Indie Life: A Year in Self-Publishing

The Indelibles will be hosting a monthly feature called INDIE LIFE. Modeled after Alex Cavanaugh's awesome Insecure Writer's Group, this will be a chance for indie authors to post about indie life, find each other, offer support, encouragement, news, helpful hints, and anything else that makes life as an indie author a little easier.

What is Indie Life? How: Sign up on the Linky at the bottom of this page here. When: Post on the second Wednesday of the month. What: Write anything indie related: something that will inspire or help a fellow indie; something that celebrates a release or a milestone; something that talks about the ups and downs, joys and heartaches of Being Indie. Grab: The banner above to include in your posts!

On February 9, 2012, I started my self-publishing adventure. I have learned a lot from self-publishing, and I wanted to share what I’ve learned.

1. Don’t be afraid to take time with your work.

Find the right cover art. Give your CPs, beta readers, etc. time to critique/edit your work. Give yourself time to edit/proofread your work. It’s easy to press the publish button, but it’s better to do it right the first time.

2. Figure out how to market your book before you publish.

Some books are harder to place than others. I’ve made my mistakes. Take time to find the right categories for your book, find the right readers, be willing to change up how you market too. I’m still learning this one, but I have learned a lot in a year of self-publishing.

3. Keep learning about formatting.

If you aren’t too tech savvy, then it might be better to pay a formatter. I consider myself pretty decent with computers, and I’m willing to learn. But you have to keep learning. For example, Amazon changed their formatting to KF8. If you haven’t checked your ebooks recently, then they might not work right on their new Paperwhite. I recently uploaded new mobi files because of the changes.

4. Consider not putting your ebooks in one retailer.

For my first self-published ebook, I tried Amazon’s KDP Select. It went spectacularly when I put the book for free on my birthday in March. I had over 2000 downloads in one day and got up to 121 in the overall Kindle store free. Then, I had almost 200 sales. In May, I tried giving the book away again, but it didn’t work as well. Amazon had changed its algorithms, making it harder to strike it big. Some authors still do very, very well in KDP Select. Some do not. You have to keep trying different things, and I would consider trying it again with a different book. But for now, I’m very happy to have my books on other retailers. Some months, I sell more on these other retailers than I do on Amazon.

5. Don’t let reviews dictate your mood.

This is one I’m still working on. I've had some one and two star reviews, and I admit they got me down. They made me pull away from marketing, stop believing in my work. I’ve realized I don’t write for those people. I try to do my very best work. I really do. Some people are going to love it. Others might not, and that’s okay.

6. Sales do not dictate whether or not your book is good.

I’ll admit that my sales since March have been a bit disappointing. Novels do better, and right now I still do not have a novel-length work published. Some people hate any work shorter than a novel-length one, even if it is well-written. That’s just how it is. A writer must keep writing and producing more manuscripts.

7. Consider not mentioning a deadline unless you’re certain you can meet it.

I rushed work to meet a deadline. I know I have. Would I change much if I had all the time in the world to fix my work? No, I wouldn’t. But I have learned not to mention deadlines until I’m at the proofreading stages or at least my last edit before the proofread.

8. Keep writing.

Although I’m still trying to find my audience, I will keep writing. Ebooks are forever, in a way. They always have a chance to find their audience and each book I write and publish will take me one step closer to finding my audience.

If you self-publish, what have you learned?