You have just typed “the end” on the finished first draft of your first complete manuscript. Congratulations! That is a huge accomplishment, and you should feel extremely proud of yourself.

​At this point it may seem like sharing your creation with the larger reading public is the thing to do. There are different ways to do this; and there are different ways to do it wrong, especially if the process is entirely new to you. Having made all of these mistakes and more myself at one point or another, here are a few things which might be worth paying attention to.

1. Polish what you plan to submit or publish. Read over your complete manuscript many times before sending it anywhere. If you get stuck on particular passages, chances are other readers will, too. And don’t trust your own proofreading. Trust me on this one!

2. Don’t assume that the Big 5 publishers will want your book, regardless of how good it is. Conversely, don’t assume that none of the hundreds of other, non-Big 5 publishers won’t be interested in it. Smaller publishers can often give a lot more attention to individual books than larger ones can or will.

3. Never scrimp on cover design.

4. Don’t plan to get rich from your first book. Odds are it will end up costing you more money than you’ll ever recoup in sales, so don’t base your retirement on it.

5. Beware the huge cottage industry catering to naïve and desperate authors. Companies that offer listing, marketing and other services are generally cashing in on authors’ inexperience. Caveat emptor, or better still, avoid these like the plague. Expert and reasonably-priced freelance editors excepted.

6. The “easiest” way to publish may be that way for a reason. The best way may not be the cheapest or the easiest. But doing things right may save you from being locked into a bad deal.

7. This is a personal opinion, but go wide. Don’t limit yourself to a single seller, no matter how big they are. Many do, and find themselves competing in a massive pool of other books where it is extremely costly, if not altogether impossible, to stand out. The bigger the vendor, the less important you and your book will be to them.

8. Free promotional sources are worth every penny. “Likes” don’t sell “books“. Be prepared to pay for exposure to real, prospective paying customers. I suggest squirreling away a few bucks here and there from the day you start writing, so that by the time you’re finished you have at least some ad money to spend. Also, don’t try to plug your book on sites oriented to authors. They’re trying to plug their own books, and aren’t especially interested in finding new things to read by other authors.

Joel Bresler is the author of

Bottomless Cups

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USA – UK – CA – AUS – IN

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Amazon:

USA – UK – CA – AUS – IN