Ten things I've learned from being an indie author.
Hello Friends
Back in January, I released my first novel, the dystopian thriller Mandate: THIRTEEN, via a US indie publisher called Manta Press. Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned as a first-time author.
1. Marketing is harder than writing. Nobody said writing a novel is easy, but it’s a breeze compared to actually marketing the damn thing.
2. Market or die. Nobody is going to do your job for you and promote your book, unless you pay them, and even then, they likely won’t do it well. If you want to sell books, you’ve gotta hussle for every sale. The danger is you drive all your friends and mailing list mad repeating the same message, but if you don’t consistently remind them, you’re forgotten. Somehow, you have to find a balance and get people to hear about your book. Whether they buy it or not is a different matter.
3. Screw social media. It is, by and large a waste of time. I’ll do a proper post on this soon, but I’ve found distancing myself from the constant noise and fight for attention helpful. Instead, I’ve concentrated on building a mailing list. Yeah, all the hours I spent trying to crack Twatter (everybody shouting, nobody listening), Instagram (the algorithm hates you. Its better left as a fun social tool and its marketing power has dwindled), and TikTok (come on, I never stood a chance as my book isn’t spicy romance or fantasy and I’m not seventeen) got my book out there to people and yielded a few sales. But if I’d spent that time on my mailing list, I would’ve sold more.
4. Give yourself a lead time. At least six months. If you expect to launch a book in a month and for it to sell, prepare to be disappointed.
5. Mailing list, mailing list, mailing list. There’s no shortage of blog posts extolling the virtues of this, but beyond the actual writing of stories, it’s been the single most rewarding thing I’ve done as a writer. I wish I’d started way sooner! I had only just begun when Mandate: THIRTEEN hit the shelves. It’s not a magic bullet. The only effective way (as an unknown) to build a list is by giving away free stories, and people who consume free stories are not always the most likely to buy your book, but in less than a year I’ve built a 3,000 strong list and when I release a new short, I can get 4-500 downloads in the month. Yes, they’re getting the story for nothing, but my story is still being ready by a way more people than I’d ever managed before. I’ll go deeper into how to get started in another post, but one important thing is to cull the people who never read your emails. I’ve already culled 2000 and it’s the only way to keep your open and click-thru rates healthy.
6. Some of your friends will think you’ve genuinely succeeded. The truth, as any indie author will know, is a different story. To many, just finishing a novel to a standard that a publisher will release is a huge achievement, and you’ve already entered the arena of literary greatness. Do you need to disabuse them of this notion by telling them you could’ve sold more books simply by spending your entire marketing budget on buying copies? Well, I suppose it IS a strategy of sorts, but what would one learn from that?
7. Lots more people make money from writers than writers make money. Between various author services, advertising courses, and unscrupulous rip-off artists, there is an inexhaustible supply of people who are only too happy to take your money and give you little of value in return. Writers seem to be the gullible old pensioners of the creative world, and I fell for a few myself. Fool me once…
8. Nobody can represent your brand like you. Running social media accounts, blogs and other channels is a grind. It’s tempting to pay someone else to do it for you. Don’t. They won’t represent you the way you do. It will come across as inauthentic and people won’t engage. Trust me, I learned the hard way. The same goes for any area of marketing. Only pay someone else if it’s 100% necessary and you haven’t got the skills or time to do it yourself.
9. This is a hobby. Sure, I started with notions of bludgeoning my way into a new career with my raw, undiscovered talent. Yeah, there might’ve been some delusions of grandeur along the way. Now, that’s well and truly out of my system. I am not the next Cormac McCarthy. I am not going to have my works turned into hit movies and talked about in schools. Neither are you. The only way to go full-time as an author and pay the bills with your books is either A) Be very, very lucky. I mean lottery-winner-level luck. B) Churn out lots (3-4 novels a year) of genre fiction and build a loyal audience one bloody reader at a time, while simultaneously learning the dark arts of marketing. It can be done, but that doesn’t mean I want to do it.
10. Don’t forget to write! In all the horror of points one-thru-ten, it can be hard to find the motivation to write. It’s vital to find reasons to write which aren’t tied to tangible success, and to keep sharpening one’s craft. If we’re not evolving and improving as writers, we’re stagnating.
I hope you found this list enlightening. If so then please subscribe below. All my posts come with a selection of PROMOS packed with FREE stories, too! Those of you on my regular mailing list will get way more in my weekly mail out.
