There could be a lot of barriers you'll meet along the way. Find out the 3 ways self-publishers sabotage their success.
Jill told me she was ready to give up self-publishing for good. That is for several reasons that were in her mind. Great reasons to go about doing that.
Today, we're going to be talking about 3 Ways Self-Publishers Sabotage Their Success. So it was several months ago and I was running through a Coaching session with Jill. Now Jill was a new writer.
She had been working on her first manuscript. She had never self-published a book. But was looking at a lot of the different options around it.
The thing is that she wanted to get her first book on the market. Because she knew she had a great story. The question was how exactly do we go from the writing phase?
And moving over to taking this manuscript and all of the steps necessary to get it onto Amazon. Where we can start seeing some sales. Learning marketing and moving forward with that.
The problem is that she had a whole bunch of reasons that this was not possible. In many ways, she was self-sabotaging herself as she was going along. She was listening to a podcast of mine.
She thought that maybe some of these issues could be dealt with. What was at stake was that she would maybe never get her book onto the market. If she continued at the pace that she had been moving.
In some ways completely stops this entire flow. She doubted that she maybe even had what was necessary to succeed at self-publishing. There were many obstacles that she faced.
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The first was she felt that she was not good enough. This was a mindset issue. And this is something that so many self-publishers have.
It's this idea that I'm not really an author. I'm not an author material. You know, people have said they like my writing. Or I believe I have stories but in the grand scheme of things, I'm just not.
Someone who people are probably going to want to read. Maybe my ideas are not good enough or my stories are not compelling enough. So, as a person, I may be able to write a story but nobody's going to want to read that story.
I may be able to write let's say a non-fiction book. But maybe there's going to be so many mistakes and stuff. That it's poorly organized, nobody's going to want to check out that book.
So that was the first obstacle that she was looking at. Then she commented on the second obstacle. She thought I don't have time.
In other words, she's so busy she has a day job. She's got a family to take care of. All of these issues created a burden and a squeeze on her time.
Making her feel that it simply wasn't going to be possible to get her book on the market. Because it requires so much time.
Not Real Barriers
The third thing was things need to be right. It's the third way self-publishers sabotage their success. They need to be perfect before we can actually get them onto the market.
The third obstacle was this perfectionism that she was trying at the time. Which I can completely understand because we don't want to throw garbage on the market.
We need to make sure that the books and the writings that we're putting on the market are going to be quality things. Those are going to stand the test of time. That people are going to want to read.
So she realized something with regards to editing and these other things. That we just need to keep going back over and over again in our writing until it's just perfect. I also struggled with these same issues.
In particular, I would say the time issue. I'm so busy with a day job and family. All sorts of hobbies, church, and whatever else that was in my life.
That was making things and taking a lot of the time that I would be doing. So I felt this from my own starting point for my self-publishing journey. The thing was that these barriers do not have to be real barriers.
So the first one we dealt with was we started looking at the mindset. One of not good enough. The point is that so much of the writing that is published isn't necessarily incredibly high quality.
So you're not that different than many of the other writers that are out there. We get better with practice. But if we aren't putting anything on the market and testing out to see what the market wants and what we have to offer.
Then it's just not going to work as we would like to see it go. So this issue of dealing with the mindset barrier that was there. She was sabotaging herself in this way that she's not good enough.
That in fact, she's definitely good enough. But will be getting better as you go. There is another issue that she was having a lot of difficulty with.
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So we need to quit comparing ourselves with other people. Realizing if you have a story or ideas you want to get out into the world, then we do that first. Then we improve upon what we're doing.
The second thing was not having enough time. One of the things I recommend to all of my coaching clients is to keep a time journal. So you can see how you're using time throughout the day.
What we discovered when looking a little bit closer at Jill's challenges was that she was using a chunk of time watching movies or tv shows. Doing other things that were not related to this.
She also was not keeping track of the time she was using concerning self-publishing. So I suggested using a free tool called die timer. To keep track of the time she was using and set a minimum goal.
For me, when I was getting started, my problem was not having enough time. So I set a goal of 5 minutes a day. After some time, I discovered that started to go up to 30 minutes a day.
Now, I have many hours a day that I dedicate to self-publishing. So this issue of not having the time is something we can work through. We can figure out things that are sucking our time.
To shift things around. So that we would have the necessary time. To go about overcoming this way we're self-sabotaging.
Improving The Next Books
The third thing was this perfectionism. Our books do not have to be perfect. It sort of ties back into the first one of not being good enough.
That our books absolutely must be perfect or else they're not worth putting on the market. This is just a false belief that will destroy your entire business. We need to realize it's not perfect.
Our goal is that our next book would be better than our previous one. We can fix previous books if it doesn't require too much time. Then we just keep on improving as we go.
We're having a dialogue with our audience. We're going back and forth. They're letting us know what it is about our books that they like or don't like.
We're fixing that in our next book. And we continue this dialogue with our audience. To figure out how we can best serve them.
As we put value into the world as creators in the form of writing. Finally, she hit one additional obstacle. The biggest burp obstacle she had was this technical ability.
I don't know anything about computers so much. I'm not very good with software. This is one I hear so often from many of my coaching clients.
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I just don't have what it takes. That's why I pointed out one of the whole reasons Self-Publishing Made Easy Now was created. It was to deal with this exact category.
It's that by breaking things down into simple steps. Working with my coaching clients and through the courses. We move through it and we hold their hand.
As we're moving through each of those steps. So that we don't reach a single point where we're like, "I'm lost, don't know what to do." That's something that a lot of the fake gurus will say, "Good luck, here's a thousand steps."
What we need is the holding of the hand. Moving through the steps saying, "look, slow things down. Dedicate a certain amount of time each day."
Let's see where we're at in the process. For Jill, she still hasn't come out with her very first book yet. But she's very optimistic now.
She realizes that a lot of these barriers were just self-sabotage. That was preventing her from getting her book onto the market. My question for you is how do you self-sabotage yourself? Your self-publishing journey?
Have you experienced the above-mentioned 3 ways self-publishers sabotage their success? I want to know let me know below in the comments. So I can know and I can actually help you deal with those exact issues.