Why you’re not making any money from your writing career as a self-published author

20% of authors will never make money from writing. Don’t be one of them!

I’m going to be brutal with you here, so brace yourselves. Behold, the logic of marketability:

Working hard has nothing to do with success.

Nobody actually cares that you spent 10 years writing your book and three weeks designing the cover. “Guilt-driven sales” talking about how you poured your soul into the book, or how your hero was inspired by your late husband won’t get you very far, because none of this is actually important.

What people care about is those precious 60 seconds they might spend peeking at your book. You have very little time to impress them, and you must make it count if you want a sale.

Most often, it’s one of these three things, which I’ll discuss in detail below:

1. You are AWFUL at marketing
2. Your book cover is ugly, or unsuitable for the book
3. Your copywriting is bad

#1: You are AWFUL at marketing

Marketing is, without a doubt, THE most integral part of being a self-published writer.

Many indie authors are their own worst enemy when it comes to marketing; a huge number aren’t willing to put in the time, or learn how to do it, whilst expecting the same results as those who are

NB: This section is quite Twitter-centric as it’s my only active social media right now.

As one of the more active members of the writing community on Twitter, it’s something I encounter so often alongside complaints of slow (or no) sales, that this article was just bursting to get out.

Marketing, at its core, is a skill. You don’t need a fancy course, nor do you require a degree. You just need time, patience, and the ability to admit that you’re doing it wrong once in a while.

UPDATE: I wrote a guide on how to make sales on Twitter without self-promoting, and you can read that here.

Before we focus on HOW to make money, we first need to focus on book marketing attempts that are PREVENTING you from making money

I don’t kid when I say that not only will this not produce any sales (except perhaps the odd one here and there if you’re lucky), but it will actively turn people away from you.

When you’re an author, you are the brand, whether you like it or not. Even if your social media is a blend of writing and showing the world your cute kitten, your face, your name, everything attached to that account is your brand.

If you find yourself doing any of these things, it’s a good idea to reinvent your strategy:

• Sending unsolicited DMs to people about your book
  This is plain rude, and also against most social media ToS guidelines. If you want a block and a ban, this is the way to do it.
• Releasing your book (and never talking about it)
  “If we build it, they will come” made for a lovely soundbite from Field of Dreams, but in the real world where Kevin Costner doesn’t play baseball, nobody will know you exist unless you get yourself out there.
• Trying to reinvent the wheel
  Whilst the algorithms and general best practices of online marketing shift and evolve over time, certain methods of the here-and-now are tried-and-tested by people who know more, and earn more from it, than you or I could ever hope to. Trying to “ignore the rules” and do things your own way can work, but if you’re able to make this work, you would be selling books and you wouldn’t be reading this.
• Replying to people’s tweets with an unsolicited book link
  The same as above, there’s a specific report category to report people for “using the reply function to spam”. The OP of the thread can also hide your link so that nobody else will ever see it.
• Posting to every #WritersLift (or similar) you can find
  This is the biggest time-waster you will ever waste time on, frankly. It doesn’t drive sales. Many people mute such tags because they are spammy and it’s annoying seeing a book you’ve zero intention of buying on your feed 40 times per day. And be honest: you don’t actually get any sales from it, do you?
• Posting in “promo friendly” spaces on social media
  Similar to the above, this is just a link dump that will generate nothing. Everyone wants to sell, and nobody wants to buy in these spaces. Put your energy towards something useful.
• “Retweet for retweet”
  On Twitter, a common thing people do is ‘swap’ retweets of one another’s pinned tweet (this usually contains a person’s links to books, blogs, and similar). Be aware that retweeting too much too often can result in a follower visiting your profile and choosing to “turn off retweets”, because they are tired of uninteresting, identikit tweets flooding their feed and hiding the people they actually want to see.

I’m going to do a guide on how to specifically use Twitter for book marketing later on, but for now, try to avoid the above where you can and focus on what’s important about social media: being social. Reply to people, interact, and make friends. Respect people’s DM boundaries, and don’t troll people or be unkind.

It worked far better for me when it came to selling DEAR ANNABELLE than self promoting ever did.

#2: Your book cover (and/or promo art) is ugly, or unsuitable for the book

A book cover is your audience’s first peek into your book. If it looks bad, they’ll assume your writing is bad.

Oh, boy. This is where things really get precarious, and definitely where people from the community may start to get pressed about my advice. But it has to be said. A great deal of the book covers I see in the indie community — and that includes some that people have paid $100+ for — are objectively ugly from a design point of view.

Much like how most indie authors are not business-minded, an even greater amount know little about graphic design, colour theory, the golden ratio, or using fonts to their maximum effect.

Like marketing, book cover design is a skill that can be learned if you have time and patience. You don’t even need money — it’s all there on the internet for free. Heck, you probably have lots of inspiration sitting right there on your bookshelf.

I’m not going to use a real book cover here, I am going to make my own for a nonexistent book, and show you what I mean.

Here I’ve designed an imaginary romance about a couple who go through some struggles before winding up together, with two covers. Both are flawed, but that is somewhat deliberate (I wanted to emulate what a zero-budget author might be able to knock up using free elements in Canva).

I’ll explain below why one is better than the other, despite the fact that the ‘better’ one isn’t perfect.

The cover on the left is eye-catching and consistent. The image on the right needs to be set on fire.

The cover on the left — and why it works despite its flaws

1. The palette is simple and consistent; nothing clashes, and everything is readable and visible without effort.
2. The silhouette immediately gives you the idea that you’re dealing with a book that contains romance between a straight couple.
3. The blue and simple tones imply that the nature of this book isn’t “cutesy” or a “beach read” — you can see at a glance that it’s unlikely chick-lit, or erotica.
4. The background could be a little less bold perhaps, however it doesn’t hide any of the cover’s important elements.
5. The byline up the top give a hint at what’s at stake in the story. It’s like the pre-blurb before you flip the book over and read the back, if you will.

The cover on the right — and why nothing about it works

1. The filter just washes the image out and the yellow font just sinks into it. The entire colour scheme looks… sickly.
2. Horrible, boring font — unless you’re using swirly, handwritten fonts, book titles and author names should almost always be in capital letters and in a font that suits the tone and mood of the novel
3. We know the book is “by” you. Just put your name.
4. It’s literally just a stock picture, unedited except for the filter. The mood of the cover is wrong; the couple look gleeful and giggly, which isn’t the case in this scenario, and it doesn’t fit the yellowish tint.
5. There’s no byline or hints at the story’s tone or context.

#3: Your copywriting is bad

Practice your copywriting skills before marketing — it can betray you as a ‘bad writer’ when you’re not.

In case you’re unaware, “copy” is exactly what you’re reading. It’s the tweets, the blurb, the bio on your author page. It’s all that text that people see before reading your book, or even its free sample.

There’s no excuse for spelling errors in your copy

I discuss these below, but I am also including the text on your cover because it too is a way of promoting yourself.

I have seen books with spelling errors on the front cover. I immediately had no interest in even reading a sample of that person’s work because they had already lost my trust.

Your copy will consist of:

• Book title, byline and name
• Rear blurb and testimonials
• Amazon book description
• Tweets promoting the book
• Text on any promo images or video

Learn how to write good copy from those who came before you

Dig around some of those bestseller lists you pretend not to care about (New York Times, Guardian, The Times, etc) and read the blurbs and sales pitches on those books.

Again, if you’re new at this — or you’ve been doing it a while without success — writing your copy is not the time to try and ‘f*ck the rules’. If you’re not selling books, follow in the footsteps of the giants who paved the way. You can work on your own path once you’ve made a name for yourself.

Some tips for good copy are as follows:

There are always exceptions to every rule (and best practice guideline), but these are some tips that will help your copy look professional. The idea is not necessarily to “not look indie”, but make a new, potentially picky reader respect you for being indie with such a good book.

• Hint at your plot, but don’t give it away. This is a sales pitch, not a synopsis. Don’t reveal any big moments or twists. Try not to just list-dump a bunch of stuff that happens. Be mysterious a little. In fact, the easiest way to go about it is to copy/paste the blurb:
• Keep your blurb short. A lot of people like to write out paragraphs on the back of their novel (in painfully tiny writing), but it’s better to set up the overall story idea, briefly introduce the hero and offer a question or two that the novel itself will answer. Will John and Jane find each other, or drift further apart? Will Detective Smith find the killer before the next victim dies? Will Agent Muscles find the bomb before the White House is blown up? (and so on)
• Keep it short and simple. In the description on an Amazon book page, you have enough space to write about 5 lines before you have to click “Read More”. If you absolutely must write below that link, get the plot premise across in those 5 lines and thereafter include testimonials and review quotes. Don’t force them to click, make them want to.
• Only list your prestigious achievements: Every indie author I see talks about being a bestseller and an award winner, but those obscure, easy-to-top Amazon categories don’t actually make you an “Amazon Bestseller”, just a bestseller in that specific category. Some of them only require perhaps 20 sales to top. The actual bestseller Amazon list requires over 1,500 sales per day to stay in the top 5. As for awards, unless you’ve won a renowned award or national competition, perhaps leave it for your blog.
• Write a good bio. Keep your author bio short and to the point. Write cosy romance? Mention that you live in London with your wife and two dogs. Forensic crime writer? Drop in that you graduated from MIT in forensic psychology. Find stuff that adds a bit of oomph to your genre or writing style.