When it comes to marketing your book onto the market you will always want to go through the correct path in order to achieve your own success. Check out this article and find out how to find success in self publishing.
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 the absolute most essential thing to do if you wish to find success in self-publishing. So the topic we're discussing today is how to find success in self-publishing.
By the end of this article, you're going to know exactly what we mean by success. You're going to have the steps necessary to put yourself on the correct path leading towards your own success with self-publishing.
And you're going to feel great knowing that you're doing what is necessary to succeed, so let's get into it. Grab a copy of my absolutely free self-publishing Checklist. To make sure that you are not skipping any of the steps necessary to succeed at self-publishing.
I have a number of little secrets inside of that checklist so go check that out. So from my own story when I first got started my initial goal was just to get a book on the market. I wasn't completely sure if this would be easy or difficult and so that was my first thing.
So in a sense, you would see that the first success level for me would be just to simply get the book on the market. One of the challenges that so many self-publishers have is when you're getting started success can mean having to "oh I want to make as much money as JK Rowling or these other people".
And this is a huge problem, "I want to sell thousands and thousands of copies". This is a very big problem because you're setting your goals too high. So it's not necessarily achievable but for me it was, can I get a book on the market?
I had very good reason to believe I could but could I write the book? could I manage to put it together, formatting it? what about this cover issue and descriptions and metadata? And all of these things are so confusing when first getting started with self-publishing.
So I set my goal to just get a book on the market and I actually did get it onto the market. But then I wasn't seeing any sales on the book and that then said: "wait for a second, this isn't what I want". I want to see some sales coming through for this book.
What's the point of writing a book if you're only just putting it on the market. So at this point, we move over from the creative side of creating the book right to marketing and understanding how exactly markets work. Which is something I had no idea even if I had been doing all sorts of data analysis in the past.
But simply not working at this level where I would be familiar with what are the key levers that we can pull in order to increase the sales that we're getting on our books. And that was the next thing. So I said a new goal and you see here then success became a little different.
I remember my goal was "can I get a sale a day?" even before that it was "can I make even a dollar a day for my books?". Now, this might seem ridiculous but in reality, setting goals like these is unbelievably much more powerful. Rather than saying "I want to make a hundred dollars or a thousand dollars a day" or some crazy thing like that.
By setting a very low but reasonable goal we slowly are moving closer to success, you see it? So the definition of success it's changing over time. The next thing was is I tried hundreds of strategies, all sorts of crazy ones.
Some of them that would now get you in trouble with amazon but I've tried all sorts of stuff. You know I'm very transparent and the fact is, is that people would say well "try this" or "try that". I remember one of my clients saying she had tried hiring a click farm.
Where somebody would download thousands of copies of her book and that got her in trouble with Amazon. Other people have done thousands of review swapping getting their reviews taken down that got them in trouble with Amazon.
Other people tried putting their table of contents at the back of the book. And then putting together 10 different copies of their books to increase pages read and that got them in trouble in their accounts banned on amazon. Do you see? There are lots of things that you can try.
The thing was I tried not these strategies per se but a number of strategies in order to see is it possible to get increasing the number of sales. And I began to realize that it's actually more strategic to stick within the realm of what Amazon is trying or what they would like to see you do.
So don't ever have your account getting risk, and getting it banned by amazon. So by staying inside those lines but at the same time pushing the limits in terms of on the marketing side. Making sure that we're doing things and optimizing.
Most Powerful Strategies
We're able to define success and we're able to start moving towards reaching that specific goal. The thing is most of the strategies I was trying failed. Some of them definitely did but the two most powerful strategies that I discovered were working great for me.
That would be keyword optimization and paid ads. I started even with just the paid ads and then I realized the importance of the keywords. So the keywords that we're choosing to help people are the categories on amazon that we're registering our books under.
And then also the title itself, title, and subtitle. I remember discussing with a Coaching client recently the importance of that subtitle specifying who is this book for. If your answer is it's for everyone then the answer is it's for no one.
It's like a t-shirt or clothing where one size fits all. A better way of saying it is one size fits no one or fun for the whole family means it's a difficult one. Because how does the whole family have fun with every single activity?
It's better to say "no we're targeting this group here". You see small children or young adults or whatever it is and then everybody else is free to join. But holding laser-like focus on that one group and this concept of market segmentation.
And making sure that we're targeting a specific market with our books. This was something I had never even considered. I just thought we'll write a book that lots of people would like and that will succeed and the answer is no.
We want to make sure we're writing a book that a specific group of people will like and the other people can join in. So for example harry potter was written for a specific target of young adults who like to read fantasy books, you see?
And by holding that laser-like focus that group became incredibly enthusiastic and missionaries for this exact book series which then brought in the other groups. But then the author JK Rowling did not shift who she was focusing on. She still continued to hold that focus.
And that kept that group excited if you water down your brand. I remember things like old navy had a problem with this and some shoe companies that would be like for surfers and stuff or skaters. I guess it was I forgot which brand it was or it was a specific sneaker that skaters like to use.
But then they started selling them to babies and old people and putting them in malls everywhere. And before you knew it the core group of skaters no longer liked the product. Then it wasn't cool anymore and nobody would buy that particular product.
So in order to make more money, they expand the size of the niche that they're targeting and they start losing. This was one of the things that I discovered, the powerful aspect there is when we're trying to achieve our goals be very careful.
We don't move away from primary strategies to getting there. The next point is is that since that point I have used content marketing, better covers, better descriptions a wide distribution. And this has definitely helped me to achieve my goals.
Check out this related article: Top 3 Book Marketing Strategies
I have new goals because since this period of time I discovered that I am very enthusiastic about self-publishing. And I've discovered a lot of other writers and authors have come to me and asked how do I do this and how do I do that. And that was what helped me launch this exact self-publishing made easy now.
The whole concept here is exactly that "hey wait I can move in and pivot from there". So I set new goals and what does success? Well, success becomes a little bit different. So on YouTube, my first starting goal would be like reaching a thousand subscribers which I did within the last couple of weeks.
But then you start seeing the subscriber rate growing bigger as the audience size grows bigger. Because there are so many writers in the world who are looking for someone who can break it down simply. And many of these people are looking for somebody who's able to coach them.
Who's been where you're at and take you through it and that's the reason why I offer a Course to teach you exactly how to do formatting your books. Or how to do a content marketing Course or one-on-one help with coaching. And so these are the things that I offer in order to make this process easier for all of you.
Focus On Your Progress
So how to find success in self-publishing? I'm going to go a little bit theoretical here on these answers today. The first thing is to focus on micro successes as I was commenting on my own story focus on one thing at a time. Do not attempt to target thousands of things.
Imagine the top of Mount Everest may be your first target is reaching near base camp like if you're going up to the first base camp. And then the second base camp if we're trying to climb Mount Everest. So in this case it would be how about just writing your book?
Don't get so focused on 16 steps ahead in the process here at self-publishingmadeeasynow.com. Our goal is to keep it simple, trying to break the whole process down. So it's so easy for a child that's the reason my kids even published their own books onto Amazon.
Because it was so easy when we break it down as opposed to saying "oh do these 50 steps" no, do one step at a time. And we can work through that and focus on these micro and you need to celebrate your achievements. There are too many students that I have when you first get started.
Like okay I got this book and I've put it onto amazon but I'm not making sales. I'm like "look slow it down" you need to celebrate the fact that you even have a book on there. Because most people just simply fail to recognize all the things that they've achieved during this process.
Even if you've written a book that's a huge success. So if you haven't written a book don't focus on these other things, your first goal for this micro success needs to be getting your book written. So that's the first one.
The second one is it's the process that is more important to winning than the destination. You will burn yourself out, you need to celebrate the fact that "look I spent 30 minutes today and I wrote a thousand words for my next book" that's fantastic.
So it's the process itself, if you're able to follow the process you're going to be a lot more successful in the long run. So we're focusing on enjoying. I remember tiger woods commenting that he enjoyed the practice sessions more than the actual tournaments themselves.
Check out this related article: Amazon is Shutting Down My Ads!
If you can't make the practice fun if you can't enjoy the process you're simply going to fail before you even achieve your goals. So we need to make sure that our focus is the laser-like focus. We're looking directly at one thing at a time.
Focusing on making progress on a daily basis and then we celebrate our achievements and our successes as we go and this is so important. I know a lot of you are more interested in the details like I normally do. We're breaking it down and how to reach these things.
But this is more on the theory side and it's so important if you're going to do it. The final theoretical point I want to hit and is our third and secret point of the day which is, do not compare yourself to anyone else. You're going to compare yourself with just yourself.
Looking and seeing how far have you come since last month or the last six months? Remember most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a short three to six-month period. And underestimate what you can accomplish in three to five years.
But if you're using on a daily basis and chipping away and making progress you're growing in knowledge, watching your revenue go up. You're watching your audience size your email list. All of these things are continuing to grow, you're going to succeed.
If I've never met anyone who's actually been in this game for five to ten years who's failed holding that focus making progress on a daily basis. We're going to start seeing those sales going up. It's just simply no chance as long as you don't take any shortcuts or violate amazon's rules and such.
We're going to stay in the game, we're going to keep producing content. The more books we have the more sales we get on our older books. This is the key to winning at self-publishing and that is what is a success is but you're going to need to define success for yourself.
So my question for you today is are you on the path to success with your book? If you are, write "yes" below in the comments and if you aren't, write "no" below in the comments. And check out my other articles and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.