Ep 148: 5 Self-Publishing Mistakes First-Time Authors Make

In this episode, we walk through 5 mistakes that quietly undermine first-time self-publishers and show how to fix each one with practical, doable steps.

We start by tightening your audience with a one-sentence framework that keeps every chapter aligned to a clear promise. 

From there, we map a real editing workflow: self-edit, gather targeted beta feedback on structure and flow, then bring in a professional editor who can strengthen the developmental and line work.

We also get honest about design. DIY your interior with reliable templates and checklists. But your cover? Invest in that. It needs to signal genre, earn clicks, and meet exact printer specs for spine width, trim, and image quality.

Then we dig into metadata, the quiet engine behind discoverability. Keywords, categories, and a clean description help the right readers find you on the world’s third-largest search engine. 

If you’re tired of guessing and want a simpler way to publish with confidence, this conversation gives you clarity and next steps you can trust.

MENTIONED RESOURCES:

Workshop with Jane Friedman: The Indie Author’s Guide to a Standout Amazon Listing

Date: January 16, 2026

Time: 10am PST / 11am MST / noon CST / 1pm EST

Sign up here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN__NjEykZNSwSpeZ48tydhpw

Self-Publishing Starter Kit: https://www.publishaprofitablebook.com/selfpublishing101

Self-Publishing Action Plan:

https://www.publishaprofitablebook.com/actionplan

🗞️ The Damn Good "Can't Stop Writing" Formula

Grab the free nonfiction or memoir kickstart that's helped hundreds of authors get out of their heads and into the flow: 

👉 https://www.publishaprofitablebook.com/chapterone

Your readers are waiting! Let's get your book published!

PublishAProfitableBook.com/Publish (use code AUTHOR25 for 25% off!)

Chapters

• 1:23 Welcome And Big Promise
• 2:10 Why These Mistakes Happen
• 3:19 Mistake 1: No Clear Reader
• 6:06 A One-Sentence Reader Exercise
• 6:54 Mistake 2: Editing Without A System
• 9:57 Beta Reads To Pro Edit Pipeline
• 12:56 Mistake 3: DIY Covers vs Interiors
• 16:05 Print Specs, Rejections, And Sanity
• 17:37 Mistake 4: Rushing To Publish
• 20:46 Why Waiting Beats Launching Fast
• 22:42 Mistake 5: Skipping Pro Publishing Steps

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:42

Hi, everybody, and welcome back. So, today we're going to talk about five mistakes that almost every first-time author makes when self-publishing. And I want to be very clear from the outset that with the exception of one, and I'll tell you why that is, and if you know me, you'll know why it is. I made every one of these mistakes, I'm quite sure. So this is not being said with any level of judgment or criticism. It is merely observation. Because frankly, having published six books, having worked with hundreds of authors and published 70 plus of their books, these are things that I've seen time and time and time again, if not experienced. So I acknowledge, first and foremost, how much misinformation is out there, or maybe not even misinformation, but conflicting information is out there when it comes to self-publishing. It's rampant and it's kind of like making sourdough. In my world right now, that's my new thing I'm trying to accomplish on the weekends. And I have I am watching no fewer than like a hundred videos a week. And most of them say the same thing, but every once in a while, someone says something drastically different. And it really screws me up. So I understand how overwhelming and challenging that can be. But the thing is that for most people, um, these a lot of these five things don't happen in the publishing process. They actually happen pre-publishing, which is a big deal because they're things that we can pay attention to and fix and or not mess up too terribly, anyway, before we get to the publishing process. So the first one, the first mistake, see the air quotes, because is not defining a clear reader. I have talked about this ad nauseum. And when I work on my own books in the nonfiction realm, I have to get very clear about who my reader is. Specifically, when I wrote my latest book, Write the Damn Book Already, it's a very specific person who I'm writing for. And I even have an Amazon review right now that says something like, she only talks about writing memoir. I I don't know how I could possibly cover memoir and fiction in one book. First of all, I don't speak to how to write fiction because I'm trying to figure that out myself. But I don't even, that's not the same book. Those are two different books. So while it comes across sometimes as a criticism from readers, like, well, you didn't talk about this. The key in handling that is knowing, well, was that my lane to talk about at all? Because if it wasn't, then you're in the see the air quotes, right by not going there. And this is something that all nonfiction, specifically writers and to a certain degree, memoir writers need to consider when in the writing phase. Who is your ideal reader? And what is it that they're looking for? What benefit are they looking for that you can provide? How do you uniquely want to guide this person? When people say, I'm writing for everyone, I have to create the constant reminder writing for everyone is writing for no one, because no one will see themselves in what who in your book. They won't feel like they're having a conversation with you. One of the greatest compliments I receive, and I know a lot of authors with whom I've worked have received this compliment as well, is I feel like I'm in the room with you. Like I feel like I'm sitting in a in your family room and we're having a conversation and you're speaking just to me. That's such a huge compliment. When you're not, when you're not clear on who your reader is, oftentimes they'll feel like they're sitting in the room with you and it's just the two of you, and you're having a conversation, and they're like, do you know who I am? Like, did we switch up the wrong? Did I come to the wrong therapy appointment? Essentially. So being clear up front and really narrowing down who your target reader is will help tremendously in ensuring that the overall flow of your manuscript and the content and the lane in which you stay and write is consistent throughout and makes sense for the right readers. So let me give you a little exercise here. This is a one-sentence how to fill this in that helps to clarify this quickly. My am writing this book for fill in the blank. So, like a woman who or a mother who, or even a person who at this point it is wants to get more clear about fill in the blank so they can blank. It feels formulaic. It is formulaic. It's not sexy at all. It helps you to remember that. So when you start writing about other stuff that's outside the realm of that, you can take all of your content and you can bring it back in and say, does this align with who I said I was writing to, with the problem that they're having, and with how I said that I was going to be able to help them navigate it. Okay, number two mistake. This is the one I don't make because I am an editor and I was raised by an editor. So I've just always known, I haven't always known exactly how editing would work in the book writing realm, but I've always, I've never said, oh, I don't need an editor. But it's the mistake is actually editing without a system. And what I mean by that, because again, editing is not formulaic, but what people often think about editing is that it's one and done. Like I'm gonna write this the best I can, and then I'm gonna send it off to my editor, and he or she is gonna make it great. That is not what a great editor does. A great editor helps you to see you've got to take your manuscript to like 92%, where you just think, okay, I'm at the point where I'm swapping the word aquamarine for teal, or I'm just like rearranging things just to say I did something today, but I don't know how to make this any better on my own. And that's when you go and start working with an editor. And sometimes it's one round and sometimes it's two rounds, and most of the time it's like seven rounds. I mean, and I don't mean seven paid rounds because that is not financially accessible for the vast majority of people. But lots of times those initial editing rounds come from beta readers. They come from colleagues, even friends who would be ideal readers of your book. Those are the people who help you to sort out the flow, the tone, the style, the content first. And then you go to a professional edit. So you've gotten a lot of those, gotten a lot of those weeds cleared out first before bringing in the big guns to really take a pass at cleaning it up even more. And a professional editor can only take a manuscript a level or two above where it currently is. They're not going to take it from level one to level 10. So the idea is to get the book to say level six or seven, with the idea that the editor will then take it to level eight or nine, because level 10 isn't even attainable. It's really not. Like perfection is not a thing anywhere, but it's definitely not a thing in the book writing world. So knowing, having this very loose idea in your head of I'm gonna write it, and then I'm gonna self-edit the bejesus out of it. And then I'm gonna bring in someone, like a beta reader, a colleague, whatever, to help me with it. And then I'm gonna go through the formal, professional, gut-wrenching manuscript tearing apart process to really make it as succinct as possible. And it's again, it's not just about grammar and sentence structure. First and foremost, it's about what's in the manuscript. Is everything that's in there, does it belong? And are you missing huge chunks that need to be in there? After that, you can hone and refine each individual sentence, which is line and copy editing. But first, we've got to do developmental editing, which is what's here, what do we want? It's like cleaning out your garage after 10 years. What, and you have piles of like what stays, what goes, what gets sold, what goes to the dump. So, mistake number three: DIY cover design and interior formatting. Now, hang on. So, to be clear, I format all of my interiors of my books. I have templates that I use, they're great. There's a small learning curve with them, but I really do believe that pretty much anybody can overcome that learning curve if they so choose. So, interior formatting is not a non-DIYable thing. I fully support you DIYing your interior. What I stress is the importance of at a minimum getting a template so that you know. I mean, I I once had told a story about how I formatted a whole manuscript and I forgot page numbers. And crazily enough, I believe, I'm trying to remember if at that point, I think what had happened was I bought a template. I didn't want the page numbers at the top, I wanted them at the bottom. So I deleted them from the top, but then I forgot to put them in at the bottom. And so when I went to upload, I was like, something doesn't even look right. And that's what it was. And this was so, so, so, so long ago. But it's a very common thing. So not only do we forget page numbers and headers and footers, but people forget copyright page, title page, about the author page, all those sorts of things. So templates will really, really, really, I mean, they'll save you in that, but that's not a non-DIYable thing. Cover design, however, in my opinion, is a pretty non-DIYable thing. Because when you're self-publishing, any book, even by a big five traditional publisher, is a needle in a haystack. When we're self-publishing, we want to do everything humanly possible to be swimming in the same ocean with all of the professionally produced books out there. And so that means professional editing, professional cover design, professional interior formatting. And it's very difficult if you are not a professional designer to DIY your book cover. Is it possible? Can you buy templates? Yes. But then you're in a situation where it's like if you're buying a template, like where are the images coming from? Are they stock photos? Do you have the license to use those stock photos? Are they too pixelated? Do you know how to set them properly on the cover? Do you know how to create spine width? All of those sorts of things are tricky. And in this day and age, it is not expensive comparatively to what it used to be, certainly. And I know everyone's definition of expensive differs, and I want to be respectful of that. In the grand scheme of things, this is an investment in your book that I don't recommend skipping. There aren't many. I mean, there are a couple. ISBN is one, and cover design is one that I really recommend doing a very specific way in order to, again, make sure that you are setting yourself up for success by being able to swim in the same ocean as everyone else who has been set up for success right from the jump. So DIY templates for interior formatting, fine. DIY on cover design, not so great. The the um the print version, too, is not three files. It's one file that's the front, the spine, the back. It's all got to be calculated to within uh portions of a millimeter. I've had Amazon KDP reject a cover before because it was off by 0.001 millimeters. And luckily, I can just go back to my fabulous cover designer and say, we're off, and she fixes it like this, and we're done. But if I had to deal with that, I mean, I don't think I'd be sitting here right now because I'd probably be in some sort of an institution. Mistake number four is a favorite of mine. I've seen it, it's not a favorite, like I'm glad it happens. I'm not, but I've seen people feel the need to do this. I have felt the need to do this, and it's rushing to publish a manuscript before it's ready. There is so often, and this isn't just in books. This is like in any business, sometimes we have this feeling of, I need to get this to market fast because I want to be someone else. And it's either someone else specifically or it's conceptually. Like you're like, somebody else is gonna do this. Let me just reassure you, everything in the book space has been done. So, what will set you apart is how you are doing it differently, how you're approaching a topic differently, how you're how you're navigating people through it differently, helping to navigate, helping them to navigate themselves through it differently. Rushing to market in order to beat someone, or in order because you have convinced yourself that if you don't release on Black Friday, or if you don't release on Valentine's Day, or if you don't release by Mother's Day, somehow, some way, you it's going to be to the detriment of your book is dangerous. And I don't mean dangerous like your safety. I'm I mean the safety of your book, like your book's success. I never, ever recommend that. So a book being published later than anticipated, but that you've actually really put your time, energy, and full self into, and then had fully edited and taking your time with cover design and interior formatting and giving getting everything registered properly and uploaded properly will always, and I am not a fan of superlatives, but it will always do better. Maybe with so, okay, now we have to take away the superlative, but somebody will message me back and go, but what about and give me some example of some one-off. There's always going to be a one-off, but I'm not someone who thinks it's a great idea to bet everything on being the one-off. Like I play the lottery too, but I don't book a$10 million vacation thinking, well, I could be the one-off. So publishing before the manuscript is ready. And this is something that also trips people up at the end, because then the people who have perfectionist tendencies, see hand raised, are like, but is it really ready? And so at some point, yes, you have to just let it go. I'm really here speaking to people who are more feeling that pull to launch sooner than later and willing to cut corners that shouldn't be cut because you're feeling like, but I got to get it out there. I got to get just get it out there and fix it later. That is not a good idea. And it doesn't usually end terribly well for the book. It leads to poor reviews, which leads to Amazon not showing your book out very much, I mean, which leads to poor review. Like it's a cyclical oh no, as opposed to a gradual upswing in getting more reviews, getting good reviews, getting more visibility, continuing to talk about it, having people say nice things and send you nice emails. The other is a shortcut to just, it's a shortcut to disappointment, plain and simple. Mistake number five, the fifth one, is skipping the professional publishing steps. So there are the whole publishing process, whether you're traditional hybrid or self-publishing, is pretty much the same. Throughout everything, people are going through formatting their book, meeting a cover, registering ISBNs, getting a library of Congress number if they so choose, registering copyright if they so choose. But there are aspects of this that a lot of people do very quickly, like key metadata, so keywords, categories, search engine optimization, meaning like the keywords that you're putting in as your seven keywords on Amazon, KDP, and then also how you're incorporating those keywords into your book description, into any reviews that you might have some level of control over, meaning that someone messages you and says, I want to write a review, but I don't really know what to write. Can you write something for me and send it to me and then I'll upload it? And if you're doing that, uh knowing to include certain keywords that are high intent by shoppers that will love a book like yours helps a lot. And it's a longer term thing. It's not an immediate, all of a sudden you'll see this huge spike in sales because you changed a couple of keywords. But it over time, when all of those things are working together, and I'm actually doing a free class, I'll put the link in the episode notes with Jane Friedman on January 16th. It is a Zoom on how to best optimize, if you're an indie published, self-published author, how to best optimize your Amazon listing so that again, it's not like turning on a spigot and all of a sudden, whoo, you know, all this, all these sales come in. But it it can change you from going to from no sales to a few sales, and then the trickle effect of getting more review, getting more sales leads to more reviews, leads to more word of mouth, et cetera. So it's they're simple things to dial in. However, they're simple in concept. They're not necessarily simple to do. Like I had someone message me the other day, and she's like, this keyword thing is gonna be the end of me. Like it's so complicated and overwhelming. And it's not complicated, but it does feel overwhelming. So, in that class that I'm doing with Jane in January, I'm gonna walk you right through my process for identifying keywords and identifying the best air quotes, categories and writing an Amazon description that helps to remember, Amazon is the third largest search engine in the world behind Google and YouTube. And Pinterest is the fourth. So having that in your head and not just thinking, well, if I just write something and throw it up there, again, the rush to launch my book, people will just find it. They won't just find it. It's like putting a fabulous product in the mall of America and just putting it in there somewhere and thinking, well, people will find it because it's just that great. They won't they won't. They've got to know where to look. And they've got to, you've got to make sure that your book is where they're looking. So your interior files versus your ebook files, the file formats are different. Whether you're uploading, if you're uploading a paperback or a hardback to Amazon, the file is slightly different than it is from if you're uploading to Ingram Spark. It's not a big change, but lots of times people are like, why is my manuscript getting rejected from Ingram Spark? And it's because you've got to save it out as a very specific type of PDF. These little details do have a massive impact long-term on visibility and sales. So why not put the time in up front to make those things correct, to put your best foot forward? There's no such thing as perfect, but to do your best right from the very beginning. It is possible, it is more than possible to self-publish a book professionally. Most people just get overwhelmed by the how. It's like the sourdough example. If you'd like more help getting started, I have a free self-publishing starter kit and I have a$17 self-publishing action plan. If you like checklists, the action plan you will love. It's literally do this, then do this, then it's all the things that have to be done in order to self-publish properly. So if you're into sourdough, it's like what it might be a little bit different from some of the other recipes out there, but this is the recipe that I have used 76 plus times to publish my books, to publish other people's books, and that hundreds of authors have used themselves to publish their books. So I will put links to both of those in the episode notes. You can also find them at publish a profitable book.com forward slash work hyphen with hype hyphen Elizabeth or work dash with dash Elizabeth. They're all on that page. And if you want even more help from there with the exact step by step to doing each of those things, my course, publish the damn book already, walks you right through all of it, literally step by step. There's video walkthroughs, there are downloads, there are checkbook, check sheets, checklists, all those things. It includes my Art of Manuscript editing workshop, which will help you understand exactly how to go through this editing process, how to self-edit, how to hire an editor, when to use beta uh readers, et cetera, all the way through to okay, the book is live and available for purchase. It's in my hands, and it is comparable in quality to any New York Times bestselling book out there. So again, I'll put all the links to those things in the episode notes below. Keep your questions coming, and I will see you again next week.