Indie Authors is a community for indie and hybrid authors and publishers.
Any genuine advice on what to learn about self-publishing?
NaNoWriMo is nearing its end, and I've nearly revised an urban fantasy novel. Pitching has proven dysmal. I'm sure many writers would benefit from sharing self-publishing know-how. Got any advice on what's successful?




Write the next one. :)
Make sure your cover is genre specific. Doesn't have to be expensive--make your own or buy a premade--but it has to say "urban fantasy". Look at the top 20 in your sales category, and make sure it fits in.
Ignore advice to spend big on editing etc. Just make sure it is as clean as you can possibly get it. You don't want to lose money on this.
Work your keywords! Especially use them to get in all relevant subgenres.
Reviews and things help a little, but really, just aim at it looking professional, make it a series if at all possible, and keep writing!
If it's likely to be a series, btw, I would suggest the strategy in which you release 3 volumes at once, possibly making the first 99 cents or free. It's what I'm planning to do next seres.
Don't forget to work up a brilliant blurb. That and the cover are the two-five seconds you have to convince someone to click 'buy'. Appearances matter, a lot.
And yep, it's quantity over quality, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Absolutely yes on the blurb! But it's easier said than done. ;)
More cover advice: professional and genre specific is WAY more important than actually having anything to do with the book. Look at publisher releases: for The Selection, the heroine wears a plain, muslin, pale lilac, empire line dress, which is actually a key moment. The cover has her in a flouncy, bright purple satin ballgown (stock photo). But a girl in a dress, shown from the back, signals a certain kind of dystopian YA romance, and that is important, not matching the book precisely. You know what you're getting when you pick it up, and I picked it up because I like that subgenre.
Too many self published authors (and small presses) spend a fortune cramming elements from the book onto the cover, and it's counter productive.
Fighting my tendency to over edit and not release myself, so it's a case of do as I say, not as I do. B
FWIW I think the common advice on hiring editors is not great advice for a beginner, as it is very expensive. And it often comes from people who are losing money from this gig, not making it. Get beta readers. Make it clean and professional looking. Don't put yourself in debt.
If worst comes to worse, you can start over with a new pen name, and use the money you made from your first pen name to hire editors for your new one. Money should flow to you, not away from you.
I agree with the cover suggestions. Don't skimp on that. I've had people buy my novella simply for the cover. LOL.
If you're selling e-books, check out Smashwords. They'll feed to all of the big name vendors except Amazon and Google Play (B&N, Kobo, iTunes, etc). They have free formatting guides on their site with some excellent tips.
I've bee at this since 2011 and it's my sole source of income. Tips:
Write more books. It's your best marketing.
Write in series, they sell better than stand-alones. Don't judge a series's performance until the third book is out.
Release them as often as possible to keep the momentum going; at my peak while I was building an audience I was releasing 3 books a year. Some people release much faster.
If something isn't selling after 3-4 books let it go. Try something else.
The only paid marketing that matters is Bookbub.
Build a mailing list. Mailchimp is good for that. It's your direct pipeline to your readers.
This comment, read this. It is all great advice.
I am not a "successful" writer by a long shot, but I have self-published two novellas. I would say the most important thing I learned is to know your limitations and don't assume you can do everything on your own. I paid for someone to make a cover for me. If you're an actual designer and can do it yourself, congrats, but most of us layfolk will not be able to make a nice cover and a bad cover... well, it's the first impression most people will get of your book. Likewise, pay for an editor. If you are confident in your story, then just get line edits and not a deep edit, but get someone who is not you and who is a pro to look at your story, even if you have to push back publication a little while to save up for it. It's worth it! Don't know how many self-pub'ed books I've given up on due to poor spelling and grammar.
I'd also advise to get some beta readers in before it even gets to the editor stage, because sometimes those catch problems you haven't noticed yourself and that can be really instrumental to improving the text in later re-writes of it.
As for the marketing end of it: I am absolutely hopeless at that so hopefully someone else has advice on that.
Oh man, yeah, I second the cover thing. A good cover can really help sell your work; a bad one can really make things harder.
(Though do note that a 'bad' cover might depend on your market. I mean, Chuck Tingle's covers are made of stock photos, but he still makes them entertaining and memorable!)
Nothing wrong with stock photos. Trade publishers use them all the time.
Some great advice from everyone here!
You could also look into Draft 2 Digital instead of Smashwords. I'd research both and see which one offers more of the service that you want and consider important. (E.g. D2D offers to format your front and backmatter for you, but Smashwords gets your ebook into libraries. D2D has no conversion style guide whereas Smashwords is notorious for how fiddly and strict its conversion requirements are.) You could also consider going Amazon-exclusive and enroll in Select. I've never had much luck there myself, but others fare better. From what I can tell, success in KU is really down to the kind of books you enroll? So you'd want to do some research into how well urban fantasy does in KU before deciding.
Other things to consider are whether you want to release it only in ebook or in other formats as well. If I recall, a fair number of indies report that most of their sales lie in ebooks, so you may want to hold off on creating print editions and/or audiobooks until later, especially if they're things you can't do yourself. (If you can do them yourself and want to, go for it! But hiring professionals is expensive and there's no guarantee you'll be seeing a return on it for some time.)
I'm also thirding the quantity over quality note, but with a small caveat: the base level of the quality needs to be at least at a decent level both in terms of technical writing and your ability to tell a captivating story. Otherwise, readers won't return to your work a second time. There are good reasons to hire an editor, especially when it comes to line editing, but it's not required. Take the advice with a grain of salt. My impression has been that many (but not all!) self-published/indie authors tend to use editors as some kind of badge to counter the stigma that all self-published books are bad quality. It's a way to say "My book is treated professionally because look I threw a lot of money at an editor" and, honestly, unless you know you absolutely need an editor to look it over, there are much better ways to spend that budget. If you make sure your book is tidy, your cover is professional and genre specific, your blurb and keywords are in order, etc, the quality will speak for itself. (Unless you plan to run a crowdfunded campaign to cover publishing costs, in which case: include editing in your base expenses. It's what people expect.)
There are no real right or wrong answers, though. Only "This is what worked/didn't work for me and it may work for you too".
Wow, good groundwork here. Much appreciated. Guess I should up it from one book a year to two. Beta readers love my novels, but agents seem apathetic. Time to ponder how to build my own audience.
Seriously, if you get the cover and blurb right, and people enjoy your first instalment, I have doubts as to most methods of audience building except keywords, nailing your subsubsubgenre, and just keep writing, just keep writing....
Bookbub is special, but not for beginners.
And good luck! Right now, no one is reading your book. It's much better out than sitting on your hard drive.