Michael Beadley asked Joseph R. Lallo:

Hi I really like the the first four Big Sigma booksand am going to read all of them. Can I please ask some advice. Did you pay for an editor for your first book? Would you advise others to do so? Also any advice on getting your first book to sell when you are completely unknown? Kind regards

Joseph R. Lallo Hi! I did indeed hire an editor for my first book, though not until AFTER I'd published it and earned some money. If I had it to do over again, I would have hired an editor before release, as I took a pretty big review hit due to the mass of errors in that first release. An edit and a good cover are the two things worth investing in for your first book.

As for how to get your first book selling when you are a completely unknown, that's a big question. As a quick answer, if you have only one book out, paying for advertising isn't a great idea because getting ads to pay off on a single book is tricky. I'd focus, instead, on pricing your first book low, possibly making it amazon exclusive to make use of the free promo days (and being in Kindle Unlimited) and try for newsletter swaps with other up and coming authors. Writing a short "reader magnet" story to release wide for free and lead people into your other book is another way. Honestly, I have done hundreds of hours of podcasts on this subject. Here's an episode about starting from scratch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ng6BT...

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