Indie Publishing: The Start-up Business & Diving into Book Two

Finally, I’ve got my act in order after several months of banging my head against a brick wall and chasing my tail. I’m aware that my lack of organisation has affected how much time I’ve spent interacting with my fellow bloggers, so my apologies for this. My two excuses, if allowed, are post-viral exhaustion combined with the nightmare of book-marketing by the trial and error method.

Waterfall
Tranquillity and Equillibrium

I don’t want to bore you with discussing my health in detail, other than to say that a tablespoonful of liquid magnesium malate and glycinate a day seems to have done the trick re energy, focus, and calm.

Having achieved a comparative state of equilibrium, I’ve spent the last week establishing a regime, in which the time spent on preparing Novel No. 2 outweighs the time spent marketing Novel No. 1. As a result, I’m already a quarter of the way through editing and formatting my children’s crossover fantasy novel, Noah Padgett and the Dog-people.

Note that I’ve said editing and formatting, as this time round I know enough about the technicalities of preparing the Kindle and Create Space versions, to enable me to do both tasks as I go along. I’m working primarily on the paperback version at the moment, while integrating as many as the Kindle features into it as I can using the styles menu on MS Word. More about this in the future, in a separate post.

For those of you who’ve indie published your first book, or are about to do so, you might like to hear what I’ve learned during the three months following publication of Desiccation

  • Marketing on Twitter is possibly a complete waste of time unless you’re already famous.
  • People are overwhelmed by stuff to read and if you don’t grab them in two seconds, you’ve lost them.
  • There are loads of people out there writing how-to books about publishing and marketing. One tip. Check these so-called experts’ own book ratings/sales statistics/reviews before buying.
  • The majority of affordable marketing packages for indie authors are aimed at the US market rather the UK one.
  • As an unknown indie author, it’s much harder to persuade US readers to buy UK novels, than the other way round (except for crime novels/thrillers).
  • English slang and spellings can confuse US readers.
  • When people review your books on Amazon’s UK site, the reviews don’t show up on the US site. But when people review your books on Amazon’s US site, the reviews do show up on the UK site.
  • If you don’t have at least five 5-star reviews on Amazon (US) — never mind how many 5-star reviews you have on Amazon (UK) — you can mostly forget about advertising in the US, which is a catch-22 situation, as this is where UK authors need extra advertising.
  • Goodreads Giveaways offer exposure to new authors and might not result in immediate sales, but 999 people entered my last one and 367 added my book to their shelves with the chance that some of them get around to reading it in the future. That giveaway lasted a fortnight and the winner lived in the US. The latest one is for a month but with fewer people eligible to enter, due to the cost of mailing the prize to some parts of the world.
  • Amazon Giveaways are useless for UK authors as they’re only available on the US site and are over with too quickly.
  • Quirky cross-genre novels are harder to sell than ones that fit into a definite category.
  • You can spend months fiddling with your product description, meta data, categories, and keywords on Amazon and Create Space, but it’s better to get it right in the first place so you can make a killing from Day One when those Amazon algorithms are crawling around your book, eager for action. Warning, they get easily bored.
  • Just because your novel has teenagers in it, doesn’t mean that teenagers are the main buyers.
  • In the short-term, you may not make a profit on your first novel, but you might on the back of your second novel. Thus, you have to look at the first novel as part of your start-up business.
  • Word of mouth, having an established blog, and guest blogging produce the largest amount of sales. Thank you, my darlings, for all your support 🙂

So my lovelies, that’s my experience. What do you all think? Agree, or disagree? Anything to add by way of tips? I’d love to hear from you all…

Author: Sarah Potter Writes

Sarah is a British eccentric who writes offbeat fiction, haiku and tanka poetry. When stuck for words, she sketches or paints instead. She's into nature conservation, sustainability, gardening, dogs, natural health, and reading. Her sociability is something that happens in short bursts with long breathing spaces in between.

21 thoughts on “Indie Publishing: The Start-up Business & Diving into Book Two”

    1. I think Australians have the same problem, which is probably why Ana Spoke decided to set her novel “Shizzle, inc” in the US rather than her own country and use US spellings and turns of phrase. That being said, she’s having far more success in the US than the UK, so maybe it works the other way around and is a hurdle set higher for indie authors wherever they live.

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  2. Absolutely! (Except that US reviews do seem to show up on Amazon UK, but UK reviews don’t show on the Amazon US site from what I’ve seen myself.
    As for Goodreads – yeah – 1272 entered for mine. I gave away four books to winners in England, America, Canada and India! (I did get one review …. guess which winner gave that?!)
    My point in saying this is that I see many authors get all excited about having several THOUSAND downloads in America when they promote their book as a freebie. Now, I know they do that so thy might generate an interest in subsequent, full price follow ups. But it’s in human nature to just grab owt that’s free. How many of these are actually read? It’s all a ‘numbers game.’

    Between the Goodreads giveaway and another two dog & cat related blogs where I offered books for free, I had @ 2500 people say they were interested in a free copy. If even 0.5% of those actually bought a Kindle copy at £1.99, then I’d be a happy bunny!

    So – it’s not just because I’m a tight, cynical Scot with short arms and long pockets that I don’t propose entering a freebie promotion. If I don’t think my ‘DD&RW’ is worth a couple quid, then who will?

    😀 😀

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    1. I know what you mean about the whole free book thing. It’s something I won’t do. A Kindle countdown deal is as far as I’ll go. I’ve spent hours of work on my book and am thinking of doing something radical, which is raising the price rather lowering it! Perhaps then people will think it’s special as it’s more expensive. You never know. Nothing to lose by experimenting, and maybe something to gain. I know that every time you make a price change, it wakes those algorithms wake up.
      PS I have Scottish blood in me, both Highland & Lowland, plus a smigeon of Norwegian and French. Am a very cynical person:-)

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  4. Unfortunately it is not just language that sometimes confuses the issue across borders. Things such as police procedure, foods, driving regulations and education can be an issue.. This is why I think Sci-fi and fantasy are so popular as you can make it all up and provided it sounds feasible it can become multi-cultural. One of my books has proved to be more popular across the board in most countries and that was the autobiography penned by my lassie collie Sam.. it seems dogs can get away with a lot more than their human counterparts internationally.

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    1. I still write my haiku and short stories for fun, and first drafts of novels are great fun, too. It’s just that I have a great desire to share what I write with the world and share that sense of fun with others (maybe sometimes spook them out as well?). Earnings come way down the list of priorities, although they would be nice. I’m just looking at ways to make my quirky novels become discoverable. Reducing them down price-wise to a few pence/cents, or giving them away free isn’t really going to do the trick, as lots of people might download your stuff but never read it. Thank you for your good wishes, Roy.

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  6. With my poetry books I change the keywords ever so often to see if I can move it up in the ratings. From reading a few books from UK writers I learned that Amazon does treat you like step children. Al the best with your new novel.

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    1. Yes, I spent months fiddling with meta data, including keywords, but haven’t found the magic formula to kick it into a steep upward climb! One can but dream. Am intending to do much more groundwork before the launch of the next novel, such as planning a blog tour in advance and setting it up for pre-orders on Amazon. It’s an ongoing learning process. Quite exhausting really, but I won’t be beaten.

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  7. I’m very much with you on the freebie culture. Why shouldn’t you get paid for spending countless hours crafting something? You wouldn’t expect a plumber or electrician to visit your home, spend hours working and then be amused or even thrilled when you say “Isn’t this free?”

    There’s too much expectation that ebooks from unknown authors should be free. I’ve listened in on conversations where people moan because they book they wanted on Kindle was £1.29 and not free. I’ve read a lot of free books from the Kindle slush pile and sadly too many were garbage where the author paid little to now attention to basics like editing and even spelling and grammar!

    It seems the indie author has a hard time climbing above the dross of “free” in order to be taken seriously by a potential reader (and hopefully fan) who might take a chance on shelling out a few pounds for something new.

    Like you say a countdown deal or competitions for a giveaway is the closest I’d come to limiting any income from something I’d worked on for a long time.

    I’m very much looking forward to your next book though! Big question is when do we get to read it?

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    1. I agree, Dave, that there is a load of dross on the Kindle freebie slush pile. I’m getting too old to wade my way through it — life is far too short to waste the time. I’m beginning to understand why lots of traditional publishers have dispensed with slush piles.
      I’m not sure exactly when my next book will be ready, but September at the latest, or maybe before. I want to have a decent run-in time to it, with plenty of pre-launch publicity. Am in a bit of a quandary about the cover, as I desperately want Jamie to do it, but am not sure that I have sufficient funds.
      Pray for a windfall, or that I win one of the big prize-money competitions I’ve entered recently!

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  8. Thanks for sharing what you learned Sarah in the event that I might need it one day! I think the great thing is that you did it and you still sound positive about all the lessons learned and getting on with the next one!

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    1. When I learn lessons, I try to take the “glass half full” approach, and say ‘yippee’ I now know something I didn’t before, rather than the opposite approach, which is to dwell on the fact that you could have done better and constantly kicking yourself for it, rather than marching forward better equipped for the next attempt.

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  9. Pingback: Indie Publishing: The Start-up Business & Diving into Book Two | Shannon Bolithoe : A Writing Life

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