What I’d Do If I Had to Start Self-Publishing Over

Book a free 25-minute call. Tell me where your book is now.

If I had to start self-publishing again, I would do four things: write about one topic I love, choose a niche where many readers are searching and few books exist, study the top sellers in that niche, and keep publishing in it for years. I learned this the slow way over 230 books, so below is what went wrong the first time and what I would do instead.

What went wrong with my first books?

I started my first book in 2015, and I was not really a writer. I had written school essays and a lot of emails, and I had only become a reader a few years before. Something about reading suddenly excited me, and I wanted to get my own ideas out into the world.

My brother had put a book on the market. It did not sell many copies, but it showed me that it did not take that much work. The Kindle revolution was just starting, and I read a pile of free Kindle books on how to self-publish. Most of them were not good, but they gave me the Kindle bug.

The first obstacle was what to write about. I went through my hobbies and my day job, and I settled on goal achievement, because I had taken lots of classes and had reached several goals myself. I wrote a thousand words a day. The cover was a pain and the formatting was a real difficulty, but I got the book on the market. Then it was crickets.

So I wrote a book on habits, because I had seen other publishers do well with habits. It did better than the first, and I now knew what readers expect. My sleep book became my most successful, and it sat on the Amazon bestseller lists for months. But my books were on sleep, habits and goal achievement. I was all over the place, and I was spreading one small brand across three audiences.

Why should I choose one topic I love?

Choose one topic you can stay excited about for years, because it takes years to build a name. Years later I started reading one to two business books a month on marketing, sales and production, and the same message kept coming through podcasts and YouTube videos: pick something you love, something that is not a fad, and stay with it.

If you pick a subject only because it looks profitable, whether that is cryptocurrency, children’s books or anything else, you will not last long enough to build a brand around it.

How do I choose a profitable niche?

Pick a niche or sub-niche where many readers want books and there are not many books on that topic. Amazon shows you what people search for. Before I understood keywords, I just had a title. Once I understood them, I could put out a book aimed at one exact phrase people were searching for, and some of those books made about $1,000 a month.

KDP gives you up to seven keywords per book, and its help page says single, specific words work better than general ones (KDP keywords help). You also choose three categories (KDP Categories). My guide to KDP keywords shows how I research them, and this post on niches shows where I would look.

The books I put out in the right markets still sell today. Ads and content marketing keep adding sales to them. If you remember only one lesson from this post, it is to be in the correct market.

Why look at what the top sellers do first?

Because the top sellers have already shown what readers in that niche buy. I would only enter a market where people are making real sales with the same type of book. If you already have a book idea, you can usually adjust it to fit a profitable niche.

I would study the length of their books, their covers and their titles, and stay close to those. I did none of this at first. I was not targeting one audience, I was not watching competitors, and I did not know whether my markets were profitable.

Why is one book never enough?

Because the money comes from building out a market, not from one launch. After a book is out, I start ads and content marketing for it, and then I write the second book. I keep publishing in the same market and take a position slightly different from everyone else’s, then build my name around it. Video is one of the ways I do that.

I tested keyword targeting across 230 books, my own and books I paid others to write. I used the money coming in to hire a team that helped me produce books faster. Through that cycle I found the subject I could talk about forever, which is self-publishing, and that is why I am here today.

Authors I coach often tell me they were sure their book would sell thousands of copies, and now it is not selling. Usually one of these four things is missing: a topic they love, a profitable niche, a look at the competitors, or a plan to keep publishing. I missed the same four.

What would I do every day?

Give yourself ten years in one topic and put in time every day. I take in input from people who are excited and trying to help me reach my goals: books, podcasts, YouTube and blogs like this one. I stay in communities and talk with many of you on YouTube to stay motivated. I have had up days and down days, and I have never looked back.

If you want help finding out which of these four is missing from your book, book my free 25-minute discovery call. It is casual and nothing to worry about. We look at your book and the market it is in, and work out the next concrete steps. If you have not written a book yet, we can look at which markets may be profitable for you.

Listen to this episode on Spotify

Free 25-minute self-publishing call with Chris Baird

Tell me where your book is now. You leave the call with a clear next step for publishing it.

Book your free call

Free, 25 minutes on Zoom, no card needed.