How To Be Successful In Self-Publishing

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• Hi Joanna - Glad to see that your career continues to accelerate. I was one of your pre-pub readers of Pentecost. You might be interested in a series I did recently on social readers - defined as those who "use blogs, social media or other online sites for reading recommendations and discussion". If you are, they are on my blog, http://www.awriterofhistory.com. (1) 10 Ways Social Readers are Changing the Reading Landscape, (2) 2 Models for Selling Historical Fiction, (3) Selling Historical Fiction Part II, (4) Selling Historical Fiction Part III, and (5) 10 Insights From the Social Reading Landscape. All best, Mary Tod

  • Thanks Mary, and I have put your article in the tweet queue :)

    • Many thanks, Joanna. I see it has been retweeted a few times :-)

• Great advice! One final bit: Keep writing and have fun doing it!

  Thanks for all that you do for other writers!

  Rebecca

• I would also say -- though I'm not yet successful -- keep reading books on writing and publishing. I just read "Million Dollar Outlines" by David Farland and it has inspired me. It's not just a book about outlining, but about finding out what the market wants and how plots and stories satisfy the needs of readers. Only after explaining that does it go into showing how to build your plot to fulfill your readers' needs. Amazing book and much more than I expected when I started reading it.

  I'm now on to "Business for Authors" by... dang I forgot who wrote that one. ;)

  Thank you Joanna for giving writers so many awesome resources.

  • Yes, definitely keep learning - every day! I've actually got David Farland coming on the show , Nick, so let me know if there's something you would want to ask him.

• Excellent tips! I would add speak at relevant professional conferences and trade shows. I've often received large class set orders for my ESL/EFL conversation based textbooks after speaking at local, state, and international conferences for English teachers. Many times professionals and decision makers want to meet the actual author, and as impressed with the author as the books written.
  While I have not been as successful as many other self-published authors, your advice about considering international markets is very apt. I have been pleasantly surprised that you can sell books and rights around the world so the ideas shaped in one's home or class can spread thousands of miles across the globe. I still get a silly kick when I sell a single copy or PDF to someone in the rather distant place like Congo, Peru, Kazakhstan, or Turkey. It just makes me smile!

• Hi Joanna.

  Every time I read your posts and hear your podcast, I start wondering "what if". But then I remember that I have only few hours a week to write and can´t quit my full time job.

  It looks like a very sad scenario, but it's not. So this is my question: Is it possible to be a successful published author when you are not a full-time writer?

  (It's not a very smart question, because the answer is "yes", I know, but maybe you can elaborate around this idea).

  Best regards Joanna, from Chile

  • Hi Dan,
    I was a full-time business consultant when I started learning learning and writing on the side - after two years of getting up at 5am and working before the office, spending my lunchtimes reading, and weekends immersed in courses and things, I started this site in Dec 2008. I had published one book at that point - I managed to make the shift to 4 days a week then and spent 3 more years getting up early and working all the time possible - I had no social life, I didn't want one - we got rid of the TV, I gave up 20% of my income so I could focus on this stuff. Basically, it's about making the time - whatever your day job is. Most writers actually have day jobs anyway so you don't have to go fulltime, but I hope that helps you understand that I spent 5 years building this business up on the side, before going full-time. All the best!

• Excellent points Joanna. As a newbie to self publishing who is in the process of writing my first book , I am realizing the power of branding. I have also decided that rather than write one very long book, to write a few shorter novellas. As you said it takes a number of books before profits can be realized. Keep up the amazing work.

  • Thanks Ian - and yes, more books enables you to do so much more in terms of pricing and promo as well as having more shelf space!

• I've used Hostgator/Wordpress for 2 years paying first for Business plan, then downgrading to Baby Plan and spent 2 hours yesterday trying to downgrade to Hatchling but they won't help me (have no idea how to do this) move my info to the new plan. I made the mistake of using a name other than my own for http://www.stardustmomentspress.com as the publishing name of my "company." Not really successful fighting trying to use it so I can ultimately sell my books (have 2 and one soon will be on Kindle). My name is on Weebly but I cannot sell digital unless I upgrade to an expensive plan. My question. Should I fight to stay on Wordpress (I'm ready to dump them today) or pay Weebly more and get Selz as you and your book encouraged. Big fan of your info.

  • Hi Carol,
    I can't give you any specific technical advice - just tell you what I do.
    I used free wordpress.com sites for my early blogs, and use wordpress.org software hosted on Siteground for this and my other site. I have been happily using wordpress for 7 years and have never had any issues. I also used Hostgator until my site got too big, and was happy with them too.
    You can sell books from Amazon, Kobo, iBooks, Smashwords and all the other sites without needing to have direct sales options on your site. Using something like Selz which is $5 per month for basic, is fine - but you'll only sell that way if you have traffic to your site - otherwise, it's not worth doing. I would suggest thinking about what you're trying to achieve with the website - I am doing a webinar on website essentials next week as well if you're interested: https://booklaunch.io/events/joanna-penn-webinar on Feb 19, 2015

• To Carl: I want to recommend Gumroad if you want to sell directly on your blog.
  To Joanna: I like your slideshare, yet I am coming from posts about A.G. Riddle and he says everywhere he invested only 18$ for marketing his Atlantis series, he did the cover himself!; his mother edited his book ad his girlfriend beta-read it. After,(note after!) the book became popular, he paid David Gatewood a few thousand bucks and then hired a professional designer. He and Hugh Howey did this and others. Hugh didn't spend a buck for editing or design with his Wool debut book. I am not advocating it but they say "write a book that folks would love and will talk to friends about it". I buy it. Here is the post in Hugh's blog I am coming from" http://www.hughhowey.com/defying-the-odds/#comment-249204
  Would love to hear your thoughts Joanna.

  • There are always outliers - and they are the ones we hear about. Weigh those against the thousands of other authors who use pro editors and cover designers - then make your own decision.

• Joanna,

  Congratulations for all your beautiful success and every advice of yours is useful, especially for a beginner like me. I am at Kindle with my first baby "A Paradise to your Soul" By Zoila T. Flores.
  And I hope you can advice me how to promote better my poetry book.
  http://amzn.com/B00PL71JMU

  Thanks,

  Zoila T. Flores

• Hi Joanna
  This is great content and I'm really digging what you offer. I've been a follower of the guys at Self-Publishing Podcast and through them, discovered your podcast http://www.thecreativepenn.com/podcasts/ - really enjoying the stuff.

  Because of people like you, Sean Platt, David Wright, Johnny B. Truant and others, I've started my own journey with self-publishing. I'm really enjoying the process and will be publishing in a couple months.

  All thanks to you!
  Thanks again!

  • All the best with your books, David!