Number 7<\/strong> above is true.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat do I mean by “best?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I mean, don’t resort to shady things in those moments of panic. I’m not even going to mention some of them. The risk isn’t worth it. They can get you banned from Amazon. Some of them might even be illegal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The main ones to stay away from are big-promise promotional sites and buying reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are some well-established promotional sites that work. Many of them are scams. The decision to use one should be deliberate and slow. They will probably vet you and even reject you. This is a good sign they are legitimate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A promotion site that lets everyone through and charges money is not going to get you the right traffic. They might boost sales for a day or week, but you probably won’t make your money back and the long-term damage to your “Also Boughts” will not be worth it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The same with buying reviews. You might get a smattering of good reviews, but Amazon has cracked down on this activity. They might all disappear. Customers can tell when a review is bought and won’t trust it. This means you won’t make your money back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anything that looks like you can throw money at it and get a bunch of sales fast is probably a scam, and it’s easy as a desperate, new author to fall for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Growth will be slow at first. You must hit a critical mass for the curve to hook upwards. I didn’t do any of the shady stuff, but I wish I knew to trust myself more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead of getting depressed about low sales, get on with the next book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
10. Self-Publishing is the Pulp of Our Time<\/h2>\n\n\n\n Maybe everyone understands this now, but I certainly didn’t back when I put out my first book. I thought I’d write my literary masterpieces and just use self-publishing as a way to bypass the flawed mainstream publishing process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I figured I’d get ahead of the curve. Self-publishing is the future. The big publishers will die out if they don’t change something. Bookstores are dying. Mid-list authors make pretty much nothing and would be better off self-publishing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What I didn’t understand was that to be successful as a self-published author, you can’t treat it as a different means to the same type of thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Self-publishing is different than traditional publishing.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n One isn’t “better” or “worse” than the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Right now, the most secure way to get success is to write a lot and to stick to a niche genre. This is basically the definition of pulp. Again, I don’t see this as bad or low quality. People read these genres to be entertained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once I embraced the idea that I could write books to entertain people, and that was a worthy goal, my books started to do a lot better. But this is something I wish I knew going in. I never would have put my first book out with this method, because it virtually guaranteed no one would ever read it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Final Thoughts:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n Much of what I wish I’d known can be summarized as this: self-publishing is not just a means to release a book; it turns writing into a full-fledged business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To be successful at this, you need to spend months or years filling in any of the components of how to run a small business that you don’t already know. You must hire people for the tasks you cannot complete on your own. You need a business plan and a launch schedule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You must understand marketing and copywriting. You need to establish and maintain a mailing list. Once you start selling enough, you need to know how to deal with small business accounting and properly maintain an income\/expense spreadsheet for tax reporting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But don’t let this scare you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I can’t think of anything better for someone that is independent, loves writing, and loves learning.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n If you take each of these tasks one at a time, it is manageable, and if you aren’t afraid to dive in and learn as things change, you might even find yourself doing well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I’ve published over 10 books by self-publishing through Amazon. I’ve learned some lessons the hard way. This is a list of the 10 things I wish I knew before self-publishing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/amindformadness.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/self-publishing.jpg?fit=1200%2C600&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10342"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10342"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11615,"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10342\/revisions\/11615"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}