Do you know how many times I hear that statement? (I wish I’d known that before I published my first book… OR just oops… I messed that up…)
I’d guess almost all 83 speakers in the Women in Publishing Summit last year said something along those lines during our interviews.
One of the disservices about the growth of self-publishing (there are many FABULOUS things about self-publishing!) is that it has given everyone the belief that self-publishing is easy and anyone can do it. Well, anyone CAN do it. The easy part is misleading.
If you’re self-publishing, you still want to have a good book. A book worth buying. A book that people will stop scrolling through the list and click on and then add to their cart. Right? Otherwise, what’s the point?
I am on vacation this week and I’ve been reading a LOT. Is there anything better than lounging around with a good book? Staying up til 1 or 2 am because I can’t put the book down! This is a luxury I can’t afford when I can’t sleep in the next day.
But now that I’m an experienced publisher, I find it difficult to read a book in peace anymore. Why? Because I study the books. I look at the cover. I look at the layout. I read the copyright page and other front matter carefully.
I keep a tally in my head of the mistakes I find. Not on purpose. This is like a crazy, publisher OCD thing. So far, I’ve found 3 misspelled words in this book. Not a huge deal, but they’ve popped out to me. They aren’t major mistakes, just words that are missing the last letter which changes the meaning. Like “spin” instead of “spine.” I probably never would have noticed it before and now I can’t stop seeing them.
It reassures me that even books published by Random House and are multiple time over New York Times best-seller books have mistakes. (It’s a darn good thriller, so I don’t really care about the mistakes, but it makes me feel better that even the big timers make mistakes!)
A mistake here and there is okay and to be expected. No matter how many times you edit the book. And if the Big 5 still make mistakes… wouldn’t you guess that first-time authors will probably make mistakes?
I can teach you how to NOT make these mistakes with my Self-Publishing Boot Camp.
Some mistakes are forgiveable, like a typo here and there. Others are not and will lead to bad reviews, low sales, and rejection from libraries, bookstores, reviewers, and more.
What is NOT okay though is a book that is not properly formatted. They scream, amateur, self-published when you open a book and the formatting is terrible.
It’s NOT okay to not have a properly converted ebook that is a hot mess when you open it. Even if KDP “converts” your book to mobi format, it doesn’t format it for you. So all you have is a hot mess kindle version.
It’s NOT okay when you publish a book in the wrong categories and have no clue about the keywords you should use that will get you found in the best places. This is a disservice to you and the people looking for your book.
It is NOT okay if you don’t know how to publish your book and you realize on launch day that your book might not actually show up on Amazon for another 72 hours.
It is NOT okay if your cover is TERRIBLE. There are just too many good cover designers out there that are reasonably priced that can make such a big difference. Let me give you an example of a book we’re publishing next week.
When we received the book, it had cover A. We redid it to cover B. (Sadly, Kim actually had a “cover designer” do this for her – which is another reason you need to know what is good/bad/normal/not normal so that you know when someone is not doing what you need.)
I could go on and on and on about mistakes that can really impact the launch and sales of your book.
Yes, you CAN figure out everything there is to know about self-publishing a book. I did it. And then I had to have my cover redone, the interior fixed, another proofread done, and hours of time and money spent improving the first time around.
What if you could save all the time, energy, frustrations, and efforts when you can spend 8 hours with me and do it really well on the FIRST try?
I’m offering a self-publishing Boot camp Aug 5-7th and the 12th.
In this 8 hours together, I’m going to teach you everything you need to know about Self-Publishing – to include what’s in a good cover, what you need to know about interior layout and how to find the right people to provide it, or some DIY resources you can use. We’ll cover places to publish, sales page copy, keywords and categories.
You will come away from that training with all the tools you need to publish a really amazing book.
Each participant will get 2 1:1 breakout sessions with me so that I can dig into your project individually.
You do not need to have completed your book (or even started it yet!) to benefit from this course. You can have even already published once and realized you need more training.
This is NOT a launch and marketing program, although we will cover some basic launch tactics. The marketing bootcamp will come later.
There are limited seats available, so don’t wait!
It’s always more fun with a friend! Get a buddy to join you and I’ll give you a 10% payback.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out!
