Things you should know before you self-publish

1.  It’s a huge time commitment–

You have to market everything yourself, draft up legal documents for editors and artists, and seek out good people to help you. You have to learn the ropes of marketing formatting, etc. yourself and that takes time.

2. You have to be willing to put yourself out there–

You need to be willing to market your book and get the word out and that means putting yourself out there.

3. Make sure you copyright your manuscript before you start sending it out into the world.

If you don’t someone can steal it or decide to copyright your manuscript before you causing you to lose rights to the manuscript.

4. It will probably cost you more money than traditional publishing

You will have to spend time and money on marketing, a cover artist, an editor, and other services that you wouldn’t have to pay if you go through a traditional publisher. You may even have to purchase an ISBN and bar code so you can sell your books in stores and to not just have them exclusively on Amazon.

5. You may need to purchase an ISBN and bar code.

You can do this here:

Fair warning. It’s a little expensive.

6. Gaining steam through Ads is really difficult.

So far my experience with Ads is that I wasted a lot of money on ads that didn’t work or weren’t really useful. Even with a marketing plan, I was often unable to get enough impressions, clicks or sales to even make back the cost of the ad.

The most important thing I’m looking for in ads now is visibility if it’s on a website and level of potential interactions.

7. Community is everything.

So far I’ve had more sales from getting to know people in the Writing Community, reading the work and talking to people whose work I find interesting. Often time they also ended up liking my stories and read or took peeks at the book. It’s also a great way to get feedback and build a fan base, but remember to give more than you take and don’t sell on social media all the time. You’ll lose people.  I’ve heard a lot of people mention the 80/20 rule. 80% being you and being real and 20% selling.

8. Doing events can really help build your fan base.

I’m not great at online sales, but I have a happy and outgoing personality, so for me getting in front of people and talking to them about my book really helped me finally move some copies. They enjoyed the eye-catching cover would stop and ask me some questions and about 50% of the people that stopped at the book bought something. If they didn’t buy in person, they usually grabbed a bookmark or business card, and several put their name down for the newsletter.

9. Do a digital newsletter signup, not a handwritten one.

When I was trying to sign people up for my email list, I had several hard bounces because I simply couldn’t read that person’s handwriting. Get some digital record of their email to help avoid this. Some of the people I

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