— Mark Paxson
Let’s say you’re a writer and you’re nearing the end of a final draft on a story. The story will be novella length, getting close to novel length. What does your runway to publishing look like?
Beta readers? ARCs? Editors? More edits by you? Hesitation to pull the trigger? Joy? Sadness?
And as you move towards your publication date, what kind of pre-publication promotional efforts do you engage in? ARCs? Set up pre-orders? Paid reviews like Kirkus? Line up a blog tour? Set up a GoodReads giveaway? Line up some of the promo sites? Beg on social media for people to buy your book?
And once you publish, then what do you do?
Asking for a friend, because nothing I’ve done with the last few books I’ve published has done a thing, so I’m curious what has worked for other people. We’ve talked about this on our occasional chats, but I’m not sure any of us are finding answers to these questions.
Writers Supporting Writers 
Do you write for money or write for pleasure? Because in this day and age of a million “published” stories a year you can’t do both.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I write for pleasure but would like to grow my audience and make a few dollars at least.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Knowing how mistake riddled my drafts are, I can’t bring myself to share it before I do at least three drafts, then upload it to Google Drive to find some of my errors, then uploading, chapter by chapter, to the free Grammarly, and finally to Scribbr just to find errors. I’m not concerned with their grammar advice, it creative writing, after all. I then hand a paper copy off to my wife to do her proofread.
Once she’s done, I pick a date and put it up for presale on Amazon, and send copies out to a small handful of volunteer beta readers. I update the file on Amazon once I have their results. I think I’ve gotten as many as 12 preorders but usually much less or none at all. I have 274 followers on Amazon, which tells you why you need to get your book in front of thousands of people to sell dozens of copies.
For promotion, all I do is talk about it on my blog, and announce when it is released, with links to the various stores. I’ve always relied on my free price to sell books. I don’t do newsletters etc, which you probably should do, but it’s too late now for me. I don’t spend money on promoting my books.
I convert the books to audiobooks on Google, Amazon, and D2D (Apple) right after the ebooks are released. Half of my sales are now audiobooks.
Because I’ve been doing this for ten years, and have released at least one or more books a year, I think I have a modest readership that remember me and looks in to see if I have anything new, every so often. This readership makes for sales. Without a readership, or any sort of promotion, a book is likely to sink unnoticed.
My takeaway is that if you want to have a book that sells, you have to write a book that is laser-focused on a subgenre that sells, plus have a wide social media presence and/or spend a lot of money promoting it. In 2025, if you haven’t written to market, and promoted it one way or another, your book is unlikely to find a market. There are, however, other yardsticks than money to measure success with. Consider them instead,.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I was on my way to making a modest, but steady income from my writing. Amazon came up with their select writers who were prepared to go only with them. I ran my own protest on the smashwords forum (What ever happened to Ted, by the way?) but eventually yielded, giving in to them for about six months, but by then I was not exactly flavour of the month. My momentum was lost. I now publish on all the sites via D2D. Yes, I still get a few $ from the mighty Zon, but most of my readers are now with Apple. Any $ goes into my charity money. I know from the reports that I’m being read by somebody in the world every day and I’m cool with that. ‘Last Flight For Craggy’ has about 520 ratings / reviews on Amazon at about a 4.2 overall rating with the rest of the series also doing ok. , so somebody liked me.
I continue to pound the keys, churning out my little stories. Latest effort coming along quite nicely. Will I churn out more? Dunno. I enjoy the journey. The challenge and the process. Not everyone can do what we do. Mega success would have come my way by now if it was meant to happen, so I’ll remain content with my efforts thus far.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I actually made a couple thousand dollars on my first book. Haven’t made much since then. As others have said, and I have said in the past, there are just too many books out there now to get noticed. Too many promo sites pushing emails that people don’t read. Just too much of a lot of this stuff and readers who don’t want to spend money on writers they don’t know. So, yeah, we write for the enjoyment of it. For me, to see if I can get another story done.
I just wish I could make a a tiny splash when I release my next book.
LikeLike
My approach is similar to Chuck’s, except that I price my books. Very modestly. I’m allergic to a lot of marketing stuff so do the bare minimum and am happy if/when a few people buy copies, and especially if they review them (mostly).
I think there are too many books out there and too few readers for everyone to make a living or even more than pocket change by writing and publishing. So as Chuck says, we have to use different measures for success.
LikeLiked by 3 people
There definitely are too many books out there which is what makes all of this so hard.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I am writing, letting it rest, editing, then giving it to beta readers and making edits again. Then I give it to the publisher (who usually is the editor too – and in Romanian, and in French too, there is one word for both editor and publisher, editeur in French, and Editure for Publishing House).
I check afterwards to give the good to print stamp. I might have a „list of reclamations” for further small corections at that pdf moment. We work together on the cover too. Usually I select the image and I obtain the fourth cover blurb from a literary critic or another writer more known. Sometimes the publisher is writing the fourth cover blurb.
Only one of my publishers works with pre-orders. For the others, when I have the book in my hands, I give it to book bloggers.
I have often a cover reveal in the latest stages pre-publication. I said often, because one of the publishers does not want cover reveals before the book exists, printed, on her desk and on mine. (Superstitious!)
I notify people on social media that the book has just appeared, and I invite them to the official launching, when it exists. In the cases of publishers out of town, where no official launching in person is possible, either I, or the publisher make a trailer/ online launching.
After I publish the book, I advertise it on my blog and on FB (including reading groups) and mostly… this is it. Sometimes organizing contests too.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you! Sounds like you have a system for this.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I read somewhere that you shouldn’t promote your book right away if it’s on Amazon. Better to quietly release it, then do nothing for a bit, and only then tell people about it. Supposedly, having the sales start to increase after it has been published for a while helps with the mysterious algorithm.
I sorta tried this with my latest one, although I probably didn’t wait long enough before I started promoting it. (Two weeks.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yet, we all do it the other way around. I think.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m nearing the end of a book now. I’ve committed to having it finished this month! For edits, I’ll read it through on the computer first, then print a hard copy to read. I usually read the hard copy aloud. The book is then sent to my Kindle, and I get the same reading experience as if I were reading someone else’s book. I don’t know why that is, but it works. I’m always surprised by how many changes/fixes I see when I read on my Kindle. After that, the book goes to one of my proofreaders. Once I get it back and make her corrections/changes, I send the book to my final proofreader who is a beast. I’m always happy then when I send the book up for publishing. It might not be perfect, but there are no egregious errors.
As for marketing … I am a slug. I’ve published as many as three books within days of each other with no fanfare whatsoever other than to mention the books on my blog.
However, when I was making decent money with my books, I used a lot of small sites for promotion. Many of them are inexpensive, and the sales add up. Book Promotion Services 2025: The Best Free and Paid Promo Services
I’m so terrible at this, I don’t even have my books in print! So much money left on the table! With 17 books published and three more to go up soon, that’s overwhelming to think of formatting them all. I do hope to get my Murder books into print this year though. At the present time, most of my sale are via Apple.
I stopped doing an email list several years ago. It took too much time to maintain, and I felt intrusive at times. I now simply guide people to follow me at BookBub for new release announcements. BookBub sends the announcements out to followers for free.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, we have a deal, don’t we? I actually managed more than 1,000 words today — a rare feat for me these days. But I am so close. Just a question of where exactly I want to end the tale.
I don’t ever send my manuscript to my Kindle. But as soon as I have what I think is a final draft complete, I print it out and read it on paper. There is just something different about reading it on paper versus on the screen. I might also do a read through on the screen also.
With this book, I have two beta readers lined up and may ask another one as well. Once I hear back from them I’ll make whatever final changes need to be made and then move to publishing.
Thank you for the info on promo services. A dozen years ago, with my first novel, I had huge success with EReaderNewsToday. Ever since, that site has done virtually nothing for me and the other ones I’ve tried have been equally useless. I do want to try some others, if they’ve been shown to work.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Good for you on the 1,000 words! I haven’t put a doggone word down since we said we’d hop to it. It’s only the fifteenth. I’ll get there! I’m going to have to start reading at the beginning first to refresh all the details in my mind – and I might as well do some editing while doing that!
Do you read for enjoyment on your Kindle? Try ONE TIME 🙂 to read your book on one. I love editing the hard copy, but that doggone Kindle – things jump out at me. Plus, it’s easy to highlight and make notes of changes. Otherwise, our methods are very similar.
Once I get these next couple of books published (soon!), I’m going to try some of these smaller sites for advertising. I’ll let you know how they pan out for me. BookBub was always my big money maker in the past, but they no longer want my first in series (free), and I don’t think the return is what it used to be. It’s a lot of money to pull the trigger with them anymore. $829 to list a 99¢ (on sale) book in the cozy mystery category. Ugh.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah, the price for BookBub has long been a turn off for me.
I mostly read on a Kindle now. And have my published books on it. Actually read my two novellas a few weeks ago. But to read a manuscript? I’ll have to ponder that.
I look forward to hearing on May 31 that you got it done.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have uploaded my MS to my Kobo ebook reader, and I can confirm what Maddie says, you do get a better perspective on how your books reads doing that. The problem for me is that when I find something I want to change, like every second page, I have to go to the MS on the computer to change it. I suppose you could highlight everything you want to change, and do it all at once, but that’s yet another step. What I do now, instead of loading on to an ebook reader is, I upload the MS from LibreOffice to Google Docs, and then open it in Docs. This gives the pages a different look, and Docs will highlights your mistakes to boot, accomplishing both a new look and the chance to make corrections in one go. I print out paper version for my wife to do her proofread.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I publish a few pages every day on WordPress. It’s about to get harder, because I’m about to start a new book😜🕴
LikeLiked by 1 person
Good luck!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks! It’s been very affirming so far, and rekindled my enthusiasm for writing.
LikeLiked by 1 person