25 publishing lessons learned the hard way

[Music] suddenly the world I used to know I see it differently you woke me from a dream now reality baby baby you are really hurting me cuz every time you tell me I'm good and B I'm doing fine but nothing ever [Music] change hi I'm about to publish my fifth book and I have learned a lot of things with every single release and a lot of mistakes I have made too there's a lot about publishing that you just don't know until you've done it in the past I've done some videos on mistakes that I've made during publishing that are 100% worth watching and I'll link them below but today we're going to do a rapid fire list of 25 things that I have learned not just mistakes but helpful lessons too and things that totally shocked me once I started publishing my books number one your first book is just your first Pancake meaning it doesn't make or break anything this is specifically for Indie authors although it could be true for traditionally published authors as well I don't know I only know the Indie side of things but your first book is just the beginning and each time that you add a book to your backlist of books your sales can and often will grow Indie authors often actually hit their successful stage what whatever you want to call it somewhere between books 20 to 30 crazy I know that's a lot of books but I've seen it happen all the authors that I look up to and admire who are Indie authors have at least 20 if not 30 or even more books published another way to phrase this would be this is not the type of career that is an overnight success and honestly neither is traditional publishing it doesn't matter if it looks like it or not it never is for people who are chasing this for the money money you're going to burn out way before you ever become successful but on the flip side for those who are willing to put the time in success does seem to be pretty reachable right around books 20 to 30 that seems to be the range something to look forward to if you love the writing and you're willing to write that many books number three social media is not actually required you can actually Market your book in a lot of other ways without it the problem is though that 99.9 % of those other ways are paid options while social media is free I think that's the real reason that so many authors prefer to use it because you're able to get so much exposure for your books for free instead of having to pay bucket loads of money what are some of these nonsocial media ways to Market your book you ask I'm happy to tell you let's talk about it because I have a whole list here the most common one that people think of is advertising but there's actually a bunch of different places where you can advertise your books so there's Amazon ads Facebook ads BookBub ads Instagram has ads now they're starting to pop off I've noticed and even potentially you could do YouTube ads and I'm sure there's other places as well in a similar vein you'll see people do sales on their book and then use paid promotion on those sales there's specific companies like again BookBub feature deals that will share your sale with a targeted group of readers if you pay them another one that's becoming more common is hiring influencers this is not something that I've done but while you could work with influencers and not pay them if you're on friendly terms more often it seems like the really big influencers do get paid to talk about products like your book oh I should have said on social media so like Tik Tok Maybe YouTube maybe Instagram I don't know I haven't done this one but I have done the kind of sister marketing thing which is PR companies that do this for you so they work with influencers and they do things like I don't know book tours cover reveals things like that that you pay them and then they set it up with their contacts and they might do this next thing as well or you might do it separately by yourself or with another company but the next one is giveaways so the PR Company could run a giveaway and you could pay for the book and pay them or you could just pay for the book and run it on your social media if you're kind of doing both or you could use a company like Goodreads which does giveaways but they're very expensive and last but not least that's also kind of connected to arcs which are Advan reader or Advanced review copies and arcs are basically very similar to a giveaway but you're giving away the book before the release specifically and so again you could do that on your own social media or you could use a company like netgalley for example where they will give away your book to readers who are looking for books but again you have to pay them so those are some of the paid marketing things that I just feel like aren't talked about as much maybe because they're a little more advanced but they're totally an option you don't have to be on YouTube either there's authors who think that because I do it that's what they should do absolutely not and honestly I'll be very real with you unless you cultivate an audience that's looking for books exactly like yours very likely it won't sell hardly any books at all I do my YouTube to help other writers who very often don't even read my genre so my YouTube channel really doesn't sell hardly any books this next one is a good one I wrote down that you'd think writing a book gets easier with each book but it's almost like as you close this knowledge gap between where you are currently and what you know you want your books to be and how good they could be writing the book actually feels like it gets harder in some ways because you are more aware of just how much needs to go into it if the book is hard to write and or you struggle with impostor syndrome sometimes those are actually both very good qualities because that means you care enough to make the book better if you didn't have that that's when you would need to worry editors are really important but especially for your first few books because if you study what they're teaching you and all the notes that they make in your document they are actually essentially a master class or like a college course on what to do when you edit your book and what to look for and even better what your specific strengths and weaknesses are but you can and should supplement with readers too and they're typically called beta readers I have videos about them on my channel if you want to know more and they're just readers who help you by asking questions before you publish your book and point out things that aren't working that well and it's very helpful because you would much rather learn about things that aren't working in the book or don't make sense sense before the book is published then after the book is published in onear reviews every print on demand company is different so do your research to make sure you don't get caught by surprise my best story and example of this is how Kindle Direct publishing or KDP when you press publish that's when the book is published but on Ingram spark I learned the hard way that as soon as you upload the files they could start printing it's not great I have videos on that I'll link it blow but if and when you make mistakes it's totally okay because you can change it you can fix it you don't like the book cover you realize that it doesn't sell that well change it the blurb isn't working rewrite it or maybe you really want to change something that seems locked in stone like the title for example you can unpublish that book and then republish as a second edition I've done this you can watch my videos below if you want to know more on that but nothing is really said in stone so don't let it stress you out too much when you order bookish swag go small in most cases you only even need like 20 but most companies when you order things like bookmarks or postcards or whatever typically 100 is the minimum so go as small as you can because it's always possible to order more but it's really depressing to have a few hundred bookmarks or postcards around and no one to give them to I speak from experience along those same lines you do not need business cards sorry sorry the only place you're going to really use these is if you go to some kind of bookish event like maybe you do a book signing that is literally the only instance you really will ever need these because we are pretty much solely online as writers and I even went like three or four years where I just printed something out that had a QR code to my website and it was just as good because you buy these kind of things in bulk and you have to go to a lot of events for it to even be worth it again I speak from experience speaking of book signs I've got some bad news if you're an introvert they're actually extremely stressful and a little bit intense not saying they're bad I'm just saying that you have to be willing to really put yourself out there be awkward stand up wave at people smile all the time for hours introduce yourself first have an elevator pitch for your book and just generally act like you love being on display you got to fake it baby also book signings often cost more money than you actually make I know I know that one really got me too if you buy stock for the book event for example there's a good chance you're going to want to buy a lot so that you don't run out of copies right away which I've done unfortunately and so then you're going to have leftover books and that's expensive books are expensive to have just lying around that you haven't sold but in other cases like when I've done Barnes & Noble signings they buy the stock so it seems great upfront no big deal but they buy way too many books I'm talking like 60 copies per book book that you have out so that's a lot of books like the typical book signing this is a bonus fact the average author sells about 20 books and that is a good book signing if you're not really famous all those extra copies are going onto the shelf and branes & Noble treats shelf space you know like it's sacred like it costs money because it does and so at some point they're going to send any leftover books back to you as the author that also gets expensive it can cost literally twice as much as sending the book to yourself it's very expensive so why do we do them they're good exposure it's more readers who find you if you've been wanting to skip them this is a great reason to skip them speaking of selling signed copies you can also sell them through your website which is often called direct sales and these are awesome I actually learned that I can make a lot more money selling books directly to readers myself because the costs are just so much lower when the printing company isn't taking a cut for all the work that they do but I also learned that if you're not careful if you're not watching the shipping costs and you know using Media Mail For example and watching what packaging you use that it's not too expensive and being careful not to do like too much bookish swag that cost you money to print if you're not careful you can actually end up breaking even and not making hardly anything so I would just watch out for that I would just recommend caution when it comes to selling your books online yourself and make sure that you watch for all those extra invisible costs also charge what you're worth I know it's tempting to put your book on sale for just 9 but the funny thing about that is you only make 35 cents as the author which means that if you sold a hundred books you only make $35 it's pretty much impossible to make your money back that way and oddly enough readers don't really seem to value your work as much when you do that either 100 sales during your release month or even your release year is actually really good for most Indie authors on your debut especially if you have a smaller audience so if you are able to hit that number you're actually doing really well that said if you are not reaching that number or you've been doing it a while and you're struggling to get much past that this is where the tough love comes in and I say this with love no judgment whatsoever but there is probably something wrong with the book's Packaging let's talk about the packaging the cover matters Above All Else honestly does your book fit in with the genre when you look at it online like on Amazon next to other books in its genre yes I did say fit in not stand out because standing out is a secondary objective but the first objective is to make sure it also mainly fits in it has to meet those genre standards that readers expect otherwise your target readers the people you know would love your your book They're going to skim right past it and not give it a second glance that's why it's so important and again trust me I've learned this the hard way all of these lessons that I'm sharing with you have been learned the hard way also with packaging the blurb matters second most after the cover the next thing readers do is they go and read the blurb or the description of the book depending on what you want to call it and if it starts out in a world with unpronouncable name confusing name another name and the reader just like wait what that's not going to sell books unfortunately and neither is just like a summary breakdown of the book you want your blurb to have a hook in the very very very first line that grabs their attention and makes them want to know more and then the rest of the blurb should do the same thing that's really the ultimate goal I should do a video on blur soon let me know if you would like that cuz I have a lot more thoughts but we're trying to be rapid fire I swear I know I'm long-winded let's keep going we're still talking about the book but this last one is less the packaging and more that that maybe it's just not the most amazing book ever you know not every book that we write is going to be the best book in the whole world an amazing bestseller especially not our first books honestly cuz we're beginners we're just figuring it out and it can be a great story but maybe we don't have all the tools in our toolbx yet to execute it the way that we truly envisioned and so that brings me to my last tip in this section which is that sometimes the best thing you can do is to stop putting so much money and time into this current book and start writing the next better book I'm going to let that one sit for a second I didn't like hearing it either but I'm on the other side now I'm on Book 15 looking back at my first book and wow wow it's true and I promise you I am way more proud of the books that I'm promoting now than my beginning book even though I love the story but I've grown so much as a writer and I promise you you will too another lesson that I learned the hard way is that honestly audiobooks are really too expensive for most authors I don't know if that'll change in the future or not but right now it's at least $11,000 if not a lot more to make an Audi book and that's on top of all your other book costs that's just the audiobook alone and on top of that it's like the hardest platform at least in my experience to actually make your money back on let me just do some editing magic here on these dishes coming back to sales if if your book has been out for a while then putting your book on sale like 99 Cents for example can be one of the best ways to Breathe new life into the series and renew your sales and potentially even sell more than you did on release and once you have a really strong backlist meaning other books that you've published especially if they're in a series then putting book one or your strongest book if you don't have a series for free not just on sale but free can actually lead to a lot more sales and a lot more income surprisingly for example one of my best sales was when I put the stolen Kingdom for free for the very first time and it got around 19,000 downloads so I'm giving this book away right all within a onee period and then I end the sale but over the next month I got sales to books two and three and four in the series and over that month I made over $5,000 from the sell through to the rest of the series it's very exciting I know and I'm sure I could think of a lot more lessons to share if you want more let me know if you want a part two but those were the ones that came to mind right away and some of the ones that just really blew my mind when I started out so I hope you enjoyed it if you did hit a thumbs up to let me know and I'll see you later [Music] bye

Channel: Bethany Atazadeh - YA Fantasy Author

Views: 5,988

Keywords: how to write a novel, bethany atazadeh, self publishing, how to write a book, writing advice, authortube, authortuber, writing a fantasy novel, writing fantasy

Id: CcyALZp4tWw

Length: 16min 53sec (1013 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 08 2024