Eight Reasons Your Self Published Novel Won’t Sell
Posted on | February 8, 2012 | 4 Comments
Self publishing seems to be the way to go these days, at least initially.* Tales of main stream publishers waiting to see how a book does as a self published work before offering representation aren’t myths, and I strongly suspect we’re seeing the start of a new method of publishing for everyone:
Self publish first, then legacy publishing.
However you can’t get the attention of main stream publishing if you’ve only sold two copies of your book and they were both to your Aunt Mavis.
While exactly what helps a self published novel take off is open for debate, there are some things that are sure fire killers for any self published work.
Before I go into them, I want to point out that these tend to be mistakes made by first timers, there are professionals who get around some of these without too many problems, but they’re the exception rather than the rule.
1. You Didn’t Edit Your Work
Even professionally published books have typos in them, but this is not an excuse for not thoroughly editing your work. I’m not just talking about looking for typographical errors, edit for character, plot and story flow as well.
Usually this means reading your work out loud. Until you’ve done it, you won’t believe how many mistakes the simple act of vocalising your work can catch.
You may also surprise your neighbours, so bear in mind you only need to say it out loud, you don’t have to shout. I certainly surprised mine.
A badly edited book won’t just get bad reviews, worse often they simply get no reviews at all because readers get frustrated and stop reading the book. Just because an agent isn’t checking everything for you doesn’t excuse you from going through your book sentence by sentence.
2. You Didn’t Get Anyone Else To Edit
No matter how awesome your editing skills are, you won’t catch every mistake you make.
After spending months working on the same manuscript, most of us are simply too close to what we’ve written to spot all the mistakes. Part of the problem is that once you’ve read the same thing thirty or more times, it’s impossible to read the manuscript without your brain filling in the blanks for you.
Getting a fresh set of eyes to look at your work is essential, and if you can, make it a set of eyes that’s been trained to look for the kind of things authors miss. I’ve been very lucky as I know several editors who are happy to look at my stuff for me, but if you don’t I recommend looking at hiring a freelance editor to take a look at your work.
Make sure you’ve written, polished and repolished your work before you send it off to anyone. It will be a colossal waste of money to pay an editor if you haven’t made the work as good as you can get it first.
3. No One Knows Your Work
If you don’t tell anyone your book is available, no one will buy it. This means you have to do a lot more than telling your mates and the people who read your blog.
You are going to have to do some marketing (or hire someone to do it for you). I know, you want to be a writer, not a marketer, but these days writers are marketers whether they want to be or not.
This means you are going to have to know what you’re doing with social media, conduct interviews and send your work out to be reviewed by book bloggers and professional reviewers.
If you don’t do this, then the chances of your book making an impact are…slim. I can’t say none, you never know when the right person will see your work at the right time. That said, word of mouth is the greatest seller of books, and it’s hard to get word of mouth going if no one’s read your stuff.
4. No One Knows You
Back in the distant past; say ten years ago**, you could get away with letting your work stand on its own. Those days are gone.
This is a hard lesson for all writes to learn. Most of us are introverted and much prefer sitting behind a desk in the dark to mingling with the rest of the world, even digitally.
The sad fact of the matter is that unless you hit an absolutely break out bestseller novel if you want to make a living from your writing you’re going to have to hustle to get not only your work, but your name out there and working for you.
It doesn’t actually have to be much. One of the first things I do when I hear about a book I might like (other than checking out a sample on Amazon) is Google the author. It’s hard to put a finger on exactly why, but I like to get a feel of what the author is like. I’m also checking to see if they have more books coming out and whether or not they’re a regular blogger.
There are so many writers out there now. Some are great authors, some are just great marketers…heck some are neither. If you want to make it big (or even make a living) you’ll need to figure out how to be bother a great writer and a great marketer.
5. You Cover Is So Bad It Warps Reality Around It
I know I go on a lot about covers but in the age of self publishing the only thing more important than a great cover is a great book. I’m going to assume for a moment that you’ve got the great book part covered.
No matter how often we’re all told that a good cover can make all the difference to an e-book’s sales we still see e-books coming out with covers drawn in crayon (seriously) or produced in Paint.
A decent cover makes such a difference you either need to invest several hundred hours in learning how to make a good cover or pay someone else a sizable chunk of money to do it for you. There are a lot of other articles around exactly how to find the right cover designer for you, but there really are only two requirements:
1. You love their work.
2. You trust in their professionalism.
If there were three, that’s where I’d put down pricing but you need to bear in mind that artists are as poorly paid as writers and trying to go absolutely bargain basement for your cover will leave you with a cover that screams at potential readers that their money would be better spent somewhere else.
6. Your Book Sucks
It can be hard to know if your book sucks or not. It’s the child of your own imagination and looking at your child critically is something most people find very difficult. The easiest way to avoid this is to run your book through multiple beta readers and take on board the criticisms that are common to all of the beta readers.
For example if you have five beta readers and four love your main character but one hates them, then you’re probably OK to keep the character the way they are***. If on the other hand four beta readers arrive at your door determined to tar and feather you for writing that particular character some changes might be in order.
The other way you can tell is that you Amazon reviews are consistently 1 and 2 stars. Note I say consistently. You will get some bad reviews no matter what, but if ALL of your fifty reviews are in the 1 and 2 star groups then it might be time to pull the book and check to see if those reviewers have a point.
7. Your Timing Sucks
If you put out a self published vampire romance novel in the last couple of years you were competing with an absolute flood of similar books. This isn’t always a bad thing: if that’s a popular genre then it can actually boost your sales; especially if you price your work in the 99 cent and $1.99 price brackets.
With that said once the tide has well and truly come in on a particular genre and the market is flooded your book can get lost in the crush. Of course if your book stands out because of a fantastic cover or because it’s so good word of mouth sells it for you then you can overcome this problem, but that’s true of almost all problems you’ll run into in self publishing.
8. It Just Doesn’t
The most frustrating thing about publishing, and in particular self publishing, is that sometimes there is no good reason for your book not selling. A pro cover, fantastic writing and marketing will all give you a far better chance of making it big but there is no guarantee of success no matter what you do.
Writing has always been a gamble, and all talent, preparation and smarts can do is improve your odds of winning. The better your odds, the better the chance that you’ll eventually win.
One Last Thing
I’ve mentioned superb writing several times in this post, and in the end that’s the thing that can carry your book over and above every other problem you might have.
You have to focus on your writing first because if you slip up in some other way, you’ll always have that to fall back on.
What problems do you see in the self publishing world? Anything you think I’ve missed?
* This is not to say you can’t go the traditional route, or that it won’t work for you.
** Dinosaurs may or may not have ruled the earth at this time.
*** Unless they start bleeding from the eyes. That’s probably a bad sign.
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4 Responses to “Eight Reasons Your Self Published Novel Won’t Sell”
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February 22nd, 2012 @ 3:15 am
Great advice! One thing I would add regarding book covers – if possible, find someone who is interested in learning something about you and your work. Having a relationship/connection with the artist certainly helps!
February 25th, 2012 @ 1:54 am
The price point seems to be a huge decision. Some say price too low and books buyers will think it’s a howler (no pun intended, my book is ‘Bridget in Werewolf Rehab’)but price too high and no one will take a chance on buying it. Is there a rule of thumb for self published children’s books?
March 1st, 2012 @ 5:40 pm
Children’s books are lagging behind a bit for ebooks (although they’re catching up quickly). If it’s just text, then I say try it at 2.99 and see how you go. if there are pictures go for 4.99. If you find there are no takers, put it on special for a week at 99 cents and see if you can kick start your sales that way.
April 14th, 2012 @ 10:50 pm
Was the typo in the heading of number five on purpose?