Over the years contributors and many commentators have shared their experiences, observations, and advice on this blog. I thought perhaps it might be a nice idea to bring it all together for the sake of anyone new to self-publishing who might find their way here – useful, practical experiences and advice from writers who’ve been at it for a while, i.e. people who know what they’re doing. Of course we do.
So what have we learned during our self-publishing journey? What would we do differently today if we could roll back the clock and start over? Any major regrets?
And having asked the question, I suppose it’s up to me to get the ball rolling.
I don’t have any major regrets. I made mistakes, but that’s part of learning.
Self-publishing was all I considered in 2015, at the age of 65, and I chose readership over pocket change. No regrets. I’m not a goal oriented fellow, so I’m mostly surprised at the 20 books I’ve written, and with my sales. Still, they’re never enough, are they?
My major mistake was not recognizing how careless I am as a writer and how special being able to proofread reliably is. I learned this the hard way. I am amazed that with half a dozen volunteer beta/proofreaders, how little overlap there is between the lists of typos I receive back from them. Luckily in self-publishing you can upload corrected copies as needed. My first books were re-uploaded a lot.
I’ve also learned that on-line grammar correcting software can’t be fully trusted yet. But it definitely makes the job of my beta readers a whole lot easier. It is now part of my process.
I’ve always written the way words and stories come naturally to me. I’ve read writing advice pieces just to sneer at them. I never use five words where ten will do, if they add personality. I never kill my babies. This seems to work for me.
I’ve tried different covers on most of my books over the years, and never found any difference in sales. I use a uniform cover design for my book covers as my distinctive “brand.”
I’ve learned never to write sequels unless the first one is a runaway best seller, since each subsequent book sells fewer copies than the one before it. Going forward it’s all stand alone books, with open endings. On the off chance.
I’ve learned that visibility, and perhaps visibility alone is the key to sales. I don’t know how to get it. I’ve never spent any money or effort marketing my books, leaving that aspect entirely to the free price of my books. That’s worked well for me. The cool kids are all into social media in order to create the visibility and buzz needed to sell their books. Maybe it works. Anything is possible.
Lots of people read books on their phones. Make sure your books are on platforms that serve books to phones – Apple & Google. Google has been a gold mine for me, I think for that reason.
Ebooks/audiobooks reach a world-wide market on a number of platforms. A lot of people in the world read English. The more affordable your books are, the wider their potential reach outside of the US is.
Audiobooks now account for between one third and one half of my free sales. $3.99 auto-generated audiobooks on Amazon/Audible haven’t sold for me.
Selling ebooks, even free ones, has grown harder every year. The market is consolidating around a relatively few sub-genre and best selling writers who monopolize the hype. If you’ a’re serious about making money, see below. But if you don’t believe me, do your research thoroughly. Write what sells.
Self-publishing is not a viable business, unless you count buying lottery tickets as a viable business. The odds of winning are about the same. Lottery payouts are far bigger. Just say’n.
I’ve learned that being a writer isn’t likely to impress anyone, if only because most people don’t read much. If you want to be famous and respected, get very rich.
I’ve found a nice community here to share my thoughts with and be part of. A definite big plus.
Your turn.
Writers Supporting Writers 
My experience is similar to yours, Chuck, except that my only regret is not having published through Amazon earlier. From 2008 until about 2015 were the fat years for self-publishers, mainly because there were fewer books. Now there are millions of books that never go out of “print” because they’re not really in print to start with. Ebooks and POD.
I suppose I should say I regret not learning how to promote and market my books, but the truth is that aspect of publishing has zero interest for me. My books have to succeed (or limp along, to be truthful) on their own merits. About the only thing that may help is writing and publishing more books, because each new one attracts some attention to the rest. But I can’t crank them out quickly enough for that.
I don’t regret getting into self-publishing. I’m pretty sure that persisting with submissions and queries would have brought no more success of any sort, and would likely have presented the challenges of not taking rejections personally and telling myself that J.K. Rowling endured dozens (or is it hundreds) of rejections before making it, so just send out another query and wait, and wait, and wait. (See the attitude? I’m glad to be done with that.)
Thanks for inspiring this mini-rant! 😁 😜 😉
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Thanks for ranting.
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You’re welcome, Chuck. My rants are fairly civilized.
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I’m old enough to remember the old days of printing out three chapters and writing a synopsis (whatever that is) and sending it by mail to a publisher to be ignored. Thumbs up for Amazon to break that with the ebook platform when Barnes and Noble dropped the ball. About 2008 for my first effort, One Man’s Dream loosely based on where I was in my life at the time. Then a proper book launch at the local library in little town New Zealand with the first Dusty Miller paperback then both into ebooks.
Fueled by too much alcohol (not recommended) I wrote away the deep dark times by writing, often having no idea what I’d written until I sobered up the next day and looked it over.
Never intending to do sci fi, I wrote Last Flight for Craggy. It went out as a freebie and amazed me with the reaction and people asking, what happens next? I hadn’t even considered a ‘next’ hence LAST Flight in the title. Six more followed plus spin offs. all still out there and being read.
I stopped counting full size books after 35 of them. I’ve had a break following Drifta’s Quest 2 but I got back in the saddle and have a couple on the go when I’ve finally finished the painting I’m working on.
Advice for newbies? Write for the fun and challenge of it. Write to your best standard. Learn about proper page breaks so it can go through as an ebook okay. Have a friendly wordsmith go over it but make sure you get warts and all feedback. Go for it.
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I started writing to see if I could do it. That was a little over 20 years ago. When I completed my first novel, I tried the query process and that effort fell completely flat. When self-publishing began to be a thing, I decided to give it a try. I published a couple of collections of short stories and a novel around 2012. I actually made a couple thousand dollars off of the novel. How? I was able to get it featured at EReaderNewsToday a couple of times. It was in a popular genre — legal thriller. I think that helped.
But then I turned to literary fiction and the self-published market began to explode and it just got a lot harder to sell books, including when I had other books featured on EReaderNewsToday. Even what I thought would be a popular genre, YA, I couldn’t get any traction. I barely make enough in sales to cover my expenses, which aren’t much.
These days, I pay for a cover artist and that’s it. My cover artist is very reasonably priced compared to what I hear other cover artists charge. Other than paying for a proof copy to check out the “look” of the book before I hit publish, I have no other expenses. I have a few beta readers who read my manuscript for free if I ask.
I have occasionally made half-hearted efforts at querying since that first efforts, but I think I’m pretty much done with trying to get into the secret society of traditional publishing. I’ll just stick with self-publishing and recognize that I’ll never get rich (or really make any money at all at this). And that’s okay.
As Audrey says, I wish I was better at promoting or marketing. But I’m not. I blog, I’m on Twitter. Most of my sales are a result of social media, but my presence on-line is … well, let’s just say I’ve never gone viral … so my presence remains pretty small. So the sales social media produces for me is … see above, not enough to make any money.
Part of the problem is the saturation of the marketplace. There are now so many promo sits chasing readers and so many self-published books getting pushed out there each and every day, it is simply impossible to get noticed.
I also wish I was able to write in a more consistent, predictable way. But after ten years of a writing explosion when I started this thing, I’ve dealt with ten years of writer’s block and distractions that means I now write in fits and starts. Every day I hope is the beginning of a change in that. And then I hope for the change the next day. And the next.
As
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Thank you for sharing your experiences.
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I have two major regrets.
1. Not developing and maintaining a proper mailing list. Even now, I simply encourage people to follow me at BookBub as BB sends out new release notices for me. I may have had more reach and sales if I had taken control of interested readers myself.
2. Not putting my books into paperback form. I’ve left money on the table all these years. I’m going to rectify that next year.
There’s probably nothing I would do differently. I learned from all the mistakes I made, and I think I’m a better writer and marketer for it.
Oh … and I’m like you. 🙂 I write the way things come to me, and I like my style. Cliches, drivel, conversations around a dinner table … I want them all. A proper editor would ditch that junk in a heartbeat. But I’m stubborn and keep it all. Passive voice, past progressive … I embrace whatever makes sense to me in my writing. Rules – bah humbug.
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Thank you for recounting your experiences and your contribution to our guide.
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Still no idea how I put my actual name on this thing.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but Fifty shades of Grey was an indie as I recall. It did ok. And we all live that dream of being a mega selling author. A few of my reviewers have said my stuff would make a great film. I’m still waiting for that call.
I’ve just about finished the painting I’ve been working on, so finally get my writing head on again which is a strange deep dark world where everything else is excluded. Alien people to meet and worlds for me to invent and discover. Will I save Earth (again) or let the human race blow it up. Maybe I’ll flip a coin on that one.
We writers have an awesome responsibility.
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And so was Silo (now an Apple TV show), The Martian, Dungeon Crawler Carl, and there was just a self-published romancy series that the author recently sold to a traditional publisher for seven figures… and she said that she would probably have made more money staying self-published, but wanted to see her books in book stores. Anything is possible. Thanks for your comment.
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