I though this deserved a spot on the blog – I was responding to a Reddit members asking about folks who publish a book “from zero”, with no audience and no money. Here’s my frank, unedited response!

Whoever said writing wasn’t the hardest part – that was totally true for me. Writing the novel took a year of very part time writing, and I would guess it accounted for less than 10% of my overall effort. I took a year after finishing to query (with a few indie publisher offers that I turned down due to contract red flags. Writer Beware is an awesome resource for this.) Formatting across multiple different formats/platforms is so strangely difficult for me (even after having done it before, helping with someone else’s book).

Costs: A graphic designer friend gave me a great rate on my book cover, but this could be free to $300 and way beyond. If you want to publish outside of KDP ebooks, you’ll need to buy ISBNs. A website costs money to build unless you know how to do it, and the domain and monthly hosting cost money. I’m a marketing professional IRL and still find book marketing difficult/frustrating for time-ROI (in part because I wasn’t part of BookTok, Bookstagram, etc, before publishing, so I had to learn a whole new industry.) I ran a short BookBub ad (a few clicks, no sales) and pulled my FB ad after one day – FB put the ad in my feed despite me not being the designated audience (Kindle owners). I was paying for differentiation and it was failing miserably. (I’ve had success runing book FB ads in the past, so this was really disappointing.)

Timing: Starting to write to publication was a little over 2 years. From the time the book was fully edited, I gave myself a 3 month launch period (which include formatting, setting up a social media presence, getting ARC readers, building a website, etc). 3 months was not nearly enough time (for me). Next time I expect to have a 6 month launch period, including building up more dedicated ARC readers and a newseletter. However many reviews you want right away, you need 10-20x that in ARC readers. (Though, if you can build even a small, dedicated audience before launch, I suspect they’re more likely to leave a review than the 5-10% of ARC readers who typically do.) My book’s been out less than a year. I’ve sold fewer books than I hoped, but I see the whole process as a learning experience, so I’m not that disappointed. (Note: I travel internationally full time so I have not done any in person events like signings or book conventions. I suspect that could be a fulfilling way to generate sales and support.)

I’m planning to turn this into a longer article about this process over on Medium – comment below with anything you’d like me to include!