How To Waste Money Self Publishing

By Bob Kern

The perfect book for new authors unfamiliar with the self-publishing process and the pitfalls of marketing your first eBook. This book covers all the essentials for publishing without all the nonsense. It is filled with a number of examples of the many money traps out there offering secret formulas for success and other horse hockey designed to coerce new authors out of their hard earned money.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bob Kern
• Release date: Jan 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386560425

Book preview

Introduction

This book was written to help new authors avoid some of the many obstacles that can be encountered with your first book. My hope is that once you have read this book you will be able to avoid the money traps and scams you will come across.  As authors, we want people to buy our books.  I want people to buy my books because the subject interests them.  I want them to enjoy my books.  I write nonfiction so I want them to learn from my books.  Yes, I want to sell lots of books too.  I just want to do it the right way.  I don’t want to mislead people into buying my books with gimmicks and tricks.

How do I market my book to the right audience?  How do I make lots of money from my books?  These are questions every new author ponders.  Let me be very clear on the answer to this – there is no magic bullet for selling books.  There are lots of people offering to sell magic bullets but they’re all duds.  Most of these people will try to lure you into buying and using their schemes of very questionable tactics to take readers money.  In the end, most them will turn out to be a scam to take your money.

I will do my best to explain some of the tricks used to lure unsuspecting authors out of their money with offers like the Making Your Book a Best-Seller gimmick.  I will explain why you should be careful paying for third-party promotions to social media sites.  I’ll discuss some of the promotions out there that claim they can make you a six-figure author.  Google and other search engines are a great resource but you need to avoid the many scams that will show up in your searches.  I’ll share my thoughts and experiences on using social media, author platforms, email campaigns, and websites for marketing your book.

Writing a book is easy for me. It’s the rest of the process that I had to learn on the fly. I’ve learned a lot about what works and what is a waste of money or an out-right scam.  I spent a lot of time and money before figuring this out.  I decided to write this book to help new authors keep from making costly mistakes and having to learn everything the hard way.  This book isn’t about everything, from the things to avoid to advice and suggestions on what works.

I’ll walk you through my process from writing a book through self-publishing it. I tried to fill this book with advice to help you be successful as an author.  I don’t just discuss the things to avoid. I will give you some options on things that are effective as well.  

This book isn’t big because I tried to get right to the point. You aren’t going to find a bunch of fluff, no pictures or graphs to fill pages.  I used the standard 12-point font recommended for books not a larger font to create the illusion of a bigger book.  There is no hidden agenda here like many books offering to help authors be successful.  I want to help you understand that there is no secret formula for a successful writing career, just lots of people willing to sell you dud rounds.

I am a disabled veteran and the author of the award-winning series, We Were Soldiers Too. I plan to release four more books in my series this year and publish a children’s book. I have finished a book on losing loved ones to dementia that I am confident will be a legitimate best-seller when I release it. 

Good luck with your writing career.

Bob

Chapter 1

Best-Selling Author

The dream of every author is to write a book that is a best-seller. A best-seller means your book is number one, top of the list, king of the hill, the most popular book on the market.  It means people like your writing, they like your book, and they like you. What does all this really mean? Money.  A book is a best-seller because it sold the most copies. It has nothing to do with being the best-written book.  It just sold more books than any other book in its category.  Having a best-selling book puts lots of money in the author’s pocket.  This is the perception of most writers publishing their first book.

This was true until eBooks broke onto the scene.  The New York Times and USA Today would publish a list of the previous week’s best-selling books from a small list of categories. When an author cracked the list for one of these categories, it was a huge accomplishment. Making one of these lists got a writer noticed and financially secure for a while.  A best-selling book was selling lots of books and making good money.  The higher up the list the book climbed, the more likely one of the big publishing houses would offer a multiple book deal with a huge advance.

Publishers would offer book deals to authors with huge money up front in the form of an advance for future books.  These advances were intended to keep the author in a financially sound position while they wrote the books they were under contract to write.  They could afford to take a chance on the author based on a previous book’s success.  It gave them more favorable odds of getting a return on investment (ROI) with future royalties.

They had many outlets at their disposal to put the books in front of readers. Barnes and Noble, Waldenbooks, Borders, and tons of locally owned retail bookstores across America. There were direct to customer options through mail-order book clubs like the Mystery Book Club, the Science Fiction Book Club, and the Military Book Club.  Readers were induced to join with