Self-Publishing Diary – 1

The “1” may be a little optimistic.

This is also a bit late as I self-published Noobs back in June and have tried a few things with it since then. In truth, I started self-publishing back in 2020, but I set up a new author page for Noobs in case any well-meaning parents went to buy another of my books for their kids, none of which are appropriate.

Anyway, I have no idea what I’m doing but I try a lot of things, so I thought I’d try documenting some of it, partly to hold myself accountable. I’ve tried to start small with this book, concentrating on the UK and only publishing on Amazon for now. I tried Amazon ads and though I had enough sales to make them seem worthwhile (3 in total and around 45 page reads, which I understand are not great numbers but compared to the last few times I tried it…) I decided to pause them for now. Firstly, I was spending way more than I was making on the books, and more than I could afford if I were to continue. But mostly I stopped because it feels like a full-time job. You have to work at Amazon ads, tweaking keywords and analysing performance, and I never have time for it so end up running poorly performing ads for much longer than necessary. Then I usually see how much I’ve spent and stop them all, rather than learning from the results. Because it’s a full time job.

I’m trying Instagram and Facebook ads now. Here’s my image:

I’d seen a few of these ads with the arrows trending so I mocked one up with a free account on BookBrush and posted it on Instagram and Facebook. I’ve boosted both for £5 just to see if they make any impact. Rather than going to page likes, I’ve linked directly to the book and have tried to target parents who play video games, because that’s what I am and I’d buy this book.

In other news, I applied for a table at MCM Comic Con a few weeks ago, then promptly forgot about it, thinking they would never approve a brand new author with one book. The approval came through last week. I then had to pay for the table, which isn’t cheap, but I’m not necessarily looking to make a profit at this point. Mostly I just want people to read the book.

So, that’s terrifying. It’s not until October and having done a couple of small book stalls I’m not totally unprepared, but it still feels like a pretty big deal. More on that to follow!