While I self-published my first book, KEEPING SCORE, in 2013, I chose a small indie publisher for my second book, THE TIES THAT BLEED. Although the publisher has a good reputation, I felt hamstrung by the inability to set my own price or even put the book on sale, making newsletters such as BookBub that drive sales out of reach. The quality of the paperback left much to be desired as well.
When my agent was unable to sell my third book, HOUSE DIVIDED (originally called THE SEESAW EFFECT), to traditional publishers, I decided to self-publish again because of my dissatisfaction with having publisher control over my second book. I thought I knew what I was doing based on lessons learned with KEEPING SCORE. I was wrong.
In the past four years, the market for self-published books has changed exponentially. In 2013, Publishers Weekly estimated that about 450,000 books were self-published. Although data is not in for 2016 yet, the number of ISBN registrations increased by 21% between 2014-2015. That’s a lot more competition. While readers are growing along with books, a saturated market means it’s that much harder for a single self-published book to stand out.
Here’s what I wish I would have done before self-publishing HOUSE DIVIDED:
Rewritten the book to take advantage of self-publishing trends. Authors who write series have better sales than authors who write stand-alone. With a few minor changes, adding a character or two from KEEPING SCORE, I could have made HOUSE DIVIDED the second in a series about work and parenting in suburban Maryland. This would have allowed me to call it a series on Amazon, make KEEPING SCORE perma-free to drive sales, and take advantage of other opportunities for series.
Taken more time. Once I made the decision to self-publish, I thought the one-year anniversary date of Trump’s election would be a great date to publish. I made this decision in July, thinking I had plenty of time before November. I didn’t. Finding a launch company and overseeing the cover design and layout took more time than I thought. Because of this, I was only able to set up the pre-order barely a month before my November 8th publication date. As many reviewers want to receive the book three months or even more before the publication date, I was unable to utilize those reviewers to get coverage for my book.
Joined more Facebook groups. There are many groups on Facebook dedicated to marketing and reviewing members’ self-published books. Because it takes a while to get established, becoming active on these groups before the book is published is recommended. I didn’t, and as a result only have 8 reviews for HOUSE DIVIDED. KEEPING SCORE has 58.
Researched more blogs, and earlier. I waited until my book was in MOBI form to research blogs and send out the emails, doing the research and emailing together. Had I done the research earlier—much earlier—I would have been ready to drop those emails as soon as I had a MOBI file to transmit, and would also have had a better idea of what was out there and who might be willing to review my book. As writers, this is something we should be doing anyway—stay up-to-date about who’s writing about your genre and what other, similar, books are out there.
Published the paperback through CreateSpace. Amazon makes it very easy to publish your paperback after you’ve uploaded your file to Kindle. What they do not make it easy to do is buy author copies at a reduced rate. While CreateSpace, which oddly enough is owned by Amazon, allows authors to buy their own books at cost at any time, Amazon does not have this option. I found a way around this by setting the paperback price as low as possible, buying my books, and then raising the price back up to a regular paperback option, but it was still twice as expensive as it would have been on CreateSpace.
Considered keeping the book in a drawer and moving onto the next one. My agent did an excellent job getting me read at imprints at all five big publishing firms. Every editor who rejected it said the same thing: Great book; no one will want to read it. And they were right. Trying to sell HOUSE DIVIDED has been an expensive, heartbreaking endeavor. No one wants to read about politics in the middle of the country’s worst political nightmare since the Civil War… even a humorous book about politics. Having to beg my friends on Facebook for reads and reviews has been humiliating and fruitless. Maybe in a few years, when Trump and his friends are in prison and the country has gone back to normal, the book will be an easier sell, but right now, no one seems to want to read it, and I’m frustrated beyond belief.
Yesterday I turned my latest novel into my agent. It’s a psychological thriller, and I hope more palatable to the Big Five than humorous political women’s fiction. If not, I doubt I’ll be self-publishing again, at least not a stand-alone book. Self-publishing seems to be a wonderful option for writers who can churn out series books, but for those of us who prefer not to, the marketing hurdles are just too high.
