So you’ve finally published your first book. You’ve spent a long time contemplating whether or not you wanted to use your gift of story-telling and become a writer, coming up with what you felt was a good idea, diagraming plot outlines, writing your rough draft, going back and revising five or six (or even fifteen) times, recruiting your beta readers, hiring an editor, then going back and revising yet again, hiring a cover artist, braving the immense learning curve of grasping the technological finesse required to format your manuscript for e-publishing and paperback after researching dozens of instructional articles and videos, and enduring any other frustration not mentioned. But you’ve made it. Several months have passed. Hell, it may very well have been several years. But you’ve somehow managed to set fear and sanity aside, stare Frustration and her sister Depression in the eyes and barge your way through their monstrous hides until you trudge and crawl your way to that glorious moment you’ve always dreamed about: that moment when your first novel goes live on Amazon, or your site(s) of choice, and becomes available to the general public for purchase. It’s a precious moment. One to take pride in. You can light up that Cuban or open that bottle of Dom Perignon and celebrate the moment. You’ve certainly earned it if you made it this far, and you deserve to enjoy it. You are now officially a published author.
But as much of an accomplishment as this is, the cold truth will eventually reveal itself before your delusions of grandeur become too grand: all that work you put in to get this far, all the fretting, doubting, hair pulling, crying in the fetal position on the bathroom floor… everything you went through to get to this precious, triumphant moment… is only the beginning. Just the tip of the iceberg, as the title states. So you better strap in and take a few large gulps of Pepto. ‘Cause buddy, every trial that you endured to get to this wonderful moment is a smooth, silky chocolate bar compared to what comes after!
I better rephrase. It’s only the beginning if you want to become a successful writer, as in getting your newly published book enough exposure so that your book sells, maybe even gather a significantly large fan-base. I assume that’s what you want. I can’t imagine anyone going through the turmoil of self-publishing a book just so they can brag that they’ve done so. I assume that if you’ve gone through what you have to publish your book, it’s because you want to share your story with others… as many others as you can. Because it’s your story. Period.
So if you want to get your newly published story out there, you’re going to need to go back to that cold truth I was talking about. The truth that I myself (and I assume most self-published authors) have had to face:
Before publishing, you were merely a writer. All you had to worry about was taking the time out of your life to complete your story, and get that manuscript ready for publication.
After publishing, you are now both a writer AND a marketer. And you have to take a hell of a lot more time out of your life to do both.
Here’s a bit of a first-hand experience. It took me quite a few years to write the first three books of my series, The Keepers of White. I worked as an English teacher, and spent many after-work hours grading homework, quizzes, and most time-consuming – essays. Because of this, I really only had time to write during my summer breaks. I know many successful indie authors who dared to quit their jobs and write full time, having put forth all of their time and energy into their writing career and reaping great benefits from doing so, but my wife works as a realtor, so her income is 100% commission, which is unpredictable. Oh, and we have five kids. So I’m not brave enough to leave my daytime job yet. Call me a chicken-shit all you want, but as long as I’ve got kids to feed, I need the steady paycheck, as dismal as it may be. I’m certain many of you aspiring authors are on the same boat.
But you know, I finally published the first novel of my series in January 2017, and it was glorious. I told everyone I knew. Got some to download. Got a lot of positive feedback. Right now I have over 25 reviews, most of which are 5-stars and are from people I don’t know. I’m confident it’s a story of good quality. It’s got a professional cover, a well thought-out synopsis, the writing is skilled (not bragging: I’ve an English degree and I know what I can do and what I can’t do: I can’t properly fix a hole in the wall or an air conditioning unit, can’t change the spark plugs in my car, but I can write), and it’s been proofread and edited to point where it’s free of errors. It’s even got a couple of awards. But with all that, the fact remains that, if I get over $10.00 at the end of the month from Amazon, it’s a good month. Why? Something else I’ve no background in: marketing. Now I’ve tried several tactics (I won’t go into what I’ve tried specifically because that is a different topic). And much of what I did would take hours every day. Hours I didn’t really have. Now, I’m not only a school teacher, but I also run a martial arts dojo. That is a big part of my life, and I love what I do, but like everything else, it takes up a lot of time. Even more frustrating was, after all those precious hours and dollars I spent to promote my book, it didn’t really do much.
Many of you may also not have much experience in marketing. After all, you’re writers, not marketers. Well, guess what? If you self-publish your book, you’re both of those things whether you want to be or not. And if you’ve never done this before, there’s a lot of trial and error that could come at the beginning. And even if you have some inside info on what to do and what not to do in order to properly market your book, there’s still all that extra time and money you need to put forth if you want your plan to work. There are many other marketing options out there, many I myself have yet to try, and I plan on doing so (afterwards I will probably write a blog going over what worked for me and what didn’t work). But regardless, it will take time and money.
Did I mention that marketing your book properly will take time and money? Yes, I can see my own redundancy in this article. It’s intentional, because you need that fact drilled into your skull if you want to succeed, and you’ll need to accept that. Even if you become fortunate enough to land a contract with a reputable publishing company, they’re not going to do all the marketing leg-work for you. Might as well face it, aspiring authors, when your status changes from “aspiring” to “published,” your title will also change from “author” to “author/marketer.”
I hope I haven’t left any of you discouraged. If I have then this business is probably not for you, because you’re going to need thick skin to get through this. And if my words alone have left your heart in despair, that’s not a good sign. Regardless of my blunt tone, there is always a way to succeed. Your best tool to do so is nothing other than sheer tenacity. The most successful authors (the most successful ANYONE for that matter) became successful because they didn’t give up after the dozens and dozens (some hundreds) of failures they faced. Tenacity is the common denominator of all successful people. So pound it into your personality right away. I have a friend, a fellow indie author (we’ve never met, but he’s on one of my author teams and we chat almost daily via Messenger and even on the phone) who claims that the writing in my books is far better than that in his own. I won’t say I agree with this statement because we all have our own styles, but I have a background in English and writing while he does not, so let’s just say for the purpose of this example that he’s right. Even so, guess what? He’s had more success with selling his books than I have. This guy is a prior Marine, and I believe it because he’s one of the most tenacious, balls-to-the-wall, buggers I’ve ever known. He tweets about his book every half hour, is all over the place on social media for that matter, has changed his cover three times, has set up a book signing at his local library, he’s even called his local radio station when he was running a promotion. My friend also has a full time job, but on his free time he promotes his work with both thrusters in overdrive. Even if he’s right, even if his writing is not at the same quality as mine, he deserves every sale he’s had and more because of the amount of time he puts into getting exposure for his book. I can’t say enough how much I admire his perseverance.
I could learn a lot from my friend. For me, and possibly for many of you, time can be difficult to acquire. So, something else I’ve had to learn on my own, is that it is extremely imperative that you create a schedule. Seriously. Write a weekly, daily, even hourly schedule down. Something tangible that you can hold and look at every day. Set aside an hour, a half-hour, hell, set aside fifteen freaking minutes if that’s all you can afford. But make a physical schedule that you can view every day in which you’ve set aside at least some time for marketing/promoting your book. Oh yeah, you also have to make sure you FOLLOW THAT SCHEDULE. Whatever you do, don’t allow yourself to go astray from it. It’s too easy to do so, so you’ll have to be disciplined! And set aside some time for writing as well. If you want to get fans, you need to take time to create new stories. So in the midst of this crazy race to get yourself noticed among the hundreds of thousands of other indie authors out there trying to make a name for themselves, don’t forget to keep writing. If you’re like me, and have two jobs and a bunch of kids, or some other similar time-consuming phenomenon going on in your life that prevents you from becoming an overnight sensation, it may take years before you see any growth, but don’t let that be a factor. After all, slow and steady…
So, it’s a lengthy article. But if you look back, you’ll see that I placed in bold SIX FACTORS required to become a successful writer/marketer:
- Time
- Money
- A Structured Schedule
- New Published Content (from time to time)
- Tenacity
- Discipline
The last two are in bold as, in my opinion, they’re the most important. If you don’t have all of these factors (who the hell has time and money anyway?), at least have tenacity and discipline, and the rest will come.
Those of you who have followed me for a while may have noticed that this is my first blog post in quite a few months. The fact that I now have two full-time jobs instead of one has something to do with that. I’m only able to get this post written because the school where I teach is on Spring Break. But my current situation is kind of why I wanted to cover this topic today. We all have a lot going on in our lives, things that prevent us from putting forth the amount of time, money, and energy that we’d like to towards the goals we want to accomplish. But that doesn’t mean we have to stop completely. If we put what we can towards it, when we can, we may get further than we might think.
I welcome any questions or comments!
