Novelist, Playwright

Six lessons learned from self-publishing my first book

I was wary about self-publishing for a long time. Concerns ranged from “Will anyone buy my book?” to… well, basically that, or variations thereof. (“Will it suck?” “Will I ever make back my investment?” etc.)

Now, ten weeks after releasing my first novel, I’m fully committed to the self-publishing (“indie”) approach. It’s been a fun ride. But it’s not always been exactly the ride I expected. I’ve learned a lot from the experience.

If you’re considering it, here are six important things I’ve learned that I wish I’d known before I started:

1. It’s impossible to predict book sales.

I read a lot about self-publishing before I started, trying to get a good idea not only of how to do it (and do it well), but what to expect. Based on what I read, I set what I thought were ambitious goals for my first book:  sell 125 copies in my first month, break even within 2-3 months, sell 750 in 2016.

Those goals turned out to be completely unrealistic. Unrealistically low, that is. I surpassed my goal for the year in nine weeks, broke even within two weeks, and sales remain steady, if not robust. It’s been amazing.

2. I have amazing friends and family.

So do you. They love you. They’ll show it. Mine jumped all over the earliest opportunities to buy my book, pushing me into the top 30 in my genre early on, telling everyone about it, even recommending it to their book groups. (My brother even bought 20 copies to sell from his accounting office!) I couldn’t have done it without them.

Is this really a lesson “learned” from this experience? Debatable. I kind of knew this before. But it definitely was great to have it all confirmed once again.

3. Bloggers are wonderful.

My biggest day of sales happened in late March, when a popular blogger posted a positive review on her website. On my next-best day, I sold 1/3 as many books. I love bloggers. I want to know 10 times as many.

4. Ask.

When you need something – a review, information on how to do something, book sales, shelf space – there is nothing so powerful and effective as a direct request.

People are glad to help, but for the most part, most don’t know what you need until you ask. Need a review? (Yes, you do. Lots of them.) Ask someone who’s bought your book – or who would gladly do it in exchange for a free copy. Need information? Ask fellow writers, bloggers, Facebook, the Twittersphere, whomever might have the answer. Want to get your books in a store? Call and ask them. You’ll be amazed at how often people say yes. And when they don’t – thank them and move on to the next person.

5. It takes way longer to do everything.

There are so many steps, and so many things to learn… and everyone does it their own way. Not only that, it seems you have to do everything several times. For example, after hitting “save” for the final (ha, ha) time on my proofread, edited, perfect (ha, ha) manuscript, I then had to reformat it for Kindle, paperback, ePub (for Smashwords and their iTunes, Kobo, Nook, etc. channels), and hardcover. Reviewers are busy, and need weeks of advance notice to get a review done in time for your release. After you upload, you have to fix any technical errors, review proof copies (and wait for shipping of those), get the cover done and perfect, etc., etc.

Give yourself LOTS of time in advance of your release date to get all of the administrivia done. It’ll eat you up.

6. Publishing costs less, marketing costs more.

It costs a lot less to publish than you may have been led to believe. The key expenses I’ve had on the publishing side are cover design, editing, buying proof copies, and ISBN’s. It didn’t amount to a whole lot.

But I spent a LOT more on marketing than I expected. The biggest cost there:  buying books to peddle to bookstores, donate to libraries, bring to book signings, give away in promotions, and have on hand to sell to friends, coworkers, and random strangers. (I do that; I’m not shy, and I find that once you get someone interested, they’re most likely to buy on the spot than if you send them to a website later.) I also bought business cards with my book’s cover image and website, a $25 investment that’s paid for itself in the first hundred cards I handed out (leaving 900 spare “bookmarks” to “accidentally” leave in coffee shops and pubs).

I also include entering competitions as marketing, and almost all of them cost money. (Too much money, but that’s beside the point.) I’ve done this sparingly, and will probably do more, but you should probably create a budget for this, and stick to it.

There’s a lot more to learn.

This is universally true, right? But I predict that I’ll have another blog post in six months that will be a lot smarter. Stay tuned.

 

Gary Corbin • May 6, 2016


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