Mistakes I’ve Made as an Indie Author and How I Learned From Them
As an indie author, it is inevitable to make a mistake or two, but how you learn from it matters
As an Indie Author, it’s inevitable to make a mistake or two, because the route of self-publishing is multifaceted and takes time to learn.
I am positive that when most writers decide to go the route of self-publishing, they aren’t expecting that they’ll need to learn:
How to conduct market research
How to navigate social media as an author
Where to find alpha, beta, and ARC readers
How to publish the book to a platform like Amazon, Kobo Books, or Google Play Books
Where to find affordable editing
Knowing if they should try to make their own cover or hire an affordable cover designer
Keyword research
Target audience research
Building an author website
How to market their book
The list feels endless, but the truth is, this is what it takes to help make your book successful.
If you are new to my work, here is a little background about me.
I started my writing career in 2014 and since then I’ve made a ton of mistakes. But the good thing is, I made the effort to learn from them and continue on. Because the truth is, learning self-publishing isn’t easy.
The publishing industry isn’t easy.
There are nearly 5,000 books alone that are published on Amazon each day. So imagine that number across all the platforms if you decide to publish to Draft2Digital or just any other platform. The competition is tough, especially when your book keeps getting shuffled down the list.
Now, I don’t mean to shout these numbers out to scare you. (Seriously, I’m not.)
I’m simply trying to make the point that so many writers want to publish their books. And for the ones who decide to self-publish, it’s inevitable that mistakes will be made. The point is to learn from them and move on.
Here are the major mistakes I made throughout my career and what I learned from them.
Overspending to publish
In the beginning, I knew nothing about publishing.
I had a book and I wanted to publish it. My husband found me a service called CreateSpace (now owned by Amazon KDP) and after paying $3,000, I had a book published on Amazon.
Now this $3,000 I spent paid for:
Cover Design
Grammatical and Developmental Editing
Creating a book description
Formatting
Uploading it to Amazon
All in all, I got a good product and I was happy with it.
However, paying three grand for every book I published wasn’t sustainable.
So…what did I learn?
I learned quickly that just because you spend tons of money on services to publish your book doesn’t mean that it will bring you book sales.
If I was going to make a career for myself as an author I was either going to need to go the traditional publishing route or I needed to learn the self-publishing process and industry.
Now, thankfully I connected with other indie authors on X who showed me tools and ways I could publish a book at a low cost. And the best part was that I would still be publishing quality books.
Over time, I learned how to:
Create my own covers
How to find Alpha, Beta, and ARC readers
How to upload my book to platforms like Amazon and more
How to format my book for free using Reedsy.com
How to find keywords and work them into a book description of 250 words or less
How to find quality editors at an affordable price
All I needed to do was slow down and take the time to learn what I needed and I could have saved myself a ton of money.
Thankfully, so many people are self-publishing now that there is tons of information out there to teach you all this stuff.
Waited too long to build my author platform
At the beginning of my career, I made an author Facebook page, posted a few posts about my first book, and then shortly afterward published my first book.
What didn’t I have?
A website
Posts built up over time on social media
A following
By some stroke of luck, I managed to have 250 copies of my book Kale Stone: An Outliers Tale go out by word of mouth. But then, I never sold another copy and I ended up with 11 reviews. Most of which were from friends.
So there I was wondering where I went wrong and unaware of how I could fix it.
So, what did I learn?
Building a platform for yourself is crucial to how well your book will do.
Why?
Because if you don’t take time to start building an audience for yourself and awareness for your work, no one will know that it’s there.
So what did I do?
My husband built me a website kayla-hicks.com
I began growing a following on social media and after four and half years I have- X 39.2k followers, Facebook 421, Instagram 606, Threads 1,020k followers, Medium 843
I began talking about my book from the time I started writing it to build momentum
I networked and collaborated with other authors
I made a newsletter and now have 250 subscribers
I have some of my books in schools and libraries
I give back to my community as an author in any way I can (donating to schools, giveaways, and more)
Established relationships with bloggers and book reviewers
Doing so made a huge difference for my platform and led me to start having a reader following, which is especially surprising given the fact that I am a multi-genre author.
If you haven’t started on your author platform, now is the time.
Thought that having book sales and gathering reviews would be easy
In the beginning, I was hopeful that friends and family would purchase my books and tell others about them. In turn, I would gather reviews and more people would buy my books.
This was not the case.
After I published my first book, I stalked it. Checked it several times a day for sales stats, and checked it weekly for any new reviews. And — let me tell you, it can be downright disappointing when nothing happens.
People I knew would ask how my book was doing and I would simply smile and say it was doing fine, when internally I was wondering what I was doing wrong.
So, what did I learn?
In order to get book sales and reviews, you need to put in the time and effort because your book will not magically become an overnight hit.
So, I began researching how to get reviews for your books. Why? When a book has reviews, it’s social proof that your book with worth the reader’s time and money. And once a book has fifty reviews, it has a better chance of being seen by readers and possibly purchased.
From the research I did, I learned:
You need to research book bloggers and reviewers that pair with your book, follow them on social media, interact with their content months before your book release, and then follow their directions to submit it for review
You need to make a marketing plan for at least six months before the release and follow it
You need to do market and keyword research for your genre and target audience to help you craft marketing content and a book description that will help readers find you
It’s important to have a small ask at the back of the book asking the reader to leave a review on Goodreads or wherever they bought the book, and if it’s in an eBook, provide a link to make it easier
Each time you receive a book review, post it on social media (use the social proof to help yourself)
Look for book clubs who may be interested in your book
Put copies of your book in Free Little Libraries and ask them to post a photo on social media and tag you
Make your book free a day after release and tell your alpha and beta readers about it so they can snag a copy and leave a validated book review on Amazon
There are tons of ways to get the word out there about your book. And while these ways aren’t guaranteed to get you reviews, they highly increase your chances of receiving one.
Yes, embarking on the route of self-publishing can feel a little nerve-wracking, but it’s well worth it.
Just know that continuously learning about the industry and how to improve any parts of your process can only help you.