Beginner Writing Business Questions

JC asks:

“I hope you don’t mind if I ask you a few related questions in terms of being a self-published author. I’ve recently been given some ‘advice’ and I don’t think it’s overly viable for someone just starting out. Such as, ‘You need to spend at least $200+ on your front cover,’ ‘Hire an expensive editor’ and ‘Commission art of your characters to put on your Patreon page.'”

I don’t actually have a Patreon page so I couldn’t offer good advice on that. That said, if you do have one, it is necessary to offer a reasonably steady stream of content to keep people engaged. I know some people offer a monthly short story, or release books early on Patreon before they go on the various ebook stores. Serial writers often release regular chapters on Patreon, and then compile them together into a book to be published later.

If I did a Patreon, I would probably set up one along the lines of Lindsay Buroker – sharing stuff with patrons before it gets published to Kindle Unlimited. That said, I’ve been doing this a long time, and so I would probably find it easier to get traction than someone just beginning.

But if you’re just starting out, a Patreon probably wouldn’t be worth the effort unless you have an existing audience from some other field that might come over with you. The flip side, of course, is that if you start a Patreon right at the beginning, you can grow it slowly and gradually so it doesn’t immediately become an overwhelming amount of work.

“What advice would you give on front covers, editing and that tricky side of publishing beyond getting the manuscript drafted?”

You can spend thousands of dollars on a front cover, but it is most likely not necessary. Frankly, when just starting out, you want a cover that’s 1.) not ugly, and 2.) effectively conveys the precise genre of your book.

A lot of cover design sites now offer “premade” covers where they can just drop in your name and title. The point of the cover is to effectively convey the genre of a book, so that’s more important than if the cover’s specifically precise about the details of the book (eye color of the characters, etc.) If you go with a premade you can generally get by for less than $100. And if you can afford it, you can always get new covers later. People re-cover their books all the time as trends in cover design change and so forth. My book DEMONSOULED has had like five million different covers at this point. (I exaggerate, it’s more like 3.5 million.)

I don’t have a lot of experience working with editors, save to note that there are different levels of editing and you really shouldn’t pay for more than what you actually need. Like, a developmental edit helps with plot and characters and story structure. A copyedit and a line edit look for typos and repeated words.

“Also, what do you feel the best approach to Social Media is? I currently have blogs, social media accounts and the likes set up from the point of view of a Book Reviewer; which is what I started several years ago as a frustrated creative. Would it be better to switch things up and create new accounts under my author’s name and on which platforms?”

It probably depends on the genre you are writing in and how much of an audience already exists on your current social media page. If you have a big audience, it might be worth keeping the current pages. Then again, if the audience is mostly book reviewers, they might get annoyed by the change in tone, so it may be worthwhile to start with new pages.

I’d say start with Facebook and Instagram. Facebook has enough of a user base that it’s probably not going anywhere for a while, especially since it seems the management is realizing that they need to back away from the failed Metaverse experiment. Twitter may or may not go out of business or even exist in its current form in a few months, but even if Twitter doesn’t change at all, it’s never been good at selling books. Writers mostly use Twitter to complain about writing to other writers. I’ve heard people have gotten good results with TikTok, but I’ve never tried the app since I don’t like video very much. Additionally, there’s a considerable amount of ill-will towards TikTok in US governmental circles for a variety of reasons, so there’s always a chance the US government might block the site at some point.

“Are there any other magical words of advice that you’d impart to a budding author? Any pitfalls to avoid?”

-Definitely don’t spend more money than you make.

-Also don’t go into debt. It’s better to bootstrap and make gradual improvements than, for example, put $5,000 on your credit card for in new covers in hopes of making it back.

-The easiest way to start advertising is to write three books in a series and then make the first one free.

-These two books are good starter guides for self-publishing, and they’re both free in ebook.

–Successful Self-Publishing, by Joanna Penn.

–Let’s Get Digital, by David Gaughran.

Finally, the thing about self-publishing is that there are a lot of different ways to do it, and none of them are wrong. Granted, there are things that are obviously bad ideas – paying $5,000 to a vanity publisher for their biggest package, paying $10,000 to have custom art made for your cover, etc – but there are a lot of different paths. You could publish to all the ebook platforms, or just to Kindle Unlimited, or you could serialize on Vella or Webnovel, or you could run a Patreon, or you could focus on paperback books with ebook as an afterthought (like children’s book authors), or some combination of all of the above.

What matters is choosing the route that 1.) works for you artistically and from a business perspective, and 2.) that you can sustain over the long term.

-JM