I am always reading articles, as most of you I am sure, about self-help? I guess would be the topic I am referring to when it enlightens you somehow. In this particular case Valuable Lessons from Self-publishing Survey, and my feedback.
- Get Help “The first lesson for self-publishers is that if you get help with things like cover design, story editing and proofreading, you will likely earn more. The report found that getting help, paid or unpaid, with editing, copy editing and proofreading provided a 13 per cent bump in earnings. Those who added cover design to that list saw a 34 per cent increase over the average. Interestingly, ebook formatting help added only an extra 1 per cent.”
- The Self-Publishing explosion will wane “In my opinion, this is an indicator that the volume of self-published titles will wane a little as authors run out of back catalogue to put out and have to start writing new books. It’s a smart move by writers to make their back catalogue available, as it gives readers a sense of the author’s experience and increases revenue opportunities. But it’s important that authors don’t allow themselves to rush new books in order to get them out quickly, because that’s when quality suffers.” Wise words, listen to it, dream about it, and always keep it in the back of your mind.
- It is possible to earn a living – was an area that surprised me the most when the survey discovered that: “Unsurprisingly, writers with agents earn three times more than those without. Romance writers earn 120 per cent of the average, but science fiction, fantasy and literary writers do much worse earning 38 per cent, 32 per cent and 20 per cent respectively.” – and I thought it was the other way around.
- Writing vs Marketing “Those in the Top Earners group all spent more time writing than marketing, and those in the group who spent the least amount of time marketing made the most money. In the overall group, those who spent the most time marketing earned the least.” Sadly to say this was relayed otherwise by most self-help articles. That marketing was the key to your success. I am not sure how I feel about this part.
- The importance of reviews “The authors who did best, however, did everything except pay for reviews: They gave away review copies, submitted to book review blogs and the mainstream press, sought popular reviewers on Amazon and asked their readers through email lists etc. Paying for reviews, however, backfired and those who did so not only got the lowest average number of reviews, they also had the lowest revenue. Paying for ads was also not a very effective marketing strategy, failing to work for about two thirds of respondents.” Lesson learned as I am a victim of such wrong approach in getting reviews which was also detailed in self-help articles for the indie author.
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