review on Goodreads as soon as they’ve finished the book, while it’s still fresh in their minds, then copy their review over to Amazon on launch day.
If you’re a blogger and know other bloggers, ask them to review your book, and make a schedule so that all the reviews don’t fall on the same day. As a nice gesture, link back to their blog in one of your posts saying what you appreciate about their work.
A word on reciprocity. Do your best to read, review and share others’ work. At times people will support you when you cannot return the favour. At other times you’ll support someone who cannot do the same for you. But your reputation precedes you, and it should be one of generosity of spirit.
Step Three: If you’re going to do the 5 days free on Kindle Prime Select or the Kindle Countdown Deal for .99 check out these sites FIRST and decide which ones you will add your book to for extra publicity. You will need a couple weeks (or over a month) notice for some of them so take that into consideration. And I’ll just warn you – it’s very hard to sell .99 books or even give away free copies without paying for some promotion. Why would you pay to give away free books? You gain reviews and there are almost always residual sales that come after a free promotion. I’ll give a more personal example below.
See if you can get BookBub to accept your title in their promotion schedule, and time it with a Kindle Countdown deal at $.99 or a free promotion. It’s expensive – check out the rate sheet here – but the average downloads there far exceed what you’ll pay to participate if you get a .99 deal. Even if you buy a free promotion, the benefits are amazing. My memoir was accepted and I had 22,000 downloads, which gave me over 50 reviews, and was eventually what led to my getting a deal for the audio version. I had residual sales and a spike in KU reads and my book just stayed for a long time in the top 100 of its category.
BookBub has a huge following. It’s not easy to get accepted though, and you’ll want to make sure you have plenty of reviews and that your book is perfect for the market (cover, title, blurb) before you try.
Step Four: If you still don’t have enough reviews for your book (aim for 10 to start out with), you can sign up here to do an author review swap on Goodreads. You read 4 books in exchange for 4 people reading yours (but they are not the same people). You must leave a review on GoodReads and Amazon for each book you review, so that’s 4 more reviews for you in both places.
Step Five: Search for newsletter swap groups on Facebook in your genre. I belong to a newsletter swap groups for clean romance. You arrange to feature 2-3 author’s books in your newsletter in exchange for them featuring your book in theirs. Of course, everyone has to start somewhere and you won’t have many subscribers at the beginning. You will always find authors who are kind enough to swap anyway, or you can offer to share their books on your FB page as well to reach more people. To build your newsletter, you can do this in three ways:
- Write a reader magnet (a short novella or short story or entire novel) that you give away for free in exchange for people to sign up for your newsletter. StoryOrigin is a good website to organise this, and at the time of my writing this article, the service is free.
- Join a group bundle promotion. You work with a few other authors to include your reader magnet in a group bundle promotion and you each promise to share about the promotion in every way you can – FB, your newsletter, on twitter, etc. This multiples your exposure, and you can also find this on StoryOrigin. There are also places like MyBookCave, Bookfunnel and others, but some you have to pay for.
- Make sure you have a teaser chapter (or two) for upcoming works at the end of your books with a link to your newsletter so they can stay up to date on the launch. You can also do this for books that are already out, except you include a link to buy. Don’t lose the opportunity to engage your readers once they’ve finished your book.
Step Six: Submit your book to national book awards. Why not, right? The five cream of the crop awards are found on this website. And the rest of them – many of which seem worthwhile to me (although it can start to get costly), are found here. This is a great thing to put on your bio, and it could get you lots of sales and recognition, even if you were “only” shortlisted. Pay attention to the time of year. All awards are different, but figure out quickly which ones you want to do and note the deadline for each. Most are at the beginning of the year, and since most of them are only for books released the prior year, time is of the essence.
Step Seven: Amazon ads do bring in sales, as do Facebook ads. I’m not an expert at either, so for Facebook ads, check out Kevin David’s “FB Ads Beginner to Expert” Youtube video. And for Amazon, sign up for David Gaughran’s super informative blog and get Amazon Decoded for free as a sign-up bonus. He just put out a new book, BookBub Ads Expert: A Marketing Guide to Author Discovery (Let’s Get Publishing Book 3)
I think I’ve covered most of the basics. Marketing can be a serious time-suck, and it’s really exhausting when you’re trying to figure it all out (on top of writing, and – likely – being a parent, and carrying on a full-time job . . .) My advice is to set a time limit each day and do what you can and be at peace with that.
Also, the best thing you can do for your book sales is to keep writing more books. The more people like your style, the more fans you have who will then buy your books. The most successful authors I know study the market and write what the readers want. Their titles, covers, and back cover copy show exactly what genre the books are in and they publish new books rapidly. Sequels and series do really well, especially for Regency, which is what I write. And some of them are making 5 figures a month. (Check out 50BooksTo50K if you really want to learn from authors who earn excellent salaries).
And that’s it. What about you, authors? Do you have any great tips to share? Please leave them in the comments so we can all benefit. (And if you want to make sure I see it, please use the comment box as Facebook does not notify me of new comments).
And don’t be afraid to get started, even if you haven’t perfectly grasped the process. Get your words out there! The world is waiting for your book.
Wow! This is so detailed, a little overwhelming for newbies but extremely helpful! I will save this for reference on my writing journey. Thank you and I pray more success in your work as an author in Jesus’ name.