It was a long road. I tried to get my book published traditionally for over ten years before I finally bit the bullet and put my first book up. My friends had been bugging me for months to try putting my book on Kindle, but I resisted because self publishing seemed like such a bad idea.
For one thing, if you self publish and then try to go the traditional route later, a traditional publisher will only pay you for second printing rights which are worth much less. Also, before ebooks became popular self publishing meant paying a company to print your books and then having to take your books to book stores and try to get them to carry them. Very few people started that way and made it.
So one night at around two in the morning I was looking into how to publish on Kindle and the process was so simple that I did it on a whim. I wasn't really prepared. My manuscript had been edited a bazillion times by then, but I didn't have a professional cover. I used Amazon's own lame free cover creator. Then a week later I had my brother come over and design a cover for me.
As for getting exposure, I basically just put the book at 99 cents and then told my Facebook friends about it. I told anyone I knew to buy it and asked them to leave a review. If you look back at the first post on this thread you can see where I posted it here hoping that people would give it a chance. The thing was I knew that it was a good story. Most people I showed it to loved it. The thing I had to do was get people to try it.
I sold 90 copies that first month and most of them were from people that had told me they were buying it. Encouraged by the support, I did an edit pass over the second book (Which had been completed years ago) and had a cover made. Then I released book two. It was not long after that sales started to trickle in from people I didn't know. It was a gradual build. 5 a day, then ten a day, then 20. Amazon started recommending it and there was a snowball effect. People were willing to give it a chance at 99 cents and I made a bit more profit from my second book.
I was half way finished with my third book by then, and I spent my evenings and time I could spare at work finishing it. That fall I released book Three and things really took off. My wife was able to quit her day job. I continued working in all my spare time on the fourth book and it came out in April the next year. During this time I put up a Facebook page for the series and started my own website. I interacted with readers all over the world and made sure to make myself accessible. I also tried a bunch of different promotions, running ads on websites and offering occasional free book promotions.
I was half way done with book five when I quite my day job of fourteen years. The release was a big success for me and since then my sales have mostly been strong. I have been averaging two books a year. Last year had a bit of a lull. My fantasy western didn't sell as well as books my other series, but I put out a lot of audiobooks and saw a big growth in that market.
When I give advice to someone starting out, I tell them to worry about one hurdle at a time. The first big one is finishing that first book. Most people don't clear that one. Then you need to go about making that book good. There are many ways to do that and in those ten years I spent trying to get it published I tried them all. But the most success came from getting friends and family to help me edit it and give me suggestions. Paid editors rarely take time to do the more than the minimum effort required and often they still miss errors in the manuscript. (Usually they aren't good writers themselves so its hard for them to give good advice.) Writing groups can be counter productive as they are merely made up of wanna be writers that can't get published either. These types of people are very opinionated about what they thing makes good writing so you can end up confusing yourself.
Once you feel confident that your work is ready you need to decide whether you are ready to self publish or if you want to try the traditional route. The traditional route requires either connections in the industry or plain luck. Self publishing can be done by anyone. If your writing is good and the story is gripping you can attract readers. Happy readers will leave good reviews and your book will get some attention. How well things go from there depend on how much effort you are able to put into it.
If you ever need editing help, I have an eagle eye for that stuff. Congrats on your success!
