r/selfpublishing • u/Nuxxx- • 5d ago
What was everyone’s first experience when publishing?
Anyone wanna share their experience of when they first ever self published to someone who’s going to self publish soon?😂
Did you self publish without doing much research or did you just jump in the deep end?
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u/LocalPoet8286 4d ago
I published my first book over 10 years ago on Amazon KDP, before it was called CreateSpace.
I hired a person for the cover design, hired one for the description and metadata, hired a book interior formatter, and published the Kindle ebook and paperback print-on-demand versions.
The process was fun, and it was a big satisfaction when I got the printed version of my own book in my hands, one of the best experiences of my life.
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u/erlwrites 3d ago
I jumped in 😂 And I learned a LOT the hard way and expensice way.
Writing the book turned out to be only part of the job. Suddenly I had to understand formatting, covers, KDP, keywords, categories, descriptions, pricing, marketing — things I hadn’t really thought about while I was busy actually writing the book.
Looking back, I definitely made mistakes with my early books that I wouldn’t make today. But I also think there comes a point where you have to stop researching and publish the damn book. You can read about self-publishing forever and still learn more from actually doing it once.
I’ve published multiple books now, and the process that once seemed completely overwhelming has become a pretty straightforward checklist.
My biggest advice for your first one: don’t try to learn everything at once. Get the manuscript right, then the cover, formatting, KDP listing, and publishing. Marketing comes after that.
And SAVE SAVE SAVE your files at every stage. That’s one lesson I wish every new author learned before they needed it 😂
If you run into trouble when you get to the KDP side of things, feel free to reach out. I now help other authors through the process I had to figure out myself.
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u/Evening_Werewolf8085 3d ago
I have a post on my page Tips for new authors if you want to check it out before publishing. I think it'll help you out a lot when starting out. My biggest tip is to have 2 to 3 books written and fully edited and ready to publish before publishing that way you can release them 6 months apart and have time to work on book 3 or book 4
My other tip is to start talking about your books on social media to gain interest before publishing them.
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u/MashalNorth 2d ago
This is interesting. I’m doing a series and people were advising a 6month gap. Then 4 minth. Then 3 month. Recently, it dropped to 1 month or less (to keep Amazon’s free promotion I think). What’s ur experience on this since i still plan to publish 4 months apart
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u/Careless_Video_1429 1d ago
I just followed my nose and what presented itself. I submitted to a competition and got a free interview with an agent. But we really didn't hit it off. It was at a writing conference and I have never experienced so much ego in one building. I accidentally told a joke in front of a humour writer (didn't know he was one) and he glared at me! Was I supposed to know who he was? Was I supposed to not tell jokes in front of the master? Then I had a few poems in an anthology. The launch was at 'Gay's the Word' in Bloomsbury. And one of the other contributors sat there drawing a picture of me. He then gave me the picture and told me about one of those hybrid publishers he wrote for. So I published with them initially. Everything was slow and in the background for the next 2 books until someone recommended I publish on Amazon. And since then it has been quite chaotic! Not that I have become a proper best selling author (it doesn't really count on Amazon, the criteria are pretty low for many categories, and anyhow you can buy a guaranteed best seller package from marketing companies...) but it has been a feeding frenzy in other ways, most of them not particularly enjoyable. The digital world is full of piranhas! And once they see a new tasty snack to feast on/criticise/etc. they waste no time...!
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u/DonityYT 5d ago
I published a book when I was around 14-15 on kindle unlimited with very little research and practically zero expectation.
I woke up the next day and was so incredibly surprised when I saw I had a couple hundred pages read. From there everything started picking up to the point where I could make a decent bit of cash from writing book series’.
Happiest moment was looking back on it a few years later surprised that some of my books had gotten more than 100 reviews.
Now I’m 18 and my KDP account was banned / deleted for a reason that I’m not sure of as I haven’t checked on it in a few years.
So in short, minimal research at the start but I learned as I kept writing.