Many authors wanted to start seeing sales quickly out of their self-published books but they know nothing about marketing. Let me tell you some processes here to help you see how easily you can self-publish your book.
Today's article has three points and you're going to want to stick around for the third point. Because it's a secret as to why the last step of your self-publishing process is the most important.
The topic we're discussing today is to see how easily you can self-publish your book. When you're getting started, you want to get your book onto the market, you just want to get it self-published. You want to start seeing those sales coming in but the process itself feels so difficult.
It can be quite difficult when you're moving through those steps. You're facing all of the challenges that a new self-publisher or even somebody who's been self-publishing for a while can face as you move in into the process.
Therefore, you're going to want to stick around because I'm going to tell you how to make this as easy as possible. Check out my free Self-Publishing Checklist. To make sure you're not skipping any of the secret steps necessary to win at self-publishing.
Let's get into it, from my own story, I want to tell you a little bit about how difficult it has been for me. I discovered that there are so many ways that make this process so hard when you're trying to self-publish. Let me share a few of them.
When I originally started, I had all of the files from my different books in the same folder. Everything was all been into together. It was difficult to see which version I had of particular files and which files belong to which books.
Even the book titles were a little bit off with their file names. You have this huge soup of files very confusing so I had the different versions of the books as well mixed. I could be editing one version only to discover this wasn't the correct version.
Because remember when you're using Microsoft Word or any of these other programs, just opening the file can change the last date modified. You may think it's the current version where in reality you're working with an older version.
I don't know if that resonates with you but when it comes to technology, I know from a lot of my viewers that you found that the technology itself can be quite a bit of a challenge for you. I'm just letting you know that I've also seen this even if I understand the words backward and forward.
You still can make mistakes when it comes to the files, where did this file go? Or maybe your computer crash and you don't even have a backup. That was something I recently put in place with using Google Drive and moving away from Dropbox as my primary way to make sure all of my files are backup.
Something as simple as that. Losing your files can get you demotivated to the point that you quit writing books. Because you're losing copies of the books you've already written and this can be very frustrating.
The thing was I lost track of the key files of the different books I had. For each book, I also needed to remember the steps necessary to self-publish. That was the beginning of the process of getting a checklist in place.
To make sure that I do not have to figure out and re-research how to do the same steps that I have done previously. And also to be able to hand these tasks to virtual assistants who could go through those steps. And take care of the tasks that I no longer wish to do myself.
This is a huge step for many authors when they're writing books. Initially, you feel you need to do everything yourself. You do the very first time, you need to understand the process but we want to write those steps down.
So that we don't find ourselves trying to remember over and over how exactly we're going to do those steps. To get our book onto the market and selling. There are many ways of making things hard when it comes to self-publishing.
Anywhere from having too many tools, you're trying to learn too many things at the same time. Or trying to do too many steps at the same time when it comes to getting our book onto the market. All of these things lead to burnout and burnout causes you to quit producing books.
Market Research
Here are the tips that I'm going to give you today or something you need to hear if you don't want to get burnout on the process. We want to feel that sensation of mastery over the process. Getting our books onto the market and seeing those sales start happening.
The first one, I want to say it's that here is the general flow and that's the thing you're making it to see how easily you can self-publish your book. Here it comes, we're only going to do one step at a time.
When you complete that step we will then move on to the next step and then continue onwards. Until we've managed to get through all of the steps. I just want to make it a little bit clear here, this is the way to keep it easy.
I understand if you do all of these at the same time or if you try to find five thousand different ways of doing it, that can be a problem. That's one of the reasons I've created courses below and I do Coaching as well. To make sure you do not get stuck on one or more of these steps that we move through the process.
But just watching these videos, I'm giving away all of my secrets so just stay in tune with what I'm putting out. You will be able to make progress yourself, let me just start you on the program here. The first thing we're going to do is we're going to do market research.
We do not want to publish a book that is targeting a genre that is already flooded or doesn't exist at all. So that research that we're doing, we are trying to figure out, is there an audience for us? You can find my affiliate link for KDSpy below in the description of all of my Youtube videos.
That's the tool I use before we would even start writing the book. Is there a market where people could even want to read about the subject you're writing upon? That's our first starting point and it is equally as important as my secret tip of the day.
In the sense that if you choose a market that doesn't exist, you're not going to sell your books. You may have a miracle in win a lottery of choosing a new market. But people who are better than your marketing, they're going to quickly jump in on that market.
They'll start making money and stealing your market share. That is just how this game goes. Instead of doing that, be one of these people who's looking and seeing the combination between books that you're excited about and topics that you can work with.
On the other hand, we're trying to find those topics that you're going to write about for a long time. Then topics on books that people already wish to purchase. So that combos are important.
Then our next step is we're going to write a book. Or pay somebody to write the book within ghostwriting which I've mentioned before. Write the book yourself if you're just getting started. Writing is a great thing if you have that skills.
Then we have the editing process. I know there are different types of editors we go through a lot on this blog. But you need to figure out what level of editing is necessary to get your book to a quality that's going to get you 3-5 stars on your book.
If it's got 1-2 stars, that will kill your book and it will make almost no sales. But 3-5 stars will be enough to start getting sales and improving the quality of your book. And getting new books on the market so we can start seeing our revenue flows.
We can increase the quality and the speed at which we're getting books onto the market. The next thing is we're going to order our cover through Fiverr. We're going to do formatting which I use Jutoh, my main tool.
For Jutoh, which is fantastic you're getting the formatting done and then we go into the description. And I write the description myself, find the best selling books in your genre or niche. Just make sure your description is somewhat similar to theirs.
But remember it's not about revealing all the secrets of your book rather it's about tempting the person. Making them saying "look you're going to have an exciting story". Or "I'm going to help you solve your problem with this book".
That's really what the description is about, it is not about describing the contents of that book. That's a huge mistake many people make. The second thing is we're going to publish the book, we're going to put the eBook and the paperback version out onto Amazon KDP.
We're going to do then the audiobook version, we're going to do that through ACX Audible, and then the hardback version through Lulu. I recently had somebody push back on me and said "Lulu is terrible", "haven't you heard all of the other stuff about Lulu" and "I'm getting money from Lulu".
I can say I'm not getting paid by Lulu, my revenue is going up from my hardback books through Lulu and they are paying me. I understand there's a lot of things confusing from their sales dashboard. Being able to order a proof copy and their cover template is a little confusing.
And maybe their customer support, they don't answer and some people were saying "they're not giving all my money". I can say I'm making more money off with Lulu lately. And so, no I'm not getting paid by Lulu they are not a sponsor of my thing.
Content Marketing
I'm just saying, part of my process was trying to find a way that I can get it out as affordably as possible. I've been happy with Lulu. You have to decide for yourself, I just needed to make that clear.
Because some people were asking me this question, if I was getting money from Lulu to promote them, and no I'm not. Based upon all of the people I send to them to get their hardback books done through Lulu. I don't blame you at all on that process.
Because it almost could be promoting them, they should be paying me for doing that. I did Google, I saw there's a lot of hate going towards them lately. Which is a little bit odd since my revenue is going up with them.
That is to say, books I published years ago are starting to make more money for me. Then ever through Lulu, that's for the hardback books. Let's get to the secret answer for today and it is that you need to ramp up your sales with marketing.
This is the final step of keeping it all easy. We're going to be building an email list through our book. We're going to ask them "give us something free" in exchange for their email address at the beginning and the end of your book. You can ask them about this.
Or you're going to ask those people on your email list to help us with our reviews, we're going to run paid ads. I use Publisher Rocket to find the best keywords for our ads that we're going to be using on Amazon ads or other ads.
If you wish to try Facebook and Google ads, I've not tried them for books. I've just used Amazon. I did use Facebook earlier but it's too pricey per click to get the money back on the sales that I was getting from my book. But that is also definitely an option.
Then the final thing and the most important thing it's going to be Content Marketing which I sell a Course. Because on content marketing, you're able to take your content yourself. And put yourself out there so that people can find you.
We can start building up your audience. Now, the reason I just went through this step was that this is the complete process and then what do we do with that? The answer is you repeat the process.
You should be doing a little bit for your different books on this all the time. But do not get overwhelmed, start with the very first step, and do not talk about the last step until we've managed to get through it. You can do content marketing the entire way and stick with a single niche.
Do not go jumping around. I made this huge mistake, I did things the hard way. And this is by far the easiest way to go about getting your books to publish onto the market and then get them selling.
Check out this related article: Do You Make These Mistakes?
This is not some get-rich-quick scheme, this is a get-rich-slowly scheme. As we're getting our books onto the market. The more books we get on the market, the more money that's coming in while we sleep which gives us the ability to get more books on the market.
We can start hiring some staff, virtual assistants who can work for us to speed up this flow. But we need to do things the easy way I know that the fake gurus out there are continually telling you "Oh you can just put a book out and I'm sure they'll make millions".
And the answer is no, you're not going to do that. We're going to build up an audience. We're going to do things the slow way but it's going to be easy and slow and not fast easy and make money instantly.
We wanted to get our books onto the market, we want to find that audience. I'm going to tell you it's exciting as we see this audience grow, as we see the money coming in, it encourages us to do more. And so, many authors have an amazing book.
You may be one of them, you have an amazing book that you've written. You put them on the market and you know nothing about the marketing. So these books are doing terribly.
And then you jump to a different topic, different thing, or different business. And you think "Well, I guess I'm not a writer". I'm telling you, deep inside of you, you are a writer. You're an author, you're somebody who can do this.
You just need the motivation to stick around and I'm telling you to hire a coach. Do something to stay in this game long enough to make a win out of it. You will thank me in the end.
My question for you today is, tell me what have you found was the most difficult with your self-publishing journey? Let me know below in the comments. Check out my other articles and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.