I always thought it was so cool that amazon has a self-publishing feature, I wanted to jump right into it when I first discovered it a few years ago. Until I allowed discouragement to take over. I seen how many self-published books there were, I read a few, they were top quality, one of them was one of the best pieces of writings I had seen at the time. I convinced myself I would never be as good as them and I thought of the amount of time it would take to get my name out there and finally start to get noticed. So, I closed the door on the idea and never looked back into it until recently.
I wish I started back then. After the research I have done, I am one hundred percent confident that I would have “been somewhere” by now. Even if it wasn’t somewhere huge, I would be making a decent income from selling my books online.
I have only recently been sharing my writing online, as well as interacting with other writers who do the same and wow, is there a big community of writers out there. It’s amazing to see everyones stories, personal experiences, knowledge, opinions and ideas. I sit for hours on Quora or Reddit sometimes just lost in the stories. With the amount of views and likes on these stories I assume a lot of other people do the same. I know I would pay for a book with these stories, journal entries, informative facts about psychology, the mind, the body, mental illness and so much more.
If you are knowledgable on a specific topic you can break that topic up into different categories and write 4 or 5 shorter books going into details about each category. If you love to write and already do it for a hobby why not self-publish?
A lot of people read self-published books these days, the market is growing. Amazons 2019 review of its kindle sales shows there are thousands of self-published authors taking home royalties of over $50,000. More than a thousand hit 6 figure salaries from book sales that year.
Then of course you will always have the people who believe that self-published books are inherently lower quality than those published by big name publishers. Can’t pull in everyone, ya win some, ya lose some. Although they are wrong. Like I said, I have read a few self-published books, and each of them were intriguing page turners with unique but great writing styles.
Self-publishing gives you the chance to have full creative control. YOU choose the title, cover design, the market place it will be stocked. You also have to pay for these things though opposed to traditional publishing where they choose it all for you and then take the cut off your royalties to pay the designer, editor, proof-reader, formatter and whoever else involved into making your book a success. Sometimes authors in traditional publishing can end up with only 10% royalties of their book opposed to self-publishing where every cent is yours.
The marketing part might be harder without an agent helping you promote and get book deals, that just means you have to work a little bit harder to get your book out there. The more you have published the more you are noticed, I’ve learned. People see your book and your name so they search you up in hopes of seeing your other work to see if your book may be worth buying. They may want to see what else you write about or your reviews.
If your other books dont catch the readers eye but instead bores them, they probably wont buy the first book they clicked on. If they see no other work by you, they probably won’t buy the book either. I probably wouldn’t. It’s hard to tell if I like someones writing style by judging one book description.
Although self-publishing may be a process, I believe if you have a love for writing, it could reward you generously. I am so excited I decided to look into it again and I can’t wait to start my journey and I suggest all the writers out there to do the same.
I want you guys to have the same motivation and enthusiasm I have towards this endeavour so, here are some self-publishing success stories that gave me some encouragement:
L.J Ross
Ross is a Lawyer who decided to try out self-publishing. Her genre is romantic suspense, crime fiction. In 2015 she published Holy Island, since then she has published nineteen novels, and has sold a total of 4.5 million copies. She hit the top of bestsellers list seven times a couple years ago which was a record. She set up her own print label to supply paper backs to V.K retailers. Ross said quitting her lawyer job and pursuing her dream was the best decision she has ever made.
Lindsay Buroker
Lindsay started writing the Emperors Edge Series and then let it sit half written on a shelf for years. She was too nervous to send it to an agent because she didnt think it was good enough or what category or niche it fit into. Then she discovered kindle. She seen all the self-published works, she learned from others who started making 4 figures a month in book royalties and she decided to self-publish. In one year she published four books and quit her day job. She sold so many copies that publishers wanted a piece but Lindsay stuck to self-publishing. She was making a killing, why wouldn’t she?
Orna Ross
Orna went the traditional route at first and used publishers for years making only 10% in royalties. In 2011, after studying e-books she took all rights back from Penguin and started self-publishing. She had to get book covers designed, self-promote and market all on her own. She put in a lot of work. In 2012 she self-published the first two books in a forthcoming trilogy, The Irish Trilogy I: After the Rising and The Irish Trilogy II: Before the Fall. She has since gone on to self-publish her next two works of fiction, Blue Mercy, and the Secret Rose. She won an Inaugural Carousel-Aware Award for best novel.
Ross launched the Alliance of Independent Authors at the London Book Fair in 2012. Her work for ALLi has seen her named as one of The Bookseller’s “100 top people in publishing.”
Melissa Leong (Wynne Channing)
Melissa is a business journalist turned writer. She sent her fiction Vampire novel to twenty different agents. No one was interested, they all declined her. She gave up her dream until her friends encouraged her to self publish on Kindle Direct Publish. With her price set at $2.99, no copies sold. She lowered the price to 0.99 and she rocketed to the best seller list in Occult and Action & Adventure categories. She got instant attention from bloggers, journalists, book outlets all trying to interview her. Three movie producers contacted her for tv/movie adaptions.
Chelsea Campbell
Chelsea used the traditional publishing route to have her book The Rise of Renegade X published. She got close to no promotion and not a lot of sales. When she tried to show her publisher a sequel, she got turned down but fans wondered when the sequel was coming out. Chelsea started a kickstart campaign, made $2,517, which was enough to bring her book dream to life. She could now pay for the cover art, editor, layout. A little while after publishing, both books took off on Amazon. In the Superhero category she was top of Amazons best seller and hot new releases list. Series now optioned by Disney Channel Movies. In four years of traditional publishing she made no profit. It only took her a short period of time in self-publishing to make a killing.
Andy Weir
Andy started The Martian as a blog. It was about the tale of a man stranded on Mars. He posted one chapter at a time. He started realizing people were quite interested so he finished the story and self-published it on Amazon for $10.99. He became a New York Times Best Seller. There is now a featured film starring Matt Damon. I’m sure you know the movie.
E.L James
Fifty Shades of Grey started out as an online fan-fiction as well. When the interest was growing, James decided to rewrite and self-publish it. Word of mouth helped make the series huge. Well over 100 million copies sold and how many movies? I don’t think James ever has to write another book again. Although who wouldn’t want to? Especially after seeing how big your first series was.
Carol Ervin
It took Carol many years to finish her book The Girl on the Mountain and she knew it a publisher and an agent meant more years. She was ready now. She self-published instead but her book flopped. She thought she made a mistake but still decided to release a sequel and a third came soon after. More buyers are interested when there is more to read and her book sales compounded. Her sales tripled from the year before. I’m sure she is glad she stuck with it.
You too, can be one of these success stories just write, write, write! Do your research and get all hyped up like I am, it’s an amazing feeling and I cant wait to see where it takes me.
If you are interested in reading about a variety of different subjects such as mental health, inside the minds of disturbed artists, the importance of being an introvert, importance of body language and non-verbal communication, the importance of mental rehearsal and imagery, the power of our minds, mindfulness, metaphysics and the cosmic world and how all the great genius’ of the past have tapped into this power to achieve seeming miracles, addiction, abuse, the effects loneliness and so much more, please check out some of my other posts:
