Hello everyone,
Thank you for stopping by. I hope you’ve had a chance to explore my website.
As I write today, it’s been a few weeks since my YA Action Adventure Thriller, The Tigers of Talighati, was launched, and things just don’t seem to be slowing down one bit.
I have been trying to pack two days’ worth of work in a day (if there is such a thing), and this has been going on for at least the past six weeks, if not more. Of course, I have been completely occupied for the past four years working on my book, but that’s a story for another day. What I would like to talk about in brief today is all the processes I have had to immerse myself in, post the completion of my book.
At the outset, let me tell you that a self-publisher’s life is a long list of learning curves, requiring an unlimited amount of patience and perseverance. I say that because I have had to don many hats, right from the get-go. I am a one-man army doing all that I can to let the world know that I have just published an action adventure thriller and why they would love reading it, no matter what their genre and what their age.
So, to begin with, let’s go back six weeks in time, when I was still in the process of putting the finishing touches on my book. Thanksgiving was around the corner, and I had just purchased a web hosting package I had zeroed in on, after which I registered the domain name and celebrated my newly acquired status as a website creator, although the creating part was still a few weeks away.
And though I had some idea about the tools needed to create my website, I was not very familiar with them. I wasn’t worried, though, for I knew there were many good YouTubers out there who would help me create a great website, and all I wanted in the beginning was to have a basic website—something that informed the visitors about who I was and what I did.
Now let’s fast forward to the final few days before my book launch. I had already been working on the book cover for months—trying out and acquiring all the necessary images, learning all the necessary tools, implementing my ideas, etc. This was in addition to working on my final draft, and once I was satisfied with both, I went on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) website to begin the upload process.
However, before we get to that, we’ll have to rewind a bit again, as something needed to be done first. Based on the amazing amount of help available online, I had learnt that I could advertise on certain websites to make passionate book readers aware of my book. You see, if you enroll in KDP Select, Amazon allows you a total of five days during the 90-day period to offer your book for free. The problem is that the date slots (on the book promotion sites, not Amazon) fill up fast, requiring you to pick a date way in advance. Since I didn’t know the exact date when my final draft and cover would be ready, I had to take a guess and book the slots almost a month before the estimated launch date. Had I waited a few more days, they would have disappeared altogether.
Now, because I had picked those dates, there was added pressure on me to get the book ready at least ten business days before the launch, because KDP says it takes them anywhere from three to ten business days to review and approve the book. And so, as the deadline neared, I began working a lot more hours and sleeping a lot less—something I hadn’t done in a long, long time, and perhaps not to such a degree. It is no surprise then that it took me only two such days to turn into a zombie, where I couldn’t tell one day apart from another. Even when I was awake, I wasn’t fully there. Thankfully, I hadn’t reached a fugue state, but it certainly felt like it sometimes in small doses. Thoughts were being processed in slow motion, and I had to draw on my reserves to comprehend the more complex ones. You can imagine, therefore, the state I was in when I began uploading the book on Amazon. It was around midnight, and little did I know that there would be many more hours of work left before I could complete the process.
And so I pushed along, stretching every fiber of my being and drawing on whatever energy I had left, but by 3 AM or so, I had decided I couldn’t continue anymore. I was really disappointed, but I had to let go. My body wasn’t cooperating, for not only was I having a colossal headache, but I was also feeling nauseated. I had overworked myself over the past few days, and I wasn’t even aspiring to be a navy seal, not by any stretch of the imagination. So what motivated me to try and pull off such a crazy stunt? It was a demanding yet exciting desire to launch my book just in time for the Christmas Holidays!
Alas, I was delayed by one day, and you might be wondering what caused the upload process to take so long. Well, some of the stuff in the beginning was easy—you just had to fill in your details, agree to certain terms, and so on. Even uploading the manuscript and the book cover didn’t take that long. What took time was reviewing the uploaded manuscript for any formatting issues that might occur due to the conversion from Word to KDP format. But what took even more time—a lot more time, in fact—was coming up with an appropriate blurb, researching the seven keywords, and selecting the three categories that best fit my book. Luckily, I had a tool that helped with the second and third tasks, but it was still very time-consuming, more so because my brain was stretched to its limit by 2.30 AM. And forget about coming up with a multi-paragraph blurb, for even if I had come up with one, I wouldn’t have been able to tell whether it made sense or not.
Can you believe it, then, that when I picked up the process again the next morning, it took me the whole day to finally reach a point where I was ready to hit the publish button? Thank goodness, I stopped when I did the previous night. And this is in no way a criticism of the upload process. It is designed to ensure all requirements are fulfilled and will take as long as it has to, but it was my naiveté that made me think I could finish it within a few hours. One could argue that I could have, had I done the groundwork, but where was the time? I could get to it only when I could, and this is when I could.
Anyway, the upload had been successful, and now I had to wait and see when the book would be available for sale. The promotion slot was exactly nine days away, not all of which were business days. I was tense, but hopeful too. Of course, I always had the option to cancel the slot a few days in advance, but if I did, the next slot could be too far away, perhaps a month away.
And so I continued toiling as I waited for the Amazon Review process to get over. There were tons of other things still left to do. After figuring out the order in which they had to be done, I began working on my website, thinking that it would be nice to have some online presence when the book was published. Besides, I had already put the website’s link in the book. But even before I could start creating the pages, I had to understand the pre-loaded plugins and configure them, and there were so many! What did they each do? Were they any good, or was there something better? For all this, I would end up spending many days learning before implementing the same. Then there was also the question of getting familiar with the website-builder tool and all the related technical stuff.
Meanwhile, after uploading the manuscript, 24 hours went by, then another 24. I was getting less and less hopeful that the book would be published in time to allow for the free promotion slot to work. Luckily, sometime before the 72 hours were up, the book was published and ready for download. Hooray! I had done it! I had just published my first book! What an achievement! I was now a published author, thanks to Amazon.
Unfortunately, the website development was taking its own sweet time. Remember the learning curve? Well, this was one of them. And I was being extra cautious, as I didn’t want to break anything and delay things even further. Thankfully, most of the problems were solved by the web hosting company’s customer service when I couldn’t find an answer online.
Meanwhile, as the free book promotion neared, I started sending out emails with the dates and a few paragraphs describing what the book was all about. That, in itself, took some time, as many things had to be checked and double-checked.
Fortunately, by the time the free book promotion was live, I had a basic website in place. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough for its first version. Very naively, I began typing the name of my website and felt frustrated when the search engines couldn’t find it. It was only much later—weeks later, in fact—that I understood that there was another plugin that needed to be configured to let the search engines know of my website’s existence. Thankfully, the direct link I had provided in my book worked, and that was good enough for the time being.
The free promotion received an excellent response during the two days it was live, resulting in a large number of downloads from all over the world. I was happy, not only for the downloads but also for the fact that people other than those in my immediate circle had come to know of the book. And just like that, I had become an amateur book marketer as well! Thank you, everyone, for downloading my book!
But I couldn’t rest on my laurels, for I still had a million things to do, a few of which were:
- understanding and implementing Amazon Ads
- creating an Amazon Author profile
- creating A+ content on Amazon
- understanding and making the best use of goodreads.com
- learning how to make my website load faster
- setting up more free book promotions and advertising about them
- sending out more emails
- learning more stuff
- fixing any formatting errors and editing mistakes in the book not caught by the upload process
- learning and implementing SEO tools
- and so many other things I won’t bore you with
Some of these are done, some are in various stages of completion, and some I have yet to get to.
So why go through this mountain of work just for a book? Because, unlike a traditionally published author—most of whose work, if not all, is handled by the publisher—a self-published author has to do everything on their own to let the world know how amazing their book is and why they should read it. And that is exactly what I am doing. Through my efforts, I have to convince them that my book has an exciting story that they will thoroughly enjoy, even if it is not of their preferred genre. Have you ever run out of movies to watch from your favorite genre, clicked on a movie you normally don’t go for, and ended up enjoying it thoroughly?
To drive the point further, I point them to the sample chapters available on Amazon, so they can read and decide for themselves. And once I have entertained them thoroughly with my story, I have to convince them to please leave an honest review on Amazon. Why? Because according to many experts, most readers don’t leave a review, not because they don’t like your work but because they don’t understand the importance of a review to an author, especially brand new ones. And the majority of the time, it was the reviews that convinced them to buy the book in the first place. Or, to put it another way, would they have given the book a second look, no matter how interesting it sounded, had there been no reviews?
I have worked on the story for almost four years, editing and refining it multiple times. The characters have become an inseparable part of my life and have a wonderful and exciting story to tell, but how do I convince the reader of the same? One of the most important ways is through reviews. And therefore, I am hopeful that all those who have downloaded my book during the promotion will find it in themselves to spend a minute or two writing an honest review. If they have no time at all, I would humbly request them to at least give it a rating. Reviews will not only mean the world to me, but they will also encourage me to write more. On top of that, it will be a treat to know which parts of the book and characters the readers enjoyed and what they would like to see more of. With whatever little understanding of goodreads.com I have, I have come to know that readers have tens, if not hundreds, of books on their “to-read” shelves, and mine may be one of them. Would they be willing to give my book a read in the coming days, even though it’s brand new? That would be just so wonderful! They could even leave a partial review after reading the first few chapters and update it once finished. In the meantime, I will continue with my efforts, letting more and more people know about my book. After all, I am fast turning out to be a jack of many trades, when all I wanted was to be a master of one—writing!
That’s all for now, folks! In the next blog, I will talk about the trip to the jungle that became the catalyst for writing this book. Until then, take care, and don’t forget to have some fun.