Are you publishing on Amazon before you’re ready?
Yesterday I told you the story of my new guide that’s out TODAY – Fire Up Amazon: How to Tweak your Amazon Presence to Perfection and Ramp Up Your Sales Potential!
And if you read that post, you know what a pain in the you-know-what this one has been to write and create. It’s taking me way longer than expected to get off the ground, and it’s gone through various transformations.
But I’m proud of myself for holding out and not letting it go too early. I kept on tweaking, adjusting the scope, improving certain sections, soliciting feedback, and cutting out anything I thought was fluff. And I think the result is pretty darn GOOD.
Don’t rush the process just because it’s easy!
Amazon self-publishing has made it all too easy to get an unfinished product out into the world before it’s reached its full potential because the idea of pressing publish and wrapping up a writing project is oh-so tempting.
Add to the fact that it’s so simple to adjust a file once it has been uploaded that it’s easy to tell ourselves “I can always improve it later”. “I’ll create an edition 2”. Or “I’ll wait to hear about typos from my readers and then re-upload a cleaner version later”.
Put out your best work first time.
I’m all for a bit of improvisation. That is after all, the beauty of digital and self-publishing. We can change our covers at any time, improve our web copy, re-write our book descriptions, bring references up to date, change the back-matter.
But once you put out less-than-perfect content, the damage is done. People will remember the first version and won’t bother with the second. Readers will point out typos and bad grammar and leave less-than-perfect reviews. You’ll lose a long-term reader.
It’s ok to take your time.
I could have pressed publish on this baby weeks ago. I told my newsletter subscribers that it was going to be out in the summer. I have a waiting list of people that have contacted me and want to read it. And I really, really wanted to finish this thing a long time ago!
But I swallowed my pride over the pushed back release date dates and kept going until the final product was exactly what I wanted it to be.
And it is.
And it’s here!
And I think I’m going to go sleep all the way until Christmas.
Excellent advice Laura on not rushing publication. With self-publishing, it’s easy to hurry through the process just to get the book in print. Self-publishing shouldn’t be “speed publishing”! It should reflect our best writing, professional editing and a quality product for readers.
Speed publishing.. love it! Or don’t love it, if you see what I mean ;)
Huge congratulations! What an achievement. It’s a long, drawn out process but really worth all the hard work. Enjoy a break for a while.
Thank you hon. Good luck on the final touches to yours too! Let me know all about it when you’re done.