This was published on Tumblr on September 29, 2024.
Yes, I have redacted the username because I don’t want you to go harass said writer. Don’t do that.
Now, let’s look at how we can learn how NOT to market ourselves using this tweet.
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Stop trying to justify yourself.
Don’t bother telling me that it is a “purposeful stylistic decision” because frankly, I do not care about your stylistic decisions, same as no one cares about my stylistic decisions when reading my books. I care about how I engage with the work. Your feelings as an author do not matter to me, and I know they don’t matter to my own readers, either.
If you are constantly getting criticism for your prose being too dense, then that is a YOU problem. The market is telling you that your writing is unpopular because you’re making it too difficult for the average person. Instead of doubling down and insisting that you are right and special and perfect, listen to the criticisms you’re receiving.
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Do not talk down to readers.
If you condescendingly tell me that “it’s okay to look up words when you’re reading,” I am not going to read your books, even if I am perfectly capable of doing so. You have just told me that you think I’m an idiot. The last thing I need in my life is to be sneered at by an author whose product I have purchased.
I have a BA in British Literature and an MA in International Relations. To say that I am familiar with dense prose would be an understatement. Read some Robert O. Keohane and you, too, can hear your brain cells liquifying in real time.
And that’s fine, because not only is Robert O. Keohane a celebrated scholar of international relations, he is explaining complicated concepts that involve a lot of moving parts. Your fantasy book should not be so complicated that I need to take notes so I know what the hell is going on. (I have ranted about this before.)
I will suffer through this kind of prose if I am paying significant amounts of money to do so. I will not struggle through such prose if I am under no compulsion.
Unless your book is required reading in a class (highly unlikely), people are reading for enjoyment during their limited free time. It’s one thing to have a few funky words here and there that are clear through context cues, quite another to litter your books with so many weird words that I have to spend half my time hunting through a dictionary.
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Don’t try to tell people how to read.
You, as an author, do not get to tell readers how to read your books. That’s not your job. You don’t have the right to patronizingly tell people to “take it slow.” You provide a product, and then the readers take it from there and get to engage with it however they so choose.
Yes, I roll my eyes at TikTok girlies who say they skip long paragraphs or only read dialogue. I have the right to say I think this is stupid, but ultimately, I don’t get to tell them how to read.
If that’s how they want to engage with the product they have purchased, that is their right, same as I’m entitled to make bread in my rice cooker or turn my iron into a doorstop if I want to.
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Your readers don’t care about you, but you need to care about them.
You know those directors who have a clearly obvious fetish because they include that same thing in every single movie? Yeah, we laugh at them. We don’t think it’s cute and quirky, we think it’s weird and gross. If you’re forcing your reader to think about you constantly by interjecting your own opinions and needs into your work, it’s off-putting.
A good book does not force you to think about the author at all. You are absorbed in the story and forget that someone even created this because it feels real. It feels genuine.
Yes, it’s your handiwork, and your essence will be in it, but that should not be the primary focus.
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Stop letting your ego get in the way.
Your readers are not sitting there going “waow, so cool” when you churn out a 500-page screed of PhD dissertation prose to talk about two elves fucking. They’re probably thinking, “wow, this author is really far up their own ass.”
Then they have a few options:
Continue reading because they think it will make them cool and intellectual to finish a self-important screed about elves fucking
Put the book down because it’s annoying and they don’t care
Grit their teeth and keep going even though they hate it because they are a completionist
None of those bode well for your reputation as an author. Except maybe the first one, if you are attempting to appeal to an extremely limited audience of pretentious nerds.
If you are trying to sell a book for profit, then you need to know what people want from a book they purchase. Clearly, the author has faced complaints about the dense prose, and instead of realizing they have a market mismatch, they make it everyone else’s problem because their ego won’t let them change.
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The instant you feel the need to defend yourself against justified criticism, you have failed.
Of course, if someone misinterprets your work or uses it as their own soapbox – or attacks you as a person – then you are more than welcome to defend yourself.
But if you get worked up over someone complaining about your prose and condescendingly tell them that they need to just get good, you have failed as a writer. You’ve failed to tell a story people want to read because you just had to ensure everyone knew you’re super special and smart.
I’ve seen a lot of queer writers do this, sadly: get sucked into stupid drama because of their ego and then turn a bunch of people off.
This person writes books that are within my genre and interests, but they’ve just told me that if I want to read a book for idle pleasure and not devote all my brainpower to it, I’m not reading it correctly. So why should I give them money to spit in my face and tell me I’m an idiot? No thanks, not my kink.
I will tell you right now that you’re more than welcome to dislike my books. You can think the Eirenic Verses is the stupidest thing you’ve ever read if you want. You can say that on the internet for everyone to see.
In fact, I encourage you to. Leave a brutally honest review. All reviews are good reviews, as I have discussed before.
DNF it, tell your friends you didn’t like it. Whatever. I can’t control your thoughts and I can’t tell you how to read it.
That’s your right as a consumer. If I failed to tell a story you enjoy, that’s my fault.
Will it hurt my feelings? Sure. No one likes to be told they didn’t do a good job. I want you to like my work because I wrote it for people to enjoy. I made up these little guys and put them in a situation, hoping you’d experience a fraction of the happiness I feel when writing.
But ultimately, I know you don’t care about my feelings as the author. You care about your enjoyment of the work and your experience, as you should.
Don’t listen to authors who talk down to you and imply that you’re stupid if they write a book whose prose style you don’t like. They’re speaking from a place of ego, and that’s their problem, not yours.
This is said about nearly everything, but it’s especially true for self-publishing, one of the most crowded niches in the world. Such a marathon can be frustrating if you have high expectations or a low threshold for disappointment, but this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t self-publish at all.
Rather than discouraging you, I want you to be realistic, understand what you’re up against, and stay motivated despite the challenges you may face.
I, personally, see these downsides as inspiration to work harder. They also remind me that even if I don’t feel like I’m doing great, I’m doing much better than many others. I’m giving it my all even if I haven’t achieved worldwide fame.
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Expecting instant success is the fastest way to burnout.
In fact, expecting success at all will make you mad when it doesn’t show up. You hit “publish,” maybe crow about it on r/selfpublish, and expect the sales to roll in. But they don’t. Because no one knows to look for you, and there are millions of other titles for them to read, and they skip over you because they don’t recognize your name.
And they especially skip over you if you have a cheap Kindle Create cover that took you five minutes to make. I’m sure there are total gems sitting in those piles of auto-generated covers, but is anyone going to actually check them out? Probably not.
I get so frustrated with people who complain that pointing out these facts is pouring cold water on their dreams. “You’re just bitter because you haven’t been successful so you’re trying to drag the rest of us down! I’ll be different!”
Not at all. I want to succeed, and I want you to succeed too. However, success does not come from a place of delusion. True, lasting accomplishment is born of hard work over many years – and from understanding what you’re up against.
What I share here hasn’t discouraged me, and I hope it won’t discourage you either. In any business endeavor, we need to understand the market, identify the challenges, and pursue the opportunities. That doesn’t mean telling ourselves we’ll make it no matter what.
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You are competing with millions of titles, many of which have far larger budgets than you.
While data varies on exactly how many books are self-published every year, this estimate of 500,000 titles is the lowest one I have seen. Some say it is as high as 4 million. The reason for the disparity is that digital-only books don’t have traditional ISBNs that can be tracked and tabulated (my books don’t).
And then we have the tradpub books; there’s about 10,000 new titles by the Big 5 every year across all genres. While tradpub has pushed a lot of the work off on the authors nowadays, they do get the benefit of some marketing plans and access to physical bookstores. Most importantly, their books are given professional covers, which is one of the biggest expenses for self-published authors other than marketing.
These are just the new titles. Every reader has access to over 156 million books, some a few years old and some a few centuries old. Many, like those out of copyright, are free.
Why would they want to spend their hard-earned money on your book? The short answer is that they probably don’t want to.
If they’re looking for a literary masterpiece, they have access to the whole canon at a click. These books have been around for decades or centuries; readers already know they’re good because they’ve been told so.
Good books don’t have an expiration date, and the longer something has been out, the more of a reputation it has built up. Tradpub books from five years ago have hundreds of Goodreads reviews, so readers can decide for themselves whether these books are worth the higher expense.
Those wanting a simple popcorn read can dive into the thousands of freebie titles. These are usually terrible, but they are also fun and mind-numbing.
So, no matter how good you are, your book is already at the bottom of the pile for choice, based on both minimal (or no) reputation and the price point.
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Readers are automatically leery of self-published authors.
With a sea of self-published stuff, readers have come to understand that many of them … are bad. Just really bad.
You see this moreso in the nonfiction space. For a while, grindset money bros were obsessed with “low content books” that could be made within a few hours and contained pretty much no information at all. Now you have thousands or millions of these essentially worthless books floating around, often with relatively polished looking covers. Readers who have bought those and been disappointed are unwilling to get scammed again.
And with fiction, there are a lot of writers who could never hack it in traditional publishing, now armed with easy access to instant gratification. They just spend a bit of time formatting their book, buy a cover, and then slap it up on Amazon.
Spelling errors? Who cares; this is a work of genius. Beta readers? Never heard of ’em. Their opinions don’t matter because this author’s book is perfect in every way and anyone who disagrees is stupid.
These books could have been better if the author did their million words of practice, but they didn’t want to wait and struggle. They wanted the dopamine hit now now now. And then they put out a bad book, and no one wants to read it. If readers do try it, they quickly realize it’s awful, and now every other self-published book must be bad too.
With all this slop floating around, readers are going to scrutinize you even harder than a tradpub book because they know for a fact that many (I’d even argue most) self-published books are terrible.
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Artificial Intelligence is making it harder than ever to break through.
AI can generate a whole book in a few minutes, or a few days if the “writer” is prompting carefully to avoid plot holes and repeats. Still, that’s much faster than the months it takes me to finish a draft. Funeral of Hopes, my third book, took me three months just on the writing, not to mention the prepublishing stuff – and I’m considered a fast writer.
And now there are companies, like Spines (I refuse to link them) that are promising to speed this up even more. These trash mills are churning out hundreds or even thousands of books a year, flooding the market with stupid nonsense that some unwitting readers will purchase and hate.
Readers will realize that these things are garbage, and again, they will scrutinize real authors even harder, especially self-pubbed ones.
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Jackpot winners can drive you crazy … if you let them.
There are some self-published authors who have made the leap to tradpub and enjoyed wild success, and there are self-pub authors who continued self-publishing and enjoyed wild success.
These folks are incredibly talented, but they are also the outliers. Most self-published authors are grinding away because they like writing and the extra pocket money is nice.
Staring starry-eyed at these people is ignoring the sad reality of survivorship bias. We hear about those who made it big, ignoring that millions of other authors pinned all their hopes on their special book, only to be shot down and ignored.
Because why would we? That’s depressing. It’s nicer to daydream that we, too, will become famous, and then get viciously angry at those who remind us that these authors are the exception.
Reality isn’t always pleasant, but ignoring it won’t get us anywhere, either.
Many of these individuals had strong connections that helped them get noticed. If you’re plunking away at a keyboard all by yourself, you’re unlikely to hit it big because no one knows about you yet. Getting discovered out of nowhere is exceedingly rare.
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Thinking of self-publishing as a business helps quell your frustration.
I have been self-employed for about a decade now, and I have now incorporated my self-publishing into my business. So, the Eirenic Verses really is a business to me: legally, financially, and emotionally.
Everything I spend on the Eirenic Verses is taken as deductions on my taxes and counted as expenses. I don’t spend more than I can afford from my other income streams, and I put it aside when it’s time to work on my day job.
A lot of authors really chafe at the idea of making their book baby into a money-making machine. It’s offensive, they sniff, to believe that art can be commodified. That’s capitalist propaganda.
… Except that’s exactly what you’re doing by selling your books. You want to make money from it, right? Then you have to think of it like a product.
Most businesses, except those with angel capital or enormous backing, really struggle the first few years. The vast majority of restaurants go out of business within five years because they went broke. When you’re building something from the ground up, you need to expect that you’ll be in the red for a while; that’s just how it works.
This is another reason why I discourage you from quitting your job to be a full-time writer. Not only is it unrealistic, but you need that capital to build your business. Budget so you can use your day-job money as funds for your self-publishing.
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For most people, self-publishing is a side hustle.
The average self-published author makes about $1,000 a year. I don’t know whether that’s after expenses or not, but regardless, it’s not life-changing money.
Of course there are outliers. There are people who have quit their job and made this their full-time profession, which drags the averages up and makes it seem like the rest of us are doing better than we are. One of the reasons full-time authors can do that is because they do see it as a business and they understand the market.
If you want this to be your full-time job, you have to treat it like a full-time job. You need to learn marketing, and study the market, and identify opportunities, and make great products, and network, and all that.
But if you don’t want to do that, then you can’t expect it to become your full-time job. It’s a side hustle, and that’s okay. There’s absolutely nothing with that. You’re not a failure for only getting a bit of income from your work because, as I pointed out above, you’re really besieged on all sides here.
I do not like the business side of things, which isn’t really a good thing for a self-published author. Rather than beating my head against the wall, crying and wailing that I’m a failure, I recognize that my disinterest in marketing leads to less interest from the market, too. Novel writing is my ludicrously expensive hobby that makes me happy. I’m okay with that.
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Every sale is a success, and every review is a badge of honor.
Authors often get down on themselves because they refuse to acknowledge that they are highly disadvantaged in this market. Or, they get angry because they can’t see their books as products, and they don’t want anyone else to see them that way either.
But look. With all the depressing info I just gave you, isn’t it miraculous that anyone picked up your book? Isn’t it wonderful that someone took the time to leave you a review? Isn’t that such a gift?
You’re fighting against such major odds, so you must celebrate every success. One sale is amazing. Two sales are incredible. 250 sales does really mean you have beaten the odds, because the average self-published book never sells more than that. Ever. In its whole lifetime.
90% of self-published books never sell more than 100 copies. The vast majority sell none at all.
While 250 books isn’t breathtaking success, it does mean you’ve made something amazing that even a handful of people want to read. You’ve fought your way upstream, and maybe you didn’t get all the way to the outlet, but you did make it farther than a lot of other people. That’s wonderful.
Most importantly, though, you tried. A lot of people don’t ever bother to self-publish at all, much less market themselves.
So, if you’ve sold one singular book, you’re doing a fantastic job, even if it doesn’t feel like it.
I’m proud of you.
Keep a clear head, smile at every sale, and remember that you have to keep going.
Previously, I discussed the significance of reviews from a reader perspective, but let’s talk about it from the author perspective too. We’ll review (haha) some practical advice for how to gain more reviews so that you’re all ready to go for your first or next novel.
I’m still working on these, so don’t assume that I have mastered the art of getting more reviews. However, this is what my research has dug up and what I am working on improving. As always, I am using my failures to boost your chances of success.
You’ll notice that a lot of the advice is about the period before and directly after release, which is the best time to start harvesting reviews. Once you get that momentum going, you’re more likely to get more reviews over time.
Obviously, you’ll get more reviews if people really like what you’re putting out. A breathtaking, amazing book is going to compel people to leave reviews. A ‘meh’ book isn’t going to get many.
Do not slapdash something up; take your time and ensure everything is absolutely perfect before you hit publish.
Learn writing, do your practice one million words, and commission a good cover so people are curious about your book before they decide to purchase. Your blurb is essential, so spend a fair bit of time refining it and getting second opinions.
Don’t just publish whenever. This is important because you want to ensure that you get reviews shortly after your release. I did not do this with 9 Years Yearning, and it struggled to get traction because I wasn’t advertising it to anyone.
Amazon boosts new releases for 30 days after publishing, and it will boost them more if you have some reviews right away; the algo assumes your book is good if it’s already attracting attention.
You should also plan your release date based on what the general public will be doing at that time. Writers Helping Writers has a good explanation of what will do well and when.
Do not release things, especially fiction, in December. It’s the worst month for book releases, as I personally learned. Ideally, get everything ready to go for November at the very latest.
I will be releasing my fourth book, What Is Cannot Be Unwritten, on November 7, 2025. If you want some sneak peeks at it, sign up for my Monday Missive newsletter!
I’ve also learned that April is a shitty month to publish. Everyone’s insanely busy in April, what with Spring Break and preparing for summer. Do March or May instead.
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However, be cautious with preorders.
I ran into this problem with Pride Before a Fall. See, I wasn’t aware that the preorder period is also the automatic 30-day boost period for Amazon. If you don’t get a bunch of preorders in that period, which is pretty challenging to do for a newer author, then you’ve wasted your boost period.
For Funeral of Hopes, I did a seven-day preorder. This isn’t necessarily because I expected a lot of preorders, but because I went through Draft2Digital and it sometimes takes a few days for books to get processed through the different channels.
So, how to get those insta-reviews right on release day. You can hope for some reviews from preorders, but these are not guaranteed. What you need is an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) campaign.
ARC campaigns are when you send out a finished version of your book before its official release date. You can technically do an ARC campaign whenever you want, but it’s best if you do it ahead of time. There are plenty of platforms that help you do this, so don’t think you have to personally reach out to everyone you know and beg them to read it.
I use the Booksprout platform for my ARC campaigns, which is far more affordable than Netgalley and has a really easy dashboard.
Ensure that readers leave the review as soon as possible after release. They can leave reviews on Goodreads before publishing, but Amazon generally frowns upon reviews placed before the release date, so ensure readers know they shouldn’t do that.
Booksprout lets you put reviews on Goodreads before release day, which can build hype as long as the reader puts a disclaimer that they got the book through Booksprout.
If you are going through Kindle Select, you also shouldn’t enroll your book in Kindle Select before your review campaign is over because Amazon doesn’t allow you to publish e-books on other platforms when you have Kindle Select. As soon as your campaign is done, click that “enroll” button and you’re good to go.
Kindle Select does not allow wide distribution, and it does not work well for every genre. It’s primarily for romances and other light reads that people aren’t going to want to keep forever. So just keep that in mind.
If you’re just starting out, go for the most limited number of review slots, which is 25. You are very unlikely to fill up 50 whole slots with your first or second novel because you have not built up enough of a fanbase yet.
You can add people to your team if they seemed to like the book based on their review, and these folks will be notified when you open up another review campaign. This way, you can develop a group of dedicated reviewers rather than starting from zero every time.
Be sure to follow up with any readers who have not published their review shortly after getting the last reminder email. A politely worded message on Booksprout can usually get them to do it. Say something like, “Hello, I noticed you have not left your review on Amazon yet. Can you please complete this as soon as possible? Thank you!”
If they still ignore you, you can get a bit firmer and remind them that they have an obligation to do so if they want to continue to use the platform. This usually gets them motivated.
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Post about reviews.
As I mentioned in the first post about this topic, a lot of readers genuinely do not know that their reviews matter to anyone. They think it’s just a way for them to express themselves, particularly on Goodreads.
By explaining how important they are and offering your preemptive gratitude for their help, you may be able to get more reviews.
Whenever you ask for reviews, explain why you want them, and make sure it’s not about how it will make you feel good. Give a basic explanation of how algorithms work and how more reviews = more visibility. You can even just say “it really helps me out” and be done with it.
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Share the most positive reviews on your social media.
Be sure to remove the user’s name before you post. You also cannot use reviews in blurbs or covers unless you get the reviewer’s permission, but you can definitely screenshot and share them without asking because these are publicly available.
For example, here’s one of my favorite reviews of 9 Years Yearning from over on Goodreads:
Do not share negative reviews to dunk on them. This makes you look petty, defensive, and rude. Report them if you think they were a personal attack, but otherwise leave them alone.
If you can’t handle negative comments, you shouldn’t be publishing in the first place. Every author will catch a few strays from time to time. You need to learn how to handle these with grace – by simply ignoring them.
This is different from the advice that companies receive, which is to engage with negative reviews in an empathetic manner. That’s because companies are continually selling products and services to consumers, but you’re only selling one or two products. Engaging with the reader on this personal level is not going to help you and may make you seem creepy.
Keep this short and sweet. That little nudge can gain you at least a few reviews, especially as Kindle will prompt them after they finish the book.
Something simple like “If you enjoyed this, please consider reviewing on Amazon” can be a nice prompt. You can also include a link to your website (which you should have) to get readers invested in the next steps of your journey.
And that’s it! There’s plenty of other advice out there about how to solicit reviews and market more effectively. I hope this gave you a jumping-off point for the rest of your research.
This post was inspired by a post over on Tumblr that reminded me self-published authors are still getting scammed by unscrupulous companies.
This is an extremely frustrating experience that will, unfortunately, take much longer to fix than it would have if the individual had truly self-published; ie, done everything himself. He will have to fight with the “publisher” for control of his own files again: a headache that would have been avoided with a bit more discernment before signing on the dotted line.
So, let’s discuss some of the most common self-pub scams, then offer a few golden rules that will let you avoid them entirely.
For authors who do not want to deal with all the work of editing, formatting, designing, and marketing, vanity presses – or, their new iteration, self-publishing agencies – seem like a dream come true.
Now all you have to focus on is writing the best book you possibly can! Then, because they are taking care of all of that for your first book, you can start working on the next one!
Yes, it sounds like a dream come true because it is too good to be true. Such a thing does not exist in real life.
This scam predicates upon an author’s desire to be traditionally published, with all the perks that provides. But think about it for a good minute. You didn’t want to tradpub because you knew it would be difficult to get accepted. Maybe you got dozens of rejections because your writing wasn’t up to par or your specific approach isn’t perfectly aligned with the publisher’s desires.
Why, then, would you think that someone will let you bypass that grueling acceptance process while still enjoying the benefits of tradpub? Doesn’t make sense.
In traditional publishing, money flows to the author, not the other way around. Tradpub authors did not have to pay for anything other than whatever got their manuscript into peak form before they began querying.
As such, any publisher that starts telling you about their “packages” and services is scamming you. Full stop. The instant they start showing you pricing packages, leave.
Any service you use as a self-published author is going to be on a per-project basis, typically a different vendor for each element of the project. By that, I mean you will pay for everything separately: you pay your beta readers, then you pay your cover artist (who is almost certainly a different person) and so on.
And the pricing will be up front. On Fiverr, you can see exactly how much you will pay for each project before agreeing to anything. There won’t be any bait and switch because these are legitimate freelancers. Keep that in mind.
Now, I will say that if your career really takes off, you might need a publicist or PR rep. But that’s extremely unlikely when you just start out. There’s not much to sell if you’ve just published one singular book, and most self-pub authors go their whole career without needing PR management because, well, they’re not famous.
What is a publicist going to do for a newly hatched selfpub author? Nothing, really. Maybe fob you off to one of their friends who runs a podcast that five people follow, and you’ll probably have to pay that person too.
The “agent” one is particularly ridiculous because the whole point of a literary agent is to serve as a gatekeeper to traditional publishing, pitching your book to different publishers and imprints. You’re not doing that in self-publishing, so why would you need an agent? You won’t. The agent isn’t doing a damn thing for you.
At the very most, they’ll find contests for you to enter that you will then have to sign up for yourself. You could have found those on your own without paying for anything.
Again, these scammers are using the lingo and trappings of traditional publishing to trick self-published authors into thinking they can achieve that same level of attention without all the annoying elements of querying. Doesn’t work like that.
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Paying for Guest Appearanceson Podcasts and Other Media Events
I completely understand how you might think this is a good idea to get more exposure. Plus, things like podcasts let people get to know you on a personal level, making them more likely to purchase your book.
But the thing is that actual legitimate podcasts do not ask you to pay them. That is because you are providing them with free content, and your presence is supposed to entice people into listening/watching/reading. In short, you are the product being sold. Some very well-known authors even get paid to be on podcasts or appear at conventions.
If you do ever get a podcast request, dig into it. Most of the time, these are very small, very unsuccessful podcasts that get minimal engagement. You’re essentially paying them to produce something that no one is going to listen to.
There’s nothing wrong with appearing on small podcasts, of course. You might find a buyer or two, and you can now link this podcast on your own social media or website for more attention. But they should never ask you to pay them for the pleasure of working with them.
Marketing seems like a mysterious and difficult endeavor – and it is. I talk a lot about my marketing woes here, but I am pretty informed about what it requires.
And it does not require a $200+ marketing course.
Anything you need to know can be found online for free, such as David Gaughran’s amazing course, or in an affordable marketing book that costs like $20. You can also read articles by professionals in any marketing magazine, read SEO journals or blogs, and watch YouTube videos on marketing.
There is no need to sign up for a paid course – unless you are doing one through an accredited college. Many community colleges offer affordable tuition for their business courses, and this can give you a much more in-depth look at marketing than any scammy course online.
You’ll also learn how to run your self-publishing business and keep a handle on your expenses, which is very helpful if you have low financial literacy (as I do).
Anyway, the aggravating thing about these dumb marketing classes is you still have to do all the work. But now you’re out money that could have been spent on legitimate marketing tools.
First off, never pay for reviews on Amazon or another other publishing platform. It will get you banned and you will not be able to self-publish anymore unless Amazon takes pity on you and unbans you.
What I’m talking about here are reviews of your book that are hosted on a separate website, typically the reviewer’s own website. The reviewer will fawn over you, hailing you as a book messiah, and never mention anything negative about the work. Scrolling through the reviewer’s website, you’ll see that absolutely everything gets five stars, even if you’ve read the book and found it to be shit.
I mean, of course they would. They want you to use their services again! So you will never get anything other than the effusive praise.
While this is flattering, remember that you paid for someone to blow sunshine up your butthole and tell you that you’re the best writer ever. It feels good but doesn’t do much for you professionally.
Here’s the caveat. If you are reviewed by an established reviewer who has exceptional marketing skills, this review can improve your SEO rankings. This is especially helpful for getting into Google’s Gemini AI overview. We can bitch all we want about AI, and I agree with your complaints, but the average person looks at the overview and doesn’t click anything else. If you show up in that overview, people will know to look for you.
So, if SEO is something you are really gunning for, then you can purchase reviews. Just know that they will improve visibility but not necessarily sales.
And please go for a cheap one. Do not spend $200 or $300 on a paid review. It’s not going to have a strong enough return on investment to warrant the service, and you could have pushed up your own SEO through sustained effort.
I mentioned in a previous post that you do need to save up for self-publishing expenses, so you might assume I’m suggesting you pay for any of these services. Absolutely not. But self-publishing the right way – the way that will make for an attractive book – is an expensive endeavor, as you have to do all your own marketing.
Here is what you can and should look into so that you have a great publishing experience:
Beta readers and editors. Choose one with good reviews on your service platform of choice, or ask other authors for recommendations.
Cover artists. Check their profiles to see if their art style is consistent; otherwise, they might just be prompting for book covers on an AI image generator or stealing someone else’s work.
Editing software or writing platforms like Sensory Readable (for reading your work aloud), Scrivener, Ellipsis, etc.
Website hosting services like WordPress.
Photo and video editing services like Canva Pro.
ARC campaign platforms like Booksprout, Book Sirens, and so on. Don’t go for Netgalley, though; it’s too expensive for your needs.
SEO research tools and platforms like Semrush and Ahrefs, or book keyword research tools like Publisher Rocket. Though you will typically not need these when you are just starting out.
Reasonably priced marketing books (under $25), or college courses on marketing. Again, there are a lot of free resources out there, so look around first before you jump to buy.
I do understand why people fall for these things. Self-publishing is a lot of work and requires careful orchestration of each part.
Not everyone who gets fleeced is a loser or idiot; they likely are overwhelmed by the amount of work required or have other obligations that make it hard to manage everything. Or they are naive young writers who see stars in their eyes when people offer them instant success.
But alas, there is no such thing as instant success; otherwise, we’d all be wildly successful and it wouldn’t mean anything anymore. So heed this advice:
Spend as little money as possible on your first book while still creating a good product. Beta readers, cover artists, and ARC platforms should be your only expenses other than things like editing software.
Any company that offers “full self-publishing services” is scamming. Self-publishing does not work like that. You have to coordinate all of it yourself.
There is no package deal service for self-publishing that isn’t a scam. In self-publishing, you have to revise and format your work, find a cover artist, write a blurb, and market, and all those other things.
Any time you find a company offering something, Google their company name with “scam.” Other authors will likely have complained about the company before, and you can decide for yourself whether their complaints are valid.
Any expense above $250 to $300, for any service, should make you squint your eyes and second guess. That includes cover artists. You really don’t need a $2,000 cover in most cases.
You can pay for others to do things for you, like cover art or ad campaign management, but you should have full control over the vendor you use because you chose them yourself.
Search for vendors on well-established freelance platforms like Fiverr. This provides a better dispute resolution process and you are more likely to be refunded for an unsatisfactory experience. Don’t use independent platforms, such as paying the person directly; then they can take your money and run.
You should always, always be in control of the final steps to publishing on any platform, whether that’s KDP or Draft2Digital. You should always be the one uploading the files, inputting the blurb, choosing the categories and keywords, and choosing pricing.
If a company specifically reaches out to you, not the other way around, it is likely a scam, or they are selling services you probably do not need.
Legitimate agencies will never ask you to pay for inclusion on their podcast or other platforms. You are the marketing tool to get people interested in their content. So it’s very unlikely you will be legitimately requested for a podcast until far later in your career.
When paying for reviews, check out their previous work and decide for yourself whether you’re willing to throw this money away for higher search engine rankings.
Self-publishing requires sustained effort over many years to reap rewards. Whatever timeline you are thinking for recouping your losses, double or triple it. And in general, you won’t break even unless you continue to produce more books, as each one will help to market the others.
Remember that you will continue to work on the books long after they are published; you’re working to market them now. There is no such thing as “set it and forget it” when it comes to self-publishing – at least, not if you want to make money. It is not a passive income machine but a long-standing side gig that you will require your attention every week.
Keeping this mindset will help you think in the long term and avoid scams that are attempting to sell you a dream of infinite money with minimal work.
Let me preface this by stating that while my day job revolves around Search Engine Optimization (SEO), I am by no means an expert.
I say that, and then this enormous monster post has a 15-minute reading time. I’m sorry? I hope it helps?
While I try to cover absolutely everything I can think of here, I encourage you to do further research. Google has some excellent resources available, and there are plenty of other guides out there.
Anyway, let’s get started.
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What is SEO and why is it important?
Search engine optimization is the process of molding your online identity so that you appear higher in search results for a given topic. Much of it revolves around keywords, which are the specific terms people use when searching for stuff.
It’s obvious why SEO is important: we want people to search for us and find our books and buy them! Most people only look at like the first ten results, and they rarely go to the second page of search results, so we need to be somewhere near the top.
While SEO takes more time to show results than paid ads, those results stick because you’re improving your organic search performance. Organic search is anything that doesn’t have a paid ad warning on it, and it is chosen by algorithms based on relevance to the given search term. These stay around for longer, and the more traction you get, the higher you show up on search pages.
Also, SEO is mostly free; you can pay for things, but you can also bootstrap it. And we looove free.
Now, let’s get into what SEO is all about for us writers.
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SEO will ideally start before you even release your book.
Here are some of the things you can consider before releasing.
If you are choosing a pen name, it must be unique enough that you are not going to be mistaken for anyone else. Get freaky with it. I’m lucky because my last name is very distinctive so I didn’t need to bother with a pen name.
Come up with a unique book title that will not get lost in the shuffle. I chose to use a numeral instead of “Nine” for 9 Years Yearning because most book titles do not have numerals. “Yearning” isn’t a common part of titles either. Eirenic Verses is also pretty distinctive.
You should set up a website right away and start developing a content backlog. The longer that your website has been in operation, the more trustworthy it is to search engines, and the more likely it will be recommended. Consistent posting schedules also bode well with Google.
Begin searching for keywords and targeting niche ones.
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Research valuable keywords and keep them in mind.
Head over to Ahrefs or Semrush and check out their keyword analysis tools. I prefer Ahrefs, but they both work similarly. Don’t worry – they both have free versions, so you don’t need to pay for anything just yet.
Now, pick a general keyword like “fantasy book” and see the synonyms it provides. Don’t target the ones at the top because these are super competitive and swamped with huge international companies. You won’t be able to rank for them, though you can still use them as you please.
Use the middle of the list for your copy, like blurbs, articles, landing pages, and so on. The more prominent the use (like in headers, meta descriptions, etc), the more likely you’ll rank. You should also use keyword-optimized subtitles as needed.
Pride Before a Fall has the subtitle “a low-stakes fantasy romance” based on my keyword research. I decided not to go with “gay low-stakes fantasy romance” because that’s a bit of a mouthful, and it’s already shelved in LGBTQ fiction.
Now, scroll down to the bottom of the list and pick out some that you can can base blog posts on. Look for long tail keywords, which are ones that are longer than a few words and typically involve a question. For example, a keyword might be “what is second-world fantasy.” You can then use this as a topic idea.
If you use WordPress for your website (which I am begging you to have), you can insert tags before posting. This is an excellent way to use keywords without making your content sound weird. Keywords also let you get discovered in WordPress Reader, so you’ll start to pick up some steam if you’re targeting those words regularly.
Be judicious with your keywords so that you don’t fall prey to keyword stuffing, which is when you just cram a million keywords into your content so that it sounds weird and fake. This will get you penalized by Google.
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Make a website.
Again, you should do this before you publish if at all possible. Get thinking, planning, and posting.
What do you need on your website? At the bare minimum:
SEO-optimized front page that discusses your books and has links to your most important pages
Author profile, with links to your socials and other accounts
Books page, with links to all retail options
Contact page with a professional email and form
Blog page
You can also have character guides, country guides, glossaries, and so on. But the main draw is your blog page. It’s crucial to keeping your website relevant and improving your SEO.
Yes, that’s right. I’m sorry to tell you this, but you need to have plentiful, free content hosted in one place. Social media is ephemeral and should only be used to direct people to your site.
I know, I know – you want as much money as possible and it’s torturous to give stuff away. Like, damn, I’m doing all this for free? What the hell?
But people don’t like paywalls, especially for one website. Medium and Substack are one thing, but don’t go thinking you’re special enough for people to pony up for you and you alone.
More free content = more visibility = more name recognition = more sales.
Also, free sites are fine, but I do think that WordPress Business is helpful for writers – much more so than paying for ads. If that’s in your budget, then definitely consider it.
And also also, pick a short, memorable, and unique URL. Ideally focused on your book series or your name.
You know, like eirenicverses.com. But that’s mine, so you can’t have it.
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Post regularly on unique topics.
Because you’re an itty-bitty author with a small audience, you cannot try to fight with the big guys who have huge SEO budgets. As such, you need to think weird.
The more unique and interesting your content, the more likely it will do well. Cover niche topics that others aren’t focusing on. You can post things like how to build a character, how to chart a plot, etc, but just know they’re going to get smothered by bigger sites that have already covered that.
For example, one of my most popular posts is “Quality Assurance Checks for Character Development.” This is an unusual topic that I haven’t seen covered before, and it provides novel tests for characterization that I made up myself.
People clearly like that because it is well-organized, creative, and provides unique information they can’t find anywhere else.
Again, return to your keyword research and find the nichest keywords you can find. The really weird ones that it seems like no one is searching for. Then write about that.
Focus on things you’re passionate about whenever you can. I’m insane about writing, so making up a million blog posts about it is fun for me. The more you enjoy doing this, the more likely you are to stick with it and improve your SEO. Pick a posting schedule that works for you – it could be once a week or once a month – and schedule stuff out.
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Organize your content correctly.
This goes both for your website overall and individual pages. Set up categories and use keywords.
In content, use headers, spacers, and breaks as necessary. Use shorter paragraphs – no more than four lines. You should also add some blocktext, bullet points, etc, as this lets people read faster.
Many people use pictures as breaks, especially as they can then add keyword-optimized alt text. I don’t do that, but you’re welcome to if you want to.
Organization includes posting about relevant topics and keeping a good theme for your site. Do not post random things about your other hobbies, unless you can connect it to the main topic, as I do in my post about the connection between athletics and writing.
And please please please, do not use your Professional Important Writing Blog as your personal diary. Readers don’t care anywhere near as much about you as you think they do.
Though you’re free to get more personal in a newsletter, which is where all your bestie superfans hang out. You can learn all about me and my boring life every single Monday if you want!
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Practice good internal linking, and select good outbound links.
Try to ensure that every single blog post is linked to at least one other blog post. The more important it is and the more you want it to rank, the more frequently you should link it. Have internal navigation bars with all your main pages on them.
This can be rough, especially as your posts proliferate, but do try your best. Do a site audit with Ahrefs (which is free with an account) to see if you have any orphan pages, then find a way to link them.
When linking outside of your website (outbound links), choose quality sites, not spammy ones. Think academic articles, major publications, government sites, and things like that. The better your links, the more that Google trusts you.
Of course, link your books frequently. If you choose wide distribution (which I encourage you to), then pick links from different platforms every time.
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Sign up for Google Analytics.
If you choose to work with WordPress, it does come with native stats. However, these are often misleading because despite what they say, it does count bots. Anything you see from Mountain View, California, is probably a Google crawler.
So while WordPress stats are good, Google Analytics and Google Search Console are better. Here’s some of the things you can do with it.
Helps you identify what content is doing well. GA will list which pages get the most hits, which tells you what type of content your readers want. You can then align better with audience expectations. Additionally, you can revise content that isn’t doing well, such as adding more keywords.
Shows what websites are getting you the most clicks. This is especially important for social media because all of us only have so much time in the day and we need to focus our attention on the most valuable platforms. I do find that WordPress is a little better for this.
Identifies search terms people are using to find you. Direct searches for your book are excellent, but you can also find what type of keywords people are using that aren’t just your book title or name. You can then focus more on these keywords in your content.
Lets you submit sitemaps so you can get your pages on search engines faster. If you use WordPress, you can get a plugin that will generate a sitemap for you. You’ll then submit this to Google Search Console (connected to your Google Analytics account), and Google will update its listings for you faster.
There’s a million more things, and Google Analytics could be its whole own post. You should check out the documentation and read some guides to see how this supercharged tool can help you.
Also, don’t be discouraged if you don’t get a lot of stats to work with at first. GA takes time to track and collate things.
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Choose wide distribution.
I regret using KU at first, because the more websites have your book, the more sales you can get, and the more that your book is recommended to people.
In fact, you may get organic links from strangers that list new books in random places. For example, Googling my book name and title showed me some offhand mention of my book on Reddit.
Love that succinct list of the tropes actually, those are great.
This blog post by Dana Fraedrich discusses why Draft2Digital is so helpful, but it doesn’t really mention SEO. The more places you are linked and the more keywords that are associated with your book, the more likely you are to come up for relevant searches. Having your book mentioned on a lot of high-ranking websites gets you more attention.
Again, ensure you have a keyword-optimized blurb, as this will help you rank higher for relevant terms.
I have another post I will share later that discusses the importance of reviews for SEO, but if I added that, this will would be an entire book in and of itself. Reviews are good for SEO too. Just know that.
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Set up accounts on book-related websites, linking back to your website whenever possible.
The more authoritative sites that link to you, the better. In addition to listing sites, sign up for things like Goodreads, AllAuthor, Bookbub, Booksprout, Authoriview, Book Barbarian, and so on. Fill out your author profile and include a link to your site right up front and center.
People probably won’t click on it, but this is an inbound link informing Google that you are Very Important and Should Be Listed Higher.
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Get your content featured on other websites.
Having inbound links, also called backlinks, from quality sites provides link equity. In other words, you get to siphon off some of that website’s ranking power for yourself.
You’ll notice that when you search for your books, the first link is likely not your website but Amazon, Kobo, etc. As an example, this is what it looks like when I search for 9 Years Yearning:
But if your website is linked on that page, then your website gets link equity. (That’s another reason why wide distribution is so important.) Over time, as you attract more and more organic links, then your website will rank higher and higher.
Of course, these all come from wide distribution. You will also need to get other links that aren’t your listings.
This is more difficult because it requires networking and research, but it’s possible. For example, you might do editorial posts on a writing-related website, sign up for reviews from influencers, or use websites like Authoriview to post interviews.
While it’s ideal to have your own byline, guest posts (when you post under someone else’s name) can also be helpful. In fact, many people don’t realize that guests posts are often written by the very company or person that is recommended in the post, so they’ll think this is a super valid and trustworthy review.
Always ask to have links to your website and books in there, calling them out by name. If you’re writing the content yourself for other websites, then you can just insert it wherever you want. Remember to use keywords as necessary.
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Be patient and consistent.
SEO is not automatic; it takes months of regular work to get yourself out there. This is both because Google doesn’t immediately crawl every website in existence (though updating sitemaps speeds up that process) and because it doesn’t trust new websites as much as older ones.
When you’ve been posting on the regular for three to six months, you’ll start to see improvements. If you have chosen a unique enough name for your series, then you’ll get the blasphemous but vital feature in Google AI search:
The fact that Google gave a little nice review of my book comes from the fact that I paid to be featured on a review site ages ago. While I originally thought that was a waste of money, it improved my SEO so I’m pleased with it now.
As an aside, it’s pretty cool that Google cares more about me than an actual Greek word and part of the Bible (which does have “verses”).
The AI did get it a little bit wrong because Eirenic Verses is the name of the series, not the book. AI is pretty stupid, after all. Still, it gets my name out there if people search for that term.
In fact, people are indeed wandering onto my site from search terms like “eirenen” and “eirenic.” That little insight from Google Analytics is the reason why I wrote the post “Names in the Eirenic Verses.”
Consistency is essential to SEO. Do not disappear for months, because then you vanish from results unless you had bombproof SEO in the first place.
Post regularly. Set up a schedule. I have posts scheduled out four months in advance, and I keep having to push things back because I continue to write more content.
There is so much more that goes into SEO; it’s a trial-and-error process that requires continual updates and strategy changes. The company I freelance for has been doing this for over a decade and is still regularly changing their tactics based on competitor analysis, so don’t think this is a one-and-done thing.
But regardless, if you keep at it, you’ll start to see rich dividends: better than ads, better than spamming social media, better than running through town screaming your book name. I’m wishing you luck.
