Good evening, My Peeps!
Today’s discussion is regarding Indy Writers and what people don’t tell you.
I am a new author. I am writing, publishing, marketing, etc. all on my own. I want to preface this story by saying that I do not have a marketing degree or a large social media following. What I do have is spunk, persistence and a lot of family and friends.
I have read all over the internet and social media, that it’s easy to make extra money on self-published books. I had been working on poetry and novels off and on for most of my life, so I thought it would be easy to finish up my novels, compile my poetry and publish them. That seemed easy enough, right? Yes and no. Publishing the books was easy, but what people don’t say on the internet, social media, ads, etc. is that even if you self-publish, you have to somehow find a way to sell those books. That is the hard part. Especially when you do not know how to get them out to people.
As I stated above, I don’t have a marketing degree or a large social media following, but I am still trying. But it’s difficult. I created a website, put my books out there, joined quite a few book club groups, etc. I even created a monthly newsletter – Soul Scribbled Stories. But, what good is all of this, if no one is out there reading it? I don’t even know where to begin on getting it out to to the world.
I tried the KDP Promotions and Marketing, but that did not go very well. Since I am new, I do not have the necessary money to spend to get my books high on the list. This means that my ROI was almost nil. So, I started to find “free” options. Unfortunately, most of those are only free if you use credits, but they use so many credits that it’s not worth it – which makes you have to spend money for more credits. So, I went back to researching.
During my research, I have found numerous websites, apps and teams who are willing to “promote” and “market” my books. However, they have no guarantees and they want thousands of dollars. To a new writer like me, that is almost impossible to afford. Then, I started getting a lot of scammers. That is another thing that they don’t tell you. There are so many scammers out there, that it’s hard to tell who is legitimate and who are the scammers. How are we supposed to know?
My husband wrote a sci-fi book a few years ago and went through a publishing company. We used our entire 7k+ income tax return to pay this publishing company to market and get his book out. They even promised him NYT Best Selling List. But they didn’t do what they said they would. So, he was out all of that money with only about 14 book sales.
All of this gets very disheartening. It makes me ask myself, “Why am I even doing this?”. I spend many long hours working on all of this. I even taught myself how to add HTML Code to my website to put in a chatbot to make my website more modern. Now, it’s still a work in progress, because like I said, I am teaching myself HTML coding, but I am still doing it.
So, my words of advise would be….
- Be ware of the scammers. They are very prevalent out there.
- Make sure you are passionate about what you do.
- Don’t expect to sell your books immediately.
- Think of doing this as a passion and not to make money. You will probably spend more money than you make.
- Persistence is the key.
- This is not easy. It takes a lot of time, energy and hours to do what you are passionate about.
- Don’t give up.
With those words of advise, I am signing off. Have a wonderful evening.
PS – If you want to check out my poetry or my books, go to my website: http://www.brandijenkins.com. You can also sign up for my monthly newsletter. It comes out the first week of the month. September’s may be a couple of days late due to Labor Day.
Much love to you all.
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