Lessons From My First Attempt at Self-Publishing
July 22, 2011 
6 Comments
Want to hear about my first attempt at self publishing? At the time I thought it was pretty successful. Back in 2006 I had written a series of posts on optimising your site to improve traffic. As part of my love affair with experimentation on the web, I decided to turn it into an e-book. Getting started in self-publishing seemed easy.
My First Attempt at Self-Publishing
Here’s what I did:
- I collected all the posts I had written into a Word document.
- I put them in order and edited them to remove any obvious references to posts.
- I added a brief introduction, a couple of resources and came up with a title — SEO Tricks.
- I found a publisher (no longer operating), uploaded my book and worked with their in-house editor on a few changes, including the title. The book became How to Get Hits.
- Then the book was published and I mentioned it a couple times on my blog.
Three Self-Publishing Mistakes
When I look at it now, I throw my hands up in horror, because that’s not the way I would self-publish a book today. Here are some of the key mistakes in my first effort at self-publishing:
- The book has no cover. Yes, you heard that right — no cover! When I published the original book the publisher provided a default cover, which I went with. There was no need for me to do anything.
- There is no copyright page. Perhaps I didn’t do this because it was all information that was already on the web for free. But more likely, I got so excited about getting the book out that I just forgot. I’ve never made that mistake since. If you’re going to publish a book with your byline then make sure you take appropriate credit via a copyright page.
- It is plain, very plain. Basically all I did was put the posts in order, use a heading style for the chapter titles, stick in a couple images and publish. But the book is visually very boring.
Self-Publishing My Book Again
I’ve learned a lot since then and would avoid those self-publishing mistakes. The good news is that much of the content is still worthwhile. So I plan to reissue the book with a new title, some new images and definitely a new design. I’ll be documenting my new self-publishing efforts in this column as I go, from September onwards.
And there’s one more thing. When I look at how I released the original book, I made little effort to promote it. That definitely has to change. Although I’m not planning to make this a major launch, I’ll definitely take some of my own advice about self promotion and get the word out. Watch this space for updates.
Image: Bill Longshaw / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Wow! Thank you for sharing these mistakes in self publishing. As they say, it’s good to learn from the mistakes of others. I’m currently in the process of publishing my ebook and this post just inspired me to do better and do my best in my next attempts too.
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Twitter: shurleyhall
July 23, 2011 at 7:57 AM
Thanks for the encouragement, everyone.
@Claude: You’re right; self publishing on Kindle (and other platforms) gives you a lot of control and makes it easy to fix errors quickly; try doing that with a print book – it would take ages!
In you this post the whole energy is in the world “self”.It mean you have power to do something good with your own efforts.I think you have traveled this journey successfully.
Nice post.Thanks for sharing your lesson by your first attempt at self publishing. Anyone can do mistake but to learn from it and to share your experience with others is a real achievement.
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Yes, we ALL make mistakes with our first published book! And self-publishing means making even more mistakes…I enjoyed your post, refreshingly honest! All I can say is that I’m sure you’ll do better next time and good luck!
The other thing is this: if your book is on Kindle (or other virtual shelves) you can always take it down and redo it: you’re the master!
Claude.N recently posted..Book Promotion Stressing You Out? Here’s How To Survive!