Hey, guys. It’s been a while, so time for a Srs Blg. 10 important things I learned from self publishing.

1. Take risks. I’ll admit that I am the WORST at doing so, but by putting your work out there, you can better build a network of people who may be interested in reading your future work. It’s also way more likely you’ll be motivated to keep improving and updating (according to SCIENCE!). Personally, I knew that my work wasn’t perfect published anyway for two reasons: to get it out before starting high school and to get feedback on my writing skills.

2. Edit your work. Editing and revising is crucial to improving. If possible, get a professional editor to review your work and make sure said editor can do both copy and content editing for you. In my case, I didn’t know that the editor we hired only worked on copy editing until it was way too late.

3. Get early reviewers, especially from your target audience. Ideally, it is better if your reviewers don’t know you personally so you get more objective reviews. Since my network was limited at the time I wrote the book, I had it reviewed by a couple of my classmates who gave some really great feedback. However, getting input from people unfamiliar with you is also necessary to get them diverse opinions.

4. Get a professional cover designer. Cover designs can range from really cheap to really expensive, but your cover can often end up being the selling point of your book. In my case, the editor we hired helped to get the first cover done.

5. Decide on the platform you are going to publish your work through. There are many platforms available, from Createspace to Lulu to Smashwords and so on. I chose Createspace and Amazon to publish my book, which allowed some flexibility in formatting, pricing, and more.

6. Make sure your book description is written properly. Gotta go fast to get reader attention. Use them action verbs. Yeah.

7. Get a release date set. Have a plan/schedule for your book release. By building up to a release date, you build hype, and hype is incredibly important to making those around you aware that you have a book and that said book is for sale. Obviously, I did not do this and now I know better.

8. Revise and release the book based on feedback post release. Self publishing gives you the control to update and release the book as many times as you’d like, and it’s not super difficult to upload new files. I updated both the cover and content of TR a couple of times.

9. Get reviews after you publish. Book bloggers and reviewers will help you gain credibility, and you look much more legitimate with reviews to your name than without. Some book bloggers are very selective on the genre and others won’t accept self published works. In my case, it took many attempts to find a couple of bloggers who agreed to review and blog about my work. Besides making you look legit, you can also get some great feedback for the future.

10. Promote your book. Toot your own horn. Toot it multiple times. When you self publish, you are responsible for everything. This ranges from selling your book to promotion, marketing, pricing, and more. This is a HUGE topic, and I can’t cover it adequately here. However, personally I can tell you that I haven’t spent much time promoting my work due to High School™ and All That™™, so I’m not the prime example of promotional success. However, though promoting is tough and draining, it is important.