Giving out a free copy of the book has paid off at last. I am finally getting reviews for my book on Goodreads, and I am excited to say that they are favorable. This helps a little bit with the imposter syndrome that lives rent-free in my head. I did all the wrong things one shouldn’t do when publishing a book. At the time, I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong.  These are the rules that I broke.

  Rule one: use alpha readers that are not friends or family. I tried to find people to read my book, but it was harder than winning the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes. The only people willing to read it wanted me to pay them a fortune, and I’m still waiting on the PCHS people to show up on my doorstep with my check. So, other than one cousin, who gave me her honest feedback, I published with me being the sole everything.

  Rule two: hire an editor. I couldn’t afford one of those either. They were more expensive than the alpha and beta readers. I had to rely on my graduate education and the academic papers that I wrote to help me muddle through formatting and editing my manuscript. 

  Rule three: use beta readers. I tried really hard to get people I knew to read my book, and every one of them promised they would. However, apparently time was never gracious enough to them. After reading the manuscript in question over twenty times, not for revisions or editing, just reading it to get a sense of flow and to ask myself the importance of each scene, I gave up on the pipe dream of getting someone to read my book. If you are wondering why I didn’t hire a beta reader, see rules one and two—also, you are probably a skimmer and not a reader if you didn’t pick up on the underlying issue. 

  Rule four: build a following and hype about your book before you release it. Silly me, I thought that most of Kindle Unlimited was done by independent authors. I would find typos and mistakes in them that previous publishing companies would have never allowed. I was forgiving of these errors because I thought an author had done the work themself, and we are all human. Given my wrong assumption, I thought that my book would be easily found among the other books on KU. I was SO wrong. Turns out, my book was allocated to the dirty, dusty shelf in the back of the basement, never to see the light of day again unless I hyped it to a following of readers.

    Rule five: get good sales with the first book before you release a second. This one still irks me. I hate a book series where you have to wait for the next installment, so I didn’t want to do that to my readers—well, to the imaginary readers. (Although, I do have a few people reading two of my books on KU, yay!) 

   Being a rule breaker did not work for me. Or, at least it hasn’t worked for me yet. I am still gaining traction, putting my mind to whatever I can think of to fix what my rebel soul cursed me with. Here’s to what may come next week. Cheers.