5 Mistakes to Avoid When Self-Publishing Your Book

If you’re in the process of self-publishing a book and want to avoid common mistakes that authors often make, then this blog post is for you. Of course, it’s always helpful to learn from other people’s experiences, so we’ve collected five mistakes that we believe every author should be aware of before self-publishing their book.

Self-Publishing a book is not always an easy task, especially when you are doing it for the first time. Many things can go wrong. You might make one of these five mistakes if you don’t pay attention to what you are doing: 

1. Self-Publishing too soon 
2. Not promoting your work 
3. Lack of consistency in branding 
4. Too much promotion without balance
5. Not sticking to your schedule.

Self-Publishing too soon 

When is your book is ready to be self-published?

Is it edited, designed, and formatted correctly? Do you have an eye-catching cover that sets the tone of your work without giving too much away? These are all important questions to consider when choosing when to self-publish your book. Make sure that you give yourself enough time to work through these phases in order to ensure that everything comes together in the best possible way for you and your readers.

Not promoting your work 

What’s the point of self-publishing your book if nobody is going to know about it?

If you want people to buy your book, you need to promote it. You can do this through blog posts, social media, and by reaching out to bloggers in your niche who might be interested in reviewing your book. It’s an ongoing process that takes time and dedication, but the results are worth it.

Lack of consistency in branding 

It’s not enough to just write a book. You also have to brand it. This means you need something distinctive, like an attention-grabbing title or cover design, so that people will take notice and buy your book instead of the next one on their favorite topic. The key is finding what makes your book stand out from all the others in its category—and then highlighting that difference every chance you get.

Your book title is the most important choice you’ll make in self-publishing your book, so spend a lot of time thinking about it. Make sure you give yourself enough time to conduct market research on Amazon’s Best Seller List for similar books before finalizing your decision.

Once you’ve decided on a title, make sure your formatting is consistent. Style each version of the book’s name—including its subtitle and series title (if any)—alike throughout all editions, covers, metadata fields like the Amazon “Search Keywords” field or Goodreads “About The Author” bio section. You can do this by using the same words, capitalizations, and punctuation. Adding a tagline or slogan can also help you create continuity across your brand.

The book description is also an important sales tool for any author because its content will be what determines whether someone reads it—or passes over your book for the next one.

Your book description should always have a strong, specific voice that’s consistent with your brand personality and tone of voice from cover to back-cover copy. It must be compelling enough to convince readers they need this information now—and it has to do so without giving away too much about what happens inside or without sounding like a stale, cut-and-paste promotional copy.

Your author bio is another marketing tool that’s used to sell your book—so it should be written with the same voice as your blurb (with phrases like “bestselling author” or “renowned expert”).

When you’re ready to promote your book, make sure that the author photo on your blog and social media profiles are consistent with the one on your Amazon Author page. Also, remember to update any bios or “about me” sections of websites, so they feature fresh content about what’s new in all versions of your book—including audiobooks.

The images you use to promote your book are also key elements that will help sell it—so think about how they can best reflect the content inside. The most effective way to do this is by including a relevant image on all of your promotional materials, like blog posts, social media posts, and website pages.

You can also utilize images for content such as infographics or videos, which requires the user to go through additional clicks before they can view it (more friction). If you want people to engage with your content, it’s best to keep this design principle in mind.

Too much promotion without balance

When it comes to marketing, promotion is the key.

But there’s a problem with all that promotion: It can end up taking over your whole life, and you’re never able to take a break from promoting! The result? You feel drained and burnt out. On the other hand, you actually do need time to write those books, so that means you need balance in your promotional activities to enjoy yourself and recharge when necessary.

Here are five mistakes people make when trying to promote their book without balancing it with other things they love doing too:

1) Doing everything for everyone on social media – Social media is great because of its reach, but if you try to do every single thing for every single person, you’ll end up struggling to keep it all under control. Remember that you’re the author of a book – not an entertainer for everyone else.

2) Over-promoting on your blog – Just because you have a blog doesn’t mean that everyone will want to read it. You need to do things differently for different platforms, so they don’t become all the same and blend together. For example, if you’re writing guest posts elsewhere online, you can link back at the end of them with a “you might also like this post”.

3) Posting too much content on social media – This one’s pretty self-explanatory. If you’re posting every other minute, don’t expect people to stick around for that long! A good rule of thumb is no more than three posts a day and always space them out in terms of time frame (e.g., not all at the same time).

4) Not taking breaks – When you’re on social media, it’s easy to start feeling like the whole world comes down to your personal brand. But remember that this is still just one part of who you are! No matter how much time and effort you’ve put into building up a strong online presence for yourself, there will always be things life outside of that.

5) Not engaging with the audience – It’s all well and good to be promoting your book everywhere, but if you’re not actually talking with readers or potential customers, it will all feel like a one-way street.

Also, make sure you’re using your timing wisely. For example, if it’s Friday night and people are winding down for the weekend, they probably don’t want to see a post from you about how great your book is – because who wants to be reminded that work is looming?

Find what works best for yourself by experimenting and testing different days and times to post.

You can also hire someone to manage your social media account to market your book for you. If you are looking for someone to help with social media promotion, the person must understand your goals and where they align with your vision. It can be hard to find a good fit when hiring people to work on social media marketing because so many of them have different styles to promote things. You want someone who will take the time to understand what you are trying to say, rather than just blindly posting something without understanding the message behind it.

Not sticking to your schedule

Sticking to a schedule is important when self-publishing a book. You should plan ahead so that everything goes smoothly on release day. This means finishing up any last edits at least three months before the publication date (or sooner than that if possible). Not only will this help make sure the final product is as good as it can be, but it also gives you time to correct any mistakes or typos before anyone else notices them.  If you follow these tips, then the chances are good that you won’t make any mistakes during the self-publishing process!