Nearly three years ago, I was out of work because of the pandemic and was contemplating my writing career. I had written a fantasy novel and tried to submit it via the traditional route for publication without success. At that time, I did not want to query agents. I kept returning to the idea of self-publishing, but I was afraid. I had seen many self-publish books that didn’t go anywhere and looked very DIY. For that reason, I thought I just needed to keep trying the traditional publishing route.
Then, one day as I was driving to lunch, a friend gave me a nudge. I told him about some of the ideas I have been working on, and he said why don’t you self-publish them? I told him I had thought about it but didn’t think it was really the best route. He encouraged me to do it, making me reconsider my notions about self-publishing. I started to ask myself what are you afraid of? What did I have to lose? On that day, I decided to explore self-publishing seriously.
I did my research, but as with most things, there’s a lot of fluff on the internet. Finding something that actually told you how to do it was hard. I think part of the reason for this is that most people are super cagey with their experiences and know-how. It’s as if they don’t want to reveal their trade secrets or simply don’t want to help others because they didn’t receive much either. It’s sort of a rite of passage, and as an unpublished writer who knows nothing, that can be frustrating.
So, that brings us to this series. I have thought about sharing how I went and self-published my book to help other aspiring writers, but I knew it would take time to write. With how many things I am juggling, I wanted to avoid rushing. So, I will walk through how I did it for the first time, the mistakes I made, and the lessons I learned. I hope this series acts as a blueprint of what to do and not do if you want to go self-publishing with your story ideas. But first, a little background on me (feel free to skip to the section after this next one if you don’t care about my background).
Why should you listen to me (or not)?
I have been writing stories since I was in second grade. In fact, I got in trouble for writing a war story between gophers and squirrels that was a little too violent for my teacher (those damn video games are desensitizing kids!). I was always curious about writing. It was a like a candle flicker in my soul that just needed a bit more fuel—enter JRR Tolkien.
In 5th grade, my teacher, Mr. Walsh, read to the class The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings over the course of the year. We even watched the old cartoon movie The Hobbit as well. We had two options when he read to us: draw in silence or listen. I often did both at the same time. I was usually drawing stick-figure battle scenes with tanks and airplanes. Back then, the old war movies would run, and my father was my go-to historian on WWII, the Roman Empire, and more, so all things military was of interest to me.
However, from that point on, thanks to Tolkien, I was hooked on writing. It just took a little longer for me to commit. Once I quit sports, music became my focus until I got to college. Then, I switched majors to English and eventually graduated from Cal State Long Beach with a double degree in Literature and Creative Writing (YOU DON’T NEED AN ENGLISH DEGREE TO BE A WRITER). All through this, I was always drawing maps, building lore for different worlds I created, and got heavily interested in conlanging because I wanted to do what Tolkien did—make my languages for my worlds.
I had been working on a fantasy world and stories for seven years. I wrote a 100K word draft, my first completed book, and started to shop it around to anyone that had an open submission policy. That included Penguin, Bantam, Tor, and others. As I learned in college, you had to accept rejection and take it on the chin to be a writer. I got nothing but rejection letters and started to rethink what I was doing.
That brings us to 2020. The pandemic hit, I lost my job, and while looking for work, I started to revisit what I wanted to do with my book. After working so long on it, I didn’t want to do the self-publishing route with it. I was afraid it would not be as good as it could be, which made me shelve it for now and come back with fresh eyes and more writing wisdom later.
Through this time, my passion for military history did not wane. Instead, that interest stuck with me into adulthood and eventually led to my first self-published series. It was a simple idea from the artwork and story of a board game called Scythe. The question I asked was, what if the Germans had mechs in World War I? How could that change the timeline? Thus, The Kaiser’s Machines and its timeline were born.
Since then, I have released four books in this timeline (a trilogy and a prequel). In addition, through my marketing efforts (I have a background in marketing, so that helps, but you can always learn this stuff), I have moved 950 total units (the vast majority are digital downloads with a smaller portion in paperback) and have grown my newsletter list from 0 to over 500 subscribers. While I started this without a full-time job, most of this success was done while working 8-5, M-F. It wasn’t easy and took a lot of work and investment, but if you are serious, that’s what it will take.
Now, I will be the first to admit I am not an expert. I am still learning and growing, as most writers are at all times. I have not reached the point where I can make a full-time income doing this, but that’s the goal. So treat this series as a resource to just get started and publish your first book. That’s the most challenging hurdle—just getting something out there for the first time.
Alright, enough about me; let’s get into it.
Where do you start with self-publishing?
First and foremost, what does it mean to self-publish? Self-publishing a book means exactly how it sounds. You don’t have an agent. You aren’t going through a traditional publishing company. Instead, you retain one hundred percent of the rights to the book and have to write, edit, and market the book on your own. And when you self-publish it on a platform, they usually take a cut, but you set the price and the royalties you make based on whether or not you agree to specific terms (more on that in future blogs).
But before you even start worrying about any of this, you need to begin with actually having something written. Now, I am not going to get into writing 101. I am assuming that you already know how to write.
So, with that in mind, the first question you should ask yourself is what kind of story you should write. I would say there are two approaches, one of which will give you more success out of the gate.
The first approach is to do some research on what’s selling. Look at genres that interest you and write your book TO market. The other option, which is the way I went and probably ill-advised, is right what interests you. Bear in mind if you write what you want to and not write it with what people are buying in the market, it will be harder to build an audience and sell books.
Now, that doesn’t mean that if you write to the market, you have to write something that doesn’t interest you. The goal is to find where those two intersect. If you don’t write to the market, you’ll have a harder time selling books. And if you don’t write something you’re not interested in, it will come through in the writing.
So, with that in mind, look at the genres you’re interested in, see the best-selling books in that genre, and formulate a story that you’re excited about within those guardrails.
Platforms to self-publish books
Before you put pen to paper, I will save you the headache. You should determine where you will publish your book first because that way, you can format your document so when you’re done writing, you can take a step out later (and a lot of pain that I experienced).
The two big names for self-publishing are Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Amazon dominates market share (holding roughly 80% of the eBook market), and it’s where most people go to make purchases these days, especially books. Barnes and Noble is a good second option, but it doesn’t have as big a market share as Amazon. Then you have platforms like Kobo, Apple Books for Authors, and a slew of other platforms.
You have two options: sell exclusively on Amazon or across multiple platforms. What’s the difference? Here are some of the things you’ll have to consider when you sell on various platforms:
You have to format your book for each platform.
You will have to manage sales and data in different dashboards.
Each time you make an update, you have to do it to all books on each platform one by one.
You cannot enroll and benefit from exclusively selling with Amazon (for your eBooks).
Now, I chose to sell only on Amazon because it has the largest market share, and it’s simpler for me, given how busy I am. Of course, you can always start with Amazon and then branch out later, but as I mentioned, Amazon dominates the eBook market. You’ll sell most of your books as eBooks (this surprised me, for they outpaced my paper book sales by 3 to even 4 to one). And if you publish on Amazon, you can enroll it into KDP Select.
KDP select forces you to sell our book exclusively on Amazon. It offers it to readers for free who are part of Kindle Unlimited. Basically, people get to read books and keep them for as long as they want for a monthly subscription. Depending on how many pages they read of your books, you get a cut of the KDP Global Select Fund. Since I already decided to sell only on Amazon (after trying Barnes and Noble simultaneously), it was a no-brainer for me.
Once you figure out where to sell, determine the size you want your book to be. Amazon provides a cheat sheet to help writers format their books for print beforehand. If you are only selling eBook versions to start, you can use Amazon’s tool, Kindle Create, to format. I am telling you this now because I didn’t format my book for print. So, after all the blood, sweat, and tears of writing my first book, it took me another two weeks of trying to get the formatting and cover correct (Amazon won’t take your book if it’s not formatted correctly for print). So, avoid this if you can.
Authors who self-publish
Hundreds of authors self-publish. Some are more successful than others. But what helped me a lot was finding someone doing this full-time. I looked to AC Cobble, a self-published author who, for me, appeared to be living the dream (writing stories full-time for a living). If you find authors like that, you can mirror what they do (such as building your website, social media pages, etc.).
One person I will mention a lot in this series is David Gaughran. He has TONS of resources on everything under the sun regarding self-publishing. He also does this full-time and has many valuable tips for people just starting. His videos are on YouTube (see the end of this blog). There’s a ton of content out there, so only consume what you need at any given moment, or you’ll quickly be overwhelmed.
Final Thoughts and Future Blogs
Self-publishing is not easy. You should seriously consider what’s best for your stories and pursue that. Perhaps in future blogs, I’ll discuss my writing process and how to go the traditional route. But for now, I hope this acts as a primer on how to start.
Here’s a summary:
Is self-publishing right for you?
If so, research the market and develop your story
Are you selling just eBooks, or do you want to sell paperbacks too?
If paperbacks as well, determine what platform you can format before you start writing
WRITE YOUR FIRST DRAFT
EDIT, EDIT, EDIT
In future blogs, I’ll discuss the differences between traditional publishing and self-publishing, editing, developing covers, tools you can use to help you write and format, and more. I’ll also walk you through how to self-publish on the two platforms I am familiar with, Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
If you haven’t already, consider joining my newsletter to get the latest updates on my blog and my current writing (no spam, unsubscribe whenever). For additional information to jumpstart your self-publishing career, look at some of the links below.
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