I recently published a children’s book on Amazon.
In this post, and over the next weeks and months, I will tell you exactly how I did it, what difficulties I encountered, and how I solved the problems that I ran into.
When I began publishing, I thought that I was prepared. I had read everything Joanna Penn has published on her blog since the end of the Roman empire. I had studied the Bestseller Experiment. I had bought and studied a good number of Joanna Penn’s writing and publishing books. I had listened to interviews with Russell Blake, Michael Anderle, T.S. Paul, and Michael Dawson. I had even read Chandler Bolt. I was ready, I thought.
Until I wrote “the end” under my story. Then the trouble began. This series of posts tells the story of all that. Of what came after “the end.”
I will tell all, as it happened, as it still happens. To begin with the worst of truths: nobody bought my book. I waited one day, one night, two days, a week. I had four sales, and I know the names of all four buyers, because they are my best friends. That was it. Not a single stranger clicked on my book. Not even by accident.
But this is what makes these posts interesting, I hope. There’s enough stuff out there on the Net from those who became rich and famous writing books: Russell Blake, T.S., Anderle, Joanna, and a whole bunch of others. Tales of indie success abound. But there are much fewer tales, if any, from the trenches. From those who fight for visibility, for a review, for a click. This post, and those that will follow, will provide this tale. Stories of the war.
I have a goal. At the end of the year (2018) I will earn 1000 USD a month from my books. How? We’ll see. This is the story of the way from here to that imaginary future. My year as an indie.
When I started, I was always puzzled about one thing: how did the Chandler Bolts and Russell Blakes get their first followers, their first readers, their first reviews? Chandler Bolt says: tell your friends. Tell your Twitter followers. Make a launch party.
If I make a launch party, I’ll be the launch party, a party of one. Very often, beginning writers are young people. They go to university, and they have lots of friends there who are ready and willing to support them with likes, shares, retweets and reviews. I am fifty. When you write your first book at fifty, there is not much of a cheerleading team around. My family, of which 2 are small kids. One or two colleagues who know about the book (the rest better don’t). A handful of half-forgotten friends in another country, not seen in years. So you’re alone, and all selling has to be done through real, honest marketing. Beginning at zero.
Another problem is time. I understand that students can make the time to write. But I’m fifty, as I said. I have a job, two children, a wife, weekends with the family, all that. I’m an academic, so I publish papers, do research, write research proposals, teach classes with hundreds of students, grade hundreds of exams and term papers every term. I cannot write eight, or even four hours a day. If I get up at five in the morning, I can manage one hour, and another some time in the afternoon. On some days, I might be able to squeeze one more hour into the afternoon, but that’s it. This is what I have, and it will have to work. My job feeds the family, and there’s no way out of this. All writing has to happen in the little free time that is left after the world has claimed most of my time and attention every day.
So here it is. The story of my adventures in writing, publishing, marketing, in all its gritty and glorious detail. We will see what worked and what didn’t, what everything cost (at the beginning of 2018), how things came together, which decisions I made and why, which of those decisions paid off and which didn’t.
Enjoy the ride, as I do. Let’s see together what lies waiting at the end of it!