I published my first two novels to Amazon yesterday! That was December 19, 2014.
Today is December 20, 2014, and it’s not even noon yet. I can tell you that I’ve already made plenty of mistakes that I’m learning from. Here’s a list of four of them that I hope you can learn from, too.
1. I should have bought my paid promotions a month (or two) ago.
I just paid for a book promotion with Kindle Nation Daily (owner of BookGorilla.com, which I subscribe to and use). My promotion is scheduled for February 7 — almost two months away!
Why I didn’t do it sooner: Two reasons. First, for some reason I didn’t think I could schedule it without an existing book. In reality, I probably could have. Second, a month or two ago, I was thinking, “I need to focus on finishing my book before I start thinking about marketing my book. Let’s not start counting chickens before they hatch.” It made sense in theory — don’t get distracted by anything that’s not writing. But hindsight is 20/20; in the future I will schedule book promotions in advance.
2. I bought an automatic submission credit from BookMarketingTools.com, but I should’ve done that sooner, too.
I also just paid $15 for a service that will automatically submit my free ebook to more than 30 sites. That’s great and I look forward to using it. However, my first free day (I’m enrolled with KDP Select / Kindle Unlimited) is tomorrow, and it’s too late to submit it for tomorrow. My next free day is scheduled for the aforementioned February 7. So now I need to either wait until February to use my credit or I need to use up another free day before then. I’m torn about which I should do.
Why I didn’t do it sooner: See reasons above.
3. Turns out CreateSpace is easy to set up.
I should have already set up the CreateSpace version of the book so that I could launch the print book and the Kindle version the same day.
Why I didn’t do it sooner: I thought it would be a time-consuming pain. Actually, it wasn’t at all. Plus it created an ISBN for my book — for free! — which it turns out I need for certain paid and free promotions. (CreateSpace is easy. It’s OpenOffice that’s giving me headaches.)
4. I ain’t got no reviews.
Reviews, reviews, reviews! These are of the utmost importance! And I launched my book with precisely 0. Not only are reviews important for purchases, reviews are important because some paid promotions won’t consider your book without at least a handful of positive reviews. I don’t think they really care if your reviews are by your Grandma; the main point is that you HAVE reviews.
Why I didn’t do it sooner: I have, right now, sitting in my inbox, some advice from Tim Grahl about how to launch your book with multiple reviews. I read this advice. I thought I should follow this advice. And I didn’t.
Dumb. Instead of giving friends and family advanced warning of when my book would be coming out and asking them in advance to write a review for me, I launched first and asked for reviews second. Next time, I will not do that.
That’s it. I’ll tell you what else I learn as I go along.