Will Once's misadventures in self publishing

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Once!

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This is the first in a random series of musings about my adventures in self-publishing.

If you are looking for one of those "how I made a million" stories, then I'm sorry but you won't find it here. I've sold a few hundred in just under two years. Not exactly the next Hugh Howey. Not yet anyway.

But I'm happy plodding along, making mistakes and friends and learning from both.

Let's start with a blog about how not to design an ebook cover...

https://willonce.wordpress.com/2015/04/29/cover-me-im-going-in/
 

EMaree

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Oh man, that is a really rocking improvement! You made the right choice updating your cover, the new one looks very professional.
 

Treehouseman

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Wow, hahahaha, what can anyone say! That is a MASSIVE improvement!

I'm still amazed that with so many low-price and nice premade covers out there, more folks aren't taking advantage of them!
 

Once!

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Thanks for the comments, guys! Agreed.

Treehouseman - I think the problem is that there is so much choice out there about how to get a cover. It is very hard to see the good stuff for the rubbish.

When I did my research I found dozens of books and website articles on DIY cover design. Then there were authors who used professional designers outside my budget. Then pre-made covers. Computer software tools. Amazon's own cover designer. The range of options was bewildering.

At first I dismissed fiverr thinking that something that costs $5 can't be any good. And I did have to look through a lot of designers on fiverr to find one that I liked. Again, there was a lot of choice.

Now I'm going to work through my back catalogue to upgrade all the covers. Plus the three new books that are hopefully coming out in the next month.
 

Once!

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The next stage in the adventure...

I've got a new cover for my second book - Global Domination for Beginners. I am keeping to the same house style of a minimalist black background with white fonts. It's another fiverr cover from pixelstudio and very good value for money at a shade over $15.

I have started an email newsletter using Mailchimp. Mailchimp itself was very easy to set up and is free if you have less than 2,000 subscribers.

It was a little more challenging to integrate Mailchimp into my wordpress blog. The instructions on the Mailchimp website talk about installing plug-ins, but I couldn't see how to do this in the blog dashboard. So I did the usual problem-solving thing. I typed my question into google. This brought up dozens of "how to" articles, including this one:

https://anikocarmean.wordpress.com/2014/05/10/mailchimp_newsletter_wordpress/

There is a bit of faffery with html, but nothing too difficult.

Read more about the adventure here:

https://willonce.wordpress.com/2015/05/06/just-an-update/
 

profen4

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Congrats on the new cover, Once!. Here's hoping your books find their audience and you sell like crazy!

hope you'll keep us posted on your journey.
 

EMaree

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Another much-improved cover. Are you okay with constructive criticism? If not, please skip the whitetext below and let me know, I'll remove it.

Whitetext time -- I would say, though, that this one doesn't indicate genre as well as your previous one. I'm guessing it's fiction (I had to check the Amazon page to confirm) but the cover and blog description both indicate non-fiction, maybe humorous like a joking How-To guide.

Given the non-fictiony title and non-fictiony cover you're going to have a hard time selling this as fiction on first glance. And I know that's part of the joke, (I get it, I promise!), but when readers tend to make snap judgments based on cover thumbnails I'd have some concerns.
 

Once!

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Emaree

Thanks! That's a really good point. I may need to revisit the blurb - not looked at it for some time. I think you are exactly right.
 

EMaree

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Your Amazon blurb is really excellent, it's just worth highlighting a bit more on the blog page (maybe bold the blurb or offset it slightly?). Nice 'n easy fix for that part! It's a great blurb, dude, show off that awesomeness~ :snoopy:
 
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