Indie Publishing and Marketing

Many aspiring authors will never be published. Let me rephrase that: many good authors with good books will never be traditionally published. This is simply the nature of the beast. With an oversupply of books hitting the market each year, and a limited number of agents and publishers out there, many manuscripts will not make it onto the shelves of bookshops. That does not mean the end of the road though.

This report is written to assist aspiring indies: authors who have written good books and who wish to publish and market it themselves.

Tracing my publishing and marketing steps is a challenge. When I prepared my manuscript for publishing and later advanced to marketing it, I hardly knew what I was doing. I foolishly did not keep track of what I was doing. The magnitude thereof only dawned on me when I tried to account for my relative success.

A common misconception is that once you secure a traditional publishing contract, the publisher does all the work, while the author sits back and relaxes as the money starts rolling in. This is not true. Even traditionally published authors are roped in to produce and market their books to boost sales. The difference between traditionally published authors and indies is that the publisher formulates the strategy. The author nonetheless remains part of the execution. If you are looking to publish, best you learn the steps, because sooner or later you will need to do it yourself.

What follows are beacons you might find while publishing and marketing a book. I have listed items in the order you might need them. From experience I can say that it is impossible to tackle them all at once. For success, though, you will have to visit each beacon at least once to see if it works for you.