7 Common Mistakes of Self Publishing Authors

Are you new to indie publishing and self publishing? It's likely you're about to. Or maybe you already are making one of these seven mistakes if you're self publishing, but you don't want to look like a self published book. This video is for you. Hey there, I'm Julie the book broad from Book Launchers. We're your professional self publishing team helping you write, publish and sell a business and brand boosting nonfiction book. The best part is you keep all rights and all royalties. We're just supporting you every step of the way. Working with authors at all phases of their publishing journey means that we get to see a lot of books that have been written without the help of our team and also books that were published without proper marketing guidance. And we also get to see the money that some authors make and the money some authors don't make. From our firsthand look into so many books and author experiences, I can tell you there are so many seven common mistakes made by indie authors. So let's go through them so you don't make the same mistakes, shall we? Number one Rushing the process. Our service is a monthly membership, so some people really try to rush to save money, but it almost always ends up costing them more in the end. If you've seen my video on manuscript draft confusion, that is a perfect example. Other times people will hire out a bunch of services all at once to go fast, but then they end up with a disjointed book and worse. Some people skip key steps just trying to get to the finish line. Number 2A do it yourself cover. Sadly, saving money on a cover is one of the worst things you can do as a self published author. We're using this for my book cover. A bad cover can impact your ability to get media attention, to get speaking engagements. It can even significantly impact the performance of your Amazon ads. Forget about the fact that people are going to pick it up and go, oh, you're self published. A bad cover can impact your results in so many ways and you probably won't really know. So you really need to make sure you've got a professional cover that is going to stand out but fit in for your genre. By the way, a Do it Yourself cover almost always looks do it yourself even if you like it. So you can always test it, put it in a lineup with the top 10 books for your category and see what it looks like in that lineup. If you still love it, well, you can always start out with it and change it later like we did with Robert Workman, which you'll hear about in a future video Number three When the Author Focuses on Themselves Too Much A lot of self published books are inspired because the author has a story. So many people have told them that it needs to be shared. They've said you need to write a book. This makes it really easy to fall into the trap of thinking the book is all about you. Look at your book, especially those first few chapters. Are you talking about yourself? I did this. I saw this. I experienced this. This happened to me. If it is, you're falling into the self publishing mistake that so many authors make. The book may be about your story, but it's not for you. It's for the reader. And you can tell your story and you should, but it needs to be in a context and a manner that's going to connect with that ideal reader and help them experience the lessons they need to learn and feel the emotions they need to feel in order to garner the benefit from your hard work and your story. And here's just a little clue for you. If you're telling a story in chronological order, it's not going to be very interesting to the reader. You have to find a story Arc Number four Not Giving Enough Time for Marketing Traditionally published books are often done six months prior to the launch in order to get a ton of book reviews, line up media appearances, secure endorsements for the launch, and get distribution all squared away. Unless you're only launching on Amazon, you really need to give yourself at least six to eight weeks. You don't need six months, but you need time so you so you can do a lot of these things as a self published author. Catalogs take time to populate issues take time to resolve and book reviewers are most interested in reading your book before it launches so they can be an early or first reviewer. Building momentum leading up to a launch is often easier than it is building it post launch. Now this is a choice, but I think that too many self publishing authors finish their book, load it for distribution and they're so excited to share it they just launched. And that only works if you have a ready made hungry audience ready to buy your book right now. So give yourself some time to create success around your book. Launch number five Keeping the Book a Secret until Launch we launched a really cool book last year. I loved it. I gave away a lot of copies. It's funny, it's interesting, it has an eye catching COVID It really should have done incredibly well. The author refused to follow our suggested pre launch activities of posting on social media, sharing with this person's client base. When the book launched, nobody knew the book was coming. We landed a few media appearances for the author and one one single post was made on this author's business Instagram account about the book, but that's it. The author was upset at how few books were sold and blamed us. But here's the thing. If you choose to keep your book a secret and expect all the sales to come from media or search results, you're going to be really upset at your launch results too. Book sales success is a result of doing a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of activities over and over. There's never one single activity that gets you results and hopefully by now you're, you know it's not. Put it on Amazon and the buyers will come. So you can't keep your book a secret. You need to talk about it. Number six Signing Contracts without Reading Them My heart breaks on a weekly basis as people contact me with bad books that they can't fix or ugly contracts that tie their book up and they thought they were self publishing and they kind of were. But it's not a good situation. So check out my video on self publishing scams and I'll probably shoot an updated one this year, so make sure you subscribe to the channel. Ultimately though, read the contracts. When someone speaks with us about working with book launchers, I direct them to the terms and conditions and I walk them through the important terms and make sure they know the important details. If somebody's not doing that and you're about to sign on a dotted line with somebody, make sure you're doing it for yourself. And by the way, also check reviews for that company. Alli and I'll link to it below has a very thorough vetting service that rates self publishing services. Check out that list and see if they're rated red, yellow, or green. Green book launchers, of course, is green. Number seven Looking for Guarantees if someone makes a guarantee, ask how they fulfill that guarantee. Check out my video on book awards and make sure you're okay with how they're going to fulfill that guarantee. One organization that promotes that they've published something like 500 bestsellers guarantees your book will be a bestseller, but they do it by forcing you to buy each other's books all on the same day. Woo hoo. You're a bestseller. You made no money and you didn't sell your book to a single prospective ideal reader, but you got that Amazon flag. Way to go. So if you want a guarantee, find out what that company does to fulfill that guarantee. And make sure you're okay with it. The reality is that there is very little that can be guaranteed in this business. The only way I can guarantee you media is if I buy it. I can only guarantee you'll sell a certain number of books if I buy the excess that doesn't sell. And the only way I can guarantee bestseller is if we rig it so that you get there. It's better to focus on things you can control. A great book, a smart marketing plan well executed and doing something every single day to build your book audience. Did I miss a common mistake? Well, let's chat about it in the comments below. And when you comment the day a video is released, you'll be entered to win some sweet book launcher swag and you'll be one step closer to being one of my beloved YouTube besties, joining the ranks with some fabulous folks like Mike Herd, Andy W, Jean Hobbs, I.J. king, and Patti Blue Hayes. Big virtual hugs to you for all your likes, comments and shares. Now this has been so much fun and I would love to spend more time with you. Now that you're going to avoid the common mistakes, let's make sure you're not writing the wrong book. That video is right here. There's also this one on repurposing your book content, something you want to think about when you're writing that book. So go ahead, choose one of these fabulous videos and I'll see you there.