Self-Publishing Secrets – Inspired To Write

I really can’t think of a better time than now to start your self-publishing business. Gone are the days when you had to tout your book around multiple publishing companies to try and get your book accepted. Now you can create your books online and publish them on Amazon with just a click of a few buttons.

It was the pandemic in 2020 that inspired me to write my first book. I had been involved in an online business connected to forex trading when I lost a lot of money. At first, it was a huge blow. But, looking back, it was the kick in the pants that I needed to get going into self-publishing.

At first, it was a slow burner, I procrastinated and took what seemed a lifetime to produce my first book. However, once I got into the scheme of things, I started to produce 30,000-word books in around a couple of months, using two-hour blocks of time each day without interruption. Focus is key here. It’s easy to get distracted and once you are distracted, it’s all a lot harder to get back on track.

Self Publishing Secrets – Your First Book

You will always remember publishing your first book fondly. Uploading the manuscript and cover to Amazon and finally pushing the “publish your book” button will give you a great sense of satisfaction. As I write this post, I have published a total of 11 books, both under my own name and under a pen name. I have also published some adult coloring books.

Once you start publishing books, it can become quite addictive. Always remember to put your heart and soul into each book, as you want to be known for writing quality content. If you are creating nonfiction books like myself, you need to leave the reader feeling satisfied that you have solved their problem. After all, people buy and read nonfiction books to mainly solve a nagging problem, whether that is losing weight, making more money, or creating a better habit.

1 book, one problem. Don’t try to solve multiple problems with one book. Create other books to solve the other problems. Every niche that you choose to write books in will have multiple problems within it that people need help with.

Once you have created your manuscript, you have the choice to publish in either the kindle ebook format, paperback or hardback formats. I personally do all three as the more products you have on Amazon the better.

SIDENOTE: Make sure each product you produce is a quality product. Amazon is awash with books of little value, stand out by creating a quality product, and you could be benefitting from the sales for years to come.

I also turn each 30,000-word book into an audiobook. This gives you another platform (Audible) to sell your products on. Amazon actually own Audible. So, when ordering your cover, bear this in mind and order covers for all four formats, as it will probably work out cheaper to get all the covers done in one go.

Self-Publishing Secrets – Marketing Your Book

If you publish with a traditional publisher, they will do all the grunt work for you. However, they will also take the biggest slice of the pie and pay you a much smaller royalty than you can get on the Amazon platform. A lot of authors create books and self-publish them, hoping for the best.

Hoping is not a good strategy when you are in the book business. You need to wear many hats. Maybe you are the writer, the editor, the person who does the formatting. You also need to be the marketer. If you don’t market your book, the chances are it will just sit there.

There are many ways to market your book, I talk about this in my book “Self-Publishing Secrets“, my best advice to you would be to use multiple channels to get people to your book. You will need to get reviews on your book in order to attract buyers. Initially, this can be difficult, especially as you haven’t sold any books yet. To get reviews, I use several methods, one of which is using a company called Pubby.

Pubby have thousands of book readers on their books who can give you an honest review. You can’t offer an incentive to give reviews, this is a breach of Amazon’s terms and conditions, however, you can give the book away in return for an unbiased review.

There are also many other ways to get your book reviewed, too many for one blog post.

I hope this post has given you value and the incentive to self-publish your first book. Please do leave a comment below and share this post.

Have a great day

Keith

P.S If you are really serious about self-publishing your own book, this book will leave you a lot of time and money. I hope you like it.