#self pub

[kjscottwrites]

HAPPY PRIDE MONTH

How many indie, self-pub, and small press queer books are you reading this month!!!?!

100!!!

1,000 ✨🎉🏳️‍🌈 !!

🗣️ A MILLION

Voting ended onJun 8

Tag some authors here on tumblr (or share some of your favorite reads!) I'll start with a few!!

@aritany @ashen-crest @mayakern @effiecalvin

[queer-ragnelle]

THE MOONLIT KNIGHT, my first book in the ELEGY OF AN EMPIRE series, is coming out 1st July 2025!

The Lady of Ruby was a beautiful dream from which Sir Gawain never wanted to wake. King Arthur's famous nephew, Sir Gawain of Orkney, Knight of the Round Table, is known by many names: Hawk of May, Dawnbreaker, Maiden's Knight. With great acclaim comes even greater expectation. When a challenge from Persian knight Sir Gromer Somer Joure draws Gawain east of the Mediterranean Sea, a new confrontation arises from Gromer's outspoken sister. The Knight of Maidens' reputation could be his undoing. Zoroastrian widow Osti Mahtab, granddaughter of Iran's revolutionary Mobed Mazdak, detests violence. And the men who make names for themselves through it. While long resigned to her devout life within the Old City's walls, she would sooner die than admit her little brother's challenger to the inner sanctum uncontested. Yet by forestalling this game of blows betwixt paladins, has Mahtab inadvertently entered the fray herself? In this retelling of The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle, Persian mythology clashes and mingles with Arthurian to create a new and exciting tale of romance, self-discovery, and fantasy. The Moonlit Knight marks the first installment of the Elegy of An Empire epic that promises to entice old and new fans of the legends for years to come.

Pre-order your copy today in print or as an ebook!

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Smashwords

Apple Books

Kobo

or your local bookshop or library!

A big thank you to @mortiscausa for this beautiful cover. Go show her some love!

[azrielgreen]

ONE MONTH TO GO!✨🎱⚔️

Eight of Swords is a dark, graphic M/M book that I've been working on NON-STOP the last 5 months!!! It's my debut novel and it's available for PRE-ORDER here! Think Bodyguard X John Wick X She Ra ✨🎱⚔️ All pre-orders get a free digital GIFT PACK on release day!!!

[croik]

Hold up, you're self pub? I love the way you write! Where's your book(s)? Where can I buy? As a fellow self-pub horror writer I want the deets!

Thank you, I'm flattered! I have my books listed on my author site here. They're more adventure-y than my current fandom writing, supernatural and fantasy rather than horror, set in historical settings. At least so far ;3

It includes the webcomic my artist friend and I did together, Bang! Bang! BOOM! which you can read for free online, but is also available on our shop in print form.

Send me yours too! 👀

[hemlockhunters]

Editing - Update #2

Hello everyone! It's been a while since I gave an update on my books, so let's get into it.

The Redwater Legend

When I last updated everyone, my first book was about to be copy-edited, and it was! Lauren Humphries-Brooks did an outstanding job editing the novel, and it was a pleasure to work with her. After I reviewed the edit, I put the book aside to focus on other projects, but I recently dusted it off with renewed focus and enthusiasm.

For those who don't know, my day job is a game dev working on dating sims. It was one thing writing my fantasy books when off work from a grocery store, but when your job is creative writing, coming home to do... more creative writing is like trying to draw water from a dried-out pond.

The other week, I finished editing the first third of the book, hoping it would be my final major edit of the novel. There were some lore details I needed to add, along with contributions from my artist, that I wanted to incorporate into the prose. Not to mention, I just wanted to give it one last look before I sealed its fate. Reading it aloud to ensure it sounds pleasing.

In a future update, I want to showcase the art being created for the book, along with the incredible artist I have been collaborating with since March of last year. March 19th is when we signed a contract, which was five days after my last update. Since then, they have been drawing and working every month, helping me create the visual style and art for the Hemlock books.

As far as finishing the book, it will be done this year. My goal is to finish this current "read aloud vibe" edit and then give it over to a Proofreader who will hopefully catch those final grammar mistakes. After that, we'll just have to see where we sit with art. Our original goal was to fill the book with illustrations, but that isn't very realistic given our time and budget.

When will it be released? No clue. I am more than happy to self-publish again, but I also want to see if any publishing houses can take my artist and me. I would like to be self-sufficient, relying on creating a good community of readers and doing the work myself. But we shall see! But, I really freaking hope it's this year. I have so many books I want to write.

The Trial of the Chimera (working title)

During the last year, I did a little bit of work on Chimera. I added a prologue showing off Ruth as a child and what led her to become a Hunter. While this story takes place before Redwater, I believe Redwater is a strong start to Ruth's journey. That's why I want to workshop Chimera more, to create a solid beginning since I know people will see it takes place first and start there, regardless of what I do. So, I might as well make it a good start, too.

The biggest hurdle of this story is the number of other interesting characters it introduces, who won't return for quite some time. You meet all of Ruth's fellow Hunter friends and her professors. All exciting characters with their own quirks, problems, and arcs to go on. Going from Chimera to two stories focusing solely on Ruth might make you, as a reader, feel a bit cheated that I gave you these toys for a few minutes only to lock them in a box.

Regardless, I think that this story is good, but it can be so much better. It is currently sitting at 34k words and needs a few more drafts before I am happy with it.

The Automata of Oscilstead

The first 10 chapters of Oscilstead have been edited for this current draft, though I believe this book will take some time to finish. It's longer than Chimera and Redwater combined, so hopefully doing those two stories first will make me a better author so I can finish Oscilstead with the skills I learned.

Call for Help

I was hoping that someone knew how I could find someone who is really good with geography and how landmasses form, to help me figure out how my world should look. I have a map done, but I can tell it's wrong since I'm not very good at that. I'd love to hire someone with experience to consult on the books so that we can make this world believable!

Wrap Up

2026 will be a big year for us. I know Redwater won't become a bestseller or anything, but I hope we can start building the foundation of a community.

Stick around, we've got more coming!

[topazadine]

Mistakes I Made When Self-Pubbing My First Book (Part 1: Mindset Edition)

Hello. Today, we are all going to dunk on me for my meteoric mistakes when self-publishing 9 Years Yearning so that you can do the opposite of these things.

This is going to be cut up into multiple posts because I just made so. many. mistakes. that I'm rectifying with my second book. Even Part 1 is extraordinarily long because damn am I a yapper, so keep an eye out for the equally long next parts.

And maybe console me by buying my book. (I promise it's not bad! My marketing strategy is!)

It's important to be transparent about this process. So many indie authors don't want to talk about their failures because it's uncomfy, and I get it. Yeah, it does suck to admit that you have failed and then expose your failures to other people. No one wants to feel bad about their efforts, especially something so personal like writing. Still, I think it can help anyway.

Can I give you actionable advice? No. I can't. I cannot give you a secret code to marketing success because I don't even know it.

BUT. I can tell you what I did wrong so you can figure out what to do right. (Then maybe tell me about it pls.)

Thinking being a good writer = book success

I am a good writer. Not the best writer on the entire planet, but more competent than your average squadron of monkeys armed with obsolete machinery. I could take at least 1,000 non-human primates in a writing fight - I'm sure of it.

However, this does not translate to immediate, life-changing results when self-publishing and marketing.

See, the unfortunate thing is that people actually have to know that your book exists, and they have to be tempted into purchasing it before they can see your remarkable writing skills.

This means that you need to have a good cover, an intriguing blurb and ... worst of all ... a marketing strategy.

Awful. But true.

Book writing and book marketing are two completely different skills. One of them is fun! And one of them makes me want to throw myself into a lake! But alas, if I want to enjoy some sort of compensation for the Fun Part, I have to do the Bad Part.

Being mad that I didn't get insta-results

I assumed that I would get my money back from my initial investment pretty quickly. After all, I wrote a very nice book. But I still have not broken even on 9 Years Yearning, and I will likely not do so until the third part of the Eirenic Verses series hits.

Actually, I may never break even at all. And I'm not even performing that poorly for a self-published author as of now.

The average self-published, digital-only book (like mine) sells only 250 copies during its entire lifetime, which can be literal decades. 250!! That's abysmal. Many self-published books sell ZERO copies. Ever.

That makes me feel a little better about saying that from June to October 2024, my first book has sold only 32 copies. That's about 12% of the expected lifetime sales in four months.

But 32 books is not, by any means, a best seller.

Though I will tell you a secret: some authors who make best seller lists actually buy their own books to artificially boost the numbers. Donald Trump did that actually! There are entire book laundering firms, like ResultSource, that are pay to play. And the NYT best seller list is heavily biased toward people with internal connections. So you can't even trust those best seller lists very much, and you shouldn't feel bad if you're only getting a handful of sales.

Regardless of whether other people lie their way to the top, the cold hard truth is that if I want to repay myself for my efforts on 9 Years Yearning, I need to sell about 1,500 copies (plus, oh, 20 extra for taxation).

That's a pretty scary number. 1,500 people have to like my book?! I don't even know that many people!

It's okay, though. My next book, Pride Before a Fall, will have a faster return on investment because it's priced a little higher at $2.99. So, for the second book, I only need to sell about 180 copies to break even. That is also because I didn't make as many dumb money mistakes, which I'll discuss in a later installment.

Very few self-published books gain instant attention and fame; many self-pubbed authors give up on advertising themselves at all because they didn't get a lot of success at first. But I'm not going to be deterred now that I realize I have to put the marketing work in.

It's up to you whether you're willing to keep grinding if you don't get immediate results.

Being lazy about learning marketing

I am still struggling with this, to be honest.

Look, I don't like marketing. The time I spend learning about marketing could be spent on something that does not make me want to tear my eyes out of their sockets. I could go rock climbing! I could watch a video on caving deaths! I could pet my dog!

So I've set a goal for myself that I just have to do one thing related to marketing a week. That could be creating visuals, reading other peoples' experiences, watching videos on it, taking courses, and so on.

It is not a lot of time spent per week, yes; perhaps about two hours. But it's about all I can stomach because it's just so boring and confusing to me.

After my first bitter disappointment, I have learned that it's okay to take a longer, more methodical approach, especially because The Eirenic Verses is a ten-part series. If I stay consistent, it will inevitably start to gain traction over time.

Ignoring the marketing potential in my friend group

I didn't really talk about my book with anyone but my family before publishing it. Didn't tell my friends, didn't post much about it on social media.

Instead, I dropped it like a dead squirrel on Facebook's feet a few days after it actually released. Thank god I didn't do the horrible Millennial "so ... I did a thing" bullshit, but I was almost too blithe about it.

I just don't want to feel like I'm bragging or making people feel obligated to purchase a copy. Which is kind of dumb of me, because people I know IRL have been super enthusiastic! I'm not even joking.

One of my newest friends purchased a copy directly in front of me and told their friends about it, so I got multiple sales just by mentioning it once. Old friends I've barely talked to in years reached out to tell me how much they loved my book and that they're so excited for me.

I learned that as long as I am not insufferable about it, most people are excited to hear that they are friends with a ~published author~. I've spent so long being immersed in Writing World that I kind of forget that to non-writers, publishing (even self-pub) is a big deal.

So I am learning to be more comfortable with talking about being an author as long as I don't act like I'm super special for clicking some keys.

Not celebrating my successes

This seems like a strange problem to have, but I can't be the only one who just kinda goes "meh" about their own achievements. Whether that's from poor self-esteem or Daddy Issues, idk, but I didn't really do anything when I released 9 Years Yearning. Didn't even get myself a cake.

I think this rubbed off on the people around me; after all, humans tend to follow one another's lead. Since I didn't treat it like a big deal at first, no one else did either. And this, of course, led to zero marketing juice because if even the author herself isn't pumped about the book, it must suck, right?

It doesn't suck. Again, I just suck at marketing myself.

So I'm forcing myself to be more enthusiastic about my next book, and to tell more people about it. I'm even getting a Bannain tattoo to celebrate the release.

Look at this stupid little idiot! I'm going to have him inked on me forever and ever <3

Given that I've gotten some decent pre-orders already (again, because I actually tried to fucking market this time), I think this more enthusiastic approach is going to serve me well.

The Thing I Did Right: Viewing my fiction writing as a money sink

Alright, so the one thing I have done correctly, which is that I did not make the fatal error of quitting my day job. I knew that my fiction writing was not going to be paying the bills any time soon. Instead, I view my job as a way to fund my Blorbo Factory.

It's not fatalistic to recognize that the odds are stacked against you as a self-pubbed author. It's realistic. You can either be delusionally confident that you will succeed, or you can be desperately demotivated and never bother.

Or you can be in the middle, see the risks, and decide that there is a deeper motivation than just making money that powers you.

Releasing the pressure of success actually makes it easier to succeed. If you are not hinging all your financial hopes and dreams on your books, then you don't see it as a loss to buy a nice book cover, pay for a good beta reader, and so on. You see it as an investment in your happiness and self-fulfillment, just like you spend money to go to the gym or buy a yourself an ice cream.

And, most importantly, you won't spend more money than you can afford to lose.

So many authors go into massive amounts of debt to fund their books and then are horrified to find that they make nothing back. A lot fall for vanity press scams and spend thousands only to have to do the same damn things I have to do as a self-pubbed author. And sometimes they never even see their book in print at all.

This could have been avoided if they had recognized that, just like when going to the casino, you shouldn't put yourself into debt in hopes of a big payday.

Anyway, now that I've told you about my marketing failures so you can avoid them, maybe you'll consider buying my book, 9 Years Yearning, which is very good despite my terrible marketing skills. It's got horses and cute boys!

And when you're done with that (it only takes about 2 hours to read, btw), be sure to pre-order the next book, Pride Before a Fall, which is arriving January 1, 2025!

Oh, and please don't forget to leave a review. Very important stuff.

I've been dodging calls from Amazon HQ who warn me that if I don't get more reviews, they'll place my children in a mushroomifier, whatever that means.

Oh ... oh no ....

[adventurebeneaththewords]

Should I edit/update my books?

yes, why not?

maybe wait a bit longer

no/not sure

Voting ended onJul 17, 2024

So, I self-published my first book in 2019, and I was really proud of the amount of work I put into it, but I also knew with my limited resources at the time that it wasn't as polished as it could have been.

I published book 2 in 2020 and book 3 in 2021.

As more time passes, I've begun to wonder if it would be a good idea to go back and edit these books! But I don't want to just do a proofread, I want to go in with fresh eyes and polish scenes, really give the original story the justice it deserves. I feel like if I were to go back, I'd like to give some scenes more details, maybe rewrite some things to better communicate my ideas, etc.

But I've also been wondering: is this a fair thing to do to the people who bought the original books? I'm not expecting anyone who bought the first ones to pay for another copy, but part of me feels weird releasing a "better version" or an "update".

Another question I have is do I pull the current version from Amazon/make it unavailable while I work on updating the books?

I could really use another opinion. What do you guys think as both writers and readers?

Thanks!

[ladzwriting]

HOLY SHIT