Day 11 - Looking Back on the Last Ten Days

Now that I’m a little under half-way to the finish line, I’d like to tell you what I think is the hardest part of selling a book online: The first five days. 

Setting up the website, making it look nice, getting all the right pages in, writing the copy for the site, setting up social media, posting, deciding on a brand-look, reading, researching, figuring out what everything means. Just wading through the swamp. It’s a bit overwhelming when you don’t know what you don’t know. 

By now, I have a pretty good idea how it all works. Which leads me to the second hardest part of selling a book online: Being seen. Although, now I think about it, this is actually harder than setting up your online universe. 

The internet is the great democratizer. Everyone can publish a book and sometimes it feels like they are. A good chunk of these writers will experience sales-fatigue in the first year or two. They’ll disappear, but other hopefuls will arise in their place. It’s a bit like a Hydra. Cut off one head, another one sprouts. That’s a hydra, right? What’s something that grows new appendages after you cut it off? You get my meaning. There is no shortage of wannabe writers and there never will be. All you have to do is last longer. I’m being dramatic. There’s more to it than that. Not quitting after you see abysmal sales on your first novel is one battle of many - even if you are the greatest living writer. 

In the 1920s and ‘30s, they had “dance marathons” - whichever couple danced the longest won. Dance till you drop! People would literally be falling down, trying to stay on their feet, clinging to each other just to win a contest. What is it with humans and endurance challenges? Well, self-publishing (and anything you want to succeed at) is an endurance challenge. All you have to do is keep dancing, keep holding on. Don’t stop, don’t let go. Eventually the weak ones will fall. Only difference here is, in dance marathons, new contestants weren’t allowed in. The point is: Hang in there. 

Nothing happens overnight, no matter how badly you want it to. If you’re planning on quitting your day job, don’t write your two-week notice just yet. All success demands blood, sweat, tears, and the passing of many trine. Whether it’s worth it remains to be discovered. Only you can define what success means to you. 

Being noticed in the over-crowded world of self-publishing is no easy task. It’s why many writers become consultants and sell online courses. It’s easier than pouring your bleeding heart into a story and not seeing results. We writers put everything into our work. We’re selling out souls for 99 cents on the Buy n’ Large of bookseller sites. No offense to Amazon, but it’s not The Shop Around the Corner. Come on, our books are worth at least $2.99. The market dictates what the market will bear. On top of that, there are as many books and short stories on the internet as grains of sand on the beach. And that’s why so many writers drop out. We’re not sales people. We’re solitary creatures who like being hunched over our typewriters by candlelight. Most of us weren’t the popular kids in school. Our friends are books and we’re pretty happy that way. Except, sales means you have to be good with people. Make no mistake: Self-publishing is sales. 

To make it, you have to sharpen your teeth and it’s easier said than done. I believe most people are honest and sales borders on the dishonest. You may have to polish your persona, lie a little on Instagram, make yourself seem better than you are - or feel you are. There is so much rejection in the writing world that writers are now celebrating their failures. “My 500th rejection! Time to party!” OK honey. Good for you. Well, if you have to celebrate something, might as well be that you’re trying. Better than nothing, eh? Still, selling our own books means we have to be the marketing person Random House would have hired for us. The person who went to school for this. 

“Making it” is a mind fuck. You’re going to make tons of mistakes, and it’s going to take way longer than you thought it would. Don’t believe any jerk who says they made it in three months. They’re lying - or omitting the prior years of slaving or the marketing degree hanging on their wall. The sad truth is, even if you out-dance all the other contestants, you still might not become one of Amazon’s top ten. That’s why it’s important to enjoy the journey. You already know that. Enjoy the late nights reading about Kindle Publishing. Enjoy learning how to sell. Enjoy the process, because you’re not flying to The Emerald City, you’re taking a steamer ship. Most of all, enjoy writing because otherwise you’re in the wrong business and should go back to that terrible accounting job you hate like your mother wanted you to. Of course, there is a fast track to Oz, but it’s very expensive. You decide if it’s worth it. I’ll talk about the fast track in another post. 

If you’ve been reading my blog these past eleven days, you might have guessed I know a little something about sales. It’s because I ran a decently (up and coming anyway) wedding photography business before this. I went to all the conferences, took all the workshops, attended all the webinars, read heaps of books. It’s a hustle and everything I learned over in the photo world applies to self-publishing. I did that for almost a decade and it’s prepared me for this. At least, mentally. My dad was also in sales. He sold gasoline to truckers. Tell me that’s not a challenge. But he was damn good at it and I grew up watching him; picking up skills I never wanted and didn’t know I’d need some day. When I started this blog and said I didn’t know anything about self-publishing, that’s true. But I do know a little about sales and dealing with people. Enough that I’m not deterred by the gauntlet ahead. 

I’ll never forget when I worked one Christmas season at the mall. I got my first real sales lesson: Don’t let anyone walk out of here without socks. They had this massive wall of socks for sale. First off, the socks were heinous. Second, it felt sleazy saying, “You know, these socks would go great with those pants!” I hated it, which is why I didn’t last there. I was also seventeen at the time. The truth is, *upselling works. It’s gross, but it brings in money. Just like the candy display at the cash register always tempts us. Just like you can buy a perfectly good base model of a car, but the salesman will convince you that you deserve leather interior. I can go into how upselling applies to self-publishing later, but BOGO (buy one, get one) is one way. So are book collections and even to some extent, guest bloggers. 

No matter how good you are selling, you must have something to sell, right? I talk a lot about sales here, but the writing is equally important. At least, I think so. I know plenty of bad writers (poor grammarians) making decent livings because they’re good at sales. 

TLDR: I learned that self-publishing is an endurance challenge. It’s less about writing and more about selling. 

*Upselling: To upsell means to encourage customers to purchase additional, complementary, larger or more expensive products and services than they had originally intended to buy. By doing so, the business can improve sales revenues, profits and profit margins.