OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn
Last week, I spoke at the Frankfurt Book Fair on the Kobo booth and talked about what it takes to be successful in self-publishing to a small group of indie authors. Thanks to Camille Mofidi from Kobo Writing Life Europe for inviting me and also getting me a star on the walk of fame – see the picture at the bottom of the post!
Here are my slides from the event and a list of notes with more links is included below.
It is 95% relevant to all authors, with a little bit of German specific info throughout.
Here's my top tips:
- Where I am now, and where I was 6 years ago. The fact that it takes time to achieve anything and being an author is just like any career. You need to invest in learning and development over time. For example, here's my 3 years as a full-time author-entrepreneur lessons learned.
- Define what you mean by success, as that will shape your career as an author
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Write more books that people want, and most authors have at least 5 books before they start making any decent money
- Use a great book cover that attracts readers in your genre
- Use keywords and appropriate metadata so your book is optimized for the various sites
- Own your own hub and your own email list, so no one can destroy your platform, your brand and your career
- Getting book reviews and identifying book bloggers in your niche
- Using promotional tools like BookBub and others
- Experiment with pricing and length
- Exploit all your rights – think ebook, print and audio as well as countries and languages
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Consider the global market and selling in multiple countries
- Attract and connect with your readers
- Use content marketing
- Characteristics of successful self-publishers
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