8 Book Publishing Mistakes to Avoid in 2023

Nobody likes to make mistakes. And if you're working on a book you plan to publish in 2023, then this video on avoiding publishing mistakes is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the Book Broad. I'm the founder of a fabulous self publishing services company called Book Launchers. If you want to save time and not watch this video, just hire us. We'll save you the pain you will feel if you make one of these mistakes. Book launchers.com application Yep, it's that easy. But in case it's just not that easy for you for whatever reason or you're just really curious, let me share the eight mistakes you need to avoid this year. Mistake number one Perfectionism. I was driving home from the gym and I was listening to Dare to Lead by Brene Brown when she said this of perfectionist perfectionism. Shoot. Why are you laughing at me?

Well, just because it's funny. Because you're talking about perfectionism and then you messed up the word. You're like cute so you weren't perfect.

I'm never perfect. Perfectionism. Here we go. Mistake number one no, I was driving home from the gym listening to Dare to Lead by Brene Brown when she said this of perfectionism. If I look perfect, live perfect, work perfect, I can avoid or minimize criticism and blame. All perfectionism is is the 20 ton shield we carry around, hoping it'll keep us from being hurt, while in truth it keeps us from being seen. I pulled over, hit rewind, listened to it again, and wrote it down. Because we know the pursuit of perfection is an impossible journey, and we can see that some authors do it out of fear of judgment or fear of failure or one of the other beloved monsters we've talked about so many times here at Book Launchers tv. Every little detail has to be just right before they will authorize the book to move to the next stage. This means the book takes two or three, sometimes even four times as long as it should. The reality is that your book is never going to be perfect and the more you mess with it, the more opportunities you have to introduce errors. It is also expensive, emotional and inefficient to send a book back and forth to an editor for another round or to ask for many tiny changes to an already great looking cover design. It's really important to know when you're actually improving the work or you're just scared to move it forward. Mistake number two not taking the time to make your book great. Conversely, we have people who rush so fast they don't take the time a Book needs to be great and fully transparent here. We've been guilty of helping an author through the process as fast as possible. You pay us monthly and so sometimes people come in with a fixed budget, so we rush to get the book done inside of their budget. And this is a mistake. And, and ultimately that's a mistake just as much as listening to someone who insists their book should skip a developmental edit or some other important quality control step. As a result, we have had the occasional book come out that a third party says that just wasn't up to your book launcher standards. Ugh. I mean, that's embarrassing for us. So I can imagine how it feels as an author of a book that people don't think is as good as it should be in the name of giving someone the service we wanted. We are always learning lessons and the lesson we continue to crystallize in different ways is that we have a process that really works as long as we hold ourselves and our authors to it. But it's not just our authors that come in and say, my book is written and it's really good. My beta readers all said so and I think it just needs a quick copy. Edit a cover and we can publish. Many people outside of our world think that writing was the hard part and now it's just going to take a couple of months to publish. And well, you can publish it that quickly if you don't care about getting something that's great into the market. You only care about speed because you can rush an edit, slap a cover on it, and quickly put it through software that will give you a layout and boom. It will look like you did that, but you'll have a book. I did a big long training on the process of self publishing in October 2022. I'll share that replay with you at the end of the video. And to make sure you don't ever miss another one of those again, make sure you're getting our bi weekly launch letter. You can go to book launchers.com 7Steps and you'll get signed up for our newsletter because we do those free trainings every month, except for July and August to help our community. Plus it also gives us a great chance to spend some time with our YouTube besties. Fabulous folks like Bill Miller, Efren Delgado, Sean Hayes, Antonio Dos Santos, the Word Weaver, and Easy Graphics. So join in. Go ahead to booklaunchers.com seven steps all right, mistake number three, believing you don't make money from selling books. Books make money. If you sell 1,000 books in a month, you're likely enjoying a $3,000 to $5,000 paycheck, depending on the format and price of the book when sold. That's nothing to sneeze at. Of course, most books don't sell 1,000 books a month. It's solid if you're selling 100 to 250 books a month more than a few months post launch, but still, that's not no money. And I'm a big believer that if you set your target low, you'll achieve it. So if your target is I won't make money selling books, that's more than likely to be true. Now, sometimes that's totally fine because you've set up a free plus shipping funnel and you're not planning to make money from the book. You're making money from the upsells that after the book is purchased, sometimes you're going to give the book away for free to build relationships with people because those relationships are far more important to you than a few dollars made per book. Sometimes you'll use your book as currency and use it to get value in exchange for the book, not cash in hand. There are plenty of ways books can make you money directly and indirectly, but set your sights on how you want to use your book to make money versus telling yourself books don't make money. Mistake 4 believing you are going to retire from your book sale revenue. On the other side of that, it's pretty darn rare that one book alone will generate anywhere near the revenue you will need to retire or kick back for the rest of your life. It's rare a couple of books will even do that. There's a reason the event that many authors attend is called 20 books to 50k. It's the magical number that many authors have found is required to hit 50k in annual revenue. 20 books. Now that's a largely fiction audience. But still, use your book as the magical tool it is to build your ecosystem, grow your audience. Sell services and products, teach what you write about, sell other people's services and products, offer your book in other formats, et cetera, et cetera. Now that ecosystem can be a great living and you don't need 20 books to build that. Mistake 5 Expecting the process to go smoothly Sometimes setbacks are setups. It's not always about moving horizontally, it's about moving vertically. Jenna Coachella said that she's a New Zealand actor. 2022 was my year of hard lessons. Facing everything from my first litigation company, financial challenges, a service restructure, and an immigration attorney that messed up my visa. It was a year, but it forced me to slow down, take a step back and really figure out what is important. The changes we made as a company were vital to the success and future of the company. I'm actually kind of excited about it and well, as for my immigration attorney, I fired that one and wished I'd made the change two years before. Sometimes it takes setbacks for me to upgrade, update and up level and ultimately I believe they were all setups, not setbacks. By the end of the year, I felt like I was mentally the strongest I've ever been in my life. The clarity I gained was invaluable in 2023. Better look the heck out because I'm ready for it. As an author, you're going to hit bumps and and you're going to get bruised. Whether it's in the editing process, the beta, reader feedback, when you choose a title or when you try to publish, something's going to kick back and that might even be when the reviews start coming in. Expect that there will be things you don't anticipate and that it's an opportunity, not an obstacle. And let me know where that setback actually turns into a setup Mistake six Playing Bestseller games. You're not still trying to game the system to get Amazon bestseller status, are you? Amazon is getting more and more sophisticated and like it or not, Amazon will not reward you for that one time hit you get as a best seller. And if you get your friends and family to buy your book and they are not the kind of people who would normally buy your kind of book. Sure you might hit that fourth level tier for a bestseller, but you've only taught Amazon to show your book to the wrong kind of reader. And months later when nobody Amazon shows your book to converts, Amazon will stop showing your book to anyone. Don't play the game. Plan a great launch plan, Ebook sales plan, great promotions. Tell your audience about your book over and over. Have fun with your book promotions and keep talking about your book. Create consistent conversations. And even if you never get that Amazon orange bestseller flag, enjoy the longevity and momentum that comes with consistently selling books to your ideal reader. Number seven Believing that it will be easy to get reviews. I know most of us know it's hard to get reviews, but every couple of weeks I get an email or talk with someone that says I'm not worried about getting reviews. I have a ton of people who will write reviews. They've already told me I never want to be the bubble burster because I want to encourage and support people. And yet I also feel like I should warn people how hard it is to get reviews. Hitting 100 reviews is a major milestone. Hitting 1000 welt? Wow, that's big. And when I see books with 10,000 plus reviews, I'm in awe. The reality is that you can expect about 25% of the people who say they will write a review to actually do it. And of those you can expect, probably 10 to 20% of them will have their review removed, blocked, or otherwise not allowed by Amazon. So if you have 100 people saying they will write a review, you can expect 25 will actually do it. And of those, at least two will be blocked, removed, or otherwise not allowed by Amazon. Maybe even more. If you're asking people Amazon is able to determine or guess our friends or.

Family I am the great bubble burster. How am I supposed to stab it when you're throwing it at me for 50 miles? I am the great bubble burster.

Oh, this one.

You don't just throw it like a. I am the great bubble master.

Jesus. Mistake 8 Not doing an Audiobook I have never said that not doing an audiobook is a mistake before, and for a select kind of book like a highly technical or heavy data book, it wouldn't be a mistake to skip it. But for the majority of nonfiction books These days, in 2023 and beyond, I think it's a mistake. Audiobooks are still the fastest growing segment of books. Spotify made a big play for audiobooks in 2022. People are on the move and they want to listen to their content. We are seeing audiobooks outselling ebooks by two times for many of our authors. If you're targeting an entrepreneurial audience, you absolutely must have an audiobook. Or you're excluding a big chunk of your audience because they aren't sitting down to read, but they are are listening. Of course, there are plenty of other mistakes you should avoid this year, but if you avoid these eight, you'll be setting yourself up for a solid year of success and beyond. But I'm curious, what other major mistakes do you think should be avoided when publishing in 2023? Let's chat about it in the comments below. And when you comment the day a video is released, you get entered to win our contest for some of our fabulous book launcher swag. Now here's the video I promised on the Deep Dive replay about the self publishing process. And this is a great video on making money from your books. Both are guaranteed good time, so click on over. I've got the coffee on and I can't wait to see you there.