What I’ve learned in 3 years of self-publishing

I’ve been publishing my own writing since July of 2017, and I have learned a lot in the three years since I began. Self-publishing isn’t for everyone. It isn’t for most people. Many newbies believe that it’s as simple as writing the book and then listing it on any of the various ebook platforms and making tons of money. Well, good luck if that is what you think. Just as writing is real work, so is getting people to buy and read your story. Don’t get me wrong, some get lucky and make a nice chunk of change, but that is all it is, change.

No one will read your book if they don’t know about it. Thousands of new books are published every day. Some are from big publishing houses, but many are self-published. The odds of succeeding are against you. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t publish your work. It means that you will have to work at standing out to get people to click that buy button on your product page.

I’m sure you have heard the phrase don’t judge a book by its cover. That’s exactly what people do. That means that your book cover needs to draw the readers in. It needs to look similar to the book covers in your genre and category, but it should be different so that it stands out. When I started, my covers were horrible, and I couldn’t afford to pay for professional work.

I decided to teach myself. I downloaded Gimp, an open-source graphics program that is similar to Adobe PhotoShop. It took a long time, but I can now take multiple images and put them together to make a new photo that can be used to make my covers. I have also utilized various other apps to easily cartoon images, which will become my signature thing for my covers going forward.

Also, a big part of the cover image is the text type that is used. It should match the Genre. I searched for the best romance fonts and found downloadable fonts that can be used to create a romantic looking text. The most important part of making a good cover is to see what it looks like as a thumbnail. Most often, this is how readers see your book for the first time. Make sure that the text is readable and that the image is clear and sharp.

Readers always judge the book by the cover first. If you can’t gain their attention from the cover image, they will never go on to read the description.

There will be more to come on this topic since I have learned so much.

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