Welcome to the first part in my self-publishing guide! My first novel, The Mistletoe Connection, releases on November 10 (add it on GoodReads!) and as I work my way through the self-publishing world, I’m breaking it down for you in simple steps that are easy to understand and follow.
There are a lot of things that go into successfully self-publishing a book, whatever success means to you. But it all starts with one very important step: Write a good book.
This is probably the advice that every self-publishing advice starts with (and if it isn’t, run!). You can try all the gimmicks and advertising you want, but if you don’t have a good book, it’s going to flop. The self-publishing market is saturated with titles these days, and so while you could just slap together a first draft, use Microsoft Paint to create a cover, and hit “Publish” on Amazon, you’re not going to get any readers beyond (maybe) your family and friends.
But what does it mean to write a good book? That’s what we’re going to be talking about today.
What makes a good book?
This is obviously a big question, and one that doesn’t really have one, single answer. But when self-publishing, there’s one key thing to keep in mind:
A good book is one that meets the reader’s expectations.
Of course, you can’t make every reader happy. But you need to do enough research in the genre you’re writing to know what readers generally expect. If you’re writing romance, it should have a happy ending. If you’re writing fantasy, you should know the mythical creatures you’re writing about, even if you break the rules.
That last bit leads me to an important point: Meeting reader expectations doesn’t mean that you don’t surprise them or keep them guessing. Naturally, that should be a goal of most books! But if a reader picks up your horror book, wanting to be scared, and you spend most of the book on witty banter between two friends…well, they’re not going to be impressed, even if it’s the funniest conversations you’ve ever written.
Savannah Gilbo’s blog is a great resource for breaking down the tropes and expectations for each genre, but the most important thing you can do is read. Both generally, and more narrowly once you decide which niche your book will fit into. In Amazon, genres can get very specific, so make sure you’re well-versed in those smaller categories. My book The Mistletoe Connection is a romance, which I already loved reading. But more specifically, it’s a “clean” or sweet romance, so there are no curse words or sex scenes. Reading other sweet romance novels helped me determine what readers will expect—again, if a reader picks up a sweet romance and then encounters a steamy scene, they’re not going to be happy with the book. I can go even deeper into genres—specifically, The Mistletoe Connection is a holiday or Christmas romance book, which has even more expectations. To learn more about finding your niche, check out Kirsten Oliphant of Create If Writing’s resources.
Of course, there’s lots more to writing a good book, and for more on that, you can check out, well, the other articles on this blog!
Figure out your goal
The other important piece to consider when writing and planning your book is your goal. What does success with this book mean to you? Do you want to make money? Do you just want to share your writing? Do you want to create a brand with this book as a part of it? Are you publishing a lot of books, or just this one for the foreseeable future? Most likely, it will be some combination of all of these, but you need to know what your top priority is, because that will guide you through the many decisions of self-publishing. If you’re planning to have some sort of career that this book factors into, whether it’s as a fiction writer or a non-fiction brand or something else, it’s important to think about what you want out of your career as a whole. How do you see this book fitting into that?
I’ve always dreamed of traditional publishing, but for the past couple of years, I’d also toyed around with the idea of self-publishing. I had ideas for a novella and a short story collection, and I knew those were harder to traditionally publish without an already established audience. When I came up with the idea for The Mistletoe Connection, even though it ended up being a little closer to a traditional novel, I decided it was the right time to try self-publishing. For my writing career, though, I plan to pursue a hybrid approach—a mix of self- and traditional publishing. So, even as I work on publishing this book, I’m querying agents with a different manuscript.
With all that in mind, what is my goal for this singular book? I’ll be honest: it’s not to make money. At least, not at first. Now, don’t run away—as this series continues, I’ll point out the ways that, if making money were my main goal, I would make different decisions, and how my real goal is guiding the decisions I’m making. So, what is my real goal? Ultimately, it’s to share my writing and have a space to experiment a bit with a different genre and structure than I normally write. At the start of the year, I planned to query literary agents, and so I knew it would be a year full of no’s. I wanted something completely within my control to make happen. So I decided to self-publish. It’s also a way for me to learn about all the aspects that go into making a book successful—marketing and design and collaborating with other authors and pricing and so many other things (that I’ll talk about as this series goes on!), which I think will be valuable even when I traditionally publish a book.
So how has this goal affected the decisions I’ve made so far? For one thing, I made it a Christmas-specific book. Realistically, there are one, maybe two, months of the year that I can actively promote this book and hope to sell any copies, as opposed to a romance not connected to a holiday. I also break that rule I mentioned above about meeting reader expectations, by mixing age audiences a bit—The Mistletoe Connection weaves several storylines together, and while it’s an adult book, there is one young adult storyline about teens in high school. Personally, I love both YA and adult books, but not everyone does, so it’s more likely that I’m narrowing my audience rather than widening it by including both.
But, this is the book that I wanted to write. I’m okay with sacrificing those extra sales to have a book I totally love and am excited to work on. That’s not to say that if making money is your top priority, then you’re selling out or can’t write a book you love. In fact, if you’re not in love with the book you’re writing (or at least, have felt in love with it at some point, even if you want to pull your hair out over it right now), you shouldn’t be writing it, because readers will be able to tell!
So those are the two important things to keep in mind as you’re trying to write a good book: How can you meet readers’ expectations in a new and creative way? And what is your goal with this book, as it fits into your larger career?
Have you considered self-publishing? Do you have any favorite self-published books? Let me know in the comments!
More on The Mistletoe Connection…
On Christmas Eve, a mix of strangers at the Denver airport are trying to make it home in time for Christmas when a snowstorm sweeps through, grounding all flights. Stuck in the airport together, they’ll help each other discover the magic of in-between places.
Six intertwined stories unfold in the airport as the clock ticks closer to midnight: Landry runs into her ex-girlfriend Resa, and the two women hit it off like nothing ever happened—until things start to get serious. Unaccompanied minor June convinces Adrian to pretend to be her boyfriend for social media that evening, but what happens if she wants to stop pretending? Charles is struggling during the first holiday season since his wife’s death, and the resulting tension with his daughter only makes the night more difficult. Wes and Keely had hoped to sweep their fight about Keely’s career under the rug during the holidays, but being stranded at the airport will bring emotions to a boiling point. Airport employees Trevor and Margo have been best friends since middle school, but can Trevor work up the courage to tell Margo he wants to be more than that? Through it all, heartbroken Mariel is determined to end the worst year of her life on a good note, and ropes everyone into her scheme to make it happen.
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Featured image by Jonas Jacobsson