Our readers play a significant role in every book we publish because they're one of the reasons why we write it but why do you hate your readers? Let me tell you the one reason that you shouldn't hate and be annoyed by your readers.
Today's topic has three points and you're going to want to stick around. Because the third point is a secret as to the top thing you're doing that shows you hate your readers. So the topic we're discussing today is a little bit of a funny one but it's why do you hate your readers?
So you're looking to get your books out and selling and start building an audience. But the problem is some of the activities you're doing make it appear as if you almost hate your readers. Therefore you're going to want to stick around.
Because I'm going to tell you exactly what you're doing and how you need to fix it. So let's get into it. Grab a copy of my Self-Publishing Secrets Checklist.
To make sure that you are not skipping any of the steps necessary to win at the self-publishing game. And there are plenty of secrets in there that you will definitely want to check out. So let's get into it.
From my own story when I first got started I managed to get my books into the kindle and the paperback versions of the books. And the thing was is I thought that would be good enough for my readers, right?
I mean after all, if they want to read my book well they can get it in these versions well not exactly. The thing is that some readers prefer only to read hardback books. Like it's a huge preference when they think of their bookshelf.
They like hardback hardcover books and those people are not actually looking to buy the paperback version or even an ebook version. Especially for the ebook version that can be a problem for many people.
And the other thing is on the audiobook front it's that well look if they want to read the book well then just get the book. You don't need to have an audiobook version. That would take a lot of time on that.
I could be used to putting out another book on the market as opposed to working around on the audiobook version. But the thing is I ended up moving over to these book formats and saw my sales start to increase drastically.
Specifically, the audiobooks became the most profitable of all of my formats. That I had my books in for a period of time mostly due to the bounty system that amazon or ACX previously had with regards to finding new readers.
But I would just say that you know when I didn't have the audiobooks think of all of the money that I was passing up in a sense. It's almost like I hated my readers in the sense that I don't care what you people want to read or how you want to read it.
I'm not listening to anything you have to say. I've decided it's going to be paperback and it's going to be the Kindle ebook version and that's it. In fact, some people even on my channel here have commented that they thought "well I have short stories so maybe I should just put them out in Kindle".
And the answer is yes if they're less than 25 pages otherwise no those things need to go out as paperback books as well. Even if you aren't going to do that you can bundle those together and then we can sell it as a collection of your short stories.
And that also will be a Kindle book and it will be a bundle paperback book. So you'll have your paperback book, your kindle book and then we also will produce this into our audiobook and we can continue on from there.
I saw even on ACX some of the audiobooks on there can be very short like only 5-10 minutes. Now if we are going for the 25-page book or pamphlet or whatever you want to call it route which will give you the ability to have a kindle version. You can have a paperback, not a hardback version.
But you can't have a 20-minute audiobook out there that also sells. So that's something I found very surprising but when we choose not to have it in the formats that our readers want to read. It's almost like we hate them so much like "look I don't want to listen to anything you have to say".
Best Way To Make Sales
And "I'm not going to change what I'm doing because I'm just this way, I'm a paperback and ebook person". But that makes no sense whatsoever so I started producing my books and audiobooks and we saw some change there, I suppose.
So listening to what my audience is telling me that's a key way of figuring out the best way to make sales. It's a relationship that you have and you're building with your readers. So your readers are telling you in one way or another what they like you.
Look at your competitors and see what formats are they in, how are they doing in the rankings. Based upon the different types of books that they also have on the market. And then that gives us a baseline to figure out that what should you be doing as well.
We're listening very closely to what is going on and this is the way that we show a little bit of love for our readers. As opposed to hate for our readers making their life difficult. Like for example if you were to put your books in microprint fonts they couldn't even read the books.
It would be so difficult or if there's lots of grammatical mistakes in your books. Then we're going to want to fix those issues to ensure that we're not going to have that problem when it comes to it. And these are ways that we show a little bit of love for our readers.
But let's get specifically into it why do you hate your readers? So the first thing is you don't put your books in the formats they want to buy and that was something that I was just hitting upon right there?
Now Amazon is coming out with hardback hardcover options right. I have previously been using Lulu I was getting some hatred from people thinking I was selling or having them as a sponsor. They're not a sponsor it's just that I've seen the sales go up.
Lately on Lulu for myself on the hardback books that I put on Lulu. But I'll have to consider if maybe it is worth my time to move over to Amazon? Since I don't think they are going to charge to put the hardback books through Amazon.
And this will probably undercut Lulu as I've advised in the past. But we will just have to see like everything we're doing experiments but we're trying to show love towards our readers. And we're going to give it to them by giving it in the formats that they wish to read the books.
This also would include of course the fonts and things making it easy for them. I remember my very first Kindle book where if you put it into the dark mode you suddenly couldn't read the text. Because they'd hardcoded the text black or dark blue I think it was at the time.
And so when you would open the book up you would start going through those pages. Only to discover that you suddenly couldn't read it at all. They had hard-coded it and the people who had done it were somebody on Fiverr or something like that that I'd hired at the time.
That was when I realized I need to do this formatting myself or train people to use the tools like Jutoh. Which you can find my affiliate link below in the description of all of my YouTube videos which I recommend to get the formatting right the very first time.
So that's another one of those little tricks you're not going to want to ignore. Because we want to show some love for our readers and not show them how much we hate them which we don't. We love our readers, right don't we?
Check out this related article: What Kind of Self Publisher Are You?
Anyway, number two you aren't publishing your books until everything is perfect. This is another way to show you hate your readers after all we don't want to put garbage on the market. So let's not put it on the market at all and you think "well I will eventually put it on the market".
Well yes eventually you know, later. You know, do everything later but that the reality is is that and I've said this before. This is an important point somebody was asking a little bit about this one of my viewers was asking about this.
And it is that we're going for three to five stars. Now some people might be thinking four and five stars are ideal. But look if you put something as a three-star it means you're delivering on the value but there are some issues.
So we're going to fix those things and we can continue making sales with three stars. That's just fine if we're going down to one and two stars well then we need to fix it. This isn't about perfectionism, it's to say the quality is too low.
Have More Self-confidence
Like if I had an app I created and put on the app store if somebody's downloading giving it one star. Because it just doesn't work like it has errors and bugs every single time. I want to use it well that should be a clear message to me that we need to go back and redo the app.
But if it's a three to four-star well now it may not be something that's their absolute favorite. But at least is delivering the value that they were requesting, does that make sense? So what we're trying to do is getting it in that range and after you've put the book out there.
The exciting part of all of this is that you can fix the book. It's not permanently frozen forever out there. Unlike if you went with like say a vanity publisher or maybe you went with a standard traditional publisher then it's sort of frozen.
They're not going to waste time going back and redoing the book. And they're not going to give you the ability you have to buy back the rights to your own books. It's crazy the nonsense that people go through.
In fact, even recently somebody had gone with one of the vanity publishers that I had mentioned previously that a lot of people are asking about. They were so dissatisfied with this vanity publisher. They wanted to somehow enter into a class action lawsuit because they had gone through them.
And then they couldn't even get the rights to their book and they weren't giving them any money for the sales. And you know I know in the small print you know you can't even read it. The parts like we reserve the right to keep all the money or something.
I don't know how these things work, it's my eyes can't even read the print when it's so small inside some of these companies you know. So as you're producing the book they're upselling and upselling. Making all sorts of money off of you and then at the end of it, you're not making any sales.
And they're not allowing you to get access to your book and they control the dashboard. So you lose a lot of control and so that can seriously be a problem. But I would suggest that you get your book onto the market and go from there.
The third and our secret point of the day of why do you hate your readers is because deep down you don't believe in yourself and your books. That is to say, you realize for yourself that you're thinking "I'm not really a writer", "I'm not really an author", "I don't really know anything about all of this".
So I'm just putting it out there and I'm not sure if they'll like it or not like. This lack of confidence in what you're putting on the market creates a little bit of doubt in our readers. It ultimately means they're not going to end up reading the book at all.
This is a way we show hatred towards our readers, right? If you want to show love towards your readers you should realize look everything's not going to be perfect. We're going to have issues but we're going to fix these things as we go and we're going to get better.
But you really can't get better when it comes to writing, publishing, and marketing these very same books if you aren't even doing these steps. And so we need to set very low expectations upon what's going to happen. And as we get things out there we will improve over time.
And our readers are going to let us know just like many of you viewers. Let me know if there are any issues with some of the articles of the advice that I'm giving. I love the back and forth feedbacks that we're able to learn and grow together and that's the biggest and most important point.
We begin to have a little confidence in ourselves. Have confidence in the things that we are creating for the world to read, explore and enjoy. And that shows love towards our readers a little towards ourselves and also towards our readers.
Because you need to ask yourself what do your readers want to do? What exactly do they want you to do? They want you to produce books they love, your books once you get them out there and start marketing and building up your audience.
They want you to produce more books this is how we show love towards our readers and quit hating them. So my question for you today is do you do things that annoy or hate show hatred towards your current or future readers?
If you do let me know some of the things that you've done that really get under the skin of your readers. And if you don't then write "No" down below in the comments because I need to know where you're coming from. Check out my other articles and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.