Welcome back! Long time, no see. Well, long time, never see. There's no face-to-face interaction involved here. Anyway, I hope you understand the sentiment; it's nice to see you return for the third part in this blog series, which may also be the last. We'll see as we go.
This week we'll be talking about finishing your novel. You've done your first, second, third, fourth, and fifth drafts; you've edited it—or paid for an editor—and it's all good in that department; you've done everything... so what's left?
Step Three
A lot, surprisingly.
Well, there is if you're self-publishing. If you're going through the traditional system, good luck! But this is where I can no longer help you. However, there are numerous sources out there that can. I found a few good ones to be:
I gave these all a read through before deciding to self-publish, and I truly think there's some valuable information held within each site. However, I just didn't think that route was for me. Do I now? Perhaps, but that's another story for another time.
Now, back to it.
Once you've got your book sorted there are a few things you'll need to do. You'll need a cover. You'll need your book formatting. You'll need to choose where and how to sell it. And, finally, you'll need to think about marketing it.
Firstly, covers. Again, sadly, I can't speak a great deal on the outsourcing of this, as I did all my cover work myself. Having a background in Graphic Design and Fine Art, I felt confident enough in my own ability to create my cover design. However, for those unable or not wanting to do this, there are options.
Reach out to an artistic friend. This will be cheapest, but it won't necessarily bring the results you desire. I know that the person I would have reached out to, had I done this, would've produced a spectacular cover—stylised and superb—but it wouldn't have fit the book's tone or my vision.
What to do instead then? The other option is to find a collection of artists whose work you're madly in love with and reach out to them. Email them, or DM them on social media if they're happy with that, and ask about commissioning them: paying them to do work for you. This won't be cheap, but you'll get an outcome you adore.
And, sadly, that's a running theme in self-publishing. You won't do well without spending a bucket load of cash. Trust me, I found out the hard way.
Anyway, great! You've got the cover commissioned—from a friend or artist you love—and they're working on it. What should you do in the meantime? Format everything.
Formatting can be a nightmare. However, there are lots of tools now that are available to make that nightmare a little more pleasant. Personally, I use Atticus. It's a great formatting software that allows me to input my manuscript then tweak it as I please until I have the book look I desire. There are alternatives, but this, at the time, was the best bang for buck, so to speak.
Once you've got your book looking nice and pretty, it's time to move on to the next step: finding your marketplace. Also, at this point, start to expect drafts of your cover, depending on how quick the artist you're working with performs their visual magic. When you receive these, be detailed with any feedback and don't shy away from saying certain aspects aren't as you wished. They'll understand—just don't be rude about it!
Now, when it comes to marketplaces, there are a few options. To mention some, there's: IngramSpark, Kindle Direct Publishing, and Kobo Publishing. There are more, sure, but those are the ones which I would consider my main ones, personally. When doing this myself, I went with KDP, as I saw it as the right option for me.
Now, KDP's interface is all relatively simple to use. You create a new book, fill out all the details you should already have handy, and save as a draft until you're absolutely ready for it to be published.
This is it. You're teetering on the finish line now.
Your book is formatted correctly. It's uploaded. The final bits are just being done on your cover. Oh, look, they're done! Great, upload that, and... now what?
Order some author copies. I'd say you only need one, but feel free to get more. These are invaluable. They'll help you spot any printing errors or formatting errors: allowing you to change before a paying customer spots the mistake and writes a scathing review. When I was at this stage with The Secrets of the Lake, I ordered five author copies before everything was absolutely perfect and ready. So, be aware, the likelihood of you getting it perfect on the first try is slim.
That's about it, really, for preparing your book for release. Your book is ready to go now, so it's time to leave it and start marketing... yay.
This was quite possibly the worst part for me, due to a combination of poor planning and lack of social media. So, take notes. When it comes to marketing your book, you want to be—you have to be—ready for it. Create a book trailer. Create mock-ups of your book. Post both to every social media platform you have. Get people excited. In fact, a great idea I did have was to give free copies to people in order for them to review when the book released. However, I did not give enough of these—or, perhaps, I gave them to the wrong people. When it came to it, only one person I'd give my book freely to did as they said they would, and the others, whilst telling me they loved it, did nothing. This left me feeling great about the book, but terrible about its life on the marketplace, where it has floundered and flailed.
But, marketing wasn't a total failure for me. No, there is a speck of hope in this seemingly massive void of despair. Paid ads. Whilst they didn't warrant their cost, personally, I did see hundreds of people viewing my book's store page and tens of them reading it through Kindle Unlimited or even buying a copy. I found that Google ads worked best for me, but that Facebook's were a very, very close second. Amazon's own ads did bring in two sales as well, but felt lacklustre compared to the other two.
And that's all. You've started advertising, your book's out, and you've struck gold! Congrats! You've crossed the finish line so many fail to cross. You did great. Before I go, though, I want to share two links with you that I found tremendously helpful in my journey and which I hope you will too, should you want to self-publish.
Together, Mandi Lynn and Daniel Greene guided me through this process in a way that made it easy and simple. Without their videos, I wouldn't have been able to do it. So, please, watch their content as it's brilliant for aspiring authors.
Anyway, with that said, all I have left to do is wish you a good day and say thank you for reading this series of blog posts. It was incredibly fun to be able to share my journey and, hopefully, give some guidance on what (not) to do when self-publishing. I will be back with more posts, but I'm not sure when yet—or what exactly they'll be about. So, keep an eye out!
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