Chris A. Baird | March 15, 2021
Self Publishing Dos And Dont 039 S

You must know what you are going to do first if want to go the self-publishing route. Learn about the self publishing dos and dont's so that you can avoid the mistakes that most self-publishers are making.

My Biggest Regret

Today's topic has three points. And you're going to want to stick around because the third point is going to tell you the absolute most important "Do" that you need to start doing if you aren't already.

Let's get into it. The topic for today is, self publishing dos and dont's? For many of you, you're starting as an author, you've got your very first manuscript written or you're working on it at this point.

That brings in a lot of questions about which things you ought to do and which things you should definitely not do? Trying to understand, these strategies can get very confusing. As we think through it, confusion results in us doing absolutely nothing.

And not self-publishing the book that we've spent so much time trying to put together in the first place. That is the one thing we do not want to do, to get stuck and overwhelm. This is what we're going to hit in today's article.

But before we get into the answers, check out my absolutely free Self-Publishing Checklist. It will help you get started with self-publishing right away.

Let's get into it, my personal biggest "Dont's" that I did and it's a little bit confusing. What are the things that I did that I regret doing? One of them was posting my books in random Facebook groups.

Check out this related article: This One Mistake Will Cost You $1000s!

This is a very common thing for authors to think that if you just post it enough on social media, that somehow will result in sales. It really will not, unless those groups are already interested in your book.

But this idea of just posting links to your book, I don't think I got very many sales at all. Probably no sales using this particular tactic. Number two, I spent way too much time refreshing daily sales. Looking at your sales dashboard, you get so excited seeing those sales.

But it can become obsessive-compulsive where you're just going in there and continually clicking refresh. I highly recommend you not fall into this trap. Check one time a day and that's it.

If you find yourself on any of your things refreshing over and over to find something whether it's your ads or anything else, this is a bad idea. Do it just once a day, otherwise, you'll be wasting a lot of time. The next was chatting with other authors and pushing my books to them.

Chatting can be good if you're with authors who are discussing strategy. In general, a lot of time is spent by authors instead of producing books and getting their books optimized and selling. It's spent talking with other authors and you feel that you're doing something.

Optimize Your Book

This doing doesn't count because usually it is not affecting your bottom line and that is something we really ought to avoid. Also, other authors are probably not interested in buying your books. I know that's hard for a lot of authors to realize.

But pushing your books to other authors simply is not an effective strategy. Besides, running ads without knowing whether they are losing money or making a profit is a huge mistake. I made this one as well which was putting my ads out there.

Putting a high level of spending and a high bid price on them. Then seeing "Wow! Look at all the sales that I'm making". Of course, when I did the math, I realized suddenly I'm losing money on all of these ads.

That was a mistake I only needed to make for 1 or 2 months. Until I made the discovery that you need to track your ads. That was another one, the thing is that I learned from these mistakes and changed what I was doing to move on and to improve.

Now, I am most definitely still making mistakes every day. I wake up and wonder what mistakes am I making? We listen to Youtube channels related to self-publishing and we watch other Youtube channels.

We read books and we take courses to make sure that we are not making those mistakes. Sometimes just getting a guide, I offer Coaching help if people would like to have that service. Just check out below in the description of my every video if that would be of help to you.

Check out this related article: Worried Companies Will Sue You For Your Book?

Or just go through it alone and see if you can figure it out. If you watch these videos you'll get quite a bit of tips regarding the mistakes that are commonly made. So, self publishing dos and dont's?

The first point is for the dos you should optimize your book. Making sure the keywords you're using are good and that the lengths of the book are good. The formatting is correct, it's in Multiple.

We're pushing it across different platforms. In terms of distribution that our end-user experience, it is going to be positive with a great description and the title. All of that comes together as a package drawing a reader's end.

Then the second thing you should do is create new books. You should Always Be Creating (ABC). I remember somebody I respect, to make that comment before "always be creating brand new books" and putting them on the market because this is the most effective way.

Take It Easy

The biggest earners on Amazon have 40 books or more each. If you're only on your first book, we need to just keep on writing and putting more books out onto the market. That's a very powerful way to increase the money that's coming in.

The final one is running ads against your book. Many authors think that just putting a book out there will sell itself is a mistake. It will sell some copies but you will drastically increase your sales by running Amazon Ads against those books.

For the "Dont's", waste time chatting with other authors. The thing is making sure that if you're discussing a strategy, that's fine. Just general chitchat about weather and stuff is not going to move the needle on your sales.

In terms of getting new books written, do not do that. The next is social media marketing. Most social media marketing is completely worthless.

I remember putting it out on Twitter. Tweeting out my books multiple times a day and I would see people clicking on it. In reality, it was just the robots from Twitter clicking and the people don't care.

This isn't what causes a person to buy a book. They go onto Amazon, they look for it. Or you're doing content marketing to draw readers who are in your target market.

You're hanging out where those readers are making a relationship. Then mentioning the books that you have, that maybe they would also like to read. That's another little trick.

Check out this related article: Are Self Published Books Copyrighted?

And the other thing is you should stop doing it. Just in case learning, all of your learning should be just in time we're learning the skills that we need as we need them and not learning them years in advance. Like what about this? What about that? That's a huge one.

The secret answer for the day and the most important "Do" is to take one step at a time. Do not move on until you understand and have done the first step. For me, I would say that is getting your book into KDP, that's the most important first step.

We should not be moving on to running ads or anything else. We just want to get this very first step complete. Can you tell me a little bit what is your biggest don't? That's the one I care most about.

What is the biggest don't that you found? Write it down below in the comments, that will really help me know if I'm reaching you on some of these subjects.

Maybe you can teach me something on here. Check out my other articles and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.

{"email":"Email address invalid","url":"Website address invalid","required":"Required field missing"}