Don’t self-publish a book until you have done these 3 things.
Win At Freelance Writing was not my first book.
I wrote a fiction novel and two non-fiction books before I ever wrote Win At Freelance Writing.
But guess what? None of those first 3 books have sold as many copies as Win At Freelance Writing.
Why is that?
It’s because of what I did differently with my latest book and in today’s post I will share with you 3 things you absolutely, must do before you ever self-publish your book.
Trust me on this: if you haven’t done these three things, I advice you to avoid publishing until you’ve completed them.
Now, of course, you can use Amazon Ads and the paid advertising to promote your book. That’s fair game!
But let’s say you don’t have the money to do that just yet and you want to make the initial sales of your book organic, these 3 tips will get you there.
The result of implementing these 3 things I am about to share with you was that within 24 hours Win At Freelance Writing hit Number 1 New Release in two different categories and remained in that spot for a week!
If you’d like to watch me talk about these points, check out the YouTube video below. Otherwise, please read on!
Before you self-publish a book, do these 3 things.
Build an audience
Before you self-publish a book, you should build an audience who will enjoy reading your book.
For the first 3 books I wrote, I had no audience.
I wrote and self-published my first non-fiction book in 2012. I remember posting about it on my personal Facebook page and receiving several virtual rounds of applause.
Those congratulatory message did not turn into sales however.
In fact, apart from a handful of my friends from church and one or two people who knew me when I was younger, that book has sold less than 20 copies in the last 8 years!
No author dreams of selling 20 books in 8 years.
Same thing happened for the next two books I wrote. I had no audience. Nobody was looking forward to my books and so when I published them, the sound of crickets abounded.
With Win At Freelance Writing however, I had been creating content around freelance writing for almost 2 years on YouTube.
My podcast is centered around writing and now this blog is going to be a resource for freelance writers and self-published authors.
And so, there was a core audience who was excited about picking up this book.
Build an audience around the subject you want to write on.
The audience does not have to be large. It could be 1000 people.
As long as your message has been clear and consistent and most importantly, on a specific niche, you will attract the right audience to you and when you launch your book you will have a better chance at succeeding.
Talk about your book BEFORE launch day
You should be talking about your book long before it launches.
Personally, I gave myself about 30 days to talk about my book before the actual launch day.
In the case of Win At Freelance Writing, I was going to launch the book on April 22, 2020.
And so, in the middle of March I began to give my audience sneak peeks of the book, I let them vote on the final book cover design and I shared a video of when I received proofs of the physical copy of the book.
I found ways to talk about the book on social media and in my emails to my email list.
When I did this, people began to send me messages to say how excited they were about the book.
This is what you want! You want to make people aware and get them excited about your book long before it launches.
I personally recommend 30 days for this.
Build a highly targeted email list
Fact – not everyone in your audience is going to buy your book.
This is just a fact of life.
But, you can find out who is really interested in buying your book by building an email list specifically for your book.
During those 30 days when I was making people aware of the book prior to launch day, I also created a landing page (pictured blow) and invited people to download the first chapter of the book.
The people on that list were a highly targeted list because they had shown interest in buying the upcoming book by downloading the first chapter of the book.
Did all the people on this list buy the book?
Again, no. But about 50% of them did!
Which was a huge win in my book.
So create a freebie around your book and offer that to your audience.
A section of people will sign up – indicating their interest in buying your book on launch day.
And guess who gets the first sales email when the book goes live on launch day? That list.
The other reason you want to do this is because if you plan on writing more books along that subject line, this will become a core section of your list you can send new book releases to.
Self-publishing is an income stream I am actively pursuing in this season of my life.
I successfully wrote books in the past but made no sales.
Following the tips I just shared, I was able to make sales and hit Number 1 New Release in two categories on Amazon.
Learn how you can work 1-on-1 with me to write and self-publish a winning book in 6 weeks.
If you do these three things before you self-publish a book, you will do well.
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
