I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Monday Marketing, I research, plan, and evaluate my marketing and promotion activities.
Dean Wesley Smith offers advice for fiction writers, naturally enough, as that’s his specialty, but I think some of his advice can be repurposed for nonfiction as well. Here are his steps for learning indie publishing:
1… Follow the steps I lay out in the first and second chapter under the tab above called “Think Like a Publisher” to get your business going. It’s simple and easy and cheap.
2… Learn how to do covers well enough to either do them yourself, or know what you are hiring.
3… Learn how to write good sales copy for your books. Not plot, sales copy.
4… Set up all the accounts needed to get your eBooks into as many online stores as you can, which means learning how to do clean ePub files these days.
5… Launch your book to all sites and fight through all that.
6… Learn how to do paper books, or hire it done.
7… And then the promotion starts, which will depend on the amount depending on the book. You have to constantly be learning about promotion and discoverability.
And you have to keep working on being a better storyteller, which is actually what sells books.
None of this sounds particularly difficult, but I imagine the reason why most indie authors don’t make it is because that is a lot of work, and it’s not going to pay off immediately. I imagine it might take me three years to start making a realistic income from writing, publishing, and marketing books. During that time I’ll be foregoing other possible income and investing in producing the books.
Still, I’m excited about it. I think it will be fun, if only I can get through the inevitable feelings of “wow I’m not getting anywhere with this,” and “why did I ever think I could be a successful author?” and “I think I’ll just move up to Breck and become a ski bum.”
Also from Smith, the four steps to getting a reader to spend money for a book:
Getting a reader to spend money for a book comes in four steps.
- 1… Cover and author name. Branded big name and cover branded to a genre.
- 2… Sales copy.
- 3… Opening that makes a reader want to buy.
- 4… Ending, validation that make readers want to look up more work by the same author.
That last one interests me because I’m coming up on the end of my first draft of Reckless Romance. It’s a good reminder that what I want to do with the conclusion is provide satisfaction and validation, and also a teaser to the next book, Reckless in Relationship.
Both of these lists make me think more about book covers. I know that’s going to be almost the first thing someone sees, either in an ad, or on the book home page, or on the book’s Amazon page, about the book.
In perusing Smith’s blog, I found that he’s associated with a book cover designer who offers book cover design courses. I guess I could take one, but I imagine I might be able to find blog posts about book cover design online that are free (or maybe an ebook I can borrow from the library about that topic).
I found these some tips for book cover design from IngramSpark, a self-publishing service, just to whet my appetite for more. I have started mocking up book cover designs with ChatGPT and Gemini Nano Banana, and it’s a lot of fun. But I don’t really know what I’m doing.
Here are the tips:
- Give readers a sneak peek of what’s to come.
- Indicate the book’s genre.
- Understand your audience.
- Set the appropriate tone.
- Pay attention to the details.
- Follow the rules of design.
- Have a distinct style.
- Consider working with a professional.
IngramSpark even offers a free How to Design a Book course that I might work through.
So as I keep working through my draft, I will in parallel work on the book cover(s). That is fun work to do, as I’ve always liked graphic design.