...must be funny, in a rich man's world....as Abba once sang.

I'm at the business end of self-publishing my first book and from here on in it's all about the money.

I've already spent money on the cover and Scrivener, I've even spent money on boosting a post on my Facebook page to see what sort of reach it had.

There are a lot of expensive questions you need to ask yourself once you're close to finished Manuscript. (If there is such a thing!)

Do I, for example, spend £100+ on a copy editor, do I spend as much if not more on an editor?

There are huge arguments that you can read on many other blogs that would support the yes argument.

Then there are questions of marketing;

1. £15-£20 for a cover reveal.
2. £80 for a blog a tour.
3. £x for pay per click advertising or ad-words.
4. £x for boosting a post on your Facebook page.
5. Press release?  I have no idea what that would cost. £30-£60 I suspect.

The question is how much do you have to spend and were is it best to spend it.  Just adding things up you could spend £1000 or more before you've even sold a single book.



So what price are you going to sell your book for?  £2.99?  £0.99p?  More?  Less?

At £2.99 on Amazon you make 70% so that's just over £2.00.

What are your projected sales? 50? 100? 10000? I'll be honest it's one of the few things I have no idea about.  If I sell 10 copies of my book I'll ecstatic but that's not going to cover my costs or class this whole exercise as a success.

Let's look at things another way. (Ignoring the fact the tax man will want a slice of your earnings)

If I spend £80 on a blog tour how many people will that reach?  How many will buy the book.  Bottom line is you'd need 40 sales to cover the cost.  But once your book has been on its blog tour the blog posts are usually permanent and so they have a long internet shelf life.  When do you stop measuring the effect the blog tour has on your sales.  How do you quantify the notoriety that this gives you?

Alternatively I could spend £80 posting a Facebook page post for a week and there's a chance I would be reaching a much larger target audience.  However, how many sales would that generate - I've some thoughts about the Facebook page thing and trying to make a post go viral I'll come back to that in a couple of weeks time.

The problem is writing a book is only a portion of the battle marketing the book and turning that marketing into sales is probably just as big if not a bigger portion of the whole.

Once you've written the book you then suddenly need to become a marketing and sales expert.....not an easy transition.

As usual I'd be interested in discussing any aspect of self-publishing with any of you just get in touch.

Phil