Before You Begin Your Career As A Self-Published Author, Make Sure You Have These 5 Things In Place

The most important part of being a writer is the writing.

However, if you want to become a successful independent writer, you have to do a whole lot more than just write. You have to learn the business of writing and market yourself in a way that puts you on the same playing field as mainstream authors with big publishing houses behind them.

We see it every day here at Bookbaby. The Internet has flipped the publishing world on its head, and aspiring independent authors want to know what they need to have in place in order to build a career for themselves — and make sure people read (and purchase) their work.

Here are the 5 things every self-published author should invest the time in building for themselves:

1. A personal website

Your website doesn’t need to be anything fancy, and you certainly don’t need to spend a huge chunk of change to have one built. A Squarespace or Wix template will do just fine.

On your personal site, you should have a few basic pieces of information:

• Home Page: Quick synopsis of who you are and what you do.
• About Page: Credentials, awards, published work, your personal story, etc.
• Blog Page: Original content pieces or republished pieces you want to share.
• Contact Page: This form should send directly to your inbox.
• Books: A place where people can either browse and then purchase on another site (linking to Amazon, etc.) or can purchase directly on your site.

These are the basics — and truthfully, you don’t need much more than that.

The purpose of your website is to inform people of who you are and what you do, especially if your intention is to gather additional freelance or contract writing work from your writing.

2. An email list

Every single successful independent writer has an email list. It’s arguably the most effective way to nurture direct relationships with your readers, fans, and most loyal customers. My rule of thumb is this: One current email name = 25 social media fans or followers. They’ve given you permission to contact them with meaningful messages.

However, building an email list takes work. Somewhere on your website (usually front and center), you’ll want to put an email capture form. Where most writers go wrong is they make their Call To Action something vague like Sign Up For My Weekly Newsletter.

What’s in your weekly newsletter? Do you share stories? Do you give writing tips? People want to know what they’re going to get in return before they hand over their email address.

Instead, make your Call To Action more specific. Every Sunday, I Share With You 3 Writing Prompts That Will Help Spark Your Next Short Story.

The more you can cater your Call To Action to the value you can provide, the more people will sign up. The key here, however, is that whatever promise you make (“Every Sunday…”), you have to keep.

3. Social media profiles

Your social media profiles are your gateway to your largest potential audience: The Internet.

Every writer should, at the very least, secure their name on all the major social sites: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Medium, Quora, etc.

From there, you’ll want to choose one platform you make your primary. One of the biggest mistakes new (and even established) writers make is they try to be everywhere at once. They think they need to maintain 8 different social profiles at the same time — and then get overwhelmed and oftentimes do a lackluster job, or give up entirely.

Post something new every day.

What will be far more effective for you is to treat one platform as your primary. I highly suggest (as a writer) looking toward platforms that lend themselves to writing — like Medium or Quora, for example. But regardless, whichever platform you choose as your primary, ask yourself how you can build a loyal audience there. Post something new every day. Dedicate a significant amount of time to mastering that one platform. And then once you’ve gotten some traction there, you can expand to a second, and a third, and so on.

4. Amazon Author Page

Sooner rather than later, you’ll want to set yourself up with an Amazon Author Page.

You’ll need to create one in order to self-publish your first book on Amazon. But also, Amazon has terrific SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and having a fully loaded Amazon Author Page will only help your name appear in Google’s search results more often. That means uploading a professional headshot, a bio, and links to your work on amazon.

For an example of a great Amazon Author Page, take a look at John Grisham.

5. Distribution

Now, more than ever, self-published authors need to be aware of all the different ways they can distribute their books — beyond Amazon.

First, you need to make your titles available at the most digital and physical stores possible. It’s critical that your titles are listed for sale in outlets like Google Play, iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and any other place that books are sold online. You need to be where the readers are.

On the print side, it’s important to be listed in the large wholesaler catalogs like Baker & Taylor, Ingram, and IPG. This is where 98% of all brick-and-mortar stores want to order from, just like they do all the other books they have in stock. BookBaby makes it easy for stores to buy its authors’ books as it lists all of its Print On Demand (POD) authors in all of the wholesale catalogs.

Not too many writers know this.

Second, in order for an independent author to distribute print books to stores, the books need to be returnable. That means it needs an ISBN number. Not too many writers know this. And the reason why they need to be returnable is because if for some reason their book doesn’t sell, the retailer is going to want to have insurance on the book(s) and be able to return them. This is a huge part of the distribution process, and it’s something we work on directly with all BookBaby authors.

It’s still the author’s job to forge those relationships with retailers and gain interest in their books. BookBaby ensures all the requirements are being met so that when a retailer says, “Sure, we’ll carry your books,” all of the pieces are already in place.

Third, authors need a reliable and easy way to manage the accounting and daily activity of their distribution business. That’s really the power of working with BookBaby. Authors get one account hub to manage their entire distribution business, plus a team of professionals to contact anytime an issue comes up. Managing a large-scale distribution business is hard and time-consuming work. Authors need to focus on writing and marketing and leave the distribution to pros.