Hey Maverick!
I thought I want to do something a little bit different! I want to share some kindle-tastic kindle publishing tips with you!
Everday I receive emails and messages asking me how I build my website, publish books, create magazines, run my Instagram, Pinterest etc
Truthfully, I’m not that confident that everything I do actually works for you. But I learned a lot over the last 4 years of self-publishing online. Which allow me to quit my day job to work from home full time.
Now I can do what I love doing because I have a passive income stream and I don’t have to rely on a month-to-month paycheck.
But don’t quit your job tomorrow. I didn’t quit my job until I had my side hustle going for 31 months.
Be responsible. You have to work on it over time but every day move closer towards this goal.
So, for the next 12 days, I’m going to share some self-publishing tips and guides to help you start your Kindle publishing, building a passive income and ultimately quit your day job!
Day 1: 5 Things Beginners Need to Know About Kindle Publishing
Day 2: 7 Reasons Why You Should Create an eBook for Your Business
Day 3: How to Write and Publish an eBook
Day 4: How To Find Profitable Niches To Publish Online
Day 5: The Biggest Mistake I Made In Self-Publishing and How You Can Avoid It
Day 6: 6 Steps To Sell More Books on Amazon
Day 7: Designing Book Covers That Sell
Day 8: 7 Most Common Self-Publishing Mistakes You Should Avoid
Day 9: 40 Ways to Promote and Market Your Book
Day 10: 49 Inspirational Marketing Tips From Top Authors
Day 11: Top 10 Best Tools for Self-Publishing Authors
Day 12: 12 Best Platforms to Self-Publish Your eBook and Make Money
Today, I want to talk about the top 7 most common self-publishing mistakes you should avoid.
1. Poor Editing
A common mistake self-publishing newbies make is trying to skimp on hiring a professional editor. You can’t ask your friend who is a school English teacher to do the work. You need a professional editor to edit your manuscript.
If there are a lot of misspellings, grammatical errors and typos, readers will give your book a bad review. And it will definitely affect your book ranking and sale. There is no way to remove the bad reviews, even if you’ve made changes and corrections on your book.
To achieve long-term success with your publishing business, you’ll need to hire a qualified and experienced editor. There are many different types of editing:
- Developmental Editing – A developmental editor will help you write your book, develop the characters and make an improvement on the entire book.
- Substantive Editing – This editor will focus on making sure the scene flow well, clarify points and remove awkward sentences.
- Copy Editing – A copy editor will help you to improve word usage and go through your manuscript line by line. They will correct grammar mistakes, spelling errors, punctuation errors and capitalization mistakes.
A professional editor will provide you a fresh, objective pair of eyes, making sure that you have the best possible manuscript off to print.
If you’re not ready to hire a professional editor to edit your manuscript, there are few editing tools online that can be very useful. You can use Grammarly to proofread, detect grammar mistakes and errors. Hemingway Apps is another great tool to review your draft and make your writing clear.
2. Poor Book Description
Book description is another aspect most self-published authors overlook. It’s a great chance for you to take hold of the attention of potential readers. It’s your only chance to convince a reader to click and buy the book.
Most people don’t read your book descriptions, they scan. Avoid making the mistake of pulling blocks of text from the back of your book without using any spacing, bullets or bolding to highlight the text. Spend some time to work on your description, make it more visually appealing and error free.
3. Bad Cover Design
Your reader will never read your book or read the content of your blog if the design is poor & unprofessional. Every effort you put into your content would have been wasted if your first impression failed to shine through.
When I just started with self-publishing, I created my own cover using PowerPoint. It looked good to me initially, but as I published more and more books, I made better covers, and I sort of understand designs really made the difference.
Through many years of practice and experience, I developed a better eye for design.
If you’re not creative or dislike designing work, you can always outsource your book cover to experienced graphic designers who can bring your ideas to life. A professional book cover will cost anywhere from $100-$300.
However, if you’re just starting out, I don’t recommend spending that amount of money for a cover design.
If you are on a tight budget, I would suggest you submit a proposal on Upwork and/or wait for freelancers to bid on your project Then, you can post a few book cover ideas on Facebook and ask people to choose their favorite design that catches their eye.
You can also use Canva to design the front cover (2D cover) of your book. It offers lots of ready to use templates.
Then, you can use special tools to design your 3D book mockup designs.
Why cut corners when you can attain premium-like quality designs with little to no extra-added cost?
Here are some other types of book mockups you can use today!
- Hardcover book mockup
- Matte Covered Books mockup
- Glossy Covered Books mockup
- Metallic Covered Books mockup
- Textured Leather Covered Books
- Book with Fabric Cover mockup
- Open Book Mockup
- Landscape Book Mockup
- Opened Matte Book Mockup
- Hardcover book in a Hand Mockup
- Hardcover Novel Book Mockup
Steal the Designs. Instantly Download your first 3D book mockup on Yellow Images for $4.99. (Use Promo Code YMG for 10% Off) If you want unlimited 3D Mockup Blueprints, become a Yellow Image Member. You can save more! Get 90% Off. Premium Members are getting Mockups for just $1.5.
4. Wrong social media strategy
Unfortunately, people hate spammy posts and they simply don’t care what you have to offer. Instead of getting yourself busy without any accomplishment, you should start focusing on the big picture.
Never let the stuff that matters least keep you from that which matters most.
Start connecting with your audience and build a loyal following on social media. If you implement it properly, social media can be a powerful tool to sell more copies of your book.
Instead of spamming social media, you should post major milestone, even dates, snippets from your book and relevant content to engage your audience.
Always stay present and consistent on your social media platforms but don’t’ overdo it by posting too many self-promotion stuff.
5. Reckless spending
The most egregious mistakes many self-published authors make is spending too much money. As a newbie, you can’t hire out based on the business model of established authors or publishers. They have a huge budget to hire professional editors, cover designers and writers.
However, if you’re just started with self-publishing then you should spend within your budget and build your business step by step.
This means you’ll only outsource the task if it’s necessary without sacrificing the quality. There are many free tools that you can use, it just takes a little research to find the right tools. I will talk about this in my coming post.
Once you generate consistent income at least $1,000 a month, then you can invest more money to scale your business. In the meantime, produce the best content as you can and slowly grow your business.
6. Erroneous Book Pricing
But don’t get too caught up with the pricing strategy.
Many self-publishers make the mistake of either overpricing or underpricing their books.
Wondering why your book isn’t selling even though you have a killer book cover and title?
Then, you may want to look at how you price your book.
Do some quick research on your competitors. Make sure your book is priced properly and aligns with others in the genre.
If you are a new author with little fans, it’s advisable to price your eBooks at $2.99-$3.99. Readers are more likely to take chance on your eBooks. Plus, you’ll get 70% royalty from Amazon.
For paperback, the best price range is below $10.
If you plan to reach a large audience and build a following, then you can give away your eBooks for free. The disadvantage is you won’t make money from all the eBooks sold.
For eBooks with the price less than $2.99, you’ll only earn a 35% royalty per sale.
Keep in mind, you need to have a plan for your book pricing.
For example, I price my new short eBook at $0.99 to boost the book ranking and increase the price after a week.
7. Give up too early
Don’t stop publishing the next after your first book is live! Even though your first book is doing well, you can’t achieve sustainable publishing business with just one bestselling book. Every product has a lifecycle, you should start working on the next book immediately once you hit the publish button.
If your first book doesn’t do well, don’t give up. You have to publish more. It’s not about the quality of your book that matters, it’s quantity too.
And the more you write, the better you become. Keep trying, keep testing, keep learning, and keep publishing. And it doesn’t add up, it multiplies. When you learn a new thing, when you find a success formula, you connect it to all the things you learned before. Plus, you can improve on your published books- modify, change the cover, write better description, and republish.
Remember, the harder you work, the luckier you get.
Well, there you go!
This is day 8 of 12 Days of Self-Publishing Tips to make passive income online!
Coming Up Next
Are You Interested in Publishing Books on Amazon?
