Self-Publishing
By El Mehdi Said
When I decided to self-publish, I expected the hard part to be writing the book. It was not. The hard part was everything that came after — the decisions no one warns you about, the patience the platform demands, and the slow, unglamorous work of finding readers. These are the lessons I wish someone had handed me on day one.
Readers decide whether to click your book in roughly two seconds. A professional cover is not vanity — it is the first line of communication with your reader. If you can afford a designer, hire one. If you cannot, study the covers of the top-selling books in your category and learn what signals your genre. A cover that looks homemade tells readers the writing probably is too.
When you are unknown, your biggest enemy is not low prices — it is invisibility. A lower price lowers the risk for a reader who has never heard of you. My eBooks are priced accessibly because I would rather ten thousand people read my work than one hundred people pay premium for it. You can always raise prices when you have an audience. You cannot manufacture an audience by charging more.