I’ve written a book, what now?

So you got it, you filtered through all those inspiring ideas and mad illusions, you found the time to put pen to paper (lol, no way, I mean fingers to keyboard), and came up with a great story that you think other people would want to read too.

Congratulations, because that is freakin’ awesome. Doing that part is sometimes the hardest of all.

Now you want to share it, but what do you do? Send your manuscript to get rejected with millions of others and give up? Do the risky, time-consuming self-publishing option? I’ve followed the latter, so it’s hard for me to advocate the former, but I can tell you this: Do the former, the worst that will happen is you’re rejected. Especially if you have a genre. If you can say to me: I wrote a Sci-Fi book! Then send it to a Sci-Fi publisher.

I didn’t.

I wrote a book that’s been called Star-Trek crossed with the Mummy, another called it Indiana Jones meets Victorian Goth. I call it a steam flavoured fantasy with a suspenseful horror twist. What a mouthful.

And I instinctively knew from online research I was going to have a really hard time selling it to a publishing firm that was going to look past my pitch in the first place. So I took the risk and self published.

If you are going to self publish, here is what I have learned so far, and I wanted to share it, and kudos to a cocktail loving friend of mine who wanted to pick my brain on how to go about it, and inspired this month’s blog post.

 

1. Edit.

This takes the top priority, there is NOTHING more annoying to ANY form of reader than bad editing. Don’t ask me about the hours I spend at the computer or printed works looking for faults, I still miss them, and my editor is human and he misses them too. I’ve seen professional authors with publishers ask readers for editing mistakes before the book is republished. We ALL make mistakes, the more you can find the better. Get an editor, get beta readers, get friends and family to find them… and slaughter every one!!

*cough* I mean fix, fix every one.

When you are ready to publish I recommend Pronoun. They publish to Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, iBooks and Googleplay, they are super helpful and have made this much easier for me than I thought it could be.

 

2. Get a good cover.

I think this is the most critical of your $$ spending. I am reading a fantastic book as part of a review club, and I cannot believe it doesn’t have heaps of reviews. I decided to review it because it had none, and while the blurb put me off a little, and needs an edit, I read the sample on Amazon and was quickly messaging the author screaming “GIVE IT TO ME!!!”

As the author was quick to let me know, he couldn’t believe something so insubstantial was of any importance, but we are fickle human beings, and are quick to judge books on their covers, despite what we say.

 

3. Social media platforms

Have them. Work on them. Send out random tweets, update your FB page three times a week, get programs to help you do it if your time conscious. I have sold books based on my social networking, not many, but it’s a start. People know I exist, I have my own domain and website, if people try to look for me, they will find me. If they don’t know who I am and stumble upon me and like what I have to say then perhaps I’ve found someone who will read my book and love it as much as I do.

 

4. Advertise

I see a lot of authors complaining their book isn’t selling but they aren’t willing to invest a little in smart advertising. And I do mean smart advertising. Don’t sell your dystopian Sci-Fi thriller to a contemporary romance e-magazine. Look up what other people are doing in your genre, and where their books are being displayed. I looked up “Steampunk e-newsletters” and found a group for fantasy/scifi fans and for a very small sum sold more books than with another enewsletter group wanting three times the price for a very generic readers group more interested in popular fiction i.e. romance.

I don’t have a romance…. Yet. Watch this space.

Or maybe not this pace but this website? Let’s stick with that.

 

5. Get reviews

This is the hardest. Shouldn’t be right? But it is. How often when checking out a local restaurant do you see it only had 3 stars and after reading the mediocre reviews, give it a miss? Tripadvisor is a pinnacle of this, when I travel I check out the worst review and see if I can live with whatever warranted the poor review.

Now the tricky part. Don’t get friends and family to buy a copy, not read it, and say on Amazon: “This is better than Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings combined! Five stars! Buy this book!” People are going to look at those reviews and squint at them for being peculiar.

Join a readers group. Offer the book for free for honest reviews on your social media platforms. I can really recommend the Books Go Social Team, and their facebook groups. It’s a kind supportive and caring community and troll free (weird right? Yeah, completely troll free, indie authors don’t have time for that….)

 

Most of all? Don’t give up. I frequently wonder if getting up at 6am and staying awake till midnight is worth it, spending every spare second not at my full time job trying to squeeze in whatever task awaits next be it feeding the bottomless pit of twitter or facebook, checking reviews, editing, writing even, when I get to it. If you gave up writing on the keyboard then you will give up here. Don’t.

If you have a story you know you want to tell the world don’t give up. Don’t give in. Take a breath and realise what I did; that even though a year after publishing my first novella I’m not J.K. Rowling, but I have set out and achieved what I wanted, I started this, and by gods I’m going to finish it. If you really want this you’ll keep going too.