Intermittent Hodgepodge: So You Want to Self-Publish, Eh?
It’s no secret that I’m trying to get my latest work, Waypoint: Eclipse, on bookshelves the traditional way. However, if that doesn’t pan out, I'll opt to self-publish again. Only this time, I want to be more deliberate about it.
With my first two works, I was impatient, excited. I wanted to see my name on the spine of the book. It’s been my dream since I was little. But - the drawback is I didn’t put enough time into the process of self-publishing itself.
Well, I recently picked up a book from a local used bookstore called The Fine Print of Self-Publishing by Mark Levine. I’m near the end of it, but I’m getting enough out of reading it that it’s completely changed my view on the process of self-publishing. By itself, this is exciting, and I wanted to share my biggest takeaways with you.
To start, anyone who has already self-published or is aiming to self-publish again needs this book. Period. End of story.
First, the book is a concise, clear, and candid master class on how to self-publish your book, from soup to nuts. (I understand what that idiom means, but I have no idea why that idiom carries that meaning). The book discusses different options for the process - and whether you should do it all on your own.
My biggest takeaway from this book is that I probably should have hired outside professionals to take on the editing, inner formatting, and marketing for my previous works. While I’m proud of my first two books, the quality of book itself could be better. There are occasional typos, for instance, and the font and formatting never really satisfied me. I did hire an outside artist to do both of my covers - and they’re wonderful - but I should have opted to get professional help to make the book more polished. Even from a content perspective, I could have used another set of eyes to go over the plot, consistency, and characters. Even though most of my free time is focused on the next book, I may actually hire someone to freshen up the older books and publish a new edition.
The book also goes into other items, such as marketing and potentially hiring a publicist to drive up sales. This is honestly something I had never considered before, and I can’t imagine not considering this in the future. The book makes a point of challenging authors to consider who your target audience is and write the book for them as much as possible. Then, figure out creative ways of getting the book in front of that particular audience.
How do you do that? A few ways - you can make a website, fill it with content, and send it out to your network. You can also send your content to places where your target audience hangs out. Social media, conventions, blogs, you name it. If you’re using Amazon, you can set up targeted ads for people who in your target group. I’ve started experimenting with a targeted ad campaign for Artifacts. I want to see how effect the campaign is and figure out a way to hone my strategy for Waypoint. And I’ve started coming up with creative ways to get my book in front of that audience.
Honestly, it’s exciting. And the book makes me reconsider whether I want to spend more time querying literary agents or just proceed with the self-publication process. I have so many more projects I want to work on. Part of me wants to just get Waypoint out there and move on. I’ve been working on it in some form for the last ten years. It’s a fantastic book and I love it dearly - but it may be time to move on?
What do you think?
Anyway, I’d highly recommend Mr. Levine’s book. You can pick it up on Amazon here.
