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.
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.
With the ease of self-publishing, there have been a glut of poorly written books that get no reviews and no sales. This dilutes the pool for other writers, who then need to fight harder to get their books known.
And given the deluge of bad books coming from self-published writers, readers are hesitant to give any self-published book a try. They simply can’t sort through all these options to find good stuff, and they’ll turn instead to a standard benchmark of trust: tradpub books.
As a self-published author, I completely understand why someone would only stick to books from the Big 5 or other trusted imprints. That author needed to convince dozens of people that their book would make money; there’s a much higher threshold of quality.
This is, of course, harmful to every self-published author. While it can partially be blamed on the fact that we don’t have anywhere near the same resources as a giant publishing company, it’s also kind of on us as a community too.
Too many people are publishing before they’re ready, making it harder for everyone – and themselves.
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Why is it so bad to publish unpolished work?
One may say, “Well, I want to start making money. I can practice my craft while getting paid for it! I can get feedback from readers and improve my work over time!”
Bzzt. Wrong.
Readers are not a good resource for feedback. You need skilled teachers, beta readers, and editors to help you with this endeavor because most readers are consumers who don’t have the skills necessary to tell you what you’re doing wrong. They’ll just tell you that they don’t like it and be done with it.
The first book that a reader encounters from you is your only opportunity to impress them. If that first impression is bad, then they’re not going to take a chance on your next works. Unless you attract new readers with your later works who then go back and read the rest, your better novels are going to flop too.
So if you’re going the self-publishing route, you need to decide for yourself whether you’re ready. Unfortunately, many writers write their very first book and decide that it’s time to go … then publish something that’s not great.
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If you have not written one million practice words, you are not ready.
I stand by this rule because it’s what kept me from publishing crap. I did approximately 1.6 million practice words before developing an original series, and I’m so glad that I did. Looking back at my work from 2021, I can see an enormous difference in quality, while that quality jump slows down in the last works before I started the Eirenic Verses.
This tells me that I’ve gotten all the kinks out of my writing style, learned from my mistakes, and developed a unique voice.
During this process, I read a mixture of beginner and professional writing while I did my own practice. I beta read for other beginners so that I could see the common mistakes in a more “neutral” setting; ie, I wasn’t tearing my own work to shreds. When I noticed that I didn’t like something, I would look for similar instances in my own work and recognize that these things aren’t helpful.
I read books about writing, studied great books, and kept practicing until I felt very confident in my skills. If I’d published back in 2021, before I began my million-word journey, I would have been ripped to shreds.
And as I have said before, fanfic was the best way to go for my practice. Some writers get frustrated because they feel like they’re “wasting their talent” by writing practice novels, but I never felt like I was expending unnecessary effort because I really enjoyed what I was doing. It didn’t feel like work, nor did it feel wasted.
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Age is not a reliable indicator of your skills.
This is a niche argument but one I need to point out. People tend to believe that when I say “beginner writer,” I’m talking about high school students or college freshmen.
Not true.
I often see people older than me (I’m in my mid-thirties) who write like teenagers because, well, they haven’t practiced enough. But for some reason, they believe that simply being older means that they’re a better writer than someone in their twenties who started writing seriously when they were very young.
Maybe this is because they have written hundreds, even thousands of emails, social media posts, or diary entries. Business and everyday communication are entirely different from fiction writing. They don’t provide you what’s necessary to succeed as a writer.
Age does provide experience in some things. You will know more about how relationships work; you’ll have a greater understanding of world affairs; you can draw on things from your own life. But, these do not automatically translate to good writing skills. You still need to practice.
We would all think it’s ridiculous if someone had never ridden a horse but insists they know what they’re doing just because they’re in their forties. Being 56 wouldn’t imbue you with the ability to play the saxophone. The same is true of writing.
This is why I stand by the million-word rule. It says nothing about age, only practice. Someone could be 25 and have written a million practice words, or they could be just starting in their fifties.
Do not assume that being older makes you wiser. Do the work.
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Not being ready now doesn’t mean you’ll never be ready.
I’ve gotten pushback before when espousing the million-word rule. People complain that it’s gatekeeping and that I’m trying to police other peoples’ actions, but I’m really not.
If you publish a terrible book, it dilutes the market for the rest of us, but ultimately it’s not my problem. I don’t have to attach my name to that work or risk my reputation on a bad book. I offer this advice because I want you to succeed, not because I’m a snob who wants to feel superior to you.
A million words can feel daunting, even insurmountable. But it’s not. That’s about ten 100k books. For me, it was 130 fanfics of all different lengths, with the largest being about 110k.
Slow writers or those with a very busy life are going to struggle with this, it’s true. But if you really enjoy writing, you want to bring your best work to the masses, and you won’t be mad about the idea of working toward that goal.
There’s no rush, especially because fiction writing isn’t a lucrative career in the first place. You’re not missing out on royalties by waiting because you wouldn’t have gotten many royalties for a bad book anyway.
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Your practice writing is not wasted work.
Another thing I see is people complaining that the million-word rule is telling them to waste time on something that won’t ever be published. While that may be true for fanfic, it’s not true if you’re writing original fiction.
Practicing something isn’t wasted effort if you have a goal in mind and are systematized about it. Few people would be enough of a jerk to tell a garage band that they’re wasting their time practicing because they haven’t produced an album or headlined a tour. Someone learning to paint isn’t wasting time making art that won’t be put in the Louvre.
For some reason, it’s only with writing that people scoff at practicing, assuming everyone can be Stephen King with their first novel. It’s not true, and you should ignore those naysayers – especially the ones that have taken root in your brain.
Writers do have an advantage over other artists, though. Once you’ve sharpened your skills, you can absolutely polish your first stories so that they are publishable. This is the joy of writing: you can come back to it as many times as necessary until you’re satisfied.
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You must be able to handle criticism before putting your work out into the world.
Can you handle negative feedback with grace, or do you fly off the handle? Have you ever fought with a reader about their score or badgered them into changing their review?
Then you are not ready to publish, even if your writing is up to par.
Authors must have good self-esteem that can take a few knocks. They need to be able to separate themselves from their finished product and recognize that everyone has different tastes. No matter how great you are, your work is not going to resonate with everyone who comes across it, and this is okay.
A few months ago, I did a review exchange with a fellow self-published author. I had given their first book five stars because I liked it, but I gave their second book four stars and an honest but polite review because, well, I didn’t like it as much.
They knew I didn’t like it because I had beta read for them, but they still begged me for a review, which was … not very smart of them. If someone told me they didn’t like what I wrote, I would not assume they’d say something different in the public sphere. Not everyone does fake nicey-nice; I certainly don’t.
Once they saw my review, they absolutely lost it. Not only did they leave me a passive-aggressive four-star review on Pride Before a Fall, but they fought with me about my review for hours, trying to force me to change what I said.
Well, of course I said no. I privately told them the exact same thing I say publicly, both about my review and about theirs:
You have to understand that reviews are not for you, they are for other readers. I was very polite in my review and simply said that the style wasn’t to my taste. I did not bash your book or claim it was terrible.
And you brought up valid criticisms in your review, which is perfectly fine. I cannot expect everyone to like my book, and you are very much entitled to think it was slow paced or not like my writing style. That review is not for me. It’s for readers who may like to know that the book is slow-paced so that they don’t waste their time on something they won’t like.
In fact, I welcome such feedback. It ensures that only people who will really like my book will pick it up and that I don’t have unsatisfied readers.
If you’ve ever argued with beta readers about their critique, or gotten angry when a reader did not give you a glowing review, then you need to take a step back and work on your self-esteem.
Get more critique, not less; train yourself out of your knee-jerk defensiveness and recognize that people not liking your work says nothing about you as a person. It has to do with your writing. It is not a personal attack.
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Contrary to popular belief, self-publishing is expensive.
Self-publishing is not free unless you’re able to create a great cover by yourself and have great friends who will beta read your work for you.
When publishing two books a year, I spend around $2,500 on products and services. This includes cover artists, beta readers, editors, writing software, WordPress, Canva, and Booksprout.
This is on the cheaper end of the scale for self-published authors; many spend $8,000 a year or more, most of which isn’t being recouped by royalties.
Again, another reason why you should not quit your day job. You need an income stream to pour into your writing.
And you have to factor in the time you’re spending writing instead of doing something with immediate payoff. This is an intangible cost that I can’t calculate, but it’s a fair chunk of change.
So a lot of self-pub authors go deep in the hole for their work. If you’re not making much, you will need to save up for this expense and find good vendors who are within your budget. Writers will need to make a publishing fund for themselves so that they aren’t going into debt paying for the services they need to succeed.
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Action points for publishing readiness
Here are the things you need to do so you’re ready to hit publish.
Find good writing manuals or free writing advice to guide you.
Read widely, thinking of what you can learn from each book.
Complete your million practice words, or more.
Learn to take constructive criticism.
Hone your unique writing voice.
Create a publishing fund.
Get feedback on your work.
Beta read for other beginner writers.
Learn about marketing (for later use).
Decide whether you want to pursue tradpub or self-pub.
Learn about tradpub expectations (even if you’re planning to self-pub).
There you have it. Everything relies on you practicing with intention, not rushing toward a finish line. Aim for those million words, read as much as possible, and know that good things take time.
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 legal 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.
