Self-Publishing Mistakes
By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
Tax time is making me a bit reflective this year. Maybe I didn’t have the time to reflect on Dec. 31st/Jan. 1 since I had a January 1 deadline…at any rate, I’m doing it now.
Tax time also always makes me think of ways I could improve. It’s great that I’m selling books—but I’ve missed opportunities along the way.
I thought I’d share my mistakes here in case you might find yourself in the same boat with some of these things. And mistakes are just opportunities to learn, after all.
Self-publishing mistakes I’ve made:
Waiting too long to venture into other formats. This is a big one, seeing the income I’ve made since July that I could have been making prior to that. Obviously, there can be some cost involved into moving into print (cover design and formatting, if you don’t do those things yourself) but audiobooks can be free. I’m a cautious person and basically waited until readers literally wrote me and asked me to put these books in audio and print format. I wish I’d moved earlier on this.
Not reserving my cover designer/formatter in advance. I’ve had to delay several releases because my cover designer or formatter was booked. Good contract labor gets booked up fast in self-pub. Ask early. Now I’m getting my covers done before I finish writing my books.
Giving readers a firm release date for my self-pubbed book too far in advance. Oh, this has bitten me several times now. When it comes to production, stuff happens. Sometimes people get sick, sometimes they have family emergencies. Sometimes they’re booked (see above). Sometimes they have internet issues. I have learned to add a week or so onto an estimated release date. Because readers will get in touch if the book isn’t out…ha! And it has an unprofessional feel to it when you miss a deadline you’ve made with a reader.
Not monitoring sales. Bad idea. If I’m having a slow month (a year ago, this was the case), then I can run a sale…play with pricing. If I don’t know I’m having a slow month, then I just get the sad little check 60 days later.
Not monitoring income/profits. Putting all our earnings in the same account as other income. This is also bad. If we’re making good income, we need to be thinking ahead: estimated tax payments in advance of tax time, money into our 401K/IRA, maybe have more withheld from our day job or our spouse’s day job. It’s no fun to pay a ton of taxes unexpectedly. And I’ve been informed that it’s very ill-advised to put your writing business income into your joint account/regular household account…it just doesn’t look great to the IRS, apparently. So maybe open a free regular checking account or credit union account that you only use for writing-related deposits. You can always transfer funds into your regular account afterward. And you can use your writing checking account to write checks for supplies, pay contract labor, etc.
Not outlining the next book in the series when finishing one. With the kind of gaps in self-publishing production that I’ve got to deal with as a hybrid writer (deadlines with the traditional publisher come first), this was a problem I’m now addressing. It takes far too long for me to get my head back into a series after working on a book in a different series.
Not having a newsletter. Readers had signed up for years for a newsletter that I didn’t ever send out. That wasn’t smart. I finally corrected this last year. If they are going to our website and taking the time to fill out the registration form for our newsletter…we should send the thing out to them.
Not doing Goodreads giveaways for the self-pubbed books. This promo thing worked out well for my traditionally published books. Why didn’t I do it for my CreateSpace Myrtle Clover books? Still haven’t done this, but need to fix that soon. It simply means ordering however many CreateSpace books I need for the giveaway and then getting it listed on Goodreads.
No website extras for readers. I’ve heard reader chatter about other writers’ websites and some of the extras they’ve seen on them. Hmm. I just haven’t gotten around to that yet. I did do a preview chapter for one of my books on the website. It would probably be helpful if I did it for the upcoming book. This is a static form of promo—you stick it up on your website once and then you’re done. Much easier than some of the social media networking we’re encouraged to do. And the one chapter I put up had readers interested, judging from feedback I received from them.
Not ramping up my self-pubbed content earlier. I seemed to view my first self-pubbed book in 2011 as a one-off.
Not venturing into self-pub until late in 2011. Yeah. Should have been early 2010. I had a book ready to go.
Not asking for my rights back (or confirming that I did hold those rights) earlier. The reason I didn’t venture into self-pub earlier (as I mention above) is because I wasn’t sure how to get my rights back to the series or the characters. The first book was traditionally published, but I wanted to self-publish others for the series. I got my rights back in a short email exchange with the publisher…took about 10 minutes for me to pen the email and took the publisher about 10 minutes back. Definitely should have explored that earlier.
There’s always room for improvement…I think last year was also the first time when I realized that this really is a small business I’m running. I have contract labor. I have legal and professional help. I’ve got research and development for books. There are areas that I’m not good at and I’m either working to learn more/do better with those or subcontract out for the things I really can’t do.
So these are the things I’d advise to keep an eye on for any writers interested in self-publishing. What tips have you got?
The post Self-Publishing Mistakes appeared first on Elizabeth Spann Craig.
