Any disadvantage to self publishing a first book if hoping to traditionally publish later books?

OP, I'd like to chime in with some thoughts from a possibly unique perspective.

I'm self-published (currently two short story collections and a novelette). I also have ten trade-pubbed short stories, which was important to me as a validator that my work met at least some kind of professional standard. Most of my beta readers come from SFF SYW, and this is not an easy room.

I haven't made it, not by any sense of the term...but I'm not starting from zero, either. I've got a few hundred readers on my email list. Others follow my blog. My few books have been generally well-reviewed. Cover art is currently giving me fits, but there's always some damn thing.

Everything has a learning curve. It's taken me until this year to finalize my thoughts on where I'm going with my blog, and I started the thing in 2015. (The previous years weren't a waste, though, since I published lots of evergreen content that I still get recurring traffic from--and it's all writing related.)

First, to circle back to the "to trunk or not to trunk" convo, I've been lurking a lot on kboards recently, since this is where some of the six-figure SP authors actually hang out. Common advice there is to write at least three books before publishing, especially if it's in a series, so you can release one a month. There's all this 30--60--90 day cliff stuff that people will wax lyrical about, but it usually comes back to the "write three and release" strategy. There's little enough consensus that I tend to pay attention when most people agree about something.

Anyway, writing a couple more books in series will allow you to grow as a writer, and then you can re-tackle book 1 with the fresh perspective that a good break brings. And also, better skills. Much better than staring at the same passage for the umpteenth time.

And if you use the intervening period to start a blog, it's a good way to develop a digital footprint. I wouldn't bother with Twitter anymore if you're SP, but it's worth starting at least a Facebook fan page and Pinterest boards for your books. If you use if-this-then-that protocols (WordPress.com blogs have this), then everything you blog automatically gets posted to Facebook, too. Book reviews left on goodreads automatically get posted to Facebook as well.

The nice thing about all this is it won't be effort wasted. Others here may disagree, but I think that whether we're trade or SP, it behooves us to have some strategies for promotion. Many of them will be useful regardless of which path you pursue.

Also, once you've got your trilogy to where you (and other critical readers) think it's of a professional standard, you can then query it one last time before pulling the SP trigger.

I think of it as keeping your options open. No one likes to see a lot of effort go down the toilet.

Hope something here helps.

Cathleen, that's an excellent post. Thank you so much. Very informative, and not condescending to us learners.


Helix --- obviously. The point is to make friends, not use people. Friends help each other out. Was there something I said that made you think otherwise?

Remember that you want traffic ultimately to be directed to your Website.

You don't want to be depending on a third party to be found so yes, use Facebook to post links that go to your site, for instance.

Ok, website, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads profile (not sure if it matters, but I have one). The only thing mentioned I don't have is Pinterest. How critical is that one? I know zip about it, so do I need to go get one?

Go to Pinterest and sign up. It's free. Get it converted to a commercial account as soon as possible. Once that happens, you need to attach an address to every image you post from your blog. Make it lead back to your site, and make sure it's an image that it's okay to use (Pixabay has quite a few attribution-free).

From the looks of your site, you write fantasy and paranormal. Those are both excellent topics for Pinterest boards. Have multiple boards, with vampires, werewolves, etc. as well as more standard fantasy boards, like dragons. Definitely do a board for dragons.

I like that part--it's the only social media thing I do that's actually fun enough that I might do it even if I didn't write. I'm just collecting cool dragon pics. Or unicorns, etc. I used to pay good money for art books with this stuff in it.

In addition, I have boards with things like Tolkien (and other famous fantasy author) quotes, along with quotes for other things I feel are worthwhile. Use separate boards for each author, although you can have a misc. board for authors that you've only got a few quotes from. Find them online and/or make your own (probably more of the first).

If you're so inclined, funny kitten memes are always appropriate. I'm not sure what that says about us as a species. I collect funny LOTR memes as well. Lots of funny Star Trek memes, too.

You'll branch out from there, but those are good places to start.

And then for no good reason, people will start saving your pins. Some of them go to your site (because you've attached links for all your blog posts), and a Pinterest tail lasts a loooong time.

When you publish a book, you should start a board. (Confession: still on my to-do list--but I have every intention of getting there.) Put all images that work with your story on it. Setting, character--whatever fits. Don't forget to post your cover, and link that back to your site's book page.

jeffschanz said:

Cathleen, that's an excellent post. Thank you so much. Very informative, and not condescending to us learners.


Helix --- obviously. The point is to make friends, not use people. Friends help each other out. Was there something I said that made you think otherwise?

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Not really, mate, but maybe consider that talking about worming your way in is probably not the best choice of words.

Cathleen, you are one of the most straight up helpful persons here. Thanks so much.
I'll do that, but I'll probably wait a little while. I spend way too much time futzing around on writer forums as it is. More social media will get me fired real soon.

Helix -- just in fun, mate. Considering the experience rankings, and memberships partially judged on meeting certain requirements, I thought it was an appropriate jest. Apologies if it caused any offense. Didn't mean to. I'm generally just a goof.

Patty said:

I'm hesitant about goodreads because my reviews would tend toward critical.

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I don't review books publicly. I've recommended a few on Twitter and in my newsletter, but basically I won't say anything publicly about another author's work unless it's positive. YMMV on this, of course, and there's no real right answer here; but I've heard rumors of places like Amazon, at least, removing book reviews by other authors in the same genre. That's just one of the reasons I don't want to get on the review bandwagon. And I will never name a book I actually dislike.

IME Goodreads is a good place to build a community as a reader. If you're going in as an author, I'd stay away from reviewing anything that even remotely resembles your genre. I'm not the world's best networker, for sure, but for me as an author Goodreads is mostly about being present to answer questions if anyone has them. (Used to be about giveaways, sigh, but I'm not doing it at their current prices.)

lizmonster said:

I don't review books publicly. I've recommended a few on Twitter and in my newsletter, but basically I won't say anything publicly about another author's work unless it's positive. YMMV on this, of course, and there's no real right answer here; but I've heard rumors of places like Amazon, at least, removing book reviews by other authors in the same genre. That's just one of the reasons I don't want to get on the review bandwagon. And I will never name a book I actually dislike.

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This is true for me as well, with the rare exception of scholarly (or putative scholarly books) in me field; there's a lot of crap out there in Celtic studies and I will review it critically.

I will review books I absolutely love, and talk about why I love them, but these tend to be older books. I will do one-line reviews of books I really enjoyed along the lines of "I really liked this, and am buying the author's next as well."

lizmonster said:

IME Goodreads is a good place to build a community as a reader. If you're going in as an author, I'd stay away from reviewing anything that even remotely resembles your genre. I'm not the world's best networker, for sure, but for me as an author Goodreads is mostly about being present to answer questions if anyone has them. (Used to be about giveaways, sigh, but I'm not doing it at their current prices.)

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Giveaways used to be a great thing on Goodreads; not so much now.

LibraryThing (which I much prefer) still does giveaways. Amazon will penalize review writers and/or remove reviews if they perceive any kind of a connection at all.

I don't review on Amazon; I know way too many writers, and they friggin' removed a review a colleague wrote about a facsimile of Chaucer's Hengwrt manuscript because they said she "shared social networks with Chaucer."

CathleenT said:

I wouldn't bother with Twitter anymore if you're SP, but it's worth starting at least a Facebook fan page and Pinterest boards for your books.

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My experience has been the opposite. I self-published my first book (under my new pen name) three weeks ago. I think the only social media platform that has made any significant difference for me is Twitter. I got some pretty decent buzz on Twitter before and after the book came out, and in some cases, can directly correlate high sales days with certain people retweeting my Twitter promo or tweeting about my book. I think it depends on the genre and a bunch of other factors. I write contemporary romance with diverse characters, and there is much more conversation on Twitter than anywhere else between POC romance authors, for example. My book also has a straight-to-the-point, amusing title that seemed to catch people's eye. I also think it was important that I've been on Twitter for years, am part of the romance community there, and while I'm hardly popular on Twitter, many people still know me.

AW Admin said:

they friggin' removed a review a colleague wrote about a facsimile of Chaucer's Hengwrt manuscript because they said she "shared social networks with Chaucer."

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I can't even...

Patty, I've posted for beta readers on Goodreads for a while. Got one response. I assume they are reading it now. I'll update you if I get an update myself. But there are a lot of beta readers that advertise their services there. But length of sample and genre are the driving factors on whether anyone is interested. Mine is a full manuscript, 149k words, so not a lot of action for something that long.
There seems to be a forum for betas here too. I haven't tried it yet.
I've been getting the best reading response so far from Bookrix. A weird little community, mixture of serious self-pubbers and poetic teens. But they've been exceptionally easy to talk with and encouraging. Just ignore the "Second Life" feel and constant chatter. There's some decent folks in between all that.

Patty said:

Question for whoever might have some thoughts -- I'm hesitant about goodreads because my reviews would tend toward critical. Is my sense of things right, that goodreads works best for people that regularly find books they genuinely want to recommend to others? My experience with books is usually more critical than that. Often, there are things I really like about a book, as well as things I could do without in that same book. Most of my reviews would end up middle-of-the-road or worse, as a result. Between 1 and 3 stars out of five. I could artificially inflate my reviews, but that seems dumb.

My sense is I am not a good candidate for building a network out of goodreads. Any user experience to chime in on this?

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I write reviews, though I'd note I handle this as part of my self-publishing. I have a review blog, take review requests, and all of that. The reviews have affiliate links (Amazon US is the one that really earns). All reviews start on my blog, but I crosspost them where relevant. Goodreads is the main place for book reviews (with a link back to the original blog review). I don't really network on Goodreads as such. I make sure my book entries are correct, post reviews, add books to lists, and general stuff like that. I don't use it to chat to people most of the time.

I've not had any major issues with this. I do a quick background check on authors, to make sure they don't have a history of being abusive to reviewers. I also avoid books with too much hype, as the fans are often terrible. But the main response to my reviews has been positive. People don't think I'm trying to destroy the competition if I have criticisms. I've had readers say they're going to buy the books based on the reviews. So even if I'm lukewarm about a book, just having those detailed reviews helps sell copies. Most authors understand that having no reviews is far worse than a reviewer hating something about the book.

Basically, I'd say write whatever sort of reviews you feel happy writing. It isn't compulsory to only say nice things, whether you're an author or not. However, if you're putting in the work to do full reviews, you might want to consider rolling it into your self-publishing business. I haven't regretted branching out into other stuff, as the other stuff turned out to make more money than my fiction.

Okay, goodreads...I've spent some time there. I just finished up a Reading Round (190--a novella round), which as far as I'm concerned is the main reason to be on goodreads.

For those of you who don't know about Reading Rounds, I did a blog post: https://cathleentownsend.com/2017/11/22/goodreads-reading-rounds/. The short version: ten authors join a review round. Each author reviews four books and receives four reviews. The moderators make sure no reciprocal reviews happen. Amazon is aware of Reading Rounds and doesn't have a TOS problem.

It's not perfect. There's an indie culture concerning reviews--some people take things way too hard, and it's best to sugarcoat as much as you can stand. Somebody without so much skin in the game (i.e. books that are subject to one-star drive-by reviews) can protect readers from substandard books. Not me. The lowest I've ever given is a two-star (goodreads)/three-star (Amazon).

So, you're going to read some dreck and be nice about it. My usual approach when it's not a Reading Round is just to not post negative reviews. I never promise a review and only post one when I feel I can genuinely praise a book.

And yeah, it's not ideal. Very few careers are. Don't get me started on all the nonsense I had to put up with when I was a teacher. Or a construction worker.

Some people advocate reviewing with some sort of firewall to protect their identity, but reviews are one of the best things you have to attract readers to your site, and nobody has enough time to get all this stuff done even once. Doing it twice is inconceivable to me.

I will cheerfully ditch Reading Rounds when I have enough readers that I can just send out an email, and poof! I have enough reviews. It's just the best option I've found when you're a small fry like me. Book bloggers have waits that stretch for months, reciprocal reviews with other authors are a no-no, as is canvasing your family and friends. Actually, you want to resist the latter for reasons of strategy if for no other reason. Getting random readers in to review your books will mess up your also-boughts on Amazon, and that's more important than most people realize.

For example, my genre is fantasy. I want fantasy readers buying and reviewing my books. If not, if my also-boughts are messed up with parenting, dog training, carpentry, etc. (from my family members), the algorithms won't know what to do with my book, and they'll give up in disgust. Algorithm love on Amazon is worth A LOT. Don't jeopardize it.

That's how I work reviews and goodreads. YMMV.

ETA: It's also possible to set up your WordPress.com blog (others may work, too--that's just what I have) to post on goodreads. I have no idea if it nets me much, but it's a simple if-this-then-that protocol, so you only have to set it up once.

ETA2: I wouldn't go blindly looking for betas on forums, even here. You're trusting this person to help you make your book better. The dark side to that coin is they can also make it worse.

I've dealt with that situation, btw, and it's possible to disengage politely. I just told the gal I was trading with that we had incompatible goals for our books, and in my opinion, we could only do each other harm. She wanted to spend way more time than I thought was wise on world-building. I can't remember what she didn't like about my work, but it wasn't anything I was going to change. Not all these exchanges work out. That's okay. I hate Game of Thrones. If you want to write like that, I'm not a good choice to help you do it.

The absolute best place for finding beta readers is SFF SYW, IMO, right here on AW. Consider getting in the habit of posting work and leaving critiques. You'll make friends, and then when you ask them to edit your book (which is what my beta swaps tend to be, full-on critique partner stuff), you'll have a trust relationship built up both ways.

I don't know what I'd do without my beta friends. I can trust them to be blunt and reasonably nice at the same time. They'll tell me if a book isn't ready. And I'll believe them. You can't get that on a forum blind date.

Without that relationship, you'll spend way too much time and angst sifting critique, trying to decide what to ignore and what to act on. Or at least I did.

I just wanted to link to this tweet from Hugh Howey and Pierce Brown. Two fanatastic Sci-Fi writers

https://twitter.com/hughhowey/status/1011861625220091906