Let’s face it, there are tons of videos, blogs, vlogs, articles, social media influencers, and people who’ll tell you how to become a best-selling author. You just have to pay for whatever they’re selling.
That isn’t what I’m doing here. I want to tell you what not to do if you want to self-publish a book. Yes, you can still become a best-selling author by self-publishing. Here are a few examples:
Many famous authors have self-published their work, including:
Self-published The Martian in serialized format on his website, which went on to become a Hollywood blockbusterÂ
Self-published Fifty Shades of Grey, which was later acquired by a traditional publisherÂ
A Canadian poet with Indian roots, Kaur's three books have all been on the NYT Bestseller listÂ
Faced gender discrimination as a female author in the early 1900s, and self-published 250 copies of The Tale of Peter Rabbit after being rejected by traditional publishersÂ
Writes in a variety of genres, including magic, romance, mystery, and paranormal romanceÂ
Self-published Wool, a New York Times best-selling science fiction novel, in eBook format through Kindle Direct PublishingÂ
Created an autonomous literary empire, best known for the DCI Ryan mystery seriesÂ
Self-published her award-winning book of poems Double Persephone at the age of 20Â
First of all, of course, you have to write a book. Go ahead and do that.
Now, I’ll tell you what I did when I first began writing. I started out writing poetry. I wrote a LOT of poetry. The more I wrote, the better I thought I was as a poet. I was always online reading the poetry of other so-called – poets. Advice that’s often given to new writers is…read tons of whatever you want to write. It makes sense. The more you read, the more you understand the craft of writing. So I did that. I read so much poetry. I also read poetry of well-known poets – Sylvia Plath, Nikki Geovani, Ted Hughes, Billy Collins, and all of the classic poets from the past.
After a few years of reading and writing poetry, I decided I could be a published poet. I was as good as any other poet…or so I thought. So, I sent off a few of my poems to publishers who published works of poetry. I received several rejections. I couldn’t understand why.
So, I started looking into self-publishing my poems. I found a publisher – Lulu.com and read everything about them. I saw how easy it was to self-publish a book. The cost was minimal, the process was simple, bada-bing-bada-boom…I did it!  I wrote the poems, designed the cover, and formatted the book, I did everything.
I published my first book! I was so excited. My book – “Chasing Emily” was now online for people to flock to and buy. So, I waited….and waited…and waited for the sales to rack up.
Nothing happened. I told my friends and family about my book. Again, no sales. I started giving away copies to friends and family. The only sales I was making were from purchasing author copies of my book myself.
 After a few years, I gave up trying to sell poetry. I decided there was no market for poems, and no one reads poetry. (Not true by the way.)
I decided that maybe I should be writing novels instead of poetry.
Once again, I followed the same procedure I’d followed with my poetry. I wrote a novel, formatted it for publication, designed the cover, and put it out there.
Nothing happened. What was I doing wrong? The answer I would discover several years later, was…Everything. I was doing everything wrong.
Let me say here, that “friends and family” are not your readers. Your friends and family all expect you to give them a free copy of your book. You don’t make anything from giving away free copies.
Knowing that…you have to shift your thinking to … who are my readers? Who reads the kind of books I’m writing? How can they find me among the tens of thousands of authors that are out there?
Follow me and I’ll show you how not to publish your books.  And I won’t charge you a dime. I’m not selling this, I’m here to help you avoid the pitfalls I fell into. I’ll tell you about my novels in the next blog post.
Oh, and by the way, that first book I published – “Chasing Emily”, it’s full of very bad poetry. It’s crap. Don’t look for it and definitely don’t buy it.
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