SHERI SINGERLING

Image by DominiqueVince via Pixabay

Well, I did! As of January 7th, 2025, I’m a published author thanks to Nytho going out into the world. Cue the lights and fanfare. So what did it involve? What lessons did I learn? How might I do things differently for the next novel? 

That’s a lot to go over, so rather than do an insanely long post that few would likely stick with to the end, I’ll provide a brief overview of the various aspects of self-publishing. I’ll dive deeper into certain topics in future posts, but if you have questions about a particular aspect, let me know in a comment so I can prioritize it.

Choose Your Formats

Once you’ve made the decision to self-publish, there are a couple of other big-picture questions you need to answer. First and foremost, you have to decide what formats your would like to make your book available in. Ebook? Paperback? Hard cover? Audio? All of the above?

To keep things simple (and cheaper), I opted for ebook and paperback. Hard covers are more expensive and don’t generate the same return in royalties. Audio books require a ton of effort and will necessitate hiring narrators, at least if you want the book to sound professional. I’d love to go back and release those formats for Nytho, but that will highly depend on how my readership develops over time.

Divvy Up the Work

Another major step in self-publishing is deciding who will do what. This is closely tied to how much you’ve budgeted for the book. The more work you farm out to others, the more money you’ll have to shell out. If you have limited funds, you’ll have to take on a fair share of these tasks yourself.

The Cover

Even if you’re on an ultra-tight budget, there is one aspect that you should really consider investing in—the cover design. Your cover is the number one marketing tool for your book. It doesn’t matter how well-written it is. If the cover is amateur or confusing or bland, readers won’t bother to look at what lies inside. It’s frustrating, I know, but it’s just a fact. Take the time and money to really ensure your cover is solid.

Just a note that hiring a cover designer doesn’t have to mean breaking the bank. There are budget options out there (like this). You just have to do some shopping around.

Everything Else

Okay, so we’ve got the cover covered (haha). What else is there? Well, lots. Let’s break it down into two main categories: publishing and marketing. When I say “publishing,” I’m talking about all the duties related to creating the book itself and getting it distributed. What I mean by “marketing” is how to get word out to readers about the novel. 

Publishing

Since I didn’t want to spend inordinate sums of money publishing my debut (debuts rarely sell well), I decided to take on the following tasks myself: formatting the ebook, formatting the paperback, writing the book blurb, purchasing the ISBNs, choosing a print-on-demand (POD) company for printing and distribution, and choosing Amazon keywords and categories.

I had to learn all of this as I went. Fortunately, there are tons of great resources online. Anytime I got stuck or confused, I asked Google or Reddit for answers. They didn’t disappoint. As I said, I won’t dive into all the details for each of these publishing tasks, but here is a brief summary of how I tackled each.

• Formatting the ebook = MS Word then Calibre to convert to an .epub file.
• Formatting the paperback = InDesign which I already had an old copy of, although I had to learn how to actually use it.
• Writing the book blurb = Reedsy and a writers group I belong to.
• Purchasing ISBNs = Bowker. Although you can get ISBNs for free through the POD company you use, I wanted my own that were unrelated to a specific vendor. Less conflicts of interest that way.
• Choosing a print-on-demand (POD) company = Amazon KDP for both the ebook and paperback and then also IngramSpark for the paperback. I enrolled my novel in Kindle Unlimited for higher visibility, but that only makes the ebook exclusive to Amazon. I also used IngramSpark for the paperback because many booksellers and librarians won’t or can’t buy the paperback from Amazon.
• Choosing Amazon keywords and categories = Publisher Rocket to help guide my decisions based on actual data. I shelled out for this because I have a large number of novels planned. It feels like a worthwhile investment.

Marketing

As daunting as the publishing process can be, it pales in comparison to the oh-so-dreaded marketing. Most writers hate promoting their own work. There’s just something icky about trying to shove your idea down people’s throats and clamor for their money. That being said, it’s a necessity. Without marketing, no one will hear about your book. So how does one go about spreading the word on their darling creation? To be honest, I don’t have amazing answers! I’m still learning this after all. But here is what I did, in case it helps.

Author Website

Shortly before deciding to self-publish Nytho, I created an author website. I had read that even authors going the traditional publishing route ought to have a website sooner rather than later. It’s great working out the kinks while you’re still unknown and invisible. That’s where WordPress came in, and how this lovely little corner of the net was born. I paid for the domain sherisingerling.com and got to work learning how to craft a website. It took a lot of time and effort, but I saw it as a useful life skill. 

Social Media

But a website isn’t an effective way to get the word out. It’s a must landing-site for an author, but it’s rarely the place where readers usually find out about said author. To spread the word a bit more effectively, I made a few author social media accounts. I already had personal ones for Instagram and Facebook, but those were private (and I wanted them to stay that way), hence my decision to create new accounts specifically for all my writer-related content. 

I stuck with the platforms I know and have a slight following on—Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I tried TikTok for a literal minute and was immediately overwhelmed. Too much noise and changing images for my autistic tastes. Do I sound like a Millennial? (I am). Anyway, there’s no need to do all the social media. That’s just a sure-fire way to get burnt out. Stick to a few and post there regularly.

Once I had my social media accounts set up, I started learning how to create content that would engage readers. This appears to be highly specific to the genre you write in! I looked at what other SF authors do and took what I liked to run with. Here’s just a smattering of what I created (mostly with Canva) for Nytho: 

Still, design isn’t my forte. There were jobs that I hired out for. My oh-so-talented brother created an animated cover for me, and KetchupJonMustard (also on IG and streams on Twitch) made these perfect character sketches of the narrators in Nytho:

I only have a small following, but since I enjoy creating content for my social media accounts, I don’t mind putting in the time and effort. That being said, followers does not equal sales. Not by a long shot. So what else can an author do to market their work without having to rely on ads? (From what I’ve read, it’s rarely worth running ads if you have fewer than 3 published novels).

ARC Reviews

Advanced review copies (ARCs) are a writer’s best friend. These are how you get reviews for your book posted to Amazon, GoodReads, StoryGraph, etc. right around your release date. This is also how you can create buzz about your work. I’ll have a post dedicated to ARCs and my experience with them, but what it essentially involves is providing a free early (usually ebook) copy of your novel to people that review books regularly in the hopes that they will read it and leave an honest review. 

It can be tricky finding ARC readers, depending on your genre, but I opted for a multi pronged approach in finding willing reviewers. I used two paid services: BookSirens and NetGalley (the co-op option through Victory Editing). I also created my own Google form and fielded requests myself. I worked my butt off with this, but I’m rather pleased with the result. To date (9 days after release), I have 12 reviews on Amazon and 22 on GoodReads. I didn’t know about StoryGraph until more recently, so I didn’t ask my ARC readers to leave their reviews there. Despite that, I have 5 reviews on that platform. ARCs are important. They lend legitimacy to a novel. Just think about when you’re cruising around online, browsing books. How do you react to a work that has 1 review versus one that has 50+ reviews?

Lessons Learned

All in all, my experience publishing Nytho has been fascinating. I’ve learned so much, most of which I can carry forward to the 13 other novels I have planned. I’ve found good people I can work with for the covers, editing, and artwork of future novels. The next novel won’t take nearly as much time to prepare for release, and I suspect each subsequent one will be easier and easier to publish.

But it’s not all sunshine and roses. Publishing Nytho has been hard, mentally and emotionally. I haven’t sold as many copies as I had hoped. Kindle Unlimited doesn’t seem to be resulting in much traction either. I know it takes time to gain a readership, usually a few novels, but it can be a bit soul crushing to see your sales rank slipping further and further with each day of no orders. 

At times like these, I just have to remind myself why I write in the first place. It’s not to make money or have tons of people read my work. It’s because I love to write.

Looking forward, I aim to publish a novel every 6 months. The next one will be coming in July 2025. I’ll have a proper post about that in the coming weeks. For that release, I’ll try a few new strategies, like interviews on podcasts and book tours on Instagram. I’ll also be focusing on building up my mailing list. I currently use the one built into WordPress, but I need one that allows me to better integrate with some reader/author portals (e.g., BookFunnel, StoryOrigin). All that to say, changes are coming on that front soon. In the meantime, you can look forward to more regular blog posts from me now that the holidays and the craziness of release day are past.

Let me know in the comment if there are any topics that you’d like to hear from me about!