Lessons Learned After Publishing My Debut

Yesterday was Oil and Dust’s “book birthday”, aka its one year publication anniversary, which made me think about the lessons I’ve learned over the past year. During the past twelve months, I’ve published two books and have a third nearly ready for copyediting. I’ve stepped outside of my comfort zone, made mistakes, and learned a ton.

Lessons Learned

Here are a few of the lessons that surprised me the most.

Writing is a Small Part of the Publishing Process

When you start writing a book, your focus is on completing the draft. Then, when you’ve finished the first draft, your focus shifts to learning how to revise and then edit the book.

But something I didn’t know was how many more skills I’d need after I’d published a book. Graphic design. Research. Learning new software. Marketing. Publicity. Website maintenance. Newsletters and email list building. Accounting. Digital art. Self-promotion and promotional materials. Understanding contracts. Collaborating with contractors. Networking.

Begging for Reviews Gets Easier

After a year, Oil and Dust still hasn’t garnered fifty reviews on Amazon. I’ve had readers reach out personally to tell me how much they enjoyed the story, but even though I’d find it harder to reach out to an author than leave a simple review, many of them haven’t reviewed.

Prior to publishing, I’d observed other authors pleading for reviews, but I didn’t really understand how hard they were to get. Each is precious (even if the reviewer didn’t love the book) and helps the algorithms present the book to new potential readers.

Scams Abound

Because reviews are so hard to get, the first time a book blogger reached out to offer a review of my book was super exciting. But then another did too. And another.

Each asked for a “donation” between $25-$125, plus the book itself. One asked for more than $200, but affirmed for the fee, they would purchase the book from Amazon to ensure their review was from a verified reader.

And it isn’t just book bloggers who reach out. “Influencers” clogged my personal messages on Instagram with offers to promote my book to their readers too.

A Promotional Blog Tour Is Not a Book Blog Tour

In a promotional blog tour, a number of blogs will put your book cover and description on their blog or their Instagram feed. But they don’t read the story, they create nothing new (you provide the cover image and book description), and they offer no opinion of your book.

In contrast, when you organize or purchase a book blog tour, the blog hosts read and review your book on their sites. These types of tours are typically more expensive and often ask you to provide physical copies of your book to the book reviewers.

Because I didn’t understand the difference, I tried both. (Expensive lesson!) Of the two, only the book blog tour helped me sell copies of my book.

Paid Writing Contests Don’t Sell Books

Out of curiosity, I tossed Oil and Dust into some of the writing contests I came across. While my book made it into the semi-finals or garnered honorable mentions in several of the contests, the results did little to help me sell copies of Oil and Dust.

Happily, the two contests I found the most useful for promoting my book were both free to enter!

Nothing Has Changed In a Year… and Everything Has Changed

Of all the lessons I’ve learned, probably the most surprising is that publishing a book is the start of a journey, not the end. But despite all the work, it’s a journey I’m delighted to be on!

If you’ve published a book, what lessons have you learned?

The header photo is a composite image. Base image by BiZkettE1 on Freepik. And also, if you haven’t yet reviewed Oil and Dust, here’s how to write an easy, simple, and fast review!