Image credit: Manuta.
A guide to writing, marketing, and building a following from scratch
My book is now six weeks out from self-publishing. This was my first book and it hit #1 as the new release in at least three categories and #1 best seller in one of them. My expenses for the book were paid for in the first week; it was profitable in the second.
I had no following when I started writing, I built it from scratch over the two months it took me to write the book. I did it on my own along with the assistance of the following I created — no paid help (other than the editing, everyone needs editing).
In this story, I’m going to share how I got the idea for the book, how I wrote it and edited it so fast, and how I turned it into a best-seller on my own.
But first, here is some proof of its success in a relevant category.
#1 Best Seller in a category relevant to Thru-Hiking, the morning of day two after release.
I will talk more about category selection (a critical component of Amazon publishing), and how best-sellers are selected, shortly.
When I was preparing to publish, I had to wade through endless articles, course offerings, and everything else in between to put together my strategy. What I hope to do for the reader is put all of this knowledge and experience into one place where it is easy to find and digest.
I should first explain that this book is a memoir of my own lived experience. I believe everyone has at least one book in them. For my own part, I have several. I’m working on the next adventure memoir as we speak. You can learn more about how I am gaining writable experiences at the end of this story.
So first, let me give you a taste of the experience that motivated the writing. Then I will tell you how I wrote and self-published a best seller in two months.
Living the Experience
In 2019, I finished my Ph.D. in Neuroscience and set out on the Appalachian Trail just a couple of months later. The thru-hike would take 142 days, walking 2,192 miles on the trail and countless more around it. On day two I met
Debra Howell "Chilly Bin"
, we walked the whole trail together… and just got married last week.
Needless to say, the experience was better than I could have ever expected. So I decided to write about it.
Writing the Book
After completing the trail, I had a few notes about the experience and little more. The notes sat on my phone for almost a year before I touched them again. The reason for that is a separate story altogether.
By the time I got back around to it, I only had three months until Christmas and I vaguely thought it would be nice to publish before the holiday. Maybe it would result in more sales.
But this was only a pipe dream at the time.
So I started writing. At first, it was slow going. I was happy to get 500 words on the page per day.
But then I made an absolute breakthrough in productivity — voice to text writing apps.
Using my phone and Google Docs, I was able to speak my book as I did something else. That something else turned out to be critical as well — I went hiking.
Much like method acting where the actor lives the life of the character they would soon portray, I was putting myself back into the environment in which the events occurred. Not specifically (not on the Appalachian Trail itself), but in nature more generally. Plus, I was boosting my endorphins and energy level all at the same time.
The book itself, nearly 60,000 words of it, was produced in almost one month exactly. Sure, it was rough. The first draft always is, and the voice to text isn’t perfect as you likely know from first-hand experience. But it helped me overcome that most essential barrier facing most writers: getting words on the page.
After that was done, I did my own edits, then sent it out to a professional editor. Editors (of varying price and quality) can easily be found online nowadays. I used Fiverr for most of it. The editing, performed by a Ph.D. in English, was worth every penny.
Once it was off my table and in someone else’s hands, out the open door as Stephen King might say, I started phase two: creating a following, and a release team.
“Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right — as right as you can, anyway — it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it.” — Stephen King
While the editing was being done, I needed a group of early readers for the book. This is an absolutely critical step in the publishing process. Let me tell you why, and then how-to.
Building a Following From Scratch
Self-publishing a book is harder than using a professional publishing group for one primary reason: finding readers is tough to do by yourself.
This is actually why most self-published books flop — no one is there to receive the book when it comes off the printer.
Publishing companies make sure this doesn’t happen. The trade-off to using a publishing company is a much lower royalty for the author, and the hurdle of having them take on the book—as well as a much longer wait-time from finished produced to published book.
When I started writing I had almost no social media presence — a Facebook following of 400 friends and family, no Medium page, no author page, no mailing list, no Twitter, YouTube, or Instagram. So if that’s where you’re starting from, take heart!
I built everything necessary for my release in just one month, starting with a Facebook Author Page.
Cover design of the book showing two people walking along a trail.
My book cover is a digital painting made from a photo we took on the AT (Credit to YariKart from Fiverr)
I made the page, invited my friends from Facebook (the 400-some I had), and told them what I was doing. I shared a few excerpts from the book, showed them the cover I had made on Fiverr, and asked for their feedback. I also shared some of my work on Facebook groups related to my topics, helping me further build my following on the author page. That’s also when I started on Medium — sharing sections from the book and talking about it here.
The next step was the mailing list. Mailing lists are, as far as I can tell, the way for a writer to build a following. Unlike Facebook, a mailing list reaches every follower immediately. Sure, not all of them open or click your email — but that’s fine, most of them will. I even found a free mailing list service that I really like — Convert Kit (I get nothing for recommending them, I really just like the service). You can see an example of my landing page here. (Note that I have changed it a bit since the book release.)
The trick with building a following isn’t to knock it out of the park on every platform. Just try to have enough dedicated followers to propel your book into Amazon’s own marketing algorithm.
How the Amazon marketing algorithm works is proprietary, but suffice it to say that if you sell enough books in your category you will get the #1 Best Seller badge or the #1 New Release badge for your book. These are not permanent, they can change daily. Having them isn’t the end all be all, but they do help with better product placement and will sell books.
My numbers, for example, don’t look that spectacular, but they got the job done: 200 Facebook Author Page followers, ~400 Facebook friends, 100 Medium followers, 60 email list subs, 15 advanced readers.
Let me explain this last point in more detail. Advanced readers are usually a hand-selected subset of your following who are willing to read the book before it releases (you give it to them for free) and are likely to post an honest review of your work when the book goes live.
It’s generally best to aim for 10–20 reviews in the first week of publishing (this is the general consensus as far as I can tell; again, the Amazon algorithm is hidden). Reviews are a major driving force behind book sales on the Amazon platform. Your early readers can post their reviews even without having bought the book, and they should submit them on day one of the release if at all possible.
I recruited these early readers by putting out “an offer to get involved” style messages on my Facebook Author Page and my email list. Then, I hand-selected from those who responded. You should take caution here: No family members can post reviews and no reviews should be paid for — Amazon is very strict about this!
The final type of review you will need is called an editorial review. This can technically be anything you want, but it’s generally better to hire it out to a professional review board. They may also help you format the blurb about your book that people will first see on the sales page. Both of these are extremely important because they come so early on your book’s page. I simply googled review boards and found one that was highly rated and within my price range.
You could also get other authors in your category to be early readers of your book and submit their professional review — I did this as well.
The next step is actually publishing your book to Amazon.
Publishing to Amazon Kindle and/or Paperback
This was far more of a pain than it should have been. I used Kindle Create (a program free to download from Amazon) to publish both the ebook and paperback versions. Here’s what you should know about the process:
Format everything in Word first, then import to Kindle Create. You will not be able to do much formating in the Create program, other than making a table of contents. And it will probably take several attempts to make it look how you want.
Kindle Create will produce a package that you can upload to Kindle Direct Publishing (Amazon) and use for both the ebook and paperback. Both versions of the book will be separate uploads.
Each version, or format, of your book, will have its own separate page on Amazon that will be linked about three days after release.
Once you submit your book for publishing, it will go live sometime within 72 hours. You’ll get no warnings, no scheduling or planning, no nothing. It may even come out when you are sleeping (thanks Amazon, so user friendly). Just so you know my own experience, the ebook took six hours to go live and the paperback took 12 hours.
Reviews will take up to 72 hours to post. This is extremely variable, from one hour to the full 72 in my experience.
You can select Extended Distribution for your book at no extra cost. Do it: This allows the book to sell in other countries and bookstores. Note that sales stats and reviews from the Amazon sales page in other countries are not connected to the one for your home country.
Create your Amazon Author Central page as soon as the book goes live. This allows you to edit the sales page more easily and to contact support when (not if) something doesn’t go as you want it to. You can also use this support feature to add categories to your book — I have read that it’s possible to get up to seven, but I only have three despite asking for seven.
Why do categories matter? This is how Amazon will rank your book against other books. Want to get #1 in either new releases or best sellers? Pick a category that is relevant to your book, but has the lowest amount of competition. Instead of just selecting Travel, go deeper and more specific so it shows up in the entire chain of categories. Instead use, Books>Travel>United States>Northeast>Mid Atlantic. It’s critical to make the categories relevant. Don’t select something because it looks easy, your readers will find it upsetting.
How do you pick categories based on your chances of becoming a best-seller? Here is a lengthy explanation of how you can tell how many books your competitors are selling, written by the Kindlepreneur. But basically, you can use the ABSR number on their sales page to determine roughly how many books you need to sell to beat them. Books sold more recently carry more weight (apparently, though I have no data on this), but all book sales count towards ratings.
Marketing
Once the book is published, your work is only half-way done. Now you need to make sure even more people see it.
I have used Facebook marketing in order to build my following on the author page, and used one more ad around release day to promote my 30% off promotion, but stopped after that. It seems to cost too much for too little revenue—but it’s hard to tell because their statistics are not that informative.
Completely in contrast to Facebook, Amazon Advertising is fantastic. They have great statistics, intuitive data with graphs, and most importantly — it actually sells books. Some quick tips based on my own experience:
Use dynamic bidding. I allow it to adjust my bidding by 150%.
Test both targeted and automatic placements. My auto placements have done better so far.
Start small and see how it goes. I chose a daily budget of $20 to start, and it has only hit that a couple of times so far.
Other than that, I continue to publish on Medium and my Facebook Author Page, usually linking my book at the bottom of the article when it’s related to the story.
I have also used my adventures, and the book, to launch a successful publication called World Traveler’s Blog along with my new friend
Marcus Franke
. In just a couple of weeks, we have grown into a community of more than 35 writers who are passionate about travel and digital nomadism.
This ongoing writing is as good for me as it is for book sales. It keeps me engaged with writing, with the adventures and stories I’ve lived, and with my ever-growing following.
This is the final aspect of marketing that I want to point out. Everything you write can be used to build your following, get people interested in your story and experiences, and be used to link it all together.
This is probably the most rewarding feeling of being an author: seeing the feedback from those who love what you do, or who gain value and knowledge from your writing, all while you build one story on top of the last, forever.
Summary
This is how I am building my own new writing enterprise. I hope you have gained something by reading about my experience with self-publishing on Amazon.
To quickly review:
Writing well, and editing even better, are the most important aspects of writing a book.
Building a following is the next most important step if you are self-publishing. This can be done quickly if you are dedicated and try many routes.
Amazon is probably the best place to self-publish because of the relative ease and complete market dominance.
Ongoing marketing will help you keep writing, continue to boost sales, and keep you and your readers engaged!
