One year into self-publishing – Advice, tips and tricks

First of all Happy New Year!

2016 was a very eventful year for lots of reasons from Britain leaving the EU, to saying goodbye to a whole host of famous faces, to Trump becoming president of the US (and much more!).

I think it’s safe to say that 2017 is looking like it’s going to be a year of big changes and perhaps some uncertainty that will have even the top-selling indie authors shifting nervously in their seats.

So what have I learnt one year on and four books in to self publishing? Turns out, a helluva  lot. The learning curve has been massive! This article is going to be a long one so maybe grab a snack.

Got it? Okay, deep breath.

It’s hard (like really, really hard)

If nothing else, I’ve learnt this. But it’s only made me push myself and realise how much I really want this. So my advice to anyone readying to click the self-publish button is this: you are by no means ‘done’. But don’t fret! Because if you want it enough, everything will be fine.

What do I mean by hard? – I now look at self-publishing as a business (so if you’re publishing books for a hobby or aren’t bothered about making money straight away then just disregard this advice). But if you are looking to do this full time as I am, then the sooner you look at this as a long-term endeavour, the better. There’s no harm in wistfully looking to the top runners out there who are doing this (and killing it) but just remember that they worked their asses off to be where they are. It may seem like they popped out of the ether into success but remember this quote by Steve Jobs:

“If you look really closely. Most overnight success take a long time.”

Sure, some people get lucky and I think to make it really ‘big’ there has to be an element of luck somewhere along the line. But I think to get lucky you have to put yourself in the firing line of luck’s assault rifle by working your butt off.

I’ve read a lot (like a lot a lot) of blog posts from successful indie authors searching for their secrets but what I found was just a lot of sensible business-minded advice. It seems one of the key things to making a success of self-publishing is being prolific. This is the one piece of advice that I’ve seen given again and again from the people doing this full time. So stop reading this and go write your next book…I’ll wait.

Back? Okay. But what if I can’t get more than one book out a year, I hear you say? Well, that’s fine. Just write and continue to write. It just might take longer to be a success that way. There is obviously a trade-off between time and quality. So if you can (semi)comfortably write a novel 50k plus and bring it out within say, 3 months at a high standard? Then you can publish four books a year. Like me