Does this sound familiar, you self-publish your book on Amazon. Maybe you used kindle ebook, kdp print or createspace and are getting crappy results. Everybody around you is having great success and your sales are so bad or non-existent that you’re thinking about quitting altogether. Well before you throw in the towel, watch this video on how to achieve self-publishing success. So, stick around:
What’s shakin WriteRighters, Keith Wheeler here, and if you want to continue to get all the hints, tips and tricks on how to make self-publishing easier, then be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel and smash that little bell icon so you can get alerted every time I put out new content.
I know exactly how frustrating writing and self-publishing can be. I’d love to hear about your successes and hurdles, so tell me about them in the comments below.
I’m not going to waste any time, I’m going to share with you 3 ways to achieve self-publishing success and I’m going to use my own experiences as illustrations.
1. Don’t compare your journey:
A group of us authors did a challenge a few months back where we wrote and self-published a kindle short read. My buddy Mark Brownless wrote a book called Locksley and is doing really well with it. Our other buddy Kevin McGuire wrote a book called Aftermath and he’s crushing it right now. He’s taken 1stplace in his category, even surpassing John Grisham. They’re having all this great, well-deserved success, meanwhile my book is barely drawing flies. It was easy for me to get down, comparing my lack of sales to their success. But then I took a step back and reassessed things, they’re writing in completely different genres than I am, perhaps they have an email list and I don’t. They’ve been writing this genre for years, while this was my first attempt at a YA book altogether. How could I fairly compare our results when there were so many different variables that went into creating those results?
2. Be your own Competition:
The only person you should be in competition with is yesterday’s you. As long as you are improving a little everyday, you’re succeeding. Pull out or think about a story you wrote back in grade school or high school or even college. Are you better than that you? Then you’ve succeeded. If you’re not, then you have a goal. Which leads me into Lesson #3.
3. Set Goal:
I did an entire video on goal setting and finding accountability partners, so I’m not going to rehash all that right now. The bottom line is, when you’re self-publishing books your goal should be to write better, write faster, create better characters, somehow, some way, be better than you were yesterday. That’s it. That is a success. If you have a monetary goal in mind, that’s great, but make sure it’s realistic. Chances are you’re not going to make 6 figures on your first book. Probably not even in your first year. So, set small realistic short-term goals that you can achieve. I have an excel spreadsheet on my desktop where I track my monthly sales.
My goal every month is to sell more than I did this month, last year. If I don’t meet that goal one month, I figure out what I can do to meet it next month. Should I run some AMS (amazon marketing services) ads? I’ve run ads that cost me less than $1 a day but are bringing in 5 or even 10 times that. Maybe I should write and publish faster so I can self-publish more books. Maybe I should try some amazon alternate platforms like lulu or barnes and noble press. Do I have every possible book available on paperback, ebook and audiobook? It took me a while to start working with ACX (Audiobook Exchange) but once I did I’ve found quite a bit of success on it.
The biggest momentum booster I’ve found, when it comes to increased book sales and overall self-publishing success is publishing more books.
Look, I know how frustrating self-publishing can be. There are going to be ups and downs. But above all else remember this, you wrote a freakin book. That’s a self-publishing success right there. That’s a dream that millions of people have but you did something about it. You made that dream a goal and then you achieved that goal. That is a self-publishing success.
So, take this video, place it in a playlist or better yet, give it a thumbs up so it will always be there in your liked videos. This way the next time those negative thoughts start to surface you can say, “Screw you, thoughts! I’ve published a freakin book, I am a self-publishing success story!”