You won’t become a successful author overnight. You need to do the things that most successful authors are doing and here are the 3 things to do in self-publishing every day.
One of the key things to succeeding in self-publishing is doing the right things every single day. That's one of the reasons why in today's article, we're going to be discussing the 3 Things To Do In Self-Publishing Every Day.
So, let's get right into those three things. The first thing is that when starting, you need to dedicate a certain amount of time each day to the most important tasks. That means for example, how many minutes are you going to be sitting down?
You're going to be doing the writing portion of your day where you're going to be working on your next book. The other area is that a percentage of the time you're dedicating each day is going to be to learn new things. So that you're continually getting sharper at the skill sets with self-publishing.
As I've mentioned in other articles, there are so many tools that you can learn. Each of those tools has a set of things and courses that go with it. To learn how exactly to best use these tools as opposed to people who skipped the training.
Those people who skipped the learning, just try to use tools and equipment without using them to their full ability. This is a huge cost. The final and third of your time each day is on the marketing side.
Your books are not going to sell themselves. You have to get them in front of the right people at the right time with the right messaging. In fact, on Amazon, about 80% to 90% of the sales that you're seeing going through Amazon are specifically associated with a lot of the marketing efforts that you're doing.
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And about that, again it’s 10 to 20 with the actual content of the books. Now, that seems a little bit shocking to a lot of authors but that is just the reality of the situation. You cannot overlook and underestimate just how powerful marketing is.
But if you're only marketing, well, how many books are you getting on the market? This is one of the reasons why it is such a powerful habit of devoting a certain amount of time and having a list. I like to use Todoist to keep track of that.
That's the tool I like to use when it comes to trying to make sure that I'm on track daily of doing the most important things. The second point is that you want to find people who motivate you and have accomplished what you're trying to accomplish. Try to stay in touch daily or at least weekly with them.
We just talk to them randomly. Sometimes, we listen to a book or we might have come in contact with somebody at a conference. But this idea of actually being regularly in contact with people who are motivating you, who are very interested in seeing your business go forward.
I just did a Discovery Session with somebody for free yesterday. I was commenting that the real value when it comes to like the Group Coaching that I do is that you're able to give a daily update. We're able to speak directly into that, where I go back and forth.
To make sure that my clients are making the progress that they need and deserve for the books that they're putting on the market. If you're going to put the books on the market, you need somebody who's going to keep motivating you as you're moving forward.
Having An Accountability Person
If you don't have that person, some people even have the opposite where your parents or friends are telling you that you're never going to make it. You're not an author, you don't have a doctorate. So, you have no business talking about some sort of self-help or whatever it is that you're talking about.
It's just not true, that isn't how this self-publishing game works. The way that it works is that you have the correct niche. That you're doing marketing whether paid or content marketing as I teach on my Content Marketing Course. Showing you exactly how to drive that traffic in.
Then it's up to the sales page on your book to get this book to sell. We're getting these people onto an email list and then we're going around with that. The fact is that we need to stay motivated and we need to stay in touch with people we trust.
I always mention this when doing Discovery Sessions. I just comment that if it's not me to help you with my 1-On-1 Program, then choose somebody else. But do not attempt to do it alone. You want somebody you're going to be in contact with not once a year but daily.
That's what I offer within Group Coaching. Where we're able to go back and forth daily. To make sure that you're achieving your full potential when it comes to getting your books on the market and getting these books to sell.
Let's move on to point three, it is great and this is something we need to practice daily. The most challenging thing of the entire self-publishing game is maintaining your motivation, waking up every day, and continuing to work.
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Focusing on this one sub-genre or niche that you're targeting for your specific books. Now, there are so many of you and you know who you are that when you're going about putting your books on the market, you continually are jumping between genres.
You have books all over the place. I have no idea what you're an expert in because you seem to be an expert in everything. Let's say you're interested in puppy training, if you put out four or five puppy training books, you'd find you get a lot more traction.
Then if you have one on puppy training, one on your foot health, and one of them on business success and entrepreneurship or something. It's all over the place, you're not an expert in any of these things or at least that's what you're communicating by using the same pen name.
In addition, even if you are using different pen names which I do suggest if you're going through multiple niches, you're going to want to hold that grit and focus in there. You're not going to be able to build an email list on all of those different books.
This is a mistake I made and there's a huge one. It would be much better to write lots and lots of books on one specific topic and build an email list around that topic. But it's got to be something you're are interested in.
Devoting The Time Necessary
You have to understand that really to get to the takeoff point, it's about a two to three years process to start seeing things exploding. Three to five and at ten years, you can usually have a name for yourself within the market when you're trying to sell your books.
I know that sounds like a long time. But in reality, if you think about all the years you use on your day job, specifically doing whatever it is you happen to be doing after 10 years. Are you devoted there? Do you not have a little bit of time to invest in yourself and your business?
That's right, your books are your business. So, this concept of grit is not something that you just wheel up now and then. You need to wake up every day and say, I'm going to devote the necessary time.
As we talked about in point one, necessary time. I'm going to stay in contact with people who motivate me and have done what I am trying to achieve. That's point two and I'm not going to give up and switch niches and jump all over the place.
We're going to hold the focus and we're assuming of course that you're going into a profitable sub-genre or niche. That's the reason I use KDSpy because that is a very powerful tool for figuring out the keywords. When we say genre or subgenre and niche, it's the keywords around it.
That's going to decide that certain people are doing searches to find books on these topics that you were writing on. Or maybe they aren't doing searches but when they come across, you want your books to show up on the first page.
We want those people to already show they're interested in making purchases of the books that you have on the market. That is something that a lot of people make the mistake of, jumping between niches. As opposed to keeping that grit in the focus or choosing an unprofitable mission.
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No matter how many books you come out with, you're never going to get them to sell. And so a lot of these things, I may be speaking in terms of maybe at a high level but I have failed in so many ways over the years to do these things.
It took me forever to realize I need to have somebody to help me with accountability and motivation. Paying somebody to do that is worth the investment. A lot of this stuff is you think you're going to save money on the one and in reality, end up losing lots of money.
Losing the chance that your books are going to explode. When we have the right number of books in the right market with the right timing and the right marketing. Suddenly, you discover you are an author, how many books do you need to sell?
I remember somebody once told me, you're not an author until you've sold a thousand books. And I'm sitting like well, what about after we sold 40,000? What are we at that point? I mean, I think it was just even the audiobooks across what was last month's 18,000 audiobooks marker.
You know, where it just continues to go while I'm sleeping. The books are continuing to sell. So, this is one of the reasons once I learned all of these skills, I was thinking what better way than to other people?
How to develop that grit and understand the very mistakes that I made. How you can avoid those mistakes and get your books onto the market. So, that's something to consider. These are the 3 things you're going to be doing daily. But what about the 3 Things To Avoid in Self-Publishing?