11 Lessons I’ve Learned from Publishing My First Book
2023 was the year I became a self-published author. June 2023 marked one of the proudest moments of my life. Thank You, President Corona! was finally out, after 3 years of painful work spread across 2,000 pages and counting, of which only 218 got into the final manuscript.
It doesn’t matter that in the end, Thank You, President Corona! was not a success. It sold like 70 copies, most of which were purchased by my friends and colleagues. Yet, it was a great experience from which I learned several precious lessons that form an authentic treasure! A treasure that I will cash in right away when I will publish my next book, set to be released in the first half of 2025, if everything goes according to plan…
What are the lessons I’ve learned from publishing my first book? Here they are. Read carefully…
1 — Don’t Go Directly Through Amazon
I was smart enough to avoid a slave contract with Amazon. I wanted to be free to publish MY book anywhere I wanted.
That’s how I entrusted IngramSpark, a user-friendly, easy-to-use self-publishing tool. With IngramSpark, you can get your book printed on-demand and distributed across over 30 online stores. Printing on-demand was great for a newbie author like me. It allowed me to sell the book from the get-go without the huge financial risk of printing thousands of copies in advance.
Your book can even become available for order at your local book store, which is something more important than you might think. Local book stores are a treasure for every community that wants to be called so. My parents are renting their commercial spaces to a local book store. Opened in 2020 (in the middle of COVID-19!), the store is sailing faster than ever and it is even hosting a reading club event twice a week! This says a lot about how much communities need a local book store in their area.
Beside helping your community, IngramSpark avoids that you became Amazon’s slave. It’s very easy to fall for the trap of getting bound to Kindle Unlimited and sign that clause demanding your book to be available only through Amazon. On top of that, even if you go live exclusively with Amazon, chances are that internet pirates will publish YOUR book on other stores anyway, without your consent, cashing in YOUR royalties on YOUR behalf…
Don’t make this mistake. Use a modern distributor like IngramSpark or a similar service, so that your book can be anywhere, at any time.
2 — Make Sure You Know Your Audience
To be honest, I’ve never had a clear idea of who my audience was. If I managed to publish Thank You, President Corona! in 2021, when the pandemic was still rocking, it could have been one of those rare cases in which “this book is literally for everyone!”
The COVID-19 pandemic was an unprecedented event that shook the life of every citizen of this planet, in a way or another. However, the slow writing (and rewriting) process could get the book ready when it was too late, when the hype around COVID-19 had already worn off. By June 2023, everybody had lost interest for a saturated topic and nobody wanted to live those troubled days again. I understand completely. I was already aware that it would have been a hard sale, but the work was done by then and I didn’t intend to lock my book in a drawer until the next pandemic.
From a potential book for everybody, Thank You, President Corona! had become a book aiming at a specific niche. I immediately thought about optimistic people, those who want to further hone their resilience and those who are curious by nature and love alternative, thought-provoking angles at the biggest topics discussed in the public sphere.
Trying to find the right audience for my book was the first big task I asked from ChatGPT, released right on time to help me.
Here are ChatGPT’s guesses, after I told it what the book was about:
- Individuals who are interested in personal development and self-improvement: Your book’s message about turning negative events into positive outcomes aligns with the interests of this audience.
- Readers who are curious about the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the world: Your book explores the opportunities brought by the pandemic and how it has improved the world. People who are interested in understanding the broader impact of the pandemic could be interested in your book.
- Business owners and entrepreneurs: The pandemic has brought about significant changes to the business world, and your book’s message about finding opportunities in negative events could resonate with business owners and entrepreneurs looking for ways to adapt to these changes.
- Book clubs and discussion groups: Your book’s theme could be a great topic for discussion in book clubs and discussion groups that are interested in current events and personal growth.
- Young adults and students: Your book’s message about turning negative events into positive outcomes could be inspiring and motivating for young adults and students who are still exploring their career paths and facing challenges in their lives.
While points #1 and #2 are very generic, points #3 and #5 are spot on in my opinion, with point #4 playing a good side role too.
The problem is that I didn’t know exactly how to market entrepreneurs and students. I needed TikTok and I didn’t know how to leverage it.
Other social media were unfeasible, as they refused to carry any ads deemed “offensive and controversial” content linked to COVID-19…
3 — Hire The Right Influencer
Nevertheless, social media marketing is vital nowadays for anything you want to sell. If you don’t want to do it yourself, you can hire someone else. I didn’t have the courage to find and hire any influencer, but you can bet for my next book I will. The simplest way is to hire a book reviewer, which TikTok and YouTube are abundant of.
In my case, I could have hired some doctor, or some professional who agrees with the book’s message (thriving in spite of an apocalypse) and wants to share their experience of how they managed to turn a bad situation into a gold mine.
Finding the right influencer requires a lengthy and tiring research, but I think it’s worth it.
One of the easiest ways to find your social media twin-soul is to check a platform like influence.co. Here you can find and connect with professional influencers that are reviewed and tested. They will be happy to give you a quote and you both can check if your book is a good match for the influencer’s profile.
Matching values are essential for the success of your social media marketing. You don’t want to hire the new Salt Bae if you wrote a vegan cook-book…
Other, more advanced tools are Upfluence and HypeAuditor, but they can be very costly for a new self-published author.
A rougher and simpler trick is to check the hashtags related to your book and see which people get the most likes for those. For example, if you wrote a romance, you can go to check the posts for #romancebook and see the people who score the highest following. It’s way less professional though and you might end up picking the wrong influencer. Just make your evaluation before taking the easier route.
4 — Create an Author Page on Amazon and GoodReads
The earliest days of launch are fundamental. Everything must be in place, starting with your author pages. Don’t limit yourself to your personal website. Make sure you also have your page and bio ready on Amazon and GoodReads, at least.
Amazon, because even if publishing on other stores, will still be your main selling channel. It’s a sad reality, but until you are not an established author, you will have to deal with those monopolistic scumbags.
What’s the purpose of an author page? When your potential readers will scroll down the book’s description, they will take a look at the author. They expect at least to see a bio and mostly, a face. When they go down there and see nothing but an empty square, they will run away. Nobody wants to buy a book written by… nobody…
GoodReads, because readers love to share what they read, talk about it, and review it! If you have a page talking about the human behind the book, they will be more inclined to review and recommend your work.
5 — Non-fiction Is the Hardest Genre to Sell
Unless you hit the right topic at the right time — like I would have if I published TPC when the pandemic was still on — going for non-fiction is the hardest way you can debut in the editorial industry.
First and foremost, non-fiction is the hardest genre to write. Non-fiction means you are describing something real, which means you cannot take narrative liberties. You are supposed to be a reporter, trying to offer the reader an authentic outlook on the world. You don’t have to be objective, you can offer your own very personal opinions about real facts, but those opinions are yours. If you want to say something controversial, it will come from your mouth. You won’t be able to say it through one of your characters. The heat will be all on you. And your research will be under close scrutiny. If you misinterpret a source or you misquote it, heaven help you! The danger of looking like a fool is always around the corner.
When writing Thank You, President Corona! I think I spent more time reading than actually writing. And I wrote something like 2,000 pages! Imagine that! Easier to write about elves, dragons, droids and sex.
But, if the sole fatigue of writing as if you were at university was not enough, non-fiction is also the hardest genre to sell. I learned this too late. If only I had watched Ryan Holiday advices, now I would know why.
Non-fiction is usually written by experts, discussing their own fields, and their goal is different from what novel authors want to achieve. The latter want to sell their books, as this is their source of income. The former want to use their book as a promotional vehicle to sell their services. See the difference? The expert’s writing journey is this:
- They become good at something, for example financial markets,
- They open a small hedge fund specialized in emerging markets,
- They decide to write a book about the reasons behind the burst of China’s real estate bubble,
- They publish their book and target wealthy people in search of alternative investments,
- These people are impressed by the book, thinking “Holy shit! They know their game! I want to get in touch with them and see if they can manage my portfolio!”
- The book sells “just” 1,000 copies, but to the right people who will bring millions under the author’s hedge fund’s umbrella!
Numbers of non-fiction sales are around the few thousands of copies. If you dream to publish a best seller, you may want to look at another genre. I know, we all dream to write the next “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck” but those are exceptions, fruit of a mix of viral marketing ability and luck with timing. 99% of the time it won’t happen to you. Be aware of that.
The only other way I can think non-fiction can sell is if you are a celebrity and write your own biography. But you need to become famous first…
6 — Send Your Manuscript to Writing Contests
Alert: send it BEFORE you publish your book. The reason is that 90% of contests want unpublished works. There are several reasons for that, but the most obvious is that the contest organization wants to be the one who discovered the new gem of the world literature.
Most contests require a very cheap entry, and some are even free. No matter what you wrote or how peculiar might feel to you: there will always be a niche for you. Find it and you will get a lot of promotion for free.
7 — Start Promoting Your Book 6 Months Prior
Regardless of the genre you choose, you need to build hype around your publication. This is valid both for fiction and non-fiction.
Believe me: things will never go according to plan, so delays are inevitable. 6 moths is an honest margin that will allow you to absorb these delays. Yet, it’s a fairly short time to avoid you get too relaxed and dull with your writing work.
What should you do in these 6 months? Here are a few ideas:
- Send the book to contests, as said before.
- Provide sneak peeks, maybe in the form of articles in your blog. Imagine those as music singles for your upcoming album!
- Post intriguing quotes from the book on your social media…
- Send free copies to reading clubs, possibly physical copies.
- Collect reviews! See below…
8 — Collect Reviews in Advance
Directly connected to the above points are the reviews. Your book needs to have at least 3–4 good reviews at the moment of launch.
Try to walk in the reader’s shoes: would you ever buy a book without reviews? Do you want to be the fool who’s going to try out an unknown product for the good of humanity? If you’re not ready for this sacrifice, then don’t expect others are.
Avoid NetGalley, unless you’re an already established author. I wasted $500 to get 0 reviews from there! Don’t repeat the same mistake. NetGalley is a powerful community, but it’s just for pros, and if you’re self-publishing your first book, you’re definitely not a pro, no matter how talented you are. Keep NetGalley for your third or fourth book, when you’re beginning to form some considerable audience and you have established some credibility among readers.
If you can’t use NetGalley, how can you collect reviews?
BookSirens.com is similar to NetGalley but way more accessible, as they use a pay-per-review model. If you don’t get reviews, you won’t be charged. Otherwise, you will pay $10 per review, and additional $2 if BookSirens finds a reader for you. Very honest offer. I wish I had used that for TPC.
If you want to be sure you will get only good reviews, then you will have to pay higher, but it can be worth it. There are many pros, I can give you one named EliteAuthors. They will charge $495 for 5 good reviews.
9 — Make Your Author Website Shine!
SquareSpace helped me to create a decent website for the book in just a few hours.
However, I should have created a website for the author, aka me, not just for the book itself. I went too specific!
It was thankyoupresidentcorona.com and it was all revolving around the book. I was releasing a book, I wasn’t producing a blockbuster movie that needs its own website to support a global massive marketing campaign.
I needed a website to illustrate who’s behind the book. However, I didn’t want to, I wanted my book to speak for itself, as if it wrote itself (when ChatGPT still didn’t exist). I wanted to apply my own form of Aestheticism, where the book and the author get detached from each other, making the writer irrelevant in front of the beauty of their work. I just applied one fundamental difference with the likes of Oscar Wilde: I don’t think art is useless, and definitely, I wanted my book to be useful for its readers.
However, today there aren’t many aestheticists around, and people want to know who’s behind a book. This becomes even more relevant with non-fiction. In this genre, the author is everything. Who wrote this? What are his credentials to write this? I read non-fiction to learn valuable and spendable information. How can I know the information is reliable? Only if the author is reliable and credible…
10 — Reddit Is Where to Look for Feedback
I wish I had discovered Reddit way before. To be honest, I have a Reddit account since 2021, but I began to use it seriously only in 2023, few weeks before launching my book. Big mistake!
Reddit has a fervent community of writers, ready to provide tips and precious feedback. You will even find folks available to read your shitty drafts! All for free!
A couple of subreddits you must be in are r/writing and r/writers.
Brace yourself, though; feedback on Reddit can be honest and very, very brutal. If you’re too sensitive, you better look for honest feedback somewhere else.
What kind of feedback I’ve received? Very precious when it came to the first version of my cover, which led me to create a more essential and slick version.
The feedback went harsher (but hilarious) when it came to the premise of my book.
I respect those reactions. Considering the possibility that the COVID-19 pandemic brought also some good is hard for whom lost someone at the virus’ hand.
11 — Quora Is a Great Place for Advertising
You can imagine the classic Big 3 of social media (Meta, LinkedIn, Google) when they saw my ads: “Thank You, President Corona??? Are you mad? There is no way we can further upset our users. They fought each other enough these two years. We are the ones who must profit from inflammatory content, not you! BANNED!”
I understand. In the end, we forget that Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, ect. are not OURS. Those are private platforms and they have all the rights to decide what we can post and what we can’t, even without providing any explanation. It’s just like night clubs in Berlin; the bouncer decides whether you get in or not and you have no right to dispute his decision.
If you’re not content with this system, Web3 social media are the answer for you. I know, giving up to your IG followers can be painful, but great pain can bring great transformation followed by a positive change in your life. And remember: Web3 doesn’t mean you will be able to post any kind of content you want without limits. The community (through voting) will decide if your content is compliant, rather than a closed panel sitting at Meta’s HQ.
But let’s leave liberty on social media aside for a moment. If you need to promote a book bearing a controversial title, what’s the best Web2 social media to do so? The one that doesn’t care about snowflake users?
The answer was before my nose, but it came to mind only when it was too late, well beyond the deadline. After 3 months of dry sales, I noticed that one of the platforms I use the most has effective ads: Quora!
I spend a considerable amount of time on Quora, discussing history, geopolitics and finance. I deem Quora as one of the most underrated platforms on the internet. Sure, there are many trash questions and even trashier answers, but when you find a fine discussion, it repays you for all the rubbish standing beside. I enjoy reading extensive and structured answers from industry experts. They are fresh air, a shelter from the deafening noise coming from the mass, that huge disgusting blob that loves commenting about everything while knowing nothing.
Since Quora is a question-based platform, it is by nature host of controversy, 24/7. That’s why they didn’t flick their eyes when I ran a test ad for Thank You, President Corona! Even when I posted this:
The headline was saying:
Looking for a bad Xmas present? Thank You, President Corona! is the ideal gift for the people you hate!
Beside having a sense of humor that at Meta they can only dream of, you see what’s the coolest thing about Quora Ads? They don’t have a predefined size for your ad! So, if you need to promote a book, you can even upload your entire cover without the pain of being cut in a stupid square. I hate Instagram’s squarish world view!
Santa Claus wasn’t generous with me and just a couple of sales came from the above ad, but sales weren’t important anymore. Now, I know where to advertise my next book! Forget Meta and their snowflake associates; Quora is the best place for any respectable author that publishes hot content.
And that was it. I hope these lessons will turn useful for you, but even for me! 😀
And if you got curious about my failing book, don’t be shy. The e-book version is just $1.99. 😁
