[kindlebooksgraphics]

Hi there!

Sitting with a cup of green tea reading all your interesting and educational forum posts!
A question came to mind... What is the single most difficult challenge when publishing Kindle-books as an author?

Let me know what you think?

Sofie

www.kindlebooksgraphics.com

 

[Guest]

Coping with 1 star ratings on Goodreads? Goodreads why you boo... it is just such innocent 'pure cathartic fantasy action' with a heroine with a tougher chin than Rocky Balboa.

 

[Jena H]

I think, by far, the most difficult--and frustrating--part of this publishing process for many people is finding marketing/promotion strategies that work.  And by 'work,' I mean work without breaking the bank.  Paid ads aren't always productive, no matter how much they cost.  And some review blogs aren't that helpful for beginners, either, as 1) it can be difficult to get a blog to review your book, and 2) the more-popular blogs only accept books that have X number of five-star reviews.  So it's a pretty tight Catch-22:  can't get the reviews without the blog mentions, and can't get the blog to mention without the reviews.

And people wonder why authors drink.   

 

[MLKatz]

I am two split-brained to name 1. I'd have to choose between two.

1. Getting through a first draft. I keep saying, Just Do It! - but that other part of my brain wants to obsess over the first paragraph.

2. Yeah, that promotion thing is time consuming and difficult to test. When you run your own website, you can gather a lot of statistics about traffic and conversions. Amazon is mostly a black box.

 

[AmsterdamAssassin]

Self-Publishing means you'll have to either do everything yourself or hire someone to do it for you. The last option is often not financially feasible, so you have to be a marketeer, publicist, cover artist, formatter, media personality, social media expert, tactician, strategist... Just writing is a major undertaking, requiring you to be a creative artist when drafting the rough manuscript, put on your editor hat to polish the mess into something people might actually want to read, find beta-readers and interpret their comments and feedback to improve your writing. By the time you have a publication-ready manuscript, you want your job to be done, not become some commercial jack-of-all-trades to flog your work on the unsuspecting public.

And with 350,000 books published annually, it gets harder and harder to get noticed, so it can get frustrating that something you spend months or years on flounders like a newborn seal pup over the thin ice, while all you can do is watch and hope that this one makes it to sea and avoids the killer whales...

 

[dalya]

Blaming publishing for pre-existing conditions.

 

[robin_hart]

Knowing when your book is ready.  Knowing you are good enough without anyone telling you.

 

[quiet chick writes]

And with 350,000 books published annually, it gets harder and harder to get noticed, so it can get frustrating that something you spend months or years on flounders like a newborn seal pup over the thin ice, while all you can do is watch and hope that this one makes it to sea and avoids the killer whales...

^ I vote for this! Getting noticed is the hardest part.

 

[Guest]

Writing the next book.  But that's also the part I enjoy the most, and the reason I'm in this line of work to begin with.

 

[CEMartin2]

Promotion. People have to know it's available for sale to buy it.