Self-publishing a book is more than just putting pen to paper. In many ways it is one of the most immersive and difficult things a person can do.
To self-publish a book all by yourself is very taxing mentally and emotionally. And throughout the process you will experience a myriad of emotions that range from wide eyed wonder to crazy.
So before you even get started on the writing process, it is important that you know what you are getting into. That way you can prepare yourself as best as you can.
Here are the emotional states you go through while self-publishing a book.
- Wide eyed wonder
When you first start self-publishing a book everything seems so perfect. The possibilities are endless and you can’t seem to do any wrong.
Inspiration seems to come out of your pores and the words just spring forth from your mind. The world is your oyster, and to your mind you are the world’s greatest writer, everyone else will know this once you release your new book.
This is the mindset of someone who just started writing their first book. Confident, optimistic and daring. Enjoy it as much as you can though because it won’t really last for too long.
- Smug self-congratulation
You start to feel that anyone who is not self-publishing are just sheep. You start disparaging other forms of publishing as nothing more than a scam.
This is the time that your love for self-publishing is at it’s highest. You feel that you can do it all. You are in control of your publishing destiny. You can reach your dream of becoming a great writer without any help from anyone.
- A few snags here and there… nothing to worry about
It has been weeks and you are now heavily immersed in the process. You just finished making your manuscript. Seeing as money is tight you hire the cheapest book editors and book designers you can find online.
But once you see the result you soon find out why their prices are so cheap. Their work is horrible. So you hire another set of publishing professionals to edit your work.
You are a bit over your budget, but that’s ok. You are sure that everything else will go well.
- Money’s tight
As you set out on publishing your book, you notice that your funds are a bit lacking. When you first started out you thought that your savings will be enough to get your book published.
But as you delve further into self-publishing, you see that your savings are bleeding out fast. So you put yourself into an even tighter budget. You just tell yourself that you will stay within your budget from now on.
- First tastes of reality
As months pass and your book is still not fully published, you start feeling a chill in your spine. Doubts start to creep into your mind.
You start noticing how much work you have to do. With traditionally published authors, they pretty much have everything done for them. The editing, book design, book publishing, book marketing everything is technically done for them.
But seeing as you are a self-published author you are technically swamped. Now you see why few people try self-publishing.
It is possible and many famous authors gained success, but they had to fight tooth and nail to get to that point. And now so do you.
- Confusion
You manage to publish your book. It took a lot more money than you expected and you had to borrow a bit from family and friends.
But now that you have published it, you can now sell your book. But where will you sell your book? Seeing as your book is self-published, bookstores will be very apprehensive in accepting your book.
So you are now confused on how you are supposed to market your book.
- Frustration
You find out a way to market your book. You use social media to market your book to family and friends. You also make a book blog of your very own to give your book more of an online presence. And as you release your book you realize one thing.
Aside from family and friends buying your book out of politeness, you are not selling that many books. Well not as many as you would like to break even with the amount of money you invested in your books. That’s when you find out your mistake.
You should have marketed your book long before you even released it. You don’t have an existing fan base for your work and now you are suffering for it. So now you are frustrated and feel that your situation is hopeless.
- Slow Realization
After you fail to reach your quota of book sales you start to realize one thing. Self-publishing is a hard business. The publishing process was technically the easy part.
This is because once you release your book that was when the hard part began. You realized that you did not have a fan base or the ability to market your book.
What’s more, you slowly realize that you were woefully unprepared to self-publish by yourself. You needed help the entire time.
- Acceptance
It’s going to be a painful experience, accepting that you were unprepared. It may even scare you away from being a writer.
But if you could get over the hump and keep moving forward you will be able to look back and see where you went wrong. You will be able to see the mistakes you made and the aspects of the self-publishing process that you could have done better.
If you could accept your faults and move forward then the entire publishing process would not have been a waste.
- Starting over
Now that you have gone through the hardships and obstacles that come with self-publishing a book for the very first time, now is the time to start over. And the best advice you can get is to ask for help.
And the best place you can ask for help are self-publishing companies. One great example is the BookVenture self-publishing company. This self-publishing company is well known for giving great book publishing services along with great self-publishing marketing services.
BookVenture reviews from client authors are also consistently good and shows how efficient and effective BookVenture can be. All in all by signing up with BookVenture you are taking the right steps in reaching your book publishing dreams.