Top Five Dumbest Things You Can Do In Indie Publishing…

I Did This For Traditional Publishing A Decade Plus Ago…

Dave Letterman did a sketch every so often on the five dumbest things in a certain area, so this is just ripped off from that basic idea.

I know this will be only five and a lot of you can surely add even more, and of course, this is my opinion and a lot of you will not agree. I will try to explain quickly my opinion in each one.

So starting with #5 and working to the dumbest, although all of these are really dumb in my opinion, here are the five dumbest things you can do as an indie writer and publisher.

#5… Put your books in Kindle Select…

First off, you lose about 3/4 of the world as a market because it is exclusive. Second, you make no long-term readers or fans, even though you might think you do. Third, you are giving your work away for free, which is telling readers it has no value, right there with all the AI crap that has no value. And Forth, you entire income is dependent on Amazon keeping the promotion project going. Readers are not paying you, Amazon is.

#4… Hire a Story Editor, Book Editor, or Book Doctor…

Luckily, this is happening less and less these days, and usually writers who do this don’t last long. Write your own books, trust them, find the typos, and publish it. Then write the next one and keep learning how to be a better crafts person and storyteller as you go along. Hiring one of these types comes directly out of fear and is damn dumb.

#3… Have Beta Readers for Your Story….

When I first heard of this practice, I thought it was a joke and to this day I still laugh at it. Writing by committee has been proven over and over to reduce the quality. It will also take any originality and author voice out of any work, no matter how careful the author claims to be. Simply have one first reader to help you find typos, grow a backbone and defend your work. This practice is also born out of complete fear.

#2… Complain About Your Lack of Sales After Only Three or Five or even Eight Books…

This shows a complete lack of understanding how discoverability in publishing works and also a belief in the old traditional ways from the 1980s or so. The myth of one book making an author famous has not been killed completely.  Also, writers are flat against learning how to help their book sell. Author names are tiny, covers don’t match genres, and sales copy is dull and plot. No reader will ever buy the story because they will never get to it. And these writers will blame their own writing, their own stories instead of their ability to simply learn a few things about book sales, and they will get frustrated and quit.

#1… Quit.

Quitting is the stupidest and of course most deadly thing you can do. Instead of continuing to learn, continuing to become a better storyteller, continuing to learn how books sell, continuing to get past that magic 20 major book discoverability curve, indie writers by the thousands just quit. Leave dead books up for sale, leave websites to go dormant, and wonder what happened to their dream of being a fiction writer.  Every-so-often the dream wins and a writer comes back to try again. But that is rare.

Now, as I did this list, I realized I more than likely should have expanded it to ten. Things like not bothering to learn copyright, not having a website, not understanding author branding, reading reviews good or bad, and so on. But for now, I’ll stick with five of the dumbest things an indie writer can do.