Self-Publishing Support Thread

[APodPerson]

Hi all,

Following a number of other threads suggesting this, I thought I’d set up a support thread for us self-publishers (although traditionally published are welcome too of course).

The purpose would be for us all to support each other, share our books, tips and tricks that have worked, and anything else self-publishing related.

MNHQ have given us the go ahead, although of course we need to make sure we behave ourselves, and if it ends up being nothing but spam it'll get pulled.

So, Rule 1: No spam!

I suggest one post introducing yourself with a link to your books, and goodreads profile, twitter, fb page, website etc, but then no further links or any kind of self promo unless it is directly related to a question from another poster.

Thanks Madhair, no that's fine, I'd rather honesty. Please remember to leave a review on Amazon because if I could get up to 25 reviews, I'd be more visable on Amazon.

Thanks

I've always wondered how the number of reviews affects your visibility. Where did you read that, helloeveryone?

Imperial - I read it on KDP. 25 reviews makes you go on to the 'she bought this, also bought that' bit, then at 50 reviews you go either further - I think it might be the emails they send out - you also get included on those.

I was selling a lot better last year and I was on the emails and on 'she bought this' etc. The number of reviews is good, but I know I'm not on the emails etc now. Maybe it's how many reviews you're getting in a particular week or something like that? Otherwise someone could get 100 reviews in week 1 and forever after would be mentioned on emails, which obviously isn't the case.

Yes you're probably right. I'd just like a few more reviews really haha! I think I've got 14 at the moment. So to get up to 25 would be great.

How does everyone go about advertising their self published book? Any tips?

I've no idea how to advertise - I've blocked on Twitter the people who promote their books all the time. The sad thing is that the more you sell, the more you will sell, because of the way Amazon itself promotes the books.

There's an article from The Guardian here about Amazon suing fake reviewers (in the US.) It's pretty big business over there.

Thanks Imperial. I just read the article - so people pay for reviews! I had to look up the bonsai book after I read it haha!

I'm on Twitter now, I've tweeted a few bits, but I really don't like Twitter. I've also got lots of flyers printed and a couple of posters. A writer friend of mine told me that she read that someone (on average) has to see something advertised 6 times before the purchase it? I think there are so many books out there now, it's too hard to be seen - unless you already have a name for yourself. I'll keep trying though, for now.

I saw that article about Amazon cracking down on the fake review industry. It's massive! I'm glad because it is just cheating, really.

I've never heard that 25 reviews is a significant number.
I have read that also-boughts appear after 10 buys, which matches my experience. (I have been told I need 10 4-5 star reviews to be eligible for a certain promotion but that's because of an agent-assisted programme that I'm on, which hasn't actually got me any extra promotion, to be fair.)
I have 30 reviews and have heard that 40 would make me get promoted more, but tbh I don't have enough faith in these figures that get thrown around on the KDP forums to think it's worth the bother of touting around to get those extra 10 reviews. I'm sure Amazon is constantly revising these thresholds anyway - it's how they work, to stop people gaming the system.
I have a great set of reviews but tbh I think great sales count for more in the algorithms! I think the current adage that the best way to promote your book is to get on and write another one, is probably true. I worked a lot at promotion and I'm not really sure it was worth the effort - the time would have been better sent getting on with the next one.

I have a question.
Kindle Unlimited - anyone made a decent amount of money out of it? How do your KU payments compare with royalties? My money is coming through my agent so I'm not actually sure how many book sales and how many KU reads it comes from.

KU is incredibly random as far as I can tell. Apparently I'm getting a bonus payment this month for being in the top X% (can't remember the figure) of authors by pages read on KU - I didn't even know that was a thing but it seems it is.

My agent tells me that everyone's individual sales have slumped massively over the past few months, purely because the book market is so much bigger. Overall sales are up but the numbers are spread so thinly. It's depressing as fuck tbh. One thing that's worked well ish for me has been book bub promotions.

Countess, can't you monitor sales etc through KDP? Even if your agent deals with it all you should be able to view it.

I think also-boughts might be on sales exceeding 10 (or other number randomly assigned by KDP) per day (or a certain number of hours) rather than 10 over a longer period of time.

To be honest, Imperial, I think I'm better off not having access - the less time I can waste on this the better!

Re the also-boughts, I'm not sure if we're talking about the same thing? When your book first goes live you get 'customers who viewed this also viewed....' which for most books eventually changes to 'customers who bought this also bought'. I don't think it can take even 10 sales a day to get that because most books never achieve that.

I was doing quite well from KU, compared to my usual sales, when they first changed to pay per page, but have had nothing this week.

My sales fell over the summer and haven't really recovered yet. I've also read that Kindle authors generally are experiencing lower sales.

I've got a 99p promotion running on one of my titles this weekend, I hope it will have a knock on effect on the others.

Am also getting on with writing the next book!

Hello there, I'm completely new to all of this and have almost finished the first draft of my first novel. Can anyone please advise me how I go about trying to find an agent? The genre is mystery/paranormal. Thanks in advance!

Hello

First off you need to draft and redraft like mad. There's no point in sending it out to agents when it isn't as good as it possibly can be. After a few drafts, when you've stopped being able to see what needs improving, it might be the moment to get other writer friends to read it, so that you can then take their comments on board.

The traditional way to find agents is through the listings in the Writers' Handbook, which you can get in your library if you don't want to spend money on it, but these days there are listings on the internet too.

Then you need to narrow it down to someone who represents your type of book - no point in sending adult mystery to someone who only represents children's fiction, for instance.
Agents' websites include instructions for submission, eg how much of the book they want to see and what they would like to know about you.

And if anyone is trying to get money from you at this stage, they are dodgy so stay well clear.

Brilliant, thank you. I know I have plenty of re-drafting to do first, but thought I'd ask as I came across this thread. No harm in being prepared!

Yes, I spent a few months following agents on Twitter before I submitted, to get a sense of who was looking for things and who might like mine. Nothing wrong with planning ahead

I think one thing I've learned is to not waste time sending work out to agents who aren't mad on that particular genre. You're working in a genre that some will love and others will hate, so you really need to look hard at who's likely to be interested.

And I second the advice about getting other people to read it - although it's tempting to send it out to people who will say "Oh that's great" you're better off sending it to people who can give a real critique.

A question for those using KDP Select - have you noticed recently that they've done something with the algorithms so free promos don't work as they used to? I had a book in a free promo for 5 years earlier this year, and it got into the top 10 free, then when the price went back up it dropped to where it had been before in the paid rankings, whereas there used to be a period where the free ranking would be carried over. Is it a new thing? Or was it just a blip in my last promo?

I've posted a review finally helloeveryone - sorry it took so long. I really did enjoy your book.

I'm going to start looking into KDP now, while also doing another edit and sending off to more agents. My first lot (I sent it to 6) didn't get anywhere, no requests for full MS so I think I'm going wrong somewhere - I'm doing a rewrite on some of the first three chapters as I've spotted some weaknesses.

I like the idea of getting some writer friends to help by reading it through. I guess I just haven't been able to develop those kind of 'writing group' relationships as yet, I need to spend more time on things like Goodreads groups and Twitter, I guess. Twitter does annoy me, though. I've followed a lot of authors and there's so much book touting going on, it takes up my entire feed and I don't tend to click on a Twitter link to a book. I wonder how successful Twitter really is at promoting self published stuff - I wonder really how big a part social media does play? I'd be interested to find out. It seems to me that there's a load of authors cramming Twitter with their links and hoping, and following each other so they have thousands of followers - but is it in any sense meaningful?

Madhairday I'm also v ambivalent about Twitter. I think there's a bit of a cart–horse thing going on, in that people who have large Twitter followings will find it easier once they write a book to promote and sell it. Equally, people who are already popular and successful novelists will get tons of Twitter followers. (I think when Stephen King first joined, he got 100K followers in a day, or something.) But for the rest of us, it does get very incestuous, with people all following one another, all trying to promote our books, and not necessarily reaching anyone who actually reads them. There are lots of writers I know who've sold hundreds of thousands of books but have relatively few Twitter followers because they started writing and tweeting at the same time, iyswim. Mark Edwards only has about 4000, for instance.

Submitting to agents is SO fraught and depressing. Be patient - they often take AGES to come back to one and when they do, offer little in the way of constructive feedback. It took me about 8 months between starting to send my MS out and signing with an agent.

I agree about Twitter. I've got about seventy followers, but they're mostly people with their own stuff to plug. I think Goodreads is the place where one is most likely to find readers, rather than other writers, but it's very time consuming. I'd rather spend the time writing.

I agree, Harriet - it seems a better use of time just to write!

IShouldBe - how many agents did you submit to before you got signed? Did you get many MS requests or many outright rejections? It is incredibly depressing, isn't it - each one feels like a kick in the guts.

mad I can't remember TBH. More than 10 but less than 20. I had a request for full really quickly, which was amazing, although the agent didn't end up signing me (and she took aaaages to decide). Then a fuckload of no's (mostly rejection slips and ignores, but one really nasty letter). Then another request for full, and another wait. Then the agent who'd asked for my MS asked to meet me, and another agent requested my full MS at the same time. I met agent 1, liked her, put the pressure on agent 2, he said no after reading the MS over a weekend, so I went with agent 1. It's not been a fairytale but I like her and trust her, and I'm just about making a living from my books, which is more than I could have dreamed of (had I been dreaming sensibly, which I obvs wasn't).

I got my agent very quickly (from my first round of submissions and she got back to me within a few days) but then finding a publisher wasn't so easy. It's a very unpredictable game and the key is to not take rejections as absolute judgements at any point.

Re Twitter, I think it depends how you use it. If you put the effort in to use it to reach a particular audience the number of followers will result in sales. If you just passively acquire numbers of followers by sitting back and letting people follow you, you won't get people who want to buy your book because they will all be people who just want you to buy their book.

When I was first on Twitter it was before I was writing seriously, and I was tweeting very specifically about feminism and history, and the followers I picked up tended to be genuine followers who were interested in what I had to share. People like that are a potential audience for a book, but in order to maintain that you need to put a bit of thought and work in. You get back what you put in, really.

If I was trying to build an audience in a new genre and had unlimited time to spare I would actively follow lots of people who follow writers similar to me, and then some of them would autofollow back and might translate into sales. As it is, though, I would rather spend the time writing.