7 Tips for Avoiding Publisher’s Remorse
By Erika Liodice | June 23, 2018 |
Every now and then, we all have those unfortunate “What was I thinking?” moments. Mine usually come when looking at photographs of myself from the ’80s when I rocked a hairstyle called “the flower.”
Unlike a bad hairstyle that eventually grows out, a poorly produced book can haunt you for the rest of your author life. Today we’re going to talk about common mistakes indie publishers make, so you never have a “What was I thinking?” moment again … well, at least in terms of your books.
To-Don’t List:
1. Serve a half-baked story.
As an indie, you don’t have an agent who tells it like it is or an editorial team poring over your manuscript hunting for problems and mistakes. These responsibilities lie with you. Don’t let the excitement of publication blind you to potential quality issues. Being independent doesn’t mean you to have to go it alone. Create your own editorial team to provide feedback throughout the writing and editing process. This group might include a writing partner, critique group, beta readers, and/or a developmental editor who can help you identify and fix story problems long before your book reaches readers.
2. Skip proofing.
There’s no better way to irritate readers and embarrass yourself than to publish a book full of typos. This is often the result when we try to edit our own work. Our brains are wired to know what we meant to say, so they automatically correct typos and fix errors, allowing us to gloss right over them. Hiring a professional proofreader should be a standard best practice before going to press. Proofreaders not only offer a fresh set of eyes for catching errors but also are masterful at tightening clunky sentences and putting the final polish on your prose. Skipping this step might save you money, but it can end up costing you far more in reputation.
3. Skimp on the cover.
Your story doesn’t start on page one; it starts on the cover. Your book’s title, cover image, copy, colors, and typography work together to offer the reader an unspoken promise about the experience they’ll have if they read your book. What do you want that promise to be?
Creating a cover that connects with readers is the best way to get someone to take a chance on your book. Here are some common mistakes to avoid:
- A color scheme that doesn’t match the tone and genre of your book
- Zany fonts that look amateurish
- Pixelated images not suited for print
- A personal photo with bad lighting
- A cover image that doesn’t relate to the story
- A popular stock image that readers may have seen elsewhere
- Poorly written cover copy
- A book cover that doesn’t work as a thumbnail (the size online book buyers will see)
- An author photo that clearly has other people cropped out
4. Publish without a proof.
Before going to press, it’s crucial to inspect the end product for quality assurance. Whether digital or print, ordering a proof allows you to see the finished product and catch any problems you might not have noticed when preparing your files.
When inspecting your proof, be on the lookout for these issues:
- Is the cover image pixelated?
- If your cover image has a full bleed, does the image reach all edges?
- Do the printed colors match your expectations?
- Are there any spots, lines, or others marks that shouldn’t be there?
- Are all the cover elements in the correct location?
- Are the spine elements positioned correctly and easy to read?
- Is the cover copy free of errors?
- Have the interior pages printed correctly?
- Are all page numbers present and in the correct order?
- Are the margins and gutter free of words?
- Is any text missing?
5. Ignore the reader.
As an independent publisher, there are no gatekeepers standing between you and your readers. Therefore, it’s up to you to know who your reader is so you can invest your time and money on marketing tactics that will provide the greatest return on investment.
To gain a better understanding of who you’re trying to reach (demographics), why they buy books (psychographics), and where to find them (geographics), consider the following characteristics:
- Gender
- Age
- Occupation
- Income
- Education level
- Attitudes
- Beliefs
- Habits
- Country
- Region
- State
- City
- Neighborhood
- Community
6. Publish with no plan.
As an indie publisher, you are your own marketing and publicity team. Publishing without a launch plan often leads to lackluster results. To raise awareness, generate pre-sales, and earn reviews, your launch activities need to begin before your book is published and continue well beyond to build on the momentum. As you develop your launch plan, consider all the ways you can reach your target audience before, during, and after your book launch.
Here are a handful of ideas to get you started:
- Build an author website to showcase your work, sell books, and serve as the home base for all your other online content.
- Select a few key social media accounts that are popular with your target audience and become active on those.
- Send advanced reader copies (ARCs) to book bloggers and reviewers in your space to collect blurbs and reviews that you can use in your book, on your website, and in your promotional materials.
- Build a newsletter list and engage your subscribers with interesting content and regular updates.
- Cross-pollinate with other authors in your genre to expose your audience to their work and their audience to yours.
- Find unique speaking opportunities to interact with your target audience on a personal basis.
7. Be disconnected.
We live in an interconnected era. As a result, readers have grown accustomed to connecting with authors off the page. Even if you don’t use social media to maintain personal relationships, it can be a valuable resource for developing relationships with readers. Depending on your book’s subject matter and genre, some social media sites might offer more valuable exposure than others. To prevent fatigue, identify a few key social media sites where your target readers hang out and join them. Not sure which sites are the most relevant to your audience? Do a competitive analysis of other authors in your space and pay attention to the social media platforms where they’re most active.
Here are several of the most popular social media platforms in use today:
Have you ever had publisher’s remorse? If so, what would you have done differently? If not, what are some of your best practices to avoid those embarrassing “What was I thinking?” moments?
The first time Erika Liodice saw the Great Wall of China, the Eiffel Tower, and Holland’s tulip fields was on the postcards her father sent from his business trips. Those postcards inspired a deep desire to see the world long before she stepped foot out of her small hometown in Pennsylvania. Today, Erika is an accomplished world traveler and freelance travel writer for National Geographic. Through her new Places That Inspire column here at Writer Unboxed, she sends postcards to fellow writers about the places she’s discovered and the creativity they’ve inspired along the way. To learn more about Erika and her work, visit erikaliodice.com.
Erika, thanks for these tips as I navigate the brave new world of self-publishing. I’ll release my YA next week. Still working on the print formatting. Right now I have zero regrets, only wishing I’d done this five years ago, but I wasn’t ready then, so this really is the right time.
Hi Vijaya,
Glad my post found you at just the right time. Good luck with your debut!
Erika
The very best wishes to you, Vijaya!!
Good luck with your release😊
Good tips, Erika. I started publishing my own mystery series in 2011 so have learned a few things along the way.
As far as remorse goes, I recently had an unfortunate issue with one of my novels on Amazon. I had uploaded a Word doc revision which looked good on my own Kindle apps and worked fine on other sites (Apple, Kobo) but for some reason, according to some readers, the formatting on Amazon had a glitch. I uploaded yet another revision and again, it looked fine to me, but I kept getting reviews from some of the readers saying there was no extra spacing for scene changes. Hopefully my third attempt has solved the issue. I’m not sure how that could have been prevented, or whether it’s a common problem. Only one book out of four (5 if you count a small short story collection) has had that problem.
One thing that I learned not to do is to publish a print edition with expanded distribution on Createspace prior to using an Ingram program like Lightning Source, and I assume, Spark. Get your own ISBN first and publish on the Ingram program before publishing on Createspace. Then you’ll have your ISBN and can publish on Createspace for distribution on Amazon and through your own on-line store only, leaving the expanded distribution to Ingram. (I created my online store and put links to it on my Proud Horse Publishing website.)
Also, one thing to watch out for is using links to your other e-books. I publish Amazon-specific e-books separately so I can add links to purchase the other books on Amazon. You don’t want to use the same (Amazon) links if publishing on Smashwords or D2D for distribution to iBooks, etc. (One option is just put a link to your own website where they can find links to purchase from their choice of on-line vendor.)
Note that Createspace provides an inexpensive way to send small quantities e.g. to reviewers, so it’s worth having them as well as another distributor. I use Lightning Source (Ingram) and Createspace for print, along with Smashwords, Amazon and Kobo for e-books. There are other distributors to choose from now, but these are the ones I’m familiar with.
On the positive side, in most cases you can correct your errors and upload revisions at no cost. (Lightning Source is an exception: you have to pay every time you make changes to your cover or the interior.)
Your tips have been a good reminder. As excited as we are to send our new books out into the world, it pays to take extra time and make sure everything is as it should be first! Thanks for posting.
Great tips, Ruth! Thanks for allowing us to learn from your experiences. Fingers crossed that your formatting issue is resolved.
Erika
I have no self-publishing regrets. Which is probably an odd thing to say for someone who ended up doing every little thing herself.
The biggest thing I’ve learned is that I must completely finish a scene before I move to the next one, because, for me, the amount of energy it takes to go back to a scene is almost as great as it takes for writing it. Small exaggeration, but I’m deep into the second book, and decided I could wait to the end of a chapter before polishing the scenes in it (thinking to save some time), and it was a disaster!
As an extreme plotter, I work in tiny pieces – and when each is finished, slip it into its setting.
Getting each scene to that stage now has its own process and checklist – and I skip steps at my own peril. The final part – listening over and over to the robot voice on my Mac reading my words to me, and then going back and forth through the counting algorithms in AutoCrit to catch repetitions I don’t intend – is boring and time-consuming and absolutely necessary.
But it’s the only way someone like me, with a damaged brain and no energy, can write a mainstream trilogy where every single word counts toward the story – and every other level.
Slow, painful, and the single thing I want to do.
I doubt I would receive some of the reviews I get, if I didn’t.
Good for you, Alicia. I love your perseverance and disclipine. Thanks for sharing your experience and best practices with the rest of us.
Erika
Erika,
Could your article and the tips therein have been more thoroughly helpful and practical? I’ve seen, and unfortunately purchased, many self-published works with the myriad errors to which you refer. Not a good look, to say the least. And with available tips like yours, inexcusable too. I’m hoping to publish soon, and will use your article as a guide to what to avoid. Thanks so much for taking the time. I wish you success with your projects — and based on the quality of this artical, am gonna look into them now! Again, thanks!
Glad my post is able to assist you in your publishing journey, Daniel. Good luck with your release!
Nope, won’t skimp here. After all the time and pre-planning I put into this first serious one, I’m going to make sure to polish the hell out of it before it’s put out there :D
That’s the spirit, Mark. Give your book the send off it deserves. Best of luck!
Great article, Erika! When my first book came out–self-published–I was shocked to discover that I should have started my promotional activities six months before pub date. I missed out on many opportunities while trying to play catch-up.