You might be hesitant to take your first step because you're afraid that you might not see sales coming in. Let me tell you from my very own experience whether is it worth self publishing a book or not.
Today's question has three answers and the third answer is a secret you're going to want to stick around for. Because it's going to explain how we can make self-publishing worth much much more than most authors say.
So let's get into it. Today's question was, is it worth self publishing a book? Now, this is a question that many authors or writers who have written a book are wondering, "should I self publish this book?".
There could be several reasons you might be wondering about this question. The first is that you've written a book and you're thinking "maybe I could get it traditionally published".
Now, most people find that very difficult if you don't already have a following, which most writers don't have. So when you first write that book, you can try to go the traditional publishing route but you may find a lot of barriers.
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Even if you do get it accepted, you'll be making low royalties. And they probably won't be marketing it much for you. So if you don't know anything about marketing, that makes it also challenging to get your book to sell.
The other route is the idea of well, maybe I shouldn't even publish it at all. Cause if self-publishing is complicated and if traditional publishing is very difficult to get it through, then maybe you shouldn't bother.
That's another key issue that people wonder when asking the question, is it worth self publishing a book? Before we get into the answers, check out my free Self-Publishing Checklist. It will help you get started on your self-publishing journey right away.
So, is it worth self publishing a book? When I first started, I assume of course it is going to be very difficult and that it's complicated. There are all sorts of things you need to know.
I think for me also is like taxes and how do you register all this information? It will be very confusing. So, the first thing I found was, I went through some videos and I read through some books and I found that there was actually an easy path to do this.
I made a lot of mistakes but I found that it really doesn't have to be that difficult when you break it down into the simple steps. But when I came out with my book, I discovered I wasn't making that many sales.
I Have Enough Motivation
And so, was it worth it? Was it not? It was definitely worth it for me. Because I could see the feeling you get from making sales for a book that you already put the work in previously.
When they're coming through, even if we're talking the book is only making you $2 a sale on Kindle or maybe $5 on your paper versions, we feel that sensation of "wow, I did this work a month ago or years ago and I'm still making money off of it".
That alone was enough to motivate me to do it. Now, for others, they want a full-time salary coming from their books immediately. And that's just very unreasonable.
But at least for me, that was my prime motivation. Then I discover how to leverage some things to get the top. To get the books to sell a lot of copies.
Let me get into that a little bit more here. So, is it worth self publishing a book? Here are today's answers.
The first is yes, you can get a stream of revenue coming in for years on a single book. I still got comments and emails on books I put out 5 years ago. So you definitely can see and if we put out another book and another book and another book, they start to compile.
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They pile up on top of each other and you'll see that money flowing from even the earliest books in. However, there is a couple of things. The process itself isn't that hard if you just break it down into simple steps.
If you see my checklist, you'll see some of the steps that I use to succeed at getting the right book published. So, we want to make sure that we don't waste any time.
We want to make sure that we are doing it in the fastest way possible that keeps us motivated. So that we are slowly moving through the steps to get that book onto the market.
And once you get the first, you have the momentum of having done it before and understanding that this is doable. You can win this. There are several issues there.
Optimization Plays An Important Role
The third and the secret point of the day is one that many authors find. Since the average author on Amazon earns only $1,000 a year, there are some things that they aren't doing.
The secret is the books have to be optimized and massively distributed and marketed if you wish to see the sales pile up. Sometimes, even before you start writing your first book which is difficult if you've already written it.
But don't rewrite the book, just simply publish it and learn for the next book. So in other words, the topics you're choosing need to be on topics for which people are searching. They are selling a lot of copies of those books, but there are very few books available.
And that ratio is a magical ratio for which it will determine whether or not your book is going to sell. The next thing in optimization is that your title matches those keywords that we already set that are going to be what people are looking for.
Your cover is great and your description is great. When they open the book up and they look to preview the book, the table of contents matches what exactly they would be expecting for like the bestsellers in that category.
Then, also, you are going to have edited the manuscript to make sure it's what your audience is expecting. After that, we are going to be marketing the book and running ads against it.
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The final thing is we are going to put it into as many formats as possible, through as many distributors as possible. So what we're doing is we're making sure as many eyes as possible can see our book. And our book is in a category people are already trying to buy.
So, this is the key to optimizing the book and making sure we are going to see those sales. Then we do it for the next book. This is the key to bring a long term stream of revenue that's coming in to help you cover the costs.
Afterwards, you can start hiring out some of these different aspects that people would take these different tasks for you. When the money does come in, it can cover those additional costs. So, is it worth self publishing a book?
What have you found? Go and let me know below in the comments. I respond to all of the comments that come in and check out my other blogs and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.