Ten things I learned from my first novel.
The year anniversary for my debut novel, the dystopian thriller Mandate: THIRTEEN, has recently passed. It got me thinking about what I learned during the process.
Don’t wait until you release a novel to build a mailing list. I didn’t start building my list until a month or so before I released my book. Having one is vital if you’re going to garner any preorders. You can’t rely only on friends and family. Now, my list is over 3000 people strong with a decent open rate. Such a list would’ve really helped me hit the top sellers on release, which helps achieve organic sales.
Social media is mostly a waste of time for selling books. In the run up to release, I spent a lot of time growing my author platforms, and I doubt it sold me ten books, let alone a hundred. Twitter is where I had the best reach, growing to 6k followers with a follow / unfollow campaign, but almost all those people are fellow writers who all have their own aims to sell books and be heard. To put it another way, everyone shouting, nobody listening. Instagram I was way too late to the party. Setting up a new account was fun on a personal level, but the fun was totally ruined as soon as I tried to follow a similar growth method and use it as an author platform. I regret not keeping it as a personal thing. I set up a tiktok account, but the sheer amount of time required to make videos people will watch and engage with just isn’t worth it unless you write hot genres like spicy / paranormal. Again, it can be a fun platform, but the time spent is likely to be better used elsewhere.
Nobody can represent you like you. I naively thought I could outsource some social media work and it was a total failure. Expecting anyone else to be able to create engaging content which is on brand for you is like expecting your dog to cook you a meal. Either find a platform you enjoy making content on and get engagement with, or don’t bother.
Paid advertising is brutal. What author hasn’t thought that, if only they had a solid advertising budget, they would be able to sell a mountain of books. The truth is, while paid advertising CAN be effective (if you know what you’re doing), it’s also highly competitive. You’re up against authors with 10-book series, or backlists of 50 books, or maybe just one book out but a lot of money to burn, or big publishers with marketing budgets. $1 a click is respectable, and you might get a 1:5 to 1:10 conversion rate, depending on how good your cover and blurb are. Do the maths on a $2.99 standalone Ebook.
There are a LOT of books out there. No, really, I mean A LOT. Take the amount you think I mean by a lot and quadruple it. Then double it. Your competition is HUGE, no matter what genre you write in. If you don’t shout about your book and learn to market, your book won’t sell. Sure, you can write in the hottest genre with the most readers, but that will usually mean the most competition.
Authors CAN and DO make a living. And I’m not talking win-the-lottery, NYT bestseller list authors, I mean self-published genre authors. Unlike, say, the music industry, there’s a surefire blueprint to making money. Churn out 4+ decent genre books (the tighter genre the better) each year, all with blurb, cover, plot etc exactly to market expectations for your genre, then learn to market your books via Facebook/Amazon etc adverts. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Well, it is, but that certainly doesn’t make it easy. For a start, you probably won’t make any real money until you have 15-20 books out. Most of the serious earners are churning out more like a book a month, and writing that much requires real discipline, and probably going full time. But it can be done.
But way more people make money off authors than authors make money. From outright scammers to people who will market your book poorly or do a half-assed job running your social media, to the multitudes selling courses on how to sell books, advertise etc, all the way to the talented, hard-working editors, cover designers, and other professionals who are paid fairly for their much-needed work. When I put my book out, I threw a lot of mud to see what stuck. Most of it didn’t. Nor did it deliver value for what I paid.
Write stuff that interests YOU. If you don’t write stuff you enjoy writing, and for reasons other than selling books, or fame and fortune, you’ll never be happy and never sustain a writing career.
The writing community is great. By and large, other writers are supportive and approachable, and there is truly a great community out there, on facebook, twitter and even IRL if you can be bothered to find them. In my experience, Facebook is the best place to meet and network with fellow writers of any genre.
Keep improving. It doesn’t matter if you’ve written one book, or one hundred, keep working on your craft to become the best writer you can be. Sure, it will eventually become diminishing returns, but us old dogs CAN learn new tricks, I promise.