What I’ve learned about self-publishing so far:

I think I may have missed the banana boat.

Before I dove into this mad experiment, I did some research on who was self-publishing, how to do it myself, and what might happen to me and my books by doing it. It all seemed fairly straight-forward and common-sense, especially for someone who’s worked at several small businesses over the years. Pretty much everyone agreed that uploading a really good book with an attractive cover to Amazon and a few other sites was a recipe for success. All of them cautioned that it most likely wouldn’t make you rich, and all of them agreed that the key point here was to put as much time as you needed into your book to make it truly good. One author even said, “don’t worry about missing the train, just spend the time you need to making your book as good as it can be. You’re not going to lose out by coming to the game late.”

This was in 2012. My book was in pretty awful shape, and for the first time in my adult life, I had accrued enough debt to need a full time job. So it took almost two years for me to get my book whipped into shape and learn the technicalities of formatting and actually finding good cover art. I will tell you now, the marketplace for e-books has changed dramatically from the pretty picture of sweet success in 2012 to today.

This is certainly not to say I don’t believe it can be done or that I can’t do it. It’s just gotten a lot more competitive in the years since self-publishing first went viral. Not competitive as in authors are trying to push out other authors — voracious readers want lots of author in their libraries, there’s room for all — it’s just getting reader attention that’s gotten really hard.

And of course, I’m learning on the fly here with my first book and first short story series, and my stupid grown-up debt requiring full-time employment. So I’ve made some punk mistakes. Mistakes I hope to rectify as I go along.

Here’s what I think I did wrong and how I fixed it:

1) Got too hopeful that this was a magic answer to my prayers.

I tried really, really hard not to believe that self-publishing might make me a full-time writer in less than a year, but it’s hard not to think it will work out when other people are tooting that they did it. I’m trying to bring myself back down to Earth and realize that I can do it, but it will take more time, money and work than I first expected. And that’s okay! (Really, it’s okay. I SWEAR. *sob!*)

2) Did not research my cover design hard enough.

I got my brother-in-law to make me a nice cover — but it portrayed the wrong genre. It was lovely, for a crime noir book. For a vampire book, not so much. Luckily, my friends at kboards.com were quick to point to cover designers they liked that were cheap, and I found someone through that avenue who built me new covers that had the flavor of the original, but looked like a vampire book. When I say “friends” at kboards, I mean that they were kind and helpful to me, and I gladly return the favor when I can, not that we have coffee together.

3) Did not learn about the ups and downs of the Amazon self-publishing site.

It’s kinda glitchy. There are workarounds, but they are hard to find and sometimes change when Amazon updates their programs and services. At first I thought it was pretty easy to use, but upon trying to get into some more aspects of it, it’s actually a pain. Thankfully, once more, kboards peeps to the rescue. Keywords, HTML allowed in the product description, the lag of the updates, how to use Author Central — all of it’s a pain, none of it is intuitive, and I didn’t even realize it was important until recently.

4) I did not consider every word I put out into the world to be a marketing tool.

And it is! Every. Word. The author biography on each site, the author’s note, the link to my e-mail list in the backs of my books, this blog — it’s all important. I need to try to make a good impression with every word I write. Not a phony impression, that would be exhausting to keep up with and make me angry at myself and the world, but the best impression of who I am that I can put forward. Not always easy when I am tired, frustrated, feeling beaten down or like a failure. And I think there is value in talking about our defeated moments, too, but it has to be done in such a way that people commiserate and empathize — not in a needy, whiny way. Not always easy, but it matters.

5) I have been marketing in a way familiar to me, which is not how online marketing is done.

I have spent quite a bit of time at local craft fairs and coffee shops, with paperback copies of my books. I’ve sold quite a few that way, but certainly not enough to get any real traction. I am a people person, not the pale introvert that a lot of writers claim to be, so getting out and talking with folks is fun for me, and I’ll probably keep doing it. But I found myself very willing to pony up $50 bucks for a table at a craft fair where I hope to sell 30-40 books, but scoffing at the “robbery” of paying for a $20 ad online that might net me 100-200 sales. Um, hello? Wake up, Mel, this is the internet! Get wired.

6) I plain forgot some of the steps or didn’t believe they were important.

Step one, get an e-mail list. Step two, link it at the back of your book. IMPORTANT. I thought, “Oh, that’s not important, what good does that do?” Well, according to my author friends who are doing this full-time, their e-mail list is what has made that possible. Single-handedly. So what did I do? Waited until my book had been out for 6 months before I even signed up for Mailchimp, then just plain forgot to put the link in the back of the book. I have since remedied this issue, but every single book I’ve sold while I had no list or no link has now been wasted. And I believe I’ve sold around 200 books in that time. Gone into the ether. I just have to hope those folks come back to look for me after I’ve put out my next installment. A few will. Many won’t. Yay me!

7) I dinged around and didn’t take myself seriously for too long.

I’m doing better, but I still fall into that habit. I spend too much time on Facebook, I read, I putter, when I should be plotting, writing or researching my next book. That’s a tough one, because who’s holding me to any sort of standard? Just me. And if I don’t get it done, I go, oh well, maybe I set too hard a goal for myself. And maybe I did, but maybe I just fucked around instead of getting to it. I’m not gonna lie, I’m dealing with overwork and frustration and depression and that makes it tough to work harder, but this is what I love and what I want to do and what makes me happy. I should at least be able to work a little harder at it. Like I said, I’m doing better, but it’s not always great. And I waited too long before I said, “Self, you gotta try to put in more effort here if you want this.”

So it’s still a learning process, it’s still going to take time before I’m a pro at this, and probably more time than I want before I can go full-time. Someone on kboards mentioned it’s about five books average before a person can go full-time, and I’ve got two more books coming out this year and another that will hopefully be done before the end of this year, so I’m not too far off. But it’s a far cry from the less-than-a-year-to-full-time-writer dream I had when I first set out on this journey.

Still, by the time I get that far, I should be pretty damn good at this gig.