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How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017
11–20 of 169 posts
Re: How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017
#12I just finished my first book, and I went a little bit different of a route than the author here. I know this isn't very DIY, but it's probably worth knowing it's an option: I simply hired someone who works at a book publishing company to edit and typeset the book for me on the side. The person I hired does it for a living and is incredibly good at it. Let's just say it's not the most lucrative career choice, so I ha…
I'd love to know who you used.
Re: How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017
#13I just finished my first book, and I went a little bit different of a route than the author here. I know this isn't very DIY, but it's probably worth knowing it's an option: I simply hired someone who works at a book publishing company to edit and typeset the book for me on the side. The person I hired does it for a living and is incredibly good at it. Let's just say it's not the most lucrative career choice, so I ha…
Congratulations! May I ask how you managed to presell that well with your first book? Did you apply any specific marketing techniques?
Re: How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017
#14Ugh Facebook really? I would want t read it but how do I remember? An email would work maybe. But a text would get me for sure but I don't have Facebook
I don't understand, I didn't see any reference to Facebook aside from the standard social media links at the bottom.
I think he's referring to the "book club" on http://www.singularbook.com/ which is a link to Facebook.
That homepage also has a 3MB image of the cover on it, bit excessive. Google reckon on saving 2.8MB by image optimisation (or 3.4MB when targetting desktop), https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=... .
Re: How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017
#15I just finished my first book, and I went a little bit different of a route than the author here. I know this isn't very DIY, but it's probably worth knowing it's an option: I simply hired someone who works at a book publishing company to edit and typeset the book for me on the side. The person I hired does it for a living and is incredibly good at it. Let's just say it's not the most lucrative career choice, so I ha…
I'd love to know who you used.
Email me, and I'll introduce you. Email in bio.
Re: How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017
#16Forget all the tooling. There are two battles:
1. To write the best book you possibly can
2. To print, market and sell that book
Far and away the most important thing is No. 1, because No. 2 cannot happen effectively without that. And the bar is high - very high. So in many ways the battle is lost or won by the time you've put down your pen. Yes marketing and distribution are incredibly important. Design too. But none of it is going to do much good unless the book really works. And making a book work is not hit and miss. It's the product of a very exact type of knowledge and skill - this is especially true of genre work. Of course, there have been a few tremendous exceptions - but you'll know if you're one of those.
So with self-publishing, as with ordinary publishing: first write a great book.
For that the tools you need are:
1. Someone who can give you tough feedback and who knows what they're talking about
2. A writing group for softer, more regular feedback
3. Long practice in writing shorter work
4. Long practice in critical reading of other people's work, especially unpublished work. You'll never make a mistake once you see that mistake and understand it in someone else's work.
Re: How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017
#17I just finished my first book, and I went a little bit different of a route than the author here. I know this isn't very DIY, but it's probably worth knowing it's an option: I simply hired someone who works at a book publishing company to edit and typeset the book for me on the side. The person I hired does it for a living and is incredibly good at it. Let's just say it's not the most lucrative career choice, so I ha…
Congratulations! May I ask how you managed to presell that well with your first book? Did you apply any specific marketing techniques?
Haha, well it's a book about Internet marketing (we wanted to create a practical step-by-step guide that read like a programming tutorial), so we've tried hundreds of things over the years and know what works. We made a promise to use only the things in the book to sell it.
We ended up changing the marketing messaging to "the ultimate growth hacking guide" from "a step-by-step guide to user acquisition" because that performed 200% better in our A/B tests, and I'm still a little bitter about that, but the money soothes my bitterness. So that was important.
Our biggest winners tactics-wise were sharing the first couple chapters on Medium and cheating a little bit, doing the same on Reddit, with a link that said "if you want more like this pre-order the book," and we worked Twitter pretty well and did a few guest speaking engagements, but no silver bullets, just a lot of lead ones.
Link to a chapter on Medium: https://medium.com/startup-grind/seo-is-not-hard-a-step-by-s...
(Link to pre-sales page, for reference: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-ultimate-growth-hacki...)
FWIW, we sell it direct-only to not deal with fees at https://secretsaucenow.com
Re: How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017
#18I've been toying with the idea of a site for original written works, in the same vein as current fanfiction sites or Deviantart.
I imagine it would end up working along the shareware model, x chapters here for free and purchase access to the full story, or something along those lines - though if there is a market for it you could use it as a streamlining process for publishing houses I suppose
Is anybody aware of a site like that in the wild already?
Re: How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017
#19The author mentions getting a copy editor, but I would also advise hiring a development editor and/or getting feedback from beta readers. Quoting Stephen King (1): Show your piece to a number of people—ten, let us say. Listen carefully to what they tell you. Smile and nod a lot. Then review what was said very carefully. If your critics are all telling you the same thing about some facet of your story—a plot twist tha…
With this approach, your novel becomes an average of what the masses like to read, rather than what you wanted to say. Engineered for the masses, so to speak. Which, of course, could explain why King is so successful.
Re: How to Self-Publish a Novel in 2017
#20The author mentions getting a copy editor, but I would also advise hiring a development editor and/or getting feedback from beta readers. Quoting Stephen King (1): Show your piece to a number of people—ten, let us say. Listen carefully to what they tell you. Smile and nod a lot. Then review what was said very carefully. If your critics are all telling you the same thing about some facet of your story—a plot twist tha…
With this approach, your novel becomes an average of what the masses like to read, rather than what you wanted to say. Engineered for the masses, so to speak. Which, of course, could explain why King is so successful.
Not for if it's just one thing
He says ignore the gradient