Ten Mistakes Self-Publishers Make

            I recently joined the Space Coast Writer’s Guild of Brevard County, Florida. It’s been a nice association so far. They do yearly short story anthologies, provide members with connections for proofreading and editing, host book-signing events (I’ll need to have at least more than one book published before I do one), and have guest speakers do an educational presentation at every meeting. Before joining in November it had been ages since I spoke with other writers. Not since graduating with my Master’s degree. At today’s meeting, the topic of discussion was ten common mistakes self-publishers make. I thought to myself “oh goody, I get to beat myself up all over again.” But actually, I think I learned some valuable information from the meeting, which I’d like to discuss here, for whoever wants to read about it, and probably for myself at a later date when I go back and read this. Let me get this obligatory thought out of the way: it sure would have been GREAT to have learned this in Graduate School. I should have joined a writer’s guild instead of getting a useless degree in Creative Writing. I would have learned actual life skills, and it would have been a lot cheaper.

            If you asked me what the biggest pitfall to avoid while self-publishing was before this meeting, I’d have said it all boils down to “don’t be poor”. I’d still stand by that to a degree, but there were things I could have done for Odinochka: Armenian Tales from the Gulag that wouldn’t have had to cost me extra money. I want to go through the list and see what I should have done differently with my book. The speaker at today’s meeting was Jacquelyn Lynn. I hope she wouldn’t mind my commentating on her list she gave us. She runs CreateTeachInspire.com. If she has issue with me doing this, I’ll gladly take this blog post down. Anyway:

Mistake 1: Ineffective title. Oh boy. Odinochka: Armenian Tales from the Gulag. Really rolls of the tongue, don't it? What was I thinking?! I want to bang my head on the wall for picking this title. It’s stuff I didn’t think about at the time. No one guided me through self-publishing. Especially not in Graduate School. But I can write a damn good twenty-five page term paper, so there’s that. I’m sure I’ll get rich with that skill. Ahem, sorry. I should have picked a title that was in English, and said something about what the book was about. I know that, in hindsight. I learned it the hard way.

Mistake 2: Poor cover design. 

Well what do you think? I did the best with what I had in this regard. I still like my cover. The title is legible, it doesn’t clash with the image. The painting is symbolic and you'll only really get it after you read the book, but I dunno, I still like it. I don’t think that was my book’s biggest problem. I've seen much worse covers on self-published books.

Mistake 3: Poor interior design. 

Umm, now that you mention it...

Well, okay, I could have done better. I should have had the page numbers at the top of the page. I don’t know why I didn’t do that. And the footers are uneven from page to page too. They're higher up on the right pages than the left pages. Formatting in Microsoft Word is such a bitch, if you’ll pardon my language. You'd think something as simple as adding page numbers to your document would be easy. It isn't. I tried. This was as good as I could get it. I remember calling Microsoft customer service for help and they were basically like "Did the online tutorials work? No? Well your version of MS Word is over six months old so screw you". I was lucky to even get it this good. I learned that you'd better have the page number situation on your document figured out before you really start writing a novel because going back and adding them later is near-impossible. I like the Palatino Linotype font, so I still stand by that choice. I think the spacing and font size are fine. But the formatting needs work, for sure.

Mistake 4: Low Quality Graphics. I didn’t dare risk using any kind of illustrations or graphics in Odinochka. I don’t think the book needed it anyway. But it’s something to keep in mind for my next books. It'd be nice to at least have maps in them or something.

Mistake 5: Using copyrighted material without permission. I might be doing that right now with this blog. Sorry if I am. Maybe it falls under Fair Use because I’m commentating on it? Hopefully. Well, this didn’t really apply to Odinochka. It may have been partly inspired by my grandfather’s memoir, so there might be that, but he won’t sue me. My next book is based on the Oz series by L. Frank Baum and I’m being extra careful only to use material from the public domain books. No ruby slippers, no green Wicked Witch of the West, etc. I'll still credit Baum, Ruth Plumly Thompson and Jack Snow even though I don't technically have to, out of courtesy for their work which inspired me. I’ve written fan fiction before based on various animated films, but I’m not profiting off that, so it should be alright. Though fanfiction.net did make me edit my stories for copyrighted content at one point. Try figuring that out. That’s another blog for another time. Anyway, as much as copyright is just a creative leash that mainly only protects the interests of mega-corporations at this point, it’s a law we must abide by.

Mistake 6: Poor editing. I did my best. I made this book on a shoestring budget. It benefited from being reviewed by my professors and fellow students at Graduate School. It was my Master’s Thesis. But yeah, Rule#1 of self-publishing: don’t be poor. Editors are expensive, and there’s no guarantee you’re going to make that money back. That’s why I’m going to have to play the traditional publishing world’s lottery from now on.

Mistake 7: Sloppy Proofreading. I don’t think my book had this problem. I even ordered a proof copy and went over it with a fine-tooth comb. This kind of goes with editing. I’ve even seen traditionally published books with spelling and grammar mistakes, so this can happen to anyone.

Mistake 8: Poor book description. 

What do you think? I thought I did a good job for what the story was. The story isn’t very marketable to begin with. The books I likened it to are obscure themselves. I wasn't able to say "If you loved Harry Potter or Game of Thrones, you're going to love this!" The more honest marketing quote would probably be “Need a good cry? Want to lose your faith in humanity? Read Odinochka!” I’ll be writing more marketable books from now on, so this will get easier. To write a really good, marketable description with all the right SEO and keywords, I ought to hire someone. “Don’t be poor” rears its ugly head again.

Mistake 9: Trusting friends for feedback. Your friends and family won’t be neutral, even if they try to be. I already knew that. My feedback for Odinochka came from brutally honest classmates and professors. The same people who boiled me alive when I tried to workshop my fantasy novel seemed to love this book. I’m going to have to find people to workshop my coming novels with. Comment here if you want to be one of them!

Mistake 10: Failing to create a plan. I had a plan. It didn’t work, but I had one. I knew it wasn’t going to be a best-seller, obviously, but I really didn’t realize what a drop in the ocean my book was going to be. My target audience was Armenians. Didn’t really catch on with them. I needed money to be able to market it. And I didn't have money. Still don't. I went into it not knowing much. My plan up until now was to write a much more marketable second novel and hopefully more people would buy this novel too out of curiosity. 

            You might think all of this discouraged me. But you know what? I feel more resolve now. I told the speaker at the meeting today that I have already self-published and I have some regrets. I asked her if there’s any recourse, you know, if I want to change the title or hire a better editor for it. She explained that I can “unpublish” it, as in take it off the market, rename it and re-edit it, and then republish it under a new ISBN number. It’s not so set in stone. One day when I have the money that’s what I’ll do. Come up with a better title, hire a professional editor. It’s kind of low on my priorities right now, but one day I’ll fix that old book and maybe it’ll be more marketable. It deserves better than I was able to give it back in 2016. I’ll remake it when my ship comes in. Whenever that’s going to happen. Anyway, you could technically buy it now and have a rare original copy before I take it off the market and revise it. Might be worth big bucks once I'm rich and famous. You know, I'm just saying...

Genius marketing, eh?