10 Things I’ve Learned In My First Year Of Self-Publishing (And 3 I Haven’t)

Elizabeth Mitchell’s first novel, I Never Stopped, with a bookmark of her suspense novel, sweethearts, sticking out in amongst a stack of incredible authors’ books at the 2019 Willamette Writer’s Conference in Portland, OR.

Here are the top 10 things 2019 has taught me.

1. Intentions matter.

Before I got started, I was sure I knew what I wanted. I’d thought it through, right?

I wasn’t in it for the money or to get famous; it wanted people to read my books. I spent a lot of time on them, so I figured someone but my family should enjoy/love/hate/be annoyed with/talk about them.

That all changed as the money to published added up. Then I realized I just wanted to pay myself back, which meant some sort of notoriety–not fame, but I needed to be noticed enough that people would buy the book.

If I’d have paid attention to my intentions, been a little more thoughtful, I’d have kept costs lower (I have a whole article about how much I spent–the good, bad, and indifferent of that). But instead, I’ve had to change my goal post continually.

2. Budgeting for a novel is not like budgeting for a grocery trip.

This seems like an obvious one, but it really wasn’t. I had it all mapped out. I knew how much the IngramSpark upload would cost me and the inventible second upload because I messed something up. I’d planned for marketing and boxes of…