What I’m Learning About Self-Publishing (and Other Autodidactic Lessons)

This week as part of my Get-Er-Done-2013, I started looking into the painfully tedious world of self-publishing and which of the five or so major self-publishing platforms would be most right for my soon-to-be released book.

I had no idea there were so many different (some nonsensical) angles one had to know about if you want more readers than just your mom and your college buddies. 

As I sat for hours (with a box of Kleenex) searching through drivilish (is that a word) blog articles on author royalties, author ranking on Amazon, customer support, which platform best supports wholesale distribution, affiliate programs, and more; I almost gave up in frustration...until I discovered two valuable tools that would help me gain all the preliminary knowledge I needed.

1. A blog’s comment bar: If you’re reading up on and researching self-publishing or anything else and the topic is closely related to what you’re looking for and has a catchy title but it’s not well written or particularly informative, there’s a good chance that it will have sparked high quality conversation among the blog’s readers. These readers (if the comment bar is actually turned on) will talk to each other back and forth about their war stories and what worked for them and how they failed and succeeded. Sometimes the people leaving comments are leaders within the same industry as the person who’s written the blog article and are giving more information as a way to solidify their own expertise (they may even leave a link to their own blog which may have even better information than the one you’re currently on).
2. LinkedIn groups: First get on LinkedIn and create a profile if you haven’t done so already. Either Google the instructions or hit me up and I’ll give you a brief tutorial. Then do a LinkedIn search for groups closely or directly related to the topic you’re researching. Go into these groups and see if anyone else had the same question as you do and see if anyone has given any solid advice on the topic. If they have, great, and if not then ask your question and see if anyone answers in a reasonable amount of time. 

Google and the internet have made it relatively simple to learn a new skill or find the path to your desired skill set in a time frame much shorter than ever before. Go out and learn whatever it is you need; whether that’s self publishing, cooking Ethiopian food, or how to breed Shar-Pei puppies. I’ll bet whatever you’ve got up your sleeve for 2013, it’s something pretty cool.