How to Get Started As An Indie Author in Ten Steps

Take control of your writing destiny and choose indie publishing

I interact quite a bit with my tribe. I’ve got some of the most-amazing writers on my platform, and at least twice a week I get an email from someone who asks a similar question, or has a similar sticking-point.

I’m so overwhelmed. I have no idea where to start.

Although I can’t solve all the woes of indie writing in one story, I’ll do my best to point you in the right direction. I’ve made every mistake, not once, but at least three times (I learn hard lessons). I still make mistakes daily. Here’s a virtual smoothie of some things you may want to follow and Some to avoid.

This is a story about becoming a commercial writer — someone who wants to earn a living from their writing by selling said writing to a group of people. If you want to keep your writing to yourself, only writing for yourself, this story probably isn’t for you.

You may be tempted to follow a different sequence. I won’t tell you what to do, but you could do much worse than follow this advice.

Many of the recommendations I’m about to make may seem counterintuitive (like, why can’t I start writing first?). But there’s a method to my cray-cray. Take what you want. Discard where you think you know better. It’s your path to follow. I’m merely the beat-up messenger.

How to start

1. Choose who you want to serve

I can’t stress the importance of choosing your customer niche first. I’m a big proponent of building a list before you need a list. But before we can build a list, we’ve got to know who we want on the list.

Who do you serve?

This is the question. Whether it’s fiction or non, if we don’t know who we serve we can’t lurk where they hang out. First, we figure out the who, then we work on the where.

I realize you’re excited to be an indie author. I know you want to start writing today. But we’re not there yet. Before we can write to wards a commercial project we’ve go to know why we’re writing and to whom.

2. Get yourself a simple website

You won’t use this for much, but you’ll need a home base for everything. Buy your name as a domain (NOT your book title. Keep it simple). This is your butterfly net for all things YOU. You’ll need this website so you can have a professional email address, [email protected], not [email protected].

I’d highly recommend getting your own hosting instead of building a site on someone else’s backbone. Wix, Squarespace, and other places like those make site-building easy, but good luck changing service providers if you want to take your site with you.

You’ll need this website to qualify for an email hosting account with some services. You’ll need it when people Google you. I will not suggest wasting your time blogging on your own site, but you’ll need the site for a press kit later, for podcasters to find your bio, and for the few randoes a month who Google your name and want to see your work.

Building a website is real work. If you want to be an indie, you’re going to work your face off. There’s no real way around the work part. Wordpress has some great, inexpensive themes that will make your site look professional.

3. Get an email service provider

If you want to sell your books you’ll need a list. If you want to build a list you need a service provider. We’ve got to own our customer lists as indies. It’s the most-important asset we’ve got. Maybe more important than our books. You can always write more books. But it’s hard to earn a new customer.

When we own our list we can operate our indie publishing business from anywhere. We’re not reliant on social. And we sure don’t want to depend on Amazon to promote our new books, because they won’t. Not until we show people want to buy them. And we show this need for our work by selling to readers via our email list.

4. Create an Easy Invite (EI)

This is your first writing project. Notice, it’s step four, not step one. We can write all day to an empty room, but if we want to build a indie publishing business we’ve got to have customers to sell our work to.

Your EI is the free offer you give in exchange for your reader’s valuable email address. Here are your two best options, fight me on this all you want. But I’ve been doing email twenty-plus years: If you write fiction, create an entire novel or novella (ebook) and give away the whole thing. Not two chapters. No one wants two chapters from an author they’ve never read. A free book, now we’re talking. If you write non-fiction, create a five to seven day email course.

Checklists are old hat. One-page PDFs are a dime a half-dozen. Posters, printables, and info-graphics will end up in the digital graveyard. That stuff is too obvious. Everyone gives away checklists and ‘blueprints.’ Give away some real meat and you’ll get real subscribers.

And please. I beg you. Whatever you do. Nowhere on your opt-in form… please promise me… you’ll never write ‘enter your email to join my newsletter.’ No one wants your newsletter, fiction or non. Our subscribers want things that benefit them. I only talk about my list when I’m not adressing my subscribers directly. They want to know I’m speaking to them, not some list.

5. Engage your readers weekly — minimum

Share the journey. It doesn’t matter if the book isn’t written. Even better. When you document the journey you bring your readers along for the trip. They become invested in your process. They’re more-likely to buy your books.

We engage often so they never forget about us. Our readers have an unlimited number of ways to spend their time. Each reader is a gift. We don’t want to lose their attention ever. We won’t bother them with too much contact, but we’ll provide them with so much value they can’t help but pay attention.

6. Learn the Hero’s Journey

Whether you write fiction or non, learn this universal storytelling process. This is the story of the human condition. We can all relate to the journey while we’re in it. There will be naysayers. Ignore them. They think they know better. We love the Hero’s Journey. So does every blockbuster and almost every commercial book.

Even if your fiction needs work, using the HJ as a framework will give your reader something to hold onto. If you write non-fiction, we need more books that use the power of story to teach us new things. You can organize your non-fiction outline loosely on the HJ and it will flow like butter on a hot corncob.

Not only is it good to learn the Hero’s Journey, but it’s also good to learn as much as you can about the craft. Watch videos. Read writing books. Attend a workshop or two. You don’t need an MFA and you don’t have to join some fancy organization. You can learn all you need from a laptop if you’d like.

5. Write every day

As indies, we’ve got to write four to five-star books. It’s a five-star world. There’s no room in our reader’s day for a three-star book. Why should she bother? Our readers have so many options to spend their reading time, they should never have to settle for reading anything less than the best.

When we write every day, and work to be a little better today than we wrote yesterday, we attack the process like a craftsman. Writing is a blue-collar vocation. We write every day. We turn the crank. We become prolific producers. We write better today than yesterday. And tomorrow better than today. There was a day when you could write one book and be famous forever. Those days are done. We’re not in it to be famous. We’re in it for the opportunity to write for a living, instead of cleaning toilets, pumping gas, teaching high school, or lawing-law.

6. Finish what you start unless it sucks

Don’t do what I did and get so scared of my writing shadow I started new project instead of finishing the old. If you don’t finish your writing, even if it’s a short story, you’ll have nothing to give your readers.

If you return the next day to find your piece of writing to be such a piece of…writing, that you don’t want to finish it — by all means, delete it. But don’t build yourself a writing back-list. There’s always more to write. Not only do we have to write our work, but we’ve also got to write our marketing.

If we don’t finish what we start, we’ve got nothing.

7. Market at night. Write in the morning.

There are few people who are true night owls. If you’re one of these, reverse this advice. No matter how hard I try I can’t write tired. It takes me forty-five minutes to finish a paragraph. If I’m rested and focused I can knock-out 1,500 words an hour.

Marketing, although creative too, doesn’t require the bandwidth your writing does. You can Instagram, created emails, write content posts, and build info-graphics all with one eye half-open. But writing tired is a terrible use of your time. It’s better to sleep instead.

8. Know what your readers want to read before you write your book

Don’t guess. If you write fiction, you’ve got genre tropes you must meet, or you’ll make your readers angry and they’ll leave you. They won’t read the next book. It’s not artsy. They have an expectation of Romance, Sci-Fi, or Westerns. If you fail the genre you fail the reader.

If you write non-fiction, don’t guess. Research the other books in your space. Uncover where they failed. Don’t repeat their one-start mistakes and steal their five-star wins.

Research your market. Your customers have left clues behind. Follow those clues and you’ll have a better chance of a best-seller.

9. Dedicate at least 25% of your working time to self-promotion

If you don’t toot your own horn there will be no music. Self-promotion isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. Word of mouth is amazing, but it won’t pay the light bill. Every day we ensure our readers know we’re still in business, that we’ve got something worth reading, or we’re working on something worth reading.

Promote all the time. Good and bad. You cannot be too many places at once. The number of touches you must make per customer, before they make a buying decision, is increasing. The old rule was seven touches. Now it could be as high as fifty. Remind your tribe you’re here to serve them. Not only does this benefit your audience, but you’ll get to eat tomorrow.

10. Learn from your mistakes and write the next book

As I mentioned, I make huge mistakes daily. I’m sure I made a mistake in this story. Tomorrow I’ll learn from it. I tweak my copywriting a few times a week, check my stats and tweak some more. We don’t just learn from writing a better book, but we learn from writing better book promotion.

We’ve all got a one-star book around the corner. Not everything you write will resonate with your readers. Cool. Maybe they don’t understand you as they should. That’s their problem, not yours. But you can’t give up. If you give up you’ve got to go back to pumping gas, cleaning toilets, teaching high school, and lawing-law. We don’t want to go back there. We keep writing.

Yes, there’s more

You need a cover. You need a book description. You need a title and a head shot. But all that stuff will work itself out. Whether you make your cover yourself or you pay for a pro cover, you’ve got to have a pro-looking cover. There’s no option any more.

If your cover doesn’t look like the best-sellers in your niche, you won’t be a best-seller in your niche. We judge books by their covers. While it might be cute for our nephew to make our covers, if he’s not in design school, I’d politely decline. This isn’t a hobby. We don’t want our niece flying a commuter jet, because it’s cute, or our grandson doing our taxes because he’s freaky with a calculator. You can’t eat cute.

Once you get two final cover designs, send them to your list for voting. Your readers will probably choose the opposite cover you’d choose. Go with the one they like.

Re-write your book description at least fifty times, one hundred is better.

Your book description is your money-maker after your cover. This is how we decide if your work fits with the books we enjoy. This is not something we write five minutes before we publish our book. I like to work on descriptions the moment I start writing the book.

But all the extra stuff can wait until you’re closer to the end. Don’t worry about your cover if you don’t have a list. Don’t worry about your book blurb if you don’t have a website.

Indie publishing is a long-haul business. There are plenty of ways to make a quick buck. This isn’t one of them. We write because we can’t imagine not writing. The money (great money) will follow as a bi-product of the hard work. The money isn’t the goal.

We’re waiting for you.

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August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. A self-proclaimed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches indie authors how to write books that sell and how to sell more of those books once they’re written. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor.

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