6 Mistakes I Made When Indie Publishing

You gear up—you grab your manuscript, prepare to hire a graphic designer, start writing up those launch team emails—and jump into the unknown of independent publishing. You soon find that there are so many mistakes that could be avoided. Potholes left and right, travelers who’ve fallen into ditches of mistakes they’ve made in the independent publishing land.

Okay, so maybe not to that extreme. But there are still many undeniable mistakes you can make in the independent publishing process—and sometimes all it takes is a little (or a lot) of preparation.

I published my first book with CreateSpace when I was seven. I had no idea how to make sales, and looking back, I probably just wanted to have a printable copy to give to friends and family. I continued on to publish with FastPencil when I was nine, and then again when I was ten. These three novellas are now unavailable for sale—but before, I was quite proud of them, as you can probably imagine.

In this blog post, I’ll be delving into the mistakes that I made during independent publishing. They were unintentional, but most of them had a severe effect on my sales and the quality of my independent publishing experience.

1. Unprofessional cover design.

I had no idea about the pros of graphic design, so yes—I just slapped a cover on. It was good in the beginning, but looking back, the covers definitely weren’t marketable.

If you do plan on independent publishing, I’d strongly advise getting a cover designer. There are multiple resources for people in need of a decent cover design—Fiverr, 99 Designs, Reedsy, and 100 Covers, for example*. It just takes a little research.

The statement “don’t judge a book by its cover” unfortunately doesn’t go this day and age. I’ve too often skimmed a bookstore shelf for a book with a historical cover in pursuit of a good read.

Your book cover needs to represent what your book is about just by giving a quick glance to the cover. Your cover needs to give a reader a glimpse of what the book is about in a few seconds. The cover is all it takes sometimes to attract a reader to your book.

Getting a cover that fits your book (and your book’s genre) is a must-have.

* Disclaimer: I have not used any of these graphic design services before.

2. Zero Advertising

Now, this was probably a good thing, but I did not do any advertising for my book. I’m by no means a professional, but advertising is definitely crucial if you want to make sales and potential buyers.

Advertise your book. Let friends and family know and find ways for them to spread the word. Build a launch team of people who are willing to do whatever it takes to get copies of your book into the hands of readers. For more information on building a launch team, check out this article.

3. Forgetting to connect my bank account in order to make sales.

This is quite a newbie mistake, and one that could be definitely avoided. In order to make money selling your book, you’d have to connect your bank account. Otherwise—you won’t receive any of the payment.

Unfortunately, this happened to me twice. I was only eight or nine, but I didn’t realize it until years later. Fortunately, there wasn’t that much money made on the two books I had forgotten, so it wasn’t much of a loss.

This point is a relatively easy lesson to learn—remember to connect your bank account, otherwise the payments from your book sales will easily slip through your fingers as they did mine.

4. An unappealing blurb.

As mentioned before, an appealing blurb and a good cover both weigh in the balance to get readers to read your book. Personally, after spotting a book with an appealing cover (that I can usually tell the genre from), I pick it up and flip to the back to read the blurb.

The blurbs I wrote for my first three books were unappealing. In example, here was the first blurb I published my book under when I was nine:

When her home burns down, Odele Bryne finds herself alone, without family. Turning into a cold, unhappy person because of the loss of her riches, she meets Amanda, who is a poor girl that lives in a village nearby Odele’s home. But not many people in Ajames Village trust her. Realizing that she must earn the trust of the villagers, she goes into the Black Forest to look for a bandit, Thomas Lead. But doing so only gives Thomas Lead and his group of gathered bandits a chance to kidnap her and hold her captive. When she makes an exciting discovery that her mother is still alive, will Mrs. Bryne still survive through the hardships that she has been through? And will Odele have a change of heart and want to help the people held captive by Thomas Lead?

Notice how this blurb summarizes most of the events in order, leaving nearly nothing to be discovered (except the last question). It gives away the “exciting discovery” (that her mother is still alive), the struggle (the people in Ajames Village don’t trust her), and lists the events (turning into a cold, unhappy person, she meets Amanda, who lives in a village nearby Odele’s home, gives Thomas Lead a chance to kidnap her and hold her captive, etc). You don’t even need to pick up this book to know what will happen—you just need to read the blurb and you have a mini-story right at your fingertips.

During my recent re-publication of this book, I rewrote the blurb to this:

In this new edition of A Change of Heart, a girl's life is thrown into confusion when her home burns down - leaving her with nothing but a silver necklace. After the loss of her home, Odele Bryne finds herself all alone in the world - until she is taken into the community of Ajames Village. Caught up in a growing danger that threatens the village, Odele begins to wonder what will happen to her now. Will an exciting discovery change her perspective? Is she really all alone in the world? And when a chance comes to make a difference, will Odele have a change of heart? Only one thing is certain - her life will never be the same. Told in the early days of the Great Depression, this is a story about one girl's personal journey of hope.

In contrast to the other blurb, this one has more of an air of mystery and suspense (the growing danger, exciting discovery, her life will never be the same) and wraps it up with a tidy closing line (this is a story about one girl’s personal journey of hope). It doesn’t list all the events of the story, instead, it leaves more for the reader to discover.

In all, I’d highly suggest crafting your blurb so it makes your potential reader itch to flip the pages open and embark on a new adventure. This can be done by introducing the world and problem, then ending it with multiple questions that the readers have yet to discover.

5. No “feel” for the genre.

This might be a heavily perplexing topic, but it’s really quite simple. I didn’t learn from the other books in my genre. I published a fantasy book, but I didn’t know what fantasy covers looked like, therefore my cover did not look like a fantasy cover (and probably wouldn’t attract a fantasy reader anyway).

My advice for this topic is to definitely do lots of research. Look into what books in your genre are doing and do the same to suit the same audience. However, that doesn’t stop you from giving your own twist and style to your works!

6. Publishing before the book is actually ready.

This one was an extremely tough lesson for me to learn. In order to decide whether or not your book is publish-ready, you need to be willing to put in the effort to make your book ready to publish. Throwing out a badly-written first draft for publication will immediately mar your potential success, as it did for mine. You can have an amazing graphic designer to do your cover, have perfect grammar, have an awesome feel for the genre, have an intriguing blurb, but if the book inside needs work—and lots of it—you will likely disappoint your readers.

I, personally, when publishing my first book with CreateSpace, found a lot of third-party sellers who had previously purchased my book and tried to resell them. There could be reasons for this—but one of them (that I assume) is that the work didn’t live up to its standards and was unprofessional, blurb-wise, story-wise, and genre-wise.

The solution, no matter how simple it may sound, is to get your book into the hands of as many people as possible. Grab their feedback and use it to polish your writing up until it’s ready for publication.

---

Overall, I’ve made many mistakes during the independent publishing process. My books and I are still far from perfect. However, the experience of publishing made it all worth it. No matter how many mistakes you make, whether in your life or independent publishing, the whole idea is to learn from it. You won’t be able to improve if you don’t make mistakes in the beginning.

Instead of viewing mistakes as imperfect scars to your past, view them as perfect starting points. I personally don’t try to hide the mistakes I’ve made in my independent publishing journey because I have the ability to learn from them. And I’m sure for every mistake you’ve made, there’s a new lesson to learn.