My self-publishing journey

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byron100

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As I've posted in another thread, I released my very first novel on Amazon KDP (e-book) and I thought I'd share what I've learned so far about self-publishing.

Firstly, when I started out writing a novel, I made a determination of what audience I was writing for - in my case, the doomer / post-apocalyptic crowd. It's what I like, I've read quite a few books in this genre, and I had a great story I was desperate to put down on paper...lol.

Along the way, I made a point to read the reviews of other books in my genre, especially the negative ones, as I didn't want to repeat the ever-so-common mistakes of first-time self-published authors. The book "Self-Editing for Fiction Writers" has been invaluable in this regard - if you don't have a copy of this book, run, don't walk, to grab your own copy. Read it at least 3 or 4 times, study it as if you were taking an exam on it. Do the exercises. I cannot recommend this book enough. Even so, it took me longer to edit and polish my novel than it did to actually write it, and as a result, I released it nearly three months later than I had originally intended.

For those of you who have yet to release a book as a self-published author, be aware you're at a tremendous disadvantage compared to published authors who have professional editors cleaning up their work (not to mention their writing has to meet very high standards just to get with a publisher.)

How to overcome this disadvantage, you might ask? Edit, edit, edit, until your eyes bleed, and then edit some more. Get other people to read and crit your work (something I didn't do enough of with my novel.) Read lots of other books and study how they write - such as limited use of adverbs, avoiding long paragraphs, and most importantly, coming up with a good "hook" to draw the reader in from Page 1, Paragraph 1. When I wrote my first draft, it didn't take long for me to realize I was a long ways from having this book ready for release, and yes, it was quite discouraging at times.

But I kept at it, and I finally did release it about two weeks ago, using social media to announce it to the world. Now, this was a bit of a challenge for me, as I'm not big on social media - I was a real facebook-hater until quite recently. Not good if you want the world to know about your book...lol. However, I was able to get many of my friends and relatives to post my book on their facebook pages, and that was a huge benefit to me in getting the word about about my novel.

As for what I've done since then, I've posted about my book in forums for folks who like these kind of books, with excellent results, and I will continue to do so - it's free, and doesn't take a whole lot of time. As for reviews, I have NOT made any effort to get people to write reviews, as I think this is highly unethical. I only want "organic" reviews so I can have a good idea if I've written a good, enjoyable book or not. If I get a couple not-so-good reviews, and they're kind enough to tell me why, this will be invaluable information I can use for my next book. I really don't think reviews help all that much, unless they come from somebody famous or whatever, so I try not to sweat it too much...lol. I've seen far too many books that have 20 or 25 5-star reviews in the first two weeks, only to have 1 and 2-star reviews trickle in later on - not a good thing, as readers were fooled by all the good reviews. I prefer not to go that route - if my book can't stand on its own, then I need to work on my skills as a writer.

Have I been happy with how it's gone so far? Heck yes! I came into this thing with very low expectations, so I couldn't be more pleased with how it's done so far. Seriously, there are over a million books I'm competing against, so cracking the 10,000 barrier in less then two weeks is a big deal, even though it's still not a huge number of books. I think you have to break the top 1000, or even the top 500 to get to where you're selling 100's of books a day. But hey, I'm certainly not complaining...lol. :)

I'll leave at this for now, but I invite all of you to ask any questions you my have about self-publishing and the process of selling books on the KDP platform.
 
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Literateparakeet

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Congratulations! And welcome to the self-pub world. :)

I can't agree more about Self-editing for Fiction Authors. It is awesome. Come to think of it, I should read it again myself!

Look forward to hearing more about your adventure!
 

byron100

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Goodreads - Confusion City

Although my book is performing above expectations, it looks as if I'm just scratching the surface in the promotion of my book - submitting my book for reviews, posting on various forums, etc., and I know there's a lot of work yet to be done in the promotion of my book. It really is a big ocean out there...whew.

One thing that's stumping me at the moment, however, is Goodreads. I know this is an important component for authors to promote their work, but man, what a confusing mess. I've gone ahead and created an author profile, and filled out some stuff, and I've got a grand total of 6 friends on there (yes, you can laugh...lol.) But that's all I've done with it so far.

The questions I have at the moment is how do I list my book on various "bookshelves" related to my genre? And should I try and get people to review my book on Goodreads whenever possible? How do you get people to find your book on there in the first place?

I've done a fairly good job of getting the word out about my book in genre-appropriate forums and the like, but I'm at a loss at what to do with my Goodreads account.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. :)
 

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The questions I have at the moment is how do I list my book on various "bookshelves" related to my genre? And should I try and get people to review my book on Goodreads whenever possible? How do you get people to find your book on there in the first place?)

You have to create the shelves yourself and add your book to them. You have no control over how other readers shelve your books, though.

Regarding getting noticed: Just like anything else, it takes time and effort. Reviews can help: check out the "making Connections" group that connects reviewers and authors. There are others, too, but I haven't tried them.
 

byron100

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For those of whom are in the process of writing a self-published work, I'd like to post a link to this webpage:

http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/bestseller.html

It's a "short and sweet" guide to writing a book people truly enjoy reading - it's advice most of you probably have heard before, but it's a good idea to commit these things to memory when sitting down to write - as it really does make a difference.

Too many self-published books - even the ones in the top 1000 - don't follow the principles of active voice, dialog tags, etc. Simple stuff, yes, but it makes all the difference in the world.
 
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Celeste Carrara

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Although my book is performing above expectations, it looks as if I'm just scratching the surface in the promotion of my book - submitting my book for reviews, posting on various forums, etc., and I know there's a lot of work yet to be done in the promotion of my book. It really is a big ocean out there...whew.

One thing that's stumping me at the moment, however, is Goodreads. I know this is an important component for authors to promote their work, but man, what a confusing mess. I've gone ahead and created an author profile, and filled out some stuff, and I've got a grand total of 6 friends on there (yes, you can laugh...lol.) But that's all I've done with it so far.

The questions I have at the moment is how do I list my book on various "bookshelves" related to my genre? And should I try and get people to review my book on Goodreads whenever possible? How do you get people to find your book on there in the first place?

I've done a fairly good job of getting the word out about my book in genre-appropriate forums and the like, but I'm at a loss at what to do with my Goodreads account.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. :)

The best way to have people add your book to their "to read" shelf is to do a giveaway. You need a paperback copy and have to pay the shipping yourself and you can pick how many books you want to give away. That may get you some reviews too. When people enter your contest, they will put your book on their "to read" shelf, then all their friends see that they have added it. It'll get you even more potential readers.

Then you want to find the "groups" in your genre. Join those groups, engage in conversation. Most of the groups have a place where authors within the group can post their book info. They will also have a place where you can offer your book for free (ebook) in exchange for an honest review. Some even have "group reads" and you can contact the moderators of the group and ask to have your book considered.

Make sure your author profile is complete, even answer those questions they have on there now so readers can get to know you better. Make sure your book is linked to your profile. Don't worry about the small amount of friends, it'll increase. You should try to find people to friend, it'll be easier to find people with like interests once you join the groups in your genre.


Goodreads is great and has been wonderful for me. It's been my best way to network, find my readers, and get reviews.

*I just took a look at your Goodreads profile. You need to add a picture. You can use your book cover. Put your author bio up there. Also, if you blog, link your blog to your profile too. Add your favorite quotes, even ones from your own books.
Hope this info helps! Good luck!

Oh, and don't be afraid to friend request all of us authors here who are on Goodreads!
 
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byron100

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Thanks so much for these suggestions. I'll try and add a pic to my profile - I've got my mug on there for my avatar, but not the main pic.

Since my book is ebook only, I don't have any copies for giveaways, but I will certainly keep this in mind in the future.

This is a lot like cultivating a garden, huh? I know it'll take a bit of time to reap the harvest, so to speak...lol.

In retrospect, I should have done a lot of this "cultivating" before I released my book - but at least I'll be in a better position when I release future books. :)

Edit - I probably goofed by adding my own book on there, but oh well - live and learn...lol. Got the photo uploaded though. :)
 
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byron100

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Interesting note: since my book was launched, I've derived about a third of my paid sales (don't know about the KU downloads, as that's not broken down by country) have been from the UK. In the past 2 days, sales from the Uk have actually exceeded those from the US.

Is this typical? Do Brits read a lot more books than Americans? Or maybe they just have a particular fascination with post-apocalyptic fiction...lol.

Any other American e-book sellers out there getting a lot of their sales from the UK?
 

Celeste Carrara

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Thanks so much for these suggestions. I'll try and add a pic to my profile - I've got my mug on there for my avatar, but not the main pic.

Since my book is ebook only, I don't have any copies for giveaways, but I will certainly keep this in mind in the future.

This is a lot like cultivating a garden, huh? I know it'll take a bit of time to reap the harvest, so to speak...lol.

In retrospect, I should have done a lot of this "cultivating" before I released my book - but at least I'll be in a better position when I release future books. :)

Edit - I probably goofed by adding my own book on there, but oh well - live and learn...lol. Got the photo uploaded though. :)

You're welcome!
Just an FYI, you can use createspace to get a couple of copies of your book to use for giveaways. It doesn't cost anything to create it and is fairly simple to do. You don't have to offer it for sale if you don't want to. You can use it just to order copies for yourself and they are very inexpensive. Createspace does agreat job too.
 
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