5 Key Ingredients to Self-Publishing Success

It has never been easier to self-publish your book. That’s why more than 1.68 million print and ebooks were self-published on Amazon in 2018. But there’s a lot more to self-publishing than loading your book onto Amazon and hoping the money will start flowing in. You need to have a strategy and you need to invest in your book and put in a lot of hard work. In this article I tell you the 5 key ingredients to self-publishing success.

1. Take the time to write and edit the best book you can.

It’s a no brainer. If you want to sell your book, you need to make it the best it can be. That means spending time writing and editing it. It means showing your books to others who can offer constructive criticism such as BETA readers or people in your writing workshop. When you write a book, it’s often hard to see its flaws. The more readers and feedback you can get, the better you can make your book before releasing it.

Many indie authors have budget restraints and decide to self-edit their novel or use software such as Grammarly. But I advise you to work with an experienced editor if you can. It’s pretty much impossible to edit your own work and catch all the errors. Nothing beats a trained editorial eye looking over your book. And it can save you a lot of embarrassment later on when readers point out all the spelling and grammatical mistakes in your book.

Remember you’re not only competing against other self-published writers; you’re also competing against traditionally published authors who have highly polished books. You don’t want to turn your readers off and receive bad reviews with a book that isn’t ready to be published. There’s no reason why you can’t aim for your book to be the same quality as a traditionally published book.

2. Perfect your book blurb and author bio.

Your book blurb

As if writing and editing your book isn’t hard enough, then you have to write a blurb for it. Your book blurb is crucial to gaining self-publishing success. A mistake I see a lot of self-published authors make is not understanding how to write a blurb for their genre. They come to me months after launching their book saying that it’s not selling. Then I see their blurb and I understand why. In a sea of books on Amazon, all you have as your point of difference is your blurb and cover design. If you don’t get both these aspects right, readers will pass your book by and go on to the next one. Nothing says “this book is self-published” more than a dodgy blurb.

Don’t despair because writing a book blurb is tough for everyone. Even publishers and editors I worked with in trade publishing often struggled to get a blurb right. Every genre has its own set of rules and conventions and blurbs follow similar formulas. A romance blurb will be very different from a crime thriller blurb. But a reader should know exactly what kind of book they are going to get by reading the blurb. Many blurbs I see from indie authors are not that compelling or tell too much of the story.

A book blurb shouldn’t give the whole plot away. Instead, it should offer a tease of what’s to come. It should be enticing, have a hook, be interesting and genre-specific. It should leave the reader wanting to know more and willing to buy your book to find out.

Do your research. Look at top-selling books in your genre. Look at how their blurbs are written. Do they use review quotes or endorsements from other authors? Do they include a tagline? How long are they? How can you make your book stand out from these books? Take your time to perfect and polish your blurb until it’s the best it can be. This will help you accomplish self-publishing success.

Your Author Biography

Also, of importance on your Amazon book page, or wherever else you have your book, is your author biography. I often see indie authors write their whole life story in the author bio section of their book product page. Or neglect to write anything at all. However, the author bio is another key ingredient of your book promotion. You can use it to show your writing credentials, promote previous books and as a source of interest for readers. You can also show a bit of your personality in your author bio. As well as finish with a call to action that tells readers how they can connect with you via your website or social channels.

If you’re writing a non-fiction book then the author biography is an important place to show your expertise in your particular area. For example, if you’re a midwife writing a book on pregnancy and birth this would be a great place to write about your experience. But keep it short and punchy. This is not the place to list your whole resume.

Some other tips:

• Avoid using ‘I’ in your author bio and write in the third person instead.
• Make sure you only include relevant information that’s also interesting.
• Write not for yourself but for your readers. What would they want to know about you?
• You will need different author bios for different situations. You might like to have a longer author bio on the ‘About’ page of your author website and use a more commercial, tighter bio on Amazon and your media release.

Whatever you do, spend time perfecting your author bio and your blurb because they are both vital marketing tools. If you do both right, it will really help you achieve self-publishing success.

If you need help writing your blurb and author bio, I offer a tailored book marketing plan package where I can write both for you.

3. Invest in a professional and quality book cover design that’s right for your genre.

Another area that really matters when it comes to achieving self-publishing success is the cover design. Nothing says amateurish more than a hastily created book design that doesn’t fit in with your book’s genre. Getting your cover right is a HUGE deal. If you get it wrong, you’ll be hurting your sales or perhaps not making any sales at all.

When I worked in trade publishing, the weekly cover design meetings were so important. Everyone from publishers to editors to sales managers and marketers got together to look at the cover design concepts. It was often a volatile meeting as a publisher might love a cover but sales and marketing would argue against it for valid reasons. It sometimes took months to get the right cover design. So, you can understand how important it is for you as a self-published author to get it right.

Many indie authors try to save dollars by getting a cheap cover design on Fiverr or other platforms with slave labour prices. You might luck out and get a great cover at a cheap rate. But chances are that unless you’ve done your research, you won’t know if your cover is right for your book and genre. I suggest that you work with a graphic designer who has experience in cover design. Because when your book cover is the size of a thumbnail up on Amazon you must have a design that looks attractive to readers at any size.

How do you find a cover designer who is right for you? Google book designers. Look at their individual websites. Make sure the designer has a portfolio. Be prepared to ask them plenty of questions before you hire them. Have a detailed cover design brief ready to go with your blurb and instructions on the imagery and design you want on your cover. Feel free to send your designer covers that are similar to the style you’re after. Keep in mind that different genres follow different cover conventions. If your book is part of a series or one of several books you have written, consider your overall author brand. Does your author name use a certain typeface on each book? If not, maybe you should consider doing what traditional publishers do and giving your books a similar look and feel.

You can give directions on fonts that you like or colours. You can even find the images but keep in mind that you’ll probably need to purchase them and make sure they are high res. A great designer will ask lots of questions and make valuable suggestions that you never even thought of! Be prepared to listen to their advice. Also, don’t forget to provide your designer with the cover specifications, including bleed and the width of the spine for print books. The wrong spine width can prove disastrous when you go to print your book.

Make your book cover look professional by including a tagline on the front cover. Or an endorsement quote from a respected reviewer. Remember your cover is one of the best marketing tools that you have.

4. Build your author platform.

I’ve listed this as number four but it’s the number one key ingredient to self-publishing success! You really need an author platform as an indie author to help attract and drive readers to where they can buy your book. Ideally, you should start your author platform as far in advance of your book’s publication as possible because it takes time to build a following, whether that’s on your blog, email list, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Please don’t start a month before your book comes out.

Some people get confused by the idea of an author platform. What it refers to is your reach as an author. How many people such as readers or influencers or other writers can you connect with via platforms like your website or social media? Some non-fiction authors may have real-world connections like industry groups who they do conference talks and workshops with.

The more people you can connect with in your readership, the more chance you have of selling your book. As you build your author platform take the time to make personal connections with people, especially other writers. If you support and help other writers to promote their books, chances are they will do the same for you.

You don’t need to be on every social network. First, you need to identify who your target readership is. Are they predominantly women? What’s their age range? Where do they hang out online? What similar books to yours do they like to read? What’s the best way of communicating with them? Once you identify your audience and where to find them, make sure that your current author platform is reaching them. Write content that they will find interesting. And don’t stop engaging and expanding your network. Whether you get on social daily or weekly, just make sure you’re consistent.

5. Make a marketing plan before your book’s release.

Tied very closely to building your author platform is making a marketing plan before your book’s release. The marketing plan is a key ingredient to achieving self-publishing success. The two go hand-in-hand and your marketing plan will shape the activities you do via your author platform.

When should you start your marketing plan for an upcoming book? Ideally, you should start six months out from your book’s release. That might seem like a large amount of time but given that you’ll probably still be editing and working on your book, engaging a cover designer and fine-tuning your blurb just for starters, you will need all this time to get prepared.

When it comes to marketing a book most of the work gets done before a book’s release. When I worked in trade publishing, we often started putting together the marketing plan for a bestselling author nine months out from publication. Advertising often had to be booked and arranged months in advance. Booksellers had to be informed of the upcoming release six months before release for huge titles and three to four months prior for everything else.

If teaming publicity with marketing, many media spots and interviews also have to be secured months in advance. Publications like magazines and even reader websites and popular podcasts are often booked out solid months in advance so you have to get in early. When doing a word-of-mouth campaign and trying to build buzz for a first-time author, advanced reading copy campaigns are often conducted. Books should go out to reviewers months in advance of publication to generate excitement and reviews before a book is published. Also, to give reviewers enough time to read and review your book. Most of them will have many other books to review so you need to be mindful of their time.

As you can see, if you wait until a month before your book comes out to put together a plan it’s simply not enough time. You need to allow months of preparation for finding and recruiting your book review team, building your social network, teasing readers with cover reveals and chapter samples, booking paid promotions and organising media and interviews or bookstore appearances.

You’ve probably spent months, if not years, writing and editing your book. So, don’t rush one of the most important parts – your book marketing campaign. Choose your book’s release date six months in advance and then work backward with all the activities you need to do before publication. Then don’t forget the marketing activities you’ll do when your book is out in the world. A good marketing plan should ideally start months in advance of your book’s release and go through to the first six months of your book’s life.

After that time, there may be a few extra things you can do, but every book has a shelf life. Unfortunately, you can’t keep the marketing momentum going forever. But hopefully you’ll have word-of-mouth and great reviews that will keep people recommending and buying your book for months to come.

In Conclusion.

Achieving great reviews and sales for your self-published book can be tough. But if you follow these 5 Key Ingredients to Self-Publishing Success, you’ll increase your chances of getting great results. From writing and editing the best book you can to perfecting your blurb and author bio, taking the time to create a quality cover to building your author platform and having a solid book marketing plan. Give yourself time to get these elements right and you’ll see fantastic results.