It’s been nearly five months since I embarked upon the adventure that is independent publishing, a decision that I made on a whim. And my, what a roller coaster it has been! I’ve learned a lot in these past few months, and I’m almost certainly going to learn a lot more. But today I thought I’d share some of the insights I had along the way, to help out all of my fellow indie publishers also new to the industry.
1) Promoting is the most difficult part of being an author.
No one is immune to promoting. I’ve heard from my fellow authors that have sold the rights to their books that they are also expected to do a large part of the promoting. Even if you sell your book you still wind up doing the lion’s share of the marketing.
Very few of us authors want to do it. We tend to be a shy, retiring, introverted group. Having to beg strangers to read your book is a daunting task. I think it’s fair to say none of us are entirely comfortable with it. So know you're not alone if you find the notion of this overwhelming. I feel your pain.
Most of us probably published our book with the thought that it is so wonderful it won’t need promoting. We may have had some kind of idea that really good novels speak for themselves. Yeah...leave that notion at the door. The most wonderful novel is going nowhere if you can’t get it out to readers. You have to find an audience for your book. The audience will not find your book. It just doesn’t work that way.
Promoting is an art. You have to realize when it is appropriate and when it is not. I made a few newbie errors with regards to promoting my books on websites and forums when it was not desired. For instance, I was part of an online community of single women for years. When I published my book, I was eager to share it, since I’d developed an online relationship with the other members. I checked the rules of posting, noted that there was no rules against it, and so I promoted it on there.
The website owners didn’t chastise me, but I had a feeling they were mad. A few weeks later they permanently banned me for an extremely minor infraction (when being banned was practically unheard of on that forum). They were clearly waiting for an excuse to throw me off. Lesson learned. Don’t promote your book on websites that belong to others without asking. Even if it’s not against the stated rules.
2) You need to connect with other independent authors
Especially if they’ve been in the industry awhile, they know all the things you don’t. Like, what paid promos actually work, and which ones are scams. You need to locate forums where independent authors hang out. For me, the groups on Goodreads has been an excellent resource.
There tends to be two types of authors that hang out there: A) Nice people who want to help you
B) Condescending snobs that believe they just wrote a Nobel Prize winning novel. The former vastly outnumber the latter, and those are the people that you want to get to know. Fortunately, the people in the latter group don’t really want to get to know you, they just want to pop into threads and make you feel stupid. Ignore them. They're the literary equivalent of Sheldon Cooper.
3) Support other independent authors
Part of being an indie means receiving tons of daily emails from sites that promote books, because you want them to promote yours. The books on these sites are free, or close to it. In the beginning, I used to just delete these emails unread. Now I skim through them and download anything I find interesting. I have made it a goal to read at least one independent novel a week, and since they’re usually free, I post a review as a way of “paying” for the book. Pay it forward. Treat other indie authors the way you want to be treated. It’s good karma.
3) Getting Bad Reviews or Bad Ratings is Inevitable
You know it’s going to happen, but it’s still a stab to the heart when it does. What I did when it happened to me is go to Stephen King’s Amazon page and take a look at all the one star reviews that he has accumulated over the years. Thousands. Doing this will comfort you. All the greats have tons of bad reviews and they went on being great.
Not to mention, I happen to know that not one of the people who have given me bad reviews/bad ratings has read my book. How? I sell my books exclusively through Amazon Kindle, which syncs with Goodreads, so I know when someone who rates it and reviews it is an actual reader.
What is the takeaway from this? There are people out there in the online world who will give you a bad review/bad rating just to be mean. They may be rival authors, trolls, exes,or someone you pissed off in a political discussion online. (If you’re the least bit political, you will run into this. This is an attempt to bully you and silence you. Don’t believe me? Look at some of the comments on Stephen King’s one star reviews. King is VERY political). Writers historically are extremely political, and this is an easy way for a lunatic who shares an opposing view to strike back. (And anyone that would go to that length IS a lunatic).
Even so, I know sooner or later I’m going to run into a bona fide reader who dislikes my books. And the reasons people have for disliking a book can be really stupid, so I’m going to have to shrug it off. The only time I advise you NOT to shrug it off is if the person actually says something constructive. If they say the book has a lot of typos, that is something you can fix, especially if you published through the Amazon Kindle platform. In that case, even if it doesn’t feel that way immediately, they’re doing you a favor.
Some authors advocate contacting people who have given you bad reviews/ratings and attempt to talk them into changing/removing them. I would not recommend doing this. First of all, it’s borderline harassment. Second of all, freedom of speech. There are times it can work against you, but you have to take the bad with the good. That’s the price of freedom.
Third of all, there are tons of stories out there of authors behaving badly, by overreacting to reviews. Emily Giffin is one who jumps immediately to mind. I used to read everything she wrote, which was generally light and fun beach reads. Then she (or her husband; he later took the blame for it but it was her account) completely went off on a reviewer who gave her a mediocre review on Amazon. It wasn’t even a bad review. Her husband (I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt that it was not, indeed, her) mobilized her fans on her website and sent them after the reviewer. There are a lot of crazies out there, and the situation got out of control very quickly. People who gave Giffin mediocre or bad reviews were getting death threats, and even when Giffin attempted to call off her minions, they wouldn’t stop. It was like her husband had set the brooms of Fantasia dancing.
Giffin later explained that she’d been getting trolled on Amazon (I now have sympathy for her, since it’s happened to me), and that one line review had triggered her husband into thinking it was one of the trolls. Mr. Giffin publicly apologized and said that it was hard for him to watch his wife work so hard on her books and then see people bash them.
Yup. I have a greater understand of that, now.
But look at the mess this caused. Giffin received tons of bad publicity and turned off potential readers. Moral of the story: IGNORE BAD REVIEWS. Do not respond, and do not contact the person. If it’s someone who legitimately didn’t like your book, it’s their right to do so. And if it’s a troll, a rival, or an ex, paying attention to them will just encourage them. The last thing you want such a person to know is that they succeeded in getting your goat.
4) Don’t give up
Want to know how to fail? Stop TRYING. This is true for everyone, even the dieter who loses weight and then gains it all back. Why do they gain it all back? Because they stopped trying. (And I know this well).
If you want to be a successful author, you need to keep writing books. Stephen King recommends you set a goal of writing 2,500 words most days of the week. I am proud to say I have stuck to that, for the most part. Sometimes it’s nine o’clock and I have to force myself to fire up my laptop, but I get it done. And there are times when I find myself slogging along, trying to make my word count, and there are times when I far exceed it. It’s not always fun. Sometimes it’s work. But that’s the way it goes.
So your first book is a flop? Big deal. Write another one.
What if the second one flops? Then you write a third.
Every time you write a book, you’ve increased your odds of success exponentially.
Keep writing. Don’t stop. At the end of the day, that’s the best advice I can give. I read somewhere once that the most successful people in life actually endured far more rejection than an ordinary person. What made them successful? The way they reacted to it. They didn't let it get them down. They kept trying.
You will no doubt run across tons of depressing statistics concerning the success of indie authors and of authors in general. One dismal figure I just encountered was that most books are read less than 250 times in their lifetime.
What does that mean for you? That means all you have to do to be a success is get your book read 251 times. That's easy!
Don't let it get you down. Remember, there are tons of people out there who are not serious about writing or being authors. They write a book as a lark, throw the typo infested first draft online, sell a few copies and they're good. They've moved onto something else. So the statistics are skewed. I suspect that most serious authors wind up being successful eventually.
How bad do you want it? That is the determining factor in your success.
1) Promoting is the most difficult part of being an author.
No one is immune to promoting. I’ve heard from my fellow authors that have sold the rights to their books that they are also expected to do a large part of the promoting. Even if you sell your book you still wind up doing the lion’s share of the marketing.
Very few of us authors want to do it. We tend to be a shy, retiring, introverted group. Having to beg strangers to read your book is a daunting task. I think it’s fair to say none of us are entirely comfortable with it. So know you're not alone if you find the notion of this overwhelming. I feel your pain.
Most of us probably published our book with the thought that it is so wonderful it won’t need promoting. We may have had some kind of idea that really good novels speak for themselves. Yeah...leave that notion at the door. The most wonderful novel is going nowhere if you can’t get it out to readers. You have to find an audience for your book. The audience will not find your book. It just doesn’t work that way.
Promoting is an art. You have to realize when it is appropriate and when it is not. I made a few newbie errors with regards to promoting my books on websites and forums when it was not desired. For instance, I was part of an online community of single women for years. When I published my book, I was eager to share it, since I’d developed an online relationship with the other members. I checked the rules of posting, noted that there was no rules against it, and so I promoted it on there.
The website owners didn’t chastise me, but I had a feeling they were mad. A few weeks later they permanently banned me for an extremely minor infraction (when being banned was practically unheard of on that forum). They were clearly waiting for an excuse to throw me off. Lesson learned. Don’t promote your book on websites that belong to others without asking. Even if it’s not against the stated rules.
2) You need to connect with other independent authors
Especially if they’ve been in the industry awhile, they know all the things you don’t. Like, what paid promos actually work, and which ones are scams. You need to locate forums where independent authors hang out. For me, the groups on Goodreads has been an excellent resource.
There tends to be two types of authors that hang out there: A) Nice people who want to help you
B) Condescending snobs that believe they just wrote a Nobel Prize winning novel. The former vastly outnumber the latter, and those are the people that you want to get to know. Fortunately, the people in the latter group don’t really want to get to know you, they just want to pop into threads and make you feel stupid. Ignore them. They're the literary equivalent of Sheldon Cooper.
3) Support other independent authors
Part of being an indie means receiving tons of daily emails from sites that promote books, because you want them to promote yours. The books on these sites are free, or close to it. In the beginning, I used to just delete these emails unread. Now I skim through them and download anything I find interesting. I have made it a goal to read at least one independent novel a week, and since they’re usually free, I post a review as a way of “paying” for the book. Pay it forward. Treat other indie authors the way you want to be treated. It’s good karma.
3) Getting Bad Reviews or Bad Ratings is Inevitable
You know it’s going to happen, but it’s still a stab to the heart when it does. What I did when it happened to me is go to Stephen King’s Amazon page and take a look at all the one star reviews that he has accumulated over the years. Thousands. Doing this will comfort you. All the greats have tons of bad reviews and they went on being great.
Not to mention, I happen to know that not one of the people who have given me bad reviews/bad ratings has read my book. How? I sell my books exclusively through Amazon Kindle, which syncs with Goodreads, so I know when someone who rates it and reviews it is an actual reader.
What is the takeaway from this? There are people out there in the online world who will give you a bad review/bad rating just to be mean. They may be rival authors, trolls, exes,or someone you pissed off in a political discussion online. (If you’re the least bit political, you will run into this. This is an attempt to bully you and silence you. Don’t believe me? Look at some of the comments on Stephen King’s one star reviews. King is VERY political). Writers historically are extremely political, and this is an easy way for a lunatic who shares an opposing view to strike back. (And anyone that would go to that length IS a lunatic).
Even so, I know sooner or later I’m going to run into a bona fide reader who dislikes my books. And the reasons people have for disliking a book can be really stupid, so I’m going to have to shrug it off. The only time I advise you NOT to shrug it off is if the person actually says something constructive. If they say the book has a lot of typos, that is something you can fix, especially if you published through the Amazon Kindle platform. In that case, even if it doesn’t feel that way immediately, they’re doing you a favor.
Some authors advocate contacting people who have given you bad reviews/ratings and attempt to talk them into changing/removing them. I would not recommend doing this. First of all, it’s borderline harassment. Second of all, freedom of speech. There are times it can work against you, but you have to take the bad with the good. That’s the price of freedom.
Third of all, there are tons of stories out there of authors behaving badly, by overreacting to reviews. Emily Giffin is one who jumps immediately to mind. I used to read everything she wrote, which was generally light and fun beach reads. Then she (or her husband; he later took the blame for it but it was her account) completely went off on a reviewer who gave her a mediocre review on Amazon. It wasn’t even a bad review. Her husband (I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt that it was not, indeed, her) mobilized her fans on her website and sent them after the reviewer. There are a lot of crazies out there, and the situation got out of control very quickly. People who gave Giffin mediocre or bad reviews were getting death threats, and even when Giffin attempted to call off her minions, they wouldn’t stop. It was like her husband had set the brooms of Fantasia dancing.
Giffin later explained that she’d been getting trolled on Amazon (I now have sympathy for her, since it’s happened to me), and that one line review had triggered her husband into thinking it was one of the trolls. Mr. Giffin publicly apologized and said that it was hard for him to watch his wife work so hard on her books and then see people bash them.
Yup. I have a greater understand of that, now.
But look at the mess this caused. Giffin received tons of bad publicity and turned off potential readers. Moral of the story: IGNORE BAD REVIEWS. Do not respond, and do not contact the person. If it’s someone who legitimately didn’t like your book, it’s their right to do so. And if it’s a troll, a rival, or an ex, paying attention to them will just encourage them. The last thing you want such a person to know is that they succeeded in getting your goat.
4) Don’t give up
Want to know how to fail? Stop TRYING. This is true for everyone, even the dieter who loses weight and then gains it all back. Why do they gain it all back? Because they stopped trying. (And I know this well).
If you want to be a successful author, you need to keep writing books. Stephen King recommends you set a goal of writing 2,500 words most days of the week. I am proud to say I have stuck to that, for the most part. Sometimes it’s nine o’clock and I have to force myself to fire up my laptop, but I get it done. And there are times when I find myself slogging along, trying to make my word count, and there are times when I far exceed it. It’s not always fun. Sometimes it’s work. But that’s the way it goes.
So your first book is a flop? Big deal. Write another one.
What if the second one flops? Then you write a third.
Every time you write a book, you’ve increased your odds of success exponentially.
Keep writing. Don’t stop. At the end of the day, that’s the best advice I can give. I read somewhere once that the most successful people in life actually endured far more rejection than an ordinary person. What made them successful? The way they reacted to it. They didn't let it get them down. They kept trying.
You will no doubt run across tons of depressing statistics concerning the success of indie authors and of authors in general. One dismal figure I just encountered was that most books are read less than 250 times in their lifetime.
What does that mean for you? That means all you have to do to be a success is get your book read 251 times. That's easy!
Don't let it get you down. Remember, there are tons of people out there who are not serious about writing or being authors. They write a book as a lark, throw the typo infested first draft online, sell a few copies and they're good. They've moved onto something else. So the statistics are skewed. I suspect that most serious authors wind up being successful eventually.
How bad do you want it? That is the determining factor in your success.
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