Self Publishing gets a bad rap, but like me as a teenager, it’s mostly misunderstood and just wants to be loved. I’ve been working through the fun, fun, fun that is uploading my first novel to IngramSpark. It’s not easy but it is simple, if that makes sense. The website has very easy to follow steps, there just a lot of them, and they ask questions that contain words like tax and compensation and you have to sign things. eep
I know it’s not difficult and I’ve done it all before for the art sites I’ve sold through so I’ll plow through. If you’re going through it, or you’ve stopped for some reason because it’s all too hard, just keep going. It’s worth it. On the weekend, I heard a writer who has paid a LOT of money to an assisted-publisher say that it was ‘so much easier than doing it themselves’. Yes, if you really just have one book in you as this guy did and have no intention or desire to write more then an assisted publisher is perfect. However, if you intend writing and publishing for the foreseeable future then you really owe it to yourself to learn how to use platforms like IngramSpark, Amazon (KDP) etc or aggregators like Draft2Digital or PublishDrive.
Today my goal is simply to complete the tax information on IngramSpark.
I desperately wanted to start a writing group called WRITE CLUB (hahaha, get it, like FIGHT CLUB, the book by Chuck Palahniuk. (The Fight Club was a brutal, underground club with bare knuckle fights.) Someone beat me to it but hasn’t posted on their page for over a year. Sane thing happened with The Little Paris Book Club; someone beat me to it. Why can’t I have any original ideas? gah!
So if you remember the book (or the movie of the same name) Fight Club had rules. The first rule of Fight Club was ‘nobody talks about fight club’. The first rule of my WRITE CLUB is that nobody is allowed to try to sell their books to other members of Write Club. I love books and buy far too many of them but when it comes to books, if there’s one thing I hate, it’s being pressured to buy a book. I actively tell people NOT to buy my book if I think they aren’t going to like it. It’s like Gluten Free Muffins. Don’t take my gluten free muffins if you’re just going to take a bite, say it’s gross and put it in the bin. And while I’m on food related analogies, when I buy a book I don’t like I get so mad. It’s like the useless calories you’ve eaten when you have a meal that’s sub-par. At least you don’t have to purge to get rid of a book you don’t like….eww
There’s NOTHING wrong with promoting your book, you just have to promote it to the right audience! I’ve been building my Facebook group for over 8 years and I am at about 4400 followers. It’s awesome, but I recently discovered that I can use fairly inexpensive ads on social media to reach the people who are my audience! So fear not, fellow writers, if you don’t have a huge following, it only costs a few dollars a day to get one!
Listening to this podcast right now – CRUCIAL listening for anyone wanting to launch not just one book but a career as a writer.
Feature image from literarytraveler.com my new fave website <3
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