In 2012 I led a writers group at one of our local libraries. I suggested we self-publish an anthology on Amazon. I didn’t do it because I thought we would sell a lot of copies. I didn’t even care if one of my works was in it, though it was cool to see a book appear when I searched for my name in Amazon. I did it for two reasons. First, I am more motivated to write with a tangible goal and a deadline. Second, I wanted to understand the mechanics behind creating a Kindle book on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and a paperback on what was then called CreateSpace (now absorbed by KDP). We did not sell many copies. The book turned out to be embarrassing. More on that later.
I eventually decided to format books as a hobby business. I do it for friends and friends of friends. As I write this, I’m working on another writers group anthology. This is my 76th book. I’ve gotten good at formatting. I’ve studied hundreds of books by the largest publishers, and I know what a professionally published book should look like. One of the books I formatted (Where the River Runs Deep by Lynne Handy) was reviewed in Publisher’s Weekly and it received an “A” for format. I passed their test!
I’ve also attempted over the last 12 years to help my clients market their books online. I haven’t earned an “A” in marketing; in fact, nothing I’ve advised or personally tried has been successful. I’ve had successful clients, but their success is a result of their offline efforts: events, readings, their relationships with bookstore owners and managing to get themselves interviewed for media. Their hustle brought readers and reviews which helped online sales. But because the authors bought the books and sold them directly, those sales did not improve their Amazon sales rank, another important component to achieving more exposure in Amazon’s marketplace.
It's obvious I’m not a marketing guru. I do believe I know the minimum criteria for a chance at success: story, cover and description. Don’t even bother spending time or money on marketing until you have these basics nailed down tight. I’ll cover each separately.
Story
If you’re writing strictly for money, pick a popular genre, study it thoroughly and write what the marketplace expects. Most of the writers I’ve worked with had a story, or a cause, which was important enough to write a book about. Many of the books I formatted did not slot comfortably into a specific genre, much less a popular one. All of this is OK, of course; write what you want to write. If your book is in a less popular genre or you can’t place it in any particular genre, be aware that marketing will take more effort, and the book will also take more time to catch on.
The most important factor in a good story: editing. Do you remember I said the first book I formatted was embarrassing? It was full of obvious typos: two commas in a row, words squished together, missing periods—it was not a pretty sight. The wonderful thing about digital publishing is all these problems can be fixed, but it should never have happened in the first place. Ten authors participated in that anthology. Each author was supposed to submit an edited, clean manuscript. That didn’t happen. Each participant was supposed to thoroughly edit the other 9 authors’ works. We did not do a good job. What did we learn? We learned that editing is more difficult than we thought, and we went too fast, and were sloppy.
The next year’s anthology went much better. Embarrassment over last year’s effort changed our attitude. A big part of the solution was to allocate more time to the editing process. Slowing down really helped a lot.
Today I advise my clients to do three things. First, use the tools available to you. If you use Microsoft Word, click the Editor button. It’s much more than a mere spell-checker. It’s not perfect, but it is vastly improved over what I used in 2012. If you don’t use Word or want to get a second opinion, try one of the online options like Grammarly or ProWritingAid.
Second, read your work aloud. Or, better yet, have your computer read it to you. Microsoft Word has this feature. You will catch more than basic spelling and grammatical errors. Awkward sentence structures and poor word choices will be easier to hear than read.
Third, hire a professional editor. This can be expensive, but usually will be money well spent. There are different types of editors: developmental and line editors. Developmental editors will help with story arc, pacing and character development. Line editors are going to assist with paragraph and sentence structure, word choice and overlap some of the features of the software-based editing tools.
If you can afford both editors, do it. If you only want to work with one, I suggest you lean toward the developmental editor and rely on the available editing tools for the rest.
Lastly, as it relates to the importance of the story itself, spend quality time on the title. Don’t just pick a title that reiterates the plot. The title is advertising. It should be crafted to intrigue a potential buyer! Keep it short! You’ll understand why brevity is important when we get to the next section about the cover.
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