Write. Publish. Repeat. (The No-Luck-Required Guide to Self-Publishing Success)

by Sean Platt

We changed the language of our books to “episodes” and “seasons,” just like TV,

then marveled at the aftermath. It seems so simple, but no one (to our knowledge then or now) had done it before. Episodes and seasons gave our readers immediate shorthand, telling them exactly what to expect (we’ll get more into all of this later, it’s super important),

and our readers rewarded us with buys, and constant support. We took our first series (now up to its fourth season, with another two to go) and built a business publishing fiction each week, positi...

To understand the big head and long tail, think of Google, or any search engine. The first page of results is the fattest part of the big head, because those are the results that most people click on. According to Google, the first result on page one gets over 50 percent of all traffic.

product that is as readily available and consumable as possible, and an upsell or next step (ideally bundled at a discounted price). All of our books

For all series of books, our introductory product is the first book in the series. For serials, the intro is the first episode. For longer, single novels, we try to create what we call a “prelude,” which is a relatively self-contained story that starts the larger work but can be pulled out to more or less stand on its own, probably with a small cliffhanger at the end. The intro needs to feel more or less complete

(Visit RealmAndSands.com/free to see all of our intro products.)

The intro product, because it’s free and

we’re always trying to send people to it, funnels people into our world. Once they finish the intro product, we give them a link to the next book in the series … and, if possible (we usually make it possible), to a bundle t...

Quick example: Unicorn Western 1 is free. At the end of that book, readers are presented with an option: They can buy Unicorn Western 2 for $2.99, or they can buy the Unicorn Western Full Saga — which contains all nine Unicorn Western books — for $9.99, and save 60 percent. The best funnels are those where the bundled upsell comprises the series in its entirety. If readers know that they can get the completed story arc in a single 60-percent-off purchase (the completed arc of a story they know t...

Our first CTA is usually for another purchase: either the next book or a bundle of multiple books. After that we’ll have a call to join our e-mail list in order to get upcoming books free or at a discount.

Somewhere in there we usually try adding a request for the reader to leave a review for the book they’ve just read. CTAs must be as compellingly worded as possible and contain a very clear reader benefit.

Give them a reason to do so. For us, people who join our list can get a book ($4.99 or less) for free on joining, hear about upcoming discounts, and get our free, e-mail-only serial story (Caveman Timecop). What satisfied Realm & Sands reader wouldn’t want to join that list?

USP USP stands for “unique selling proposition.” There’s a lot of possible verbiage we could add about USPs, but the bottom line is that a USP is what differentiates you from everyone else. How are you unique in a way that makes what you’re selling more attractive to your target market? Your USP answers your customer’s question, “In a sea of options that seem more or less the same, what compelling reason do I have to buy from you?”

There’s an element of luck to self-publishing in the e-book age, but the much, much larger factor that determines success and failure is how hard you work and how smart you are about your marketing.

Success comes from hard work and the accumulation of small numbers.

He watched his sales numbers, but wasn’t invested, emotionally, in seeing any single title make him famous or rich. In time, one did. Wool took off, seemingly out of the blue. Hugh said he didn’t understand one iota why it happened, but did know what to do once it had. Because he’s smart and “gets” the new age of self-publishing, he started writing sequels to capitalize on Wool’s initial popularity — the “I-want-to-know-what-happens-next” factor.

He also kept working on his other books and series. When readers were done with Wool, they decided they liked Hugh and dug into his archives.

and had produced all along, since well before Wool hit — he had plenty for tho...

is that it’s a true workman’s paradise. There is almost a direct line between “how hard you work (intelligently)” and “how much success you have.” Talent is required, yes, as is some luck. But hard work and smart marketing will strap booster rockets to both.

but if we wanted a sure paycheck, there are much, much better and faster ways to do it. The good

and the bad news is that in the indie world, all of the control is in your hands. You are responsible for every molecule of your success.

You’re most likely to read the descriptions of the books with the most compelling covers,

see its cover if its name, visible on the spine,

piques your i...

(Don’t let anyone tell you that people don’t judge a book by its cover. They absolutely do.)

for recommendations. But when none of their recommendations sounded quite right, I simply went and looked for books I hadn’t read by writers I already knew I liked.

Read that last sentence again, because it’s the way out of the hopelessness, and the key to your entire career as an independent author: I looked for books by writers I already knew I liked.

We’re mostly online, and online the problem I had that day in Barnes & Noble is much worse. A new book buyer on Amazon.com won’t have a clue where to start, so she’ll probably move into a book category and look at the bestsellers. Unless you’re

bestseller, you

won’t have a shot. The only way to stand out is just as we’ve already said: Build your reader base one reader at a time, then make those people love you so that the next time they’re on safari for a quality read, they’re searching with you already front a...

It’s stable, meaning that a change at one bookseller or another won’t instantly destroy your business. Loyal readers buy again and again, and they tell their friends. They champion you. I asked my social networks for suggestions when I was looking for books. Your readers will be working for you when friends ask them for their recommendations.

Your best strategy is to build fans, and you’ll do that a few readers at a time. Your second book will sell better than your first, and your third will sell better than your second.

But your discoverability, once you put in the time to earn a positive reputation, will actually be much better in online bookstores. For your book to reach a reader, it must

You’ll almost certainly end up in your own books’ recommendations, meaning that your space opera might show up as a suggestion to people who bought your western.

Amazon.com currently has the most comprehensive recommendation engine, featuring many different Top 100 lists (bestsellers overall, bestsellers in a genre,

rated overall and in a genre, popularity lists) and will even send e-mails to customers suggesting new titles. Most sites will remember customers in some way, know their purchase history, and put appropriate books in front of them. Imagine you walk back into that Barnes & Noble, and the clerk hands you the best book you ...

Social networks weren’t around in any meaningful way when I first wrote The Bialy Pimps, but today there’s Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and dozens of others. There’s even what we would argue is the most important network for books: Goodreads. Goodreads, in case you don’t know, is a social network devoted entirely to reading and sharing book reviews and book discussion. Readers

excellent post-apocalyptic novel, someone might list it next to Stephen King’s The Stand. So,

what happens when someone finds that list? Well, to some degree they’ll learn not only that your book exists, but also that at least one person thought it was worthy of being mentioned alongside Th...

similar statement.” Plenty of reviewers say they’re going to buy the next book. That’s a ton of social proof, and that helps to sell books. So, while

groomed e-mail lists populated by their fans. For the most part, publicity, marketing, and

Discoverability is easier, but because anyone can now publish, there’s a lot more noise to get in the way of that discoverability.

Today, we can push a button and get worldwide distribution.

design our own book covers if we possess some artistic talent, control our own marketing, distribution, and pricing from our home offices, and write as much or as little as we want. Indie publishing isn’t for everyone, but

some, it’s a match made in heaven. Y...

That’s both good news and bad news. If you’re not selling well in the U.K., maybe it’s because you haven’t promoted enough in the U.K. Maybe it’s because you should manually adjust your U.K. price rather than letting it adjust based on the U.S. dollar, because although $4.99 USD

converts to £3.08 as of this writing, £2.99 is a better price psychologically, and hence might convert better despite the lost nine pence. Who

Used to be, if you enrolled your book in Amazon’s KDP Select program (trading Amazon 90 days of exclusivity for a five-day window to make your book free), all you had to do was flip the five-day switch and you’d sell a lot of books. Promote that free book in any way possible, then turn the book back to paid status so you could rake in the money flooding in from your new, higher sales rank. But in 2013, Amazon changed how free “sales” counted toward your post-free sales rank, and that particular tactic totally stopped working. Authors who didn’t know how to pivot were screwed. When Sean and Dave started writing serialized e-books, they wrote their faces off to maintain a weekly publishing schedule, and thereby form a habit with their readers. They released a project’s six “episodes” over the course of six weeks, with each episode priced at 99 cents.

Because the commission percentage on a 99-cent sale is half of that on a $5.99 sale (35 percent versus 70 percent) and