For the official show notes: http://createifwriting.com/152 To sign up for my weekly email: http://createifwriting.com/quickfix  This post will be a deep dive into the strategies I utilized in 2018 to go from under $100 a month to making solid four figures every month self publishing on Amazon. My goal is to be as transparent as possible and give you the strategies and tips you'll need to find success!  Caveat: There is no ONE way. These are things that worked for me. If you don't have a well-written book, chances are you will not succeed self publishing on Amazon or anywhere else. If you are interested in self publishing on Amazon, it's a great time to be writing! There are so many more resources and tools out there to help you. But that can also mean a lot of time wasted researching, testing, and trying things. I spent the last year testing, trying, and self publishing. I'm happy to say that within that year, I've made huge strides and learned a lot that I wanted to share. This post will be an overview of the strategies I employed and I'll do a deeper dive on each piece in a separate post. BEFORE YOU SELF PUBLISH ON AMAZON Before we get into the strategies, I want to make this clear: You are unlikely to find success with a poorly written book, a bad cover, and an unclear genre. These are necessities! Sometimes you might get away with one of those, but all three are massively important. WELL-WRITTEN BOOK While we can all point to books that are poorly written and still find success, your goal should be to write a book that resonates with readers. Sometimes books with poor writing style or grammar do well because the story resonates with readers. But books that well well are books that connect with an audience. Start here: write the very best book you can. BOOK COVERS Without a solid book cover that looks professional and like the other books in your genre, your book will not sell. No matter how good the inside of the book is, people are turned off by bad covers. This is simply reality. The faster you understand that and stop fighting against it, the better off you'll be. Good resources for affordable covers:  Go On Write German Creative on Fiverr CLEAR GENRE If you try to tell someone about your book and say something like, "It's kind of like a sci-fi thriller, with a little romantic comedy and fantasy mixed in," then YOU ARE IN TROUBLE. Books in a genre may have elements of another genre (like a sci fi book that has a romantic storyline in it), but to do well with your marketing efforts, you really need to be very clear on your genre. If you haven't checked out my post on Niching Down, this would be a great place to start!   Once you've got a well-written book, a solid cover, and a clear genre, it's time to think about self publishing and marketing your book.  HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY SELF PUBLISH ON AMAZON I tried a lot of things in 2018, but these are the main things that led to success with self-publishing. I'll go into more detail on each in future episodes and posts, but for now, here are the top things I did. (Again, AFTER writing good books, having solid covers, and being clear on my genre.) The first three are related to writing and craft and the second three are related to marketing. Published quickly (about a book every six weeks starting in May) Writing in a series Writing in a hot trope Consistently grew my newsletter Set up newsletter swaps with other authors in my genre Paid for promotions through other email newsletters Other than the two on the list, those three main things ALL deal with email! Email is and always will be my foundation for what I do. PUBLISHING QUICKLY I did not know that I could write so fast. This will NOT be for everyone! But I will say that if you don't think it's you, don't put a mindset block on writing quickly. My very first book ever took two years to write. The first clean romance book I wrote took three months. My second clean romance book took two months and my third took two wee