1. Don't join Kindle Select and thereby cave in to Amazon's exclusivity demands. This is controversial advice, and to understand why I offer this advice, you can read more about some of the downsides of Kindle Select here, or get a copy of The Sane Person's Guide to Self-Publishing for a more complete picture. That said, I strongly recommend you distribute your ebook via Smashwords, so that you can get it into Barnes and Noble, iTunes, Kobo, etc. Smashwords is free to authors, has good royalty rates, and is an all-around great company. If you uploaded a word doc (saved as a filtered webpage) to KDP, you can use basically the same file with a few tweaks on Smashwords. Also their blog is useful to follow for news. Further, I think it's totally worthwhile to do a print book via a print-on-demand option like Createspace. It's easy and cheap (very nearly free) to make a POD book, so why not?
2. Engage only in the platform building and marketing that you actually enjoy doing, and skip all the rest of the advice that the Internet claims you HAVE to do to be a successful self-publisher. If you like Twitter, use it. If you like GoodReads, use it. Same for Facebook or your own blog, but don't feel like you need to do ALL of them. Focus on using the ones you like well. And don't bother with blog tours. Total waste of time and energy.
3. Get some press. Send our press releases, do events that might get coverage, and help the world learn about your book.
And, presented last but actually the most important thing:
Start writing your next book, if you haven't already!
Do you have any top tips to add? Leave a comment with your ideas!
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