No one will ever care about our success as much as we do. That’s why—even though we’re writers—we should think of ourselves as business people. No matter what kind of writer we are, we’ll need to make business decisions, and that’s where having a business plan can help.
Ready to Learn about Self-Publishing Your Story?
The Self-Publishing Your Story section of Jami's blog is filled with self-publishing insights, tips, and techniques.
Sample topics:
* Jami's Fiction University guest posts about Indie Publishing Paths
* cover artist and editor selection advice
* formatting issues
* creating print versions, etc.
If you want even more writing advice, be sure to check out Jami's Publishing & Career Highlights page, which features some of her most-helpful posts on this topic, as well as on working with beta readers/editors, branding, career planning, and more. On that page, you can also find links to related free worksheets/tools and information guides.
Or want to refine these results? The Search page offers many filtering options.
It’s no secret that many authors are considering self-publishing on some level. So I’m happy to host my friend Julie Musil, who’s sharing some of the pitfalls of self-publishing and providing tips for avoiding those issues. Honestly though, I think her advice is applicable to every author, no matter our publishing path.
This past weekend, author Hugh Howey shared Liliana Hart’s self-publishing method, which she calls “5 down and 1 in the hole.” It’s easy to look at her self-publishing success (over 2 million ebooks sold) and chalk it up to luck. However, I heard advice that complemented her technique throughout the RWA Annual Conference.
When changes happen gradually, we’re not always aware of them. My every-other year schedule for attending the RWA Annual Conference allows me to see the changes in the organization like a distant relative. I hadn’t attended the National Conference since 2012 and the differences from then to now were profound.
Those of us who haven’t been through the editing process with professionals don’t know what to expect. In the case of developmental editing, we might not even know what editors do. That’s not good. We need to understand what’s involved with the different stages of editing to judge whether an editor is right for us and will meet our needs.
Back at the start of the ebook revolution, self-publishing was still a “no-no” and only a handful of small and e-publishers existed for my genre. Since then, our choices for publication have exploded, from self-publishing becoming accepted to dozens of small and e-publishers hopping on the ebook train. Before, we used to deal with whatever
More writers are considering self-publishing than ever before. Even traditionally published authors who love their publishers are taking the step to become hybrid authors—a mix of New York and self-published—as they release related novellas or new series on their own. Yet the prospect of self-publishing can be overwhelming. Self-published authors have to oversee more steps and find
The publishing world has been abuzz with the results of the 2014 Digital Book World (DBW) and Writer’s Digest Author Survey. Headlines scream “Most authors make less than $1000 a year.” Numbers taken out of context claim that 80% of the 9000+ respondents earn $1000 or less. Eh. Yes and no. Yes, the DBW/Writer’s Digest