Going Indie: What I’ve Learned So Far

It's been almost three months since I hit “publish” on all the major retail sites for my debut indie romance, SPANISH LESSONS (Study Abroad #1).  And holy shit has it flown by.  I know I am really, really new to the indie game, but I've already learned A LOT – like, a lot lot.  I wish I had known all this stuff when I first started, so I thought I'd share a few tips and tricks for those of you kicking around the possibility of self-publishing your novel.  Here goes!

1. To quote my BFF RiRi, “Work work work work work” on getting your craft right.

One of my biggest regrets of my early writing career is not spending nearly enough time on the craft of writing – learning how to create a stellar, satisfying romance novel.  Now I recognize how freaking important it is to get that craft right.  I think one of the best ways to do this is to read the masters of your genre.  Like, all of them.  I write romance, so that means I dove deep into the backlists of Tessa Dare, Elle Kennedy, Kristen Callahan, Sonali Dev, Christina Lauren, Eloisa James, Elizabeth Hoyt, Stephanie Perkins, Kristan Higgins…the list goes on.  I checked out Kirkus and Publisher's Weekly and read the romances that received starred reviews; I scoured my favorite romance blogs (Smart Bitches Trashy Books, Dear Author, Smexy Books, The Lusty Literate, and The Romance Dish, among many, many others) and picked up their recommended books.  I read so much I'm pretty sure I'll never have 20/20 vision again.  But it was worth it.  I learned what made a romance really sing; what made characters come to life; what made a juicy, sexy conflict and a satisfying Happily Ever After (HEA).  Reading is as essential to your work as an author as writing is.  I used to think that if I wasn't writing I wasn't really working, but now I consider reading part of my job, too.  It's that important.

2. Edits are HARD.  They will also turn your pile-of-stinking-shit first draft into a pretty decent book – IF you don't take the easy way out.

I don't think anyone has an easy, breezy writing process, but I will say these STUDY ABROAD books were fucking difficult to write.  Don't get me wrong, I had a lot of fun revisiting my own experiences studying abroad in Spain more than ten (!) years ago.  But I was determined to write the best books I possibly could.  I think I have, but not because I magically became a better writer overnight.  I wrote my best books yet because I put a lot of money, time, and effort into edits.

First, I scoured the backmatter of the self-published romances I loved.  A lot of the authors will thank their editors, publicists, and cover artists in their acknowledgements.  This is a great way to find freelancers for your own indie project; it's how I found my amazing editor, Kristin Anders.  I do not jest when I say her enthusiasm for my work and her tough, insightful, amazing edits have changed my life – and my books.

I promised myself that I would work my ass off to make SPANISH LESSONS and LESSONS IN GRAVITY shine.  That meant never, ever taking the easy way out when it came to Kristin's edits.  For example: the first draft of GRAVITY was okay.  It was really slow in the beginning, and the heroine's “reasons” didn't really add up.  But it was passable.  Kristin suggested I could change a few smallish things and have an okay draft ready to be published – OR I could incorporate this AMAZING new idea she came up with that would make the book super hot and super awesome.  Doing this, however, meant rewriting the first HALF of the book.

That's right.  I'd have to trash over 30,000 words and write close to 40,000 new ones.  Just the thought of it made me feel like dying.  I think I almost did.

But I wrote them.  It was hard and it was boring and it felt like it would never end.  But it ended up being the best decision ever.  My readers are going apeshit (in a good way) over Maddie and Javier's story.  Reading their glowing reviews makes all that work totally worth it.

I guess the moral of my editing story is this: Find a tough editor you work well with.  Pay him/her well.  One round of edits usually isn't enough.  Kristin and I will go through 2 or 3 rounds of content edits before I feel confident enough to hit that “publish” button.

3. Invest in a great cover that is genre-appropriate.

I hired a super talented artist to do the first covers for SPANISH LESSONS and LESSONS IN GRAVITY.  Her work is really amazing, and the covers turned out beautifully.

Only problem?

They read way too young for the genre I'm writing in (New Adult).  I could've saved myself a lot of time, money, and angst by checking out the bestseller lists in New Adult and taking cues from the covers I saw there.  I hired a new cover artist (Elizabeth Bank of Selestiele Designs…highly recommend!) to put together some new covers for me that were more genre-appropriate.  Totally hot, right?

4. If you can, release multiple books at once – especially if you're writing a series.  This way you can make the first book FREE, and entice new readers, while also having some paid content in your back pocket.

It just so happened that by the time I got all my ducks in a row to publish SPANISH LESSONS, book #2 in the STUDY ABROAD series was ready to go, too.  I didn't plan that intentionally, but yikes am I glad it worked out that way.  As a new author, it's tough to convince readers to fork over their hard-earned dollas on an untested author they don't know or trust.  But if you can offer book #1 in your new series for free, they'll be much more likely to give you a read.  They have nothing to lose!  And neither do you if you have book #2 ready to go.

Right now SPANISH LESSONS (Study Abroad #1) is FREE on all retailers; book #2, LESSONS IN GRAVITY, is $3.99.  It's too early to tell if my strategy here is working, but it makes me feel like I'm doing something to attract new readers as I work on book #3.

A note on making your book free on all book retailers: Kobo and iBooks allow you to make your book free with pretty much no hassle.  But Amazon and Barnes and Noble straight up won't allow you to make it free without jumping through a few hoops.  Here's how I did it:

Amazon – I posted a shameless plea for help on the “Make it Free” thread on KBoards, essentially asking other authors to report a lower price on SPANISH LESSONS so Amazon would price match.  I also reached out to Amazon directly via the “Contact Us” button in my KDP account.  I made the case that making book #1 FREE would entice readers to purchase book #2 for $3.99.  I think having that PAID book #2 really helped convince Amazon to make book #1 free.  If I make money, so do they – think of it that way.

To make SPANISH LESSONS free on Barnes & Noble, I had to upload the book to B&N through Draft2Digital.  Not as much of a hassle as Amazon, but it still required a few extra steps.

Even if you don't have book #2 ready to go when you release #1, it's probably worth making book #1 free anyway unless you already have a lot of readers.  It's a really great way to encourage people to try out your work.

5. Whether or not your book is free, you have to let people know it's available if you want to move more than the 3 copies your parents will buy.  This is called marketing.  It is very, very hard to figure out.

I will tell you, point blank, that I have absolutely no idea what the hell I am doing when it comes to marketing my books.  (Neither, by the way, do traditional publishers – I've worked with them and I know that firsthand – but that's another post for another day.)  Right now, I'm just trying to get as many reviews of SPANISH LESSONS (book #1) as possible.  The more reviews you have, the more likely readers are to take a chance on a new author.  I still flail around on a daily basis, but here are some resources I've found that have helped tremendously:

• Mark Dawson's 3-part course on Facebook Ads
• Nick Stephenson's 3-part course on Reader Magnets
• HM Ward's Blog
• Joe Konrath's Blog
• Marie Force's Self-Publishing Yahoo Group (you have to sign up for a Yahoo account to access it I think…at least that's what I did!)
• KBoards Writer's Cafe

Things I've tried that do work:

• Targeted Facebook ads (see Mark Dawson above).  Start small and experiment A LOT.
• Stalking Goodreads, Amazon, and Google for romance bloggers who blog about my genre
  • Tip: Google the top 20 bestselling books in your genre (mine would be New Adult and Contemporary romance).  A bunch of reviews should come up on various blogs.  THOSE bloggers are your readers!
• Reaching out graciously to said romance bloggers for reviews in exchange for free copies of my books (make sure they post to as many sites as possible…Goodreads and Amazon are a great start).  At this point I've contacted over 250 bloggers asking them to review SPANISH LESSONS.  I plan on contacting more.
  • Tip: most of these bloggers are very active on Facebook.  Create a Facebook profile (NOT author page) for your bad-author-self so you can “friend” or “like” these blogs and interact with them on a daily basis.  Just like in any other business, relationships matter!  It's also a lot of fun.
• Targeted Pinterest ads (surprisingly)

Things I've tried that don't work:

• Paid blog tour/cover reveal.  I liked the tour coordinator I worked with, but I didn't see ANY bump in sales whatsoever after shelling out over $100.  I did, however, get some reviews via the blog tour, but I've gotten way more reviews by reaching out to bloggers on my own – and that doesn't cost a thing.
• Contest/giveaway for something OTHER than my books.  I hosted a giant giveaway via the blog tour I paid for – I'm talking a Kindle, a gift card, free book, etc. – and again I saw NO sales as a result of it.

Things I've tried that may or may not be working – jury's still out:

• Goodreads giveaways.  This only works if you have physical copies of your books to send out.  I DO see a big bump in readers who add my books to their “To Read” shelves, but I don't see a bump in sales.  Will update as I continue to experiment with these.
• Giveaways hosted via my author Facebook profile page.  I don't have a large enough audience yet to really host a great giveaway, even if I encourage “sharing” or “tagging friends.”
• Instagram ads (you can create and pay for these via Facebook).  Still fine-tuning my targeted ads, but so far Instagram has been a dud versus the results I've seen on Facebook and Pinterest.

Things I want to try:

• Newsletter subscription services like BookBub and Freebooksy.  I've applied to BookBub three times now, and so far no luck.  I have my first big feature tomorrow on My Romance Reads – we'll see how it goes!
• Contacting other indie authors in my genre to see what worked for them, marketing-wise (besides writing really, really amazing books!)
• Twitter advertising.  I'm honestly not the biggest fan of Twtter – it's such a time suck for me, and I always leave feeling weirdly left out/totally out of my element – but I do think lots of readers go there to find out what books people are talking about.

6. Get yo' author newsletter on!  This means you need a website.

Mark Dawson and Nick Stephenson will tell you time and time again that your author newsletter is the most important marketing tool in your arsenal.  It's not an easy thing to put together, however.  Not only do you need a website where people can go to sign up for your newsletter, you have to encourage them to go there – never mind setting up a Mail Chimp account, formatting your newsletters, etc.

Is it a pain in the ass?  Yes.  But it's worth the trouble.  You won't see magical sales numbers overnight, but if you're real about your indie career, you gotta play the long game.  And your newsletter is probably the best way you can do that.

Now for the website stuff – because you do need one of those for a newsletter sign up.  A few years ago, I paid a top-tier web developer a TON of money to set up a super fancy, super pretty website.  I forked over practically my entire advance from my traditionally published historical series for that website.  And you know what?  It didn't even do what I needed it to (sell books!).  The developer also charged me an arm and a leg every time I needed to update the site.  Lesson learned: you don't need to fork over giant bucks for a great website.  Find someone who is talented but also decently priced to build your site and help you keep it current.

I recently had a new developer rebuild my site entirely – Meg Tinkham of Tinkham Creative Solutions.  She is AWESOME and so is my new site (www.jessicapeterson.com).  It's gorgeous, it's super functional, and the best part is Meg offers quick, affordable updates.  I highly, highly recommend her if you're looking to build a site or just update what you have.

7. Speaking of newsletters – backmatter matters.

“Backmatter” is the stuff that you put in your finished manuscript after the last page of your story.  It's the page/pages readers look for to learn more about you and your books.  Courtney Milan was the first indie author to alert me to the importance of these pages.  First and foremost, you want to include a link to your newsletter sign up.  If a reader loves your book – and hopefully she will! – she'll want to find out when your next one comes out.  Nick Stephenson suggests you even offer a reader some kind of free incentive – a novella, maybe, or some deleted scenes from the book – in exchange for signing up for your newsletter.  Whatever you do, make sure you mention that all-important sign up!

I also thank readers for taking a chance on a new author in my backmatter, and provide links to all my social media and website.  I ask readers to leave a review if they feel so inclined, and make sure I include links to the book's Goodreads and Amazon/iBooks/etc. page to make it as easy as possible.  Finally, I include a cover image of the next book in the series, along with the first chapter or two of that next book to give readers a little “tease” in the hopes they will buy it!  Here's the first page of my back matter verbatim from SPANISH LESSONS.  Feel free to use and insert your own links!

• Thank you for reading SPANISH LESSONS—I hope you laughed, you cried, you got turned on by the sassy bits. If you got especially turned on, please consider leaving an honest review on Amazon or Goodreads. I appreciate it!I’d love to hear from you—here are a few ways to keep in touch:Sign up for my newsletterFriend me on Facebook

  Like my author page

  Check me out on Twitter, Instagram and Goodreads

  Drop me a line at jessicapauthor@jessicapeterson.com

  Book #2 in the Study Abroad series—LESSONS IN GRAVITY, Maddie’s story—is available now here! Check out the next few pages for a super sexy excerpt. I think you’re going to like it!

So, wow.  That was a really, really long post.  I'm sure I'll think of other things to add to this list, but I'll leave it there for now.  I hope this was helpful to some of you, at least, and of course I'd love to hear from you about your own experiences in the self-publishing wilderness.  Thanks for reading!