Nigel George is an educator and author of five books on technology and self-publishing. In this article, he draws on his experience to collate the ‘non-negotiables’ for an author to have if they are looking to establish a successful independent publishing operation.
I’ve never been much of a social media fan. I’ve used social media as a promotional channel, but I never really got sucked into the vortex.
When I resurrected the Indie Publishing Machine after a long hiatus, I thought it would be interesting to get back on to social media and get an idea of what has changed in the last few years.
Not much, as it turns out.
The aspiring writers’ names are different, but the questions are the same.
The gurus are different, but the bullshit is the same.
TikTok is a thing, but very few want to recognise it is following the same trajectory as every other social media platform, and, eventually, the wave will break.
I’ve avoided the vortex once again, thankfully. My adventure back into the twilight zone was valuable in that it gave the spark for this month’s article.
While the same old rubbish that will not help your career is still circulating, the business fundamentals that do lead to success also have not changed. I didn’t expect they would, but a smart businessperson checks these things from time to time.
I talk and write about author mindsets a lot, but haven’t explored traits and actions exhibited by successful indies in a meaningful way. The draft list of successful traits was quite long, but in keeping with listicle tradition, here are seven I believe are fundamental characteristics for indie publishing success.
You’ve Written at Least One Publishable Book
By publishable, I mean a complete book of over 50,000 words that at least one qualified stranger has said is good.
The qualified stranger does not have to be an editor, nor do they have to critique your entire book, they just have to be someone who is skilled enough to give you honest feedback on the likelihood of a potential reader getting past page 10 without deleting your book and never giving you a second thought.
If you do not have that book yet, stop reading and go write it.
I’m serious. Stop reading. Delete your social media apps, stop reading craft books and definitely unsubscribe from all those ‘gurus’ you are following. Me included.
Go write the book. Now.
Ok, so you probably didn’t listen to that advice because curiosity got the better of you. That’s ok :).
Why would I say this? Because that first book is your apprenticeship. Without the learning that comes from taking an idea through multiple drafts and working on getting a complete to publishable standard, you have exactly zero chance of success as an indie.
You Know One Book is Just the Beginning
Indies are not just authors; we are publishers too. You can’t build a publishing business with only a book or two. Or three or four or even ten. The Alliance of Independent Authors’ 2023 income survey shows that indie income doesn’t reach the ‘decent side hustle’ stage until you’ve written eleven or more books. Full-time fiction writers, with rare exceptions, have all written twenty or more books. Non-fiction writers fare better because the profit margin on non-fiction is much higher than on fiction books, so you don’t need to sell as many books to make the same income. If they want to make a solid career out of their writing, however, non-fiction writers still must write multiple books to generate a sustainable income.
If your indie publishing aspirations do not include a plan to produce new books consistently over a long period to build up a solid body of work, you have a writing hobby, not a writing business.
You Treat Your Indie Publishing as a Business
Far too many aspiring indies go the non-traditional route because of the same false assumption that many go into business for themselves—freedom from ‘the man’.
Successful indies know that freedom to choose your own path comes at a high price. You might trade in the boss, but you replace them with customers, suppliers, distributors, designers, editors, marketers, landlords, lawyers, accountants and government departments that are all far more demanding than the most diligent micro-manager could ever be.
An indie is an author and a publisher. An author writes. A publisher edits, promotes, licences, distributes and manages all the business aspects of the author’s work.
A successful indie, like a successful small business person, does one of two things. They either learn how to do these things themselves, or they hire professionals to do it for them.
If you are not willing to do either of these things, then you must either accept your writing is just a hobby, or go back to feeding your best efforts into the slush pile.
You Control Your Platform
This means your domain names, hosting account, website, designs and branding, ISBNs and all publishing rights are in either your name of the name of your publishing company.
I’m showing my age here, but my career pre-dates the Internet, and I have spent most of it in small businesses that either develop technology or rely on it to function. I ran a computer company along the way too. Trust me when I say technology platforms fail far more often than they succeed.
When I had the computer company, more than half of my business was helping other small business owners put their lives and businesses back together after a platform failed, or jacked up their pricing beyond the reach of the business owner.
Buying hosting and your domain names is no more complicated that getting a new smartphone contract. Building a basic WordPress site takes a few hours and requires the same technical skill as a social media post. If you don’t believe me, I show you how to do it for free on the Indie Publishing Machine.
Controlling your platform also means you do not sign a contract with a publisher without having a clear exit plan if they go bust. You also don’t give anyone exclusive rights to your work. Ever.
While exclusivity is tempting, it’s a poison chalice. Nothing is forever in book publishing. Just ask Barnes & Noble, that went from market leader to playing catchup in less than a decade. Or Borders and Angus & Robertson, the latter only surviving online today as a brand owned by Booktopia.
Yeah, Amazon in on top right now, but Apple is a trillion dollar company. Google is not exactly hurting for capital either. Kindle is 16 this year. There is no guarantee it will be around for another 16 with mega-wolves like Apple and Google at the door.
Also, while the US is the biggest book market, there is a whole wide world out there. American mega-corps don’t dominate every market. For example, Rakuten (the owners of Kobo), which is far from a minnow in the business pond, is betting big on a global subscription model that doesn’t require exclusivity.
You are in this for the long term. If you tie most of your business to the fortunes of a single company (or a single market), you don’t have a business; you have a disaster waiting to happen.
Your Mailing List is Your Most Valuable Asset After Your Books
Email has never been toppled as the king of customer engagement. It never will be for one simple reason—value. For someone to hand over their email, you must put something in front of them they value enough to agree to the exchange.
Advertising relies on impulse, and the value exchange is between the advertiser and the platform. The readers are just the profit margin. This is why the readers vanish as soon as you stop running ads.
Social media doesn’t hold a candle to email because engagement is very low. It sounds counter-intuitive given how many hours we spend scrolling through social media apps, but the data bears it out. Tim Grahl (and others) have experimented many times with similar results—launching to a mailing list regularly out-performs social media accounts with subscriber lists hundreds and even thousands of times larger.
Yes, people with hand over dud emails or unsubscribe as soon as they download your freebie, but they’re like people who pirate your work—they were never going to buy from you, anyway.
Successful indies spend time every week nurturing and building a quality mailing list full of engaged readers. They know they must give to receive, so they regularly provide value. That way, when they do offer the reader an opportunity to buy, the reader will gladly hand over their money to ensure they keep getting great value.
You Understand the Fundamentals of Selling Do Not Change
The sales funnel dates back to the late 1800s. Claude Hopkins wrote Scientific Advertising in 1923. The Rule of Seven comes out of marketing research from the 1930s.
The fundamentals of converting browsers into customers have not changed. The tools have got more sophisticated, and the number of ways you can reach potential readers has exploded, but how you acquire and keep a loyal reader still boils down to principles that will never change:
- You make them aware you have something they might want.
- You build trust and rapport with that person.
- You offer them an opportunity to buy.
Armed with this knowledge, you can objectively evaluate the latest guru espousing their wonder-super-mega-ninja-secret marketing system (yours for ONLY $297!!!!). You can ignore the noise and the hype and boil their offering down to a simple question: do they help you deliver on one or more of the fundamental principles?
You Know You’re Not Special
On average, there are less than 20 people in the world that know us well enough to trust us, and only a few hundred that know us well enough to remember our name if they saw us again.
Of all these people, only a handful will be interested in our books.
Then there’s the other 7.8 billion people that don’t even know we exist.
Among those billions, there are plenty of people who would love our books if they knew we existed, but there’s a problem.
They don’t care.
Steven Pressfield has written some of my favourite books on the craft of writing, but one of his best is Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t. Here is an internationally successful author espousing a truth that successful indies also know—we are not special.
We are craftspersons who value our readers and work hard to create material that connects with our audience, but we’re not special. The world does not owe us an audience.
Successful indies know that all attention is earned. They turn up every day willing to learn and grow, and are deeply aware that happy readers are the main game.
Which brings us to the end of the list. I had a few more on the original list, but these seven are key in my view. If you take nothing else away from the article, the most important concept for you to accept is this: Indie publishing is a business and successful business people have a deep understanding of the fundamentals that underlie their success.
If you are already enjoying some success as an indie, I am sure you will recognise many of these traits in the way you conduct your business. If you are just starting out, they should help you sort what is important from all the noise generated online.
In the interest of brevity, I’ve not gone into much detail about each of the seven traits and actions. In the next few articles, I’m going to expand out on some of these topics, so if you’re interested, stick around :).
Nigel George is an entrepreneur and manager with 25+ years’ experience building and managing technology companies. He is the author of five books on technology and self-publishing. He has independently published his books since 2015 and is an expert on how to build and run a successful independent publishing business. Nigel is passionate about passing on his expertise to other authors, teaching them how to succeed as an independent author. You can learn more about his work on his Indie Publishing Machine website.
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