How to self-publish well and sell a lot of books

A few weeks ago I was The Dan Wickline Show and he asked me the very broad question of how to self-publish well and sell a lot of books. I thought I would give you my answer, flushed out in a little more detail, because I quite liked it.

It really comes down to a couple things.

1 – Your book HAS to be as good as anything the big publishers put out. Somebody has to be able to look at your book and not tell the difference between it and what Random House, Dark Horse, etc put out. It needs to have YOUR flair, but it cannot be lacking in art, cover, story, or anything else.

You can sell books with subpar art/story, but if you want to sell A LOT of books, like make a career out of it level of books, your books HAVE to be of exceptional quality.

That means editorial, cover design, book design, story, blurb, everything needs to meet and, usually, beat the industrial average.

2 – Once you are an exceptional maker of things, you need to realize that for every 100 people you talk to, 99 will NOT be your ideal reader, so you need to get REALLY COMFORTABLE with rejection, because you’ll need to talk to literally hundreds of thousands of people to find an audience to jam with you. The more niche your work, the more people you need to speak with to find one who is into your work.

Just because somebody says NO doesn’t mean your work is bad, it just means they aren’t grokking what you put down.

This is why it’s so important that your work be OBJECTIVELY GOOD, even if it is subjectively not somebody’s jam.

3 – Once you have an audience, even a little one, you have to fan those flames by making things FOR THEM. Yes, it’s really fun to make other types of books, and write whatever you want, but every time you write in a new genre, or format, you have to basically build that audience from scratch again. Since almost nobody will be a massive, runaway bestseller, even me by the way, it behooves you to make things for the fans you have.

That doesn’t mean write in one series, but it does mean that when somebody buys something from you, they are very likely to buy something else you write if that book is part of the same taste profile.

That allows you to maximize the dollar spend of every fan, and makes your back catalog more valuable. If you are constantly writing in different genres, your fans will be less likely to consume your back catalog. The more congruent your work is, the more likely the majority of your fans will go back and consume that older stuff.

I didn’t do this at the beginning of my career to my detriment. I was still making a living, but when I started doing this was when everything exploded.

4 – In order to make finding fans (which is expensive) cost-effective, you really need a signature series, which is something that has A LOT of books in it that gives you a really good ROI when you run ads or do marketing for it.

Ichabod, for instance, has 3, and will soon have 4, volumes. The Godsverse Chronicles has 2 graphic novels and 7 books, which will expand to 3 graphic novels and 11 books by January 2022.

This means when somebody digs into that series, they can return A LOT of money, which also means that I can spend a considerable amount of money and effort to find readers for that series.

On top of that, every time I launch one of those books, it’s another opportunity to build buzz around the series, find new readers, and get existing fans excited, infusing new life into back catalog books with each new installment, and giving myself additional opportunities for readers to find my work.

Conversely, with a stand-alone, you only have that one book launch to get the book selling, and then it fizzles out unless the book happens to take off quickly. Most books do not take off the first time out of the gate, so having multiple chances to get a book selling increases your odds for success.

This is just another reason why stand-alone books are hard, until you are established at least, because you do not make a lot of money from a reader if they only buy one book from you, and people are unlikely to read through the rest of your catalog when you write single, unconnected books compared to when you have a series.

Almost ALL really successful authors have a series that keeps finding readers over time, and allows their publisher to spend money because the readthrough is high

A good guideline is to make your signature series at least a million words for books, and 10-12 issues for comics.

Now, I started making good money before having a signature series, but once you have one then marketing and advertising become far more cost-effective, and it just compounds with every subsequent book.

Once you have a signature series working for you, then you can write stand alones, or try to funnel people to your other works, but having one is so important it’s almost impossible to exist as an author without one.

It also helps readers with word of mouth, as they can talk up your series, and refer people to it. I have learned how important it is to make it easy for your readers to talk you up over time. Referrals are a huge part of a successful author career.

And there you go.

Make something great that is of equal quality to the big publishing houses. Become comfortable with rejection. Keep your books in a consistent genre/tone to increase the value of your backlist. Design a signature series (a million words or so) that you can market perpetually and keep finding new readers.

One final note. Even if you do everything right, you will have books that fail to live up to expectations and others that outperform expectations. That is just a part of doing this work.