Hi, it's @b-a-pigeon! You can call me B. I'm in my late 20s & use they/he pronouns. I made this sideblog for the purpose of posting resources, advice, & experiences on self-publication.
I've been self-publishing since January 2021, and have put out two books so far with the third and fourth on the horizon. I'm still relatively new to this and hardly a success story, but I've learned a lot through my own mistakes and doing a ton of research, so I thought I'd make a blog dedicated to helping out other self-publishers!
Feel free to send in any questions you have or any suggestions for what to do with this blog đ If you wanna learn about my writing, check out my main! I do this for free because I like being helpful, but feel free to tip my Kofi if this blog helps you out!
I'll try to keep this short but tl;dr I got a decent amount of engagement & might've turned a profit (but definitely broke even at least) so I'm happy with it!
I tried the lowest tier - $10, estimated 2500 impressions
The post got 560 notes & I got 9 new followers
So far, I've made $9.99 on 3 Amazon e-books
Probably I sold an Amazon paperback too (since I rose millions in the rankings overnight, lol) but it hasn't been reported yet
I won't know if I sold any copies on other platforms for at least a few more days
10 people added MiE to their goodreads tbr (out of 63 ever!?)
24 people clicked an external link from my UBL & there was a slight but noticeable increase in website/linktree traffic, newsletter signups, etc. in the past day
I'll probably keep experimenting with this - maybe trying a similar post with a different book, or a higher pricing tier to see if it scales. If I sell more copies, or if there's anything interesting in the report Tumblr is supposedly going to send me, I'll post an update! But feel free to ask me any questions in the meantime đ
Hey y'all! Sorry I've been absent--I've been busy with a new book release(!!), and while I'm taking notes about the process, I don't have much to report yet.
I might post soon about:
Trying out BookSirens & StoryOrigin for ARCs
Book sales numbers & how they impact rankings on Amazon
Setting up POD paperbacks
Social media self-promotion
Not sure yet... if there's something specific you'd like to see, lmk! :)
Here's the Bookfunnel post I promised! Full disclosure that the links used as examples are my own referral links, but I genuinely think it's easier to explain by example. If you're reading this after Dec 2021, most of the links will have expired, but I can pull up new ones if you message me!
What is Bookfunnel? A website for indie authors that provides resources like ARC & reader magnet distribution, group promos for sales & building newsletters, one-on-one author swaps, etc. It's subscription-based, with the basic functionality available starting at $20/year.
How do group promos work? Basically: you link up with other authors & cross-promote by sharing links to a central promotional page! There are two kinds of promos:
Newsletter promos: You give away a free piece of writing (aka a reader magnet) to everyone who signs up for your newsletter--for example: this "December Fantasy & Magic" promo
Sales promos: You create a landing page for your books (here's one of mine, for example) with a summary and purchase links--like this "Coming Soon Preorder Event"
Some of these have specific requirements to join--like limitations on 18+ content, minimum average clicks or newsletter subscribers, etc. & others are invite-only. I feel like the majority that I've checked out have been pretty open, but I imagine it depends on your genre!
My results: I'll admit that round one was a flop! My books weren't a good fit for the sales promos I chose (tragically, since I thought "Queer SFF" would be right up my alley) & so even though I got an average of ~30 clicks to my referral links & ~35 views across 3 promos, I maybe made 1-3 sales. So... not great!
I decided to try my first newsletter promo this month with a preview of an upcoming book, and got 30 link clicks & 10 downloads in the first week alone. Unsurprisingly, the conversion rate is much higher for free writing! (I had been kind of dismissive of the advice to develop a newsletter at first--but honestly, even though it seems weirdly old-fashioned to send emails, I'm finding it way easier and more direct than wrestling with social media algorithms!!)
Overall... I feel like it's still too soon to determine whether it was worth the money for me, but my personal takeaways so far are that 1. it's really important to make sure your work is a good fit for the promo & 2. this is a great way to develop a newsletter following! Happy to update more in the future & answer any other questions!
âšSupport a low-income QTPOC author on their birthday!âš
Hi, Iâm B! Iâm queer, trans, neurodivergent, & multiracial. I'm also an indie author who writes contemporary/low fantasy, featuring adult LGBTQ characters & characters of color; at the moment, my writing is my only source of income.
I'm turning 28 on November 29th, and all I want for my birthday is support for my writing career to help me pay my rent đ€ Hereâs how you can help!
Pay for my writing (link includes summaries + purchase links) | Become a patron | Buy me a coffee!
If you donât have $$ to spare but want to support, you can reblog this post; find my mailing list & other social media on linktree; and leave me a review if youâve read my work.
Thank you so much for your support in whatever form that takes!
Hey y'all, I didn't want to use this blog to self-promote, but I'm gonna make one exception because it's almost my birthday and my financial situation is not great. I appreciate any support! :)
Putting your book up through Kindle Direct Publishing is honestly pretty straightforward, but I wanted to give a broad overview of everything you'll need to consider and prepare before you're ready to publish. I'm gonna try to keep this relatively brief and link to other resources where I can, but let me know if you have any questions!
(This is all assuming that you have a finished but unformatted manuscript & a cover, by the way!)
First things first: you have to format your manuscript. KDP recommends uploading docx, epub, or kpf files. You can totally hire someone to format your book for you if you have specific design needs or wants, but otherwise, it's not hard to do it yourself! Here's how:
.kpf: This is a proprietary format generated by a program called Kindle Create, which only works for Amazon (as in: you'll have to reformat your book to upload it anywhere else). KC is simple and free... but also pretty clunky, very limited in its design options, & not ideal for anything more complex to format than just text. There's a tutorial if you want a sample text to mess with, but I honestly figured it out myself just by clicking around.
.docx: Amazon has a Formatting Guide for Word; I haven't done this myself, and it's a little more involved, but this seems like a solid option if you have specific formatting needs.
.epub: I personally use Scrivener for creating epubs (here's a guide); it's not free and requires a bit of a learning curve, but I've been happy with my results. I just Googled it & it seems like there are plenty of free options, but I can't speak to how they turn out!
This is also the point where you'll add in your front matter (i.e. title page, copyright, dedications, table of contents) & back matter (i.e. your author bio, list of your other books). If you want to leave a note for your readers prompting them to leave a review or sign up for your mailing list, or if you have the preview for a sequel to share, or anything like that, drop that in the back too!
At this point, you should have a completed cover and a ready-to-upload manuscript, so you can head over to the KDP website and create a new book! There are three pages to complete here:
Details: Mostly basic info like title, author, summary, etc. but I would recommend doing some market research before choosing your categories and search keywords. Clicking around the Kindle store can be helpful in categorizing your book; this guide also has some suggestions for choosing search keywords.
Content: Upload your formatted manuscript and cover, and generate a preview! (I've caught some weird errors at this point, so I definitely suggest looking through your preview and making sure everything looks okay.)
Pricing: Another step where I have to suggest market research; go with the pricing conventions in your genre. (They can vary a lot between genres! Under different pen names, I charge $2.99 for both a 20-40k word fantasy novella and a 5k word erotica short.) If your book is priced in the $2.99-9.99US range, you can access 70% royalties; otherwise, it's 35%.
(Somewhere in there is the option to sign up for Kindle Select, which requires Amazon exclusivity, puts your book on Kindle Unlimited and gives you access to some specific marketing tools. Some people perform very well on KU & make most of their writing income through this program, but it really depends on your books and your genres. I have some limited experience with this, but I'm happy to answer any questions!)
And... that's it! You'll click publish, and within 72 hours (often within 24, in my experience) they'll get back to you on whether or not your book has been approved. Once it's live, you'll be able to sign in to your KDP account & find a link on the "Bookshelf" page, and your sales history on your "Reports" page.
Again, feel free to leave me a message if you have any questions, and I'll make a post about publishing not on Amazon sometime in the near future!
I have a book coming out this week(!!??), which I'm releasing on Amazon & my website for now, so I was thinking about doing a post or two where I share my step-by-step process for getting my e-books ready to sell.
Feel free to send me a message if you would like me to include something specific about the process - or have any other questions about self-publishing!
Running way later than I thought on this post because I have a million things going on & am having a hard time organizing it, but I'm gonna try to post about KDP today since it's straightforward enough! Inbox is still open if y'all have any questions or requests đ
I have a book coming out this week(!!??), which I'm releasing on Amazon & my website for now, so I was thinking about doing a post or two where I share my step-by-step process for getting my e-books ready to sell.
Feel free to send me a message if you would like me to include something specific about the process - or have any other questions about self-publishing!
Signed up for Bookfunnel to check out their group promos today!
Bookfunnel, if you're not aware, is primarily an e-book delivery service for indie authors; people use it to distribute their ARCs and reader magnets, etc. They also host group promos, which allow authors in similar genres to connect and create multi-book landing pages to share with their audiences. Some of them have specific requirements for ie how many newsletter subscribers you have, but it seems like most of them (of those I cared to check out, at least) allow anyone to join!
Working with other indie authors in my genre to cross-promote and expand my audience sounds great on paper, so I really hope it works out! I signed up for the lowest-tier subscription at $20 a year and it took hardly any time to set up my account, so it feels pretty low-risk, but I'll let y'all know when my first group promo ends in mid-November whether it was worth it.
Ok, here's the Vella post! Happy to elaborate on anything or speak more to my own experience if y'all would like, just send me a message :)
What is Vella?
Vella is Amazon's attempt to get in on the "web serial" thing (think Radish, Royal Road, Wattpad). At the moment it's in beta, so there's still no app and it's available only to Amazon users in the US via the iOS Kindle App or web browser.
How does it work?
Writers upload stories one episode at a time, which readers can unlock with tokens (100 words = 1 token = $0.01US - authors get 50% of token income). Readers can leave thumbs up, faves, follows, & reviews on stories; there's a "top faves" list in lieu of a bestsellers list. They recently launched a monthly bonus program for writers, based on some truly mysterious calculations - you can find some crowdsourced data here if you'd like to try to try and make sense of it!
What kinds of stories are successful?
9 of the top 10 faved as I write this are tagged "romance" or "erotica." The most successful genres (in terms of faves) are: romance, fantasy, paranormal, action & adventure, and sci-fi. The least successful are: children's stories (with 0 stories), non-fiction, historical fiction, LGBT fiction (my genre :|) & dystopian.
Is it worth it for writers?
Obligatory disclaimer: Amazon and its role in publishing are, of course, broadly bad for writers (& everyone else)... but if we're going to look at Vella relative to other serialization and self-publishing options, though, it's kind of a mixed bag. The token payout is pretty bad, but the bonuses are relatively generous. There aren't a lot of readers on the platform, meaning it's easy to secure a spot on the top-faves list and equally easy to get 0 reads, ever. There are weird glitches and unclear policies, and customer support is ill-equipped to solve or answer questions about them.
Personally? I just cross-posted the serial I was already writing for Patreon with no expectations and ended up making hundreds of dollars without putting in much extra work, so it feels very worth it to me. But I got in early & I got lucky! If you're considering it - I'd make sure to research their policies, others' experiences, and the other options available to you before committing. And feel free to message me with any questions!
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Follow @selfpublished for more resources on self-publishing đ
Can you talk about your process of self publishing? I'm looking into it but I'd to hear a first person account of going through the whole thing. It seems so daunting.
Yeah, I can give a brief overview of what my process is like, and if you're interested in elaboration on something specific just lmk! I have definitely done everything as cheaply as possible and am also hardly a success story so take all of this with a grain of salt.
You can also check out r/selfpublish on Reddit & 20booksto50k on Facebook; while I do mostly hate them, they contain some valuable resources at times!
Editing: Professional is ideal, if you can afford it. I can't, so I rely on editing from my writing partner, beta readers, and spelling/grammar software. I also honestly spend a lot of time editing using different methods to make my books as polished as I can make them.
Cover art: Again, it's great if you can hire an artist; right now, my cover art is all art from a friend + design on Canva (there's a free option, I pay $10/mo I think). If you don't mind designing it yourself, you could always license a stock image or commission an artist.
Formatting: Whatever website you're using to publish will let you know about their formatting rules and what filetypes they accept etc. I use Kindle Create (free) to make Kindle e-books, and Scrivener ($50) for .epub and paperback formatting. You can totally pay people to do this for you and it's not that expensive.
Publishing: This part is pretty easy actually - just upload your formatted manuscript and book cover, fill out a few fields (summary, usually tags or something, etc.), and choose your pricing. You might want to do a little market research to figure out pricing - it can vary a lot between genres!
Promoting: I am simply not good at this. Send out ARCs so your book gets some early reviews! Establish a social media presence and post a lot! Buy Amazon or Facebook ads if you want! I've had a weird amount of success on Tumblr but I think I just got lucky in finding a very supportive corner of Writeblr & a bunch of mutuals who reblog my promo posts and say nice things about my writing all the time đ„°
Honestly that's pretty much it - it's super daunting to be responsible for all of this yourself but the individual steps aren't that difficult and there are lots of different websites and programs and resources to help you along :) Again feel free to message me again if you need any elaboration!!
So Iâm really not what you would call a âsuccessfulâ self-publisher, as I have 1. not quite broken even (despite doing most things as cheaply as humanly possible) and 2. truly not sold that many books, in part because I made many mistakes when I was just starting out.
Still, though, I have self-published, and I post about it and tag my posts, so I get a lot of questions. Iâm always happy to help but I also often forget to respond and sometimes people ask for a lot of information - so I thought itâd be helpful to answer the usual questions all in one post. If you have any other questions, feel free to let me know!
Should I self-publish or pursue traditional publishing??
I donât know! This depends on you and your book. Look into the differences between self-publishing and traditional publishing & decide which works best for you!
Do I have to use Amazon?
Nobody is going to force you but Kindle is something like 80% of the e-book market, so unless you already have a following itâs going to be really hard to sell books otherwise tbh.
Do I need a professional editor?
The general consensus is âyes, definitely.â If you have the money, do it. I personally couldnât afford it; I relied on free editing from a writer friend, a ton of self-editing, an Autocrit subscription, and beta readers. Most self-publishing people are super insistent that you 100% absolutely need to pay a professional editor to sell any books but realistically if you cannot afford it, Iâd recommend getting other peopleâs eyes on your book & using some kind of proofreading/editing software at minimum.
Do I need a professional cover designer?
Itâs definitely a good thing if your covers look âprofessionalâ but honestly Iâve seen people make some pretty good-looking covers just from stock images and Canva so I donât know how necessary this is. My own book covers are art from a friend + Canva; I designed the Mirrored in Evergreen cover, the artist designed the Worm in a Jar cover.
How do you market your books?
Iâm not good at marketing!! My books are also uniquely hard to market, so if youâve written something a little more genre conventional + with a wider target audience youâll have an easier time than I. Personally, though: Iâve tried Amazon ads, Facebook ads, and unpaid social media posts. In order from most to least successful: 1. Tumblr 2. Amazon ads 3. random people finding my website on Google 4. everything else. If I could go back in time I would send out some ARCs so I could have started out with more reviews, which opens up more promotional opportunities, but itâs too late now!
Am I going to make money?
Itâs very unlikely, especially at first. If you keep writing & publishing & promoting yourself - and if you find your audience and a way to keep them up-to-date with your new publications (a lot of writers have email lists, at minimum you should have social media) - youâll definitely have a chance at success! Iâve read that it can take a lot of time and multiple books, so donât give up if your first book doesnât sell!
On a final note: if you want to read experiences from people who have sold more books than I have, check out 20booksto50k on Facebook or the selfpublish subreddit. Honestly I think a lot of the people who post on these are either weird grifters whose only interest in writing is profit-motivated or people who have these super hardline black-and-white takes on everything (e.g. many of them would be appalled that I have even suggested that one might publish w/o hiring a pro editor) so you should take their advice - and mine - with a grain of salt!
