7 Reasons A Self-Published Book Has Low Book Sales

Getting a self-published book to sell well is not easy

Many self-published authors fail to give their books the best chance of success because they are in such a rush to publish that they overlook so many of the basics.

Quite a lot of authors new to self-publishing clearly get so many basic things backwards, upside down and back the front. The result is usually very low book sales.

Getting a book or ebook published and available for sale on Amazon is the very last step in the process, and not the very first.

To give a new book any chance at success and gaining book sales, a lot of planning, preparation and good old-fashioned hard work is needed before bringing a book to market.

It is the lack of this process that causes so many new authors to become disillusioned with self-publishing when they find book sales are very scarce indeed.

It is worth knowing that publishing a book, by any method or means, is always a gamble.

Big publishers bank on getting only a handful of the titles they publish each year to sell very well, and then hope that one or two will take off and hit the bestsellers. As for the many titles that fail, well, that is how the book publishing business works. It’s a gamble.

The same applies to self-published titles, and more than likely, at around the same percentage of success. Many will fail, while some will succeed.

To get a book toward the success end of the equation, you need to take the time to produce a great book. You have to plan how to market and promote, build an online presence and define the book’s market appeal.

If you can avoid the following seven classic mistakes new authors often make, then you will be giving your new book a far better chance of success.

1. Publishing a poor quality ebook or book.

Without a shadow of a doubt, a book that is badly written and structured, poorly proofread, badly formatted and full of errors and typos will fail miserably. If you rush into publishing before your manuscript is up to an acceptable standard, it can only be a sales disaster.

Checking your manuscript thoroughly before publishing is vital. You can use free tools like Grammarly or Prowritingaid to help find many common errors.

Even if the manuscript is good, a sub-standard book cover is another sales killer. Using homemade book covers might be cheap, but they look cheap too. Readers and book buyers really react badly to awful book covers.

Another vital element is your book description.

A two sentence summary is not a book description, nor is a long preview read of the first chapter. A great book descriptionworks in quickly hooking a book buyer’s interest, yet so few authors take the time to get this important element right.

2. Promoting a book to no one.

Blasting out social media posts about a new book is usually pointless anyway, but even more so if they are to almost nobody.

Publishing a book and then thinking, “oh yeah, I need a Twitter account and Facebook page,” is such a common mistake.

New social media accounts have so few followers, and then bombing your handful of new followers with a book can only lead to losing them all in a hurry. It is totally self-defeating.

Building a big social media presence takes time. It absolutely has to be done well, well, well before publishing. Promoting your book needs to begin well before you publish.

3. Self-publishing is free, isn’t it?

Yes, hitting the publish button on Amazon, Smashwords or Draft2Digital is totally free. But that’s about where the free part stops.

Making a profit in business almost always comes after making an investment, and self-publishing is no different.

Investing in a professional book cover, editing, proofreading, book promotion and advertising are all expenses that are necessary for successful self-publishing.

This doesn’t mean at all that you need to invest thousands of dollars. But without a modest budget and investment, it will be hard to succeed.

4. My book is for everyone!

Well, no. Books are categorised by genre for a very good reason.

Only certain readers read certain books, and they have very particular tastes in what books they buy and read.

Taking the time to learn and understand the demographic and type of reader your book is aimed at becomes a huge benefit when it comes time to bring your book to market.

Trying to promote and advertise a romance novel to avid readers of spy novels or science fiction is going to be a big waste of money.

However, knowing what defines your small market niche will put your advertising and promotion expenditure to much better use.

New authors rarely spend enough time researching competitive book genre categories and search keywords before they publish.

Understanding how powerful Amazon search keywords are is a vital step in helping book buyers find your book.

5. It’s trending, it’s trending!

Following a new trend is like being the last in line for a new iPhone. It will be sold out before you get to the head of the queue.

Vampires where in a few years ago, before 50 Shades started a new soft erotica trend, and next week it will be something new.

Perhaps that is the key. Don’t follow trends, start a new one.

Or better still, stick to what you know, and wait for that to be a trend again. Anyway, it takes so long to write a great book that ten trends will have come and gone before you have finished.

6. It was hard work for me, so my price will be high.

Pricing a Kindle ebook above the market never works. Sure, it was tough to write your book, and you might think that $9.99 is a fair price in return for your hard work.

Unfortunately, the book market does not work on how you feel or think.

Book pricing is extremely sensitive and if a book is outside the ‘buying range’ is has little hope of selling. Before deciding on the cover price, look at books that are in your genre and price according to the market, and not your ego.

It is far better to sell 100 ebooks at $0.99 than no ebooks at $7.99.

7. Quick, quick, quick! Publish it!

This is by far the most common reason a book does not sell.

Rushing into self-publishing a book without a plan is a recipe for almost guaranteed failure. It is really is putting the cart before the horse.

No plan, no preparation, no base, no followers, no promotion, no launch, no build-up, no budget and no sales.

Self-publishing is not a race.

It is the process of bringing a quality product to market for people to buy. No amount of wishing and hoping will help, but planning and preparation certainly will.

Wrap-up

If you are planning to self-publish, give you and your book at least a chance of success by taking your time and getting the essential elements in place before you publish.

Most self-publishing problems arise from rushing too quickly into publishing a book.

It is not rocket science. Make sure your book is of the highest quality, pay for a great cover, write an absolutely fantastic book description, know your niche market and build a social media base around it and develop a book promotion plan and budget.

Do all this BEFORE you publish, and you will have a much, much better chance of success with your book.