The following is a guest post from author Shane Pacelli, author of The Teacher That Didn’t Teach and The Teacher That Taught Too Much. I hope you all enjoy his tips for publishing success! He’s very personable, and I encourage all of you to follow him on Twitter and check out his books.
To Agent, or not to Agent
I was honored when Jessica asked me to write a guest blog post on her blog. I will admit, this is my first time ever posting something in someone else’s blog. This past Tuesday, we were talking about whether or not to get a literary agent for your book(s) on #indiechat. For those of you who don’t know what #indiechat is, it’s a chat that we do on Twitter every Tuesday night at 9PM Eastern time using the hash tag #indiechat. We have wonderful conversations about various topics that concern independent authors. It generally produces a lot of great side discussions. I started joining these chats about four or five weeks ago and I highly recommend them to any independent author.
My exact tweet that night that intrigued Jessica was, “I’ve been selling fairly well without an agent. My main focus right now is writing my next book. #indiechat”. I am a children’s author with two chapter books that I self-published. My first book, The Teacher That Didn’t Teach, came out in July 2012 (It was finished in July 2011, but it took me a long time to find out how to self-publish the way I wanted it) and my second book, The Teacher That Taught Too Much came out in September 2012. I definitely searched for a literary agent and a publisher. I sent out many, many query letters looking for both an agent and/or a publisher that was interested in my works. I received many rejections. I also didn’t hear back from many of the people I sent letters to. I had an offer from a smaller publisher, but declined it because they wanted to charge what I thought was way too much for my 140-page children’s book. If I want someone to publish my book, I want them to do it on my terms.
It was at that point that I decided to stop worrying about querying literary agents and publishers. Can they do a great job with my book and sell it better than I am? I’m sure they can. The reason I stopped was because I have been selling, between the two books, over 50 copies on kindle every month since December 2012. My highest monthly total I believe was 98. Is that a ton? No. Do I think it’s a lot? Absolutely. My thought was since I’m selling much more books than I expected, I don’t want to spend my valuable time trying to find an agent or publisher. If someone finds me and wants to take me on and the terms work, great! If not, I’m not going to lose sleep over it.
Ever since I was a student in sixth grade, I have wanted to be an elementary school teacher. Yes, you read that correctly. I never thought in a million years I’d be an author. The idea for my first book came to me one April day in 2011 and I went with it. I am currently an aide in an elementary school looking for a full-time teaching position. I spend a lot of time looking for teaching jobs. I’d rather spend my time looking for my dream job than looking for a publisher. I also want to spend my time working on the third book in the series because I love writing.
What have I done to sell “so many” books each month? I am on an extremely tight budget. Although I love writing and am extremely proud of the books I have written, I really don’t want to spend a lot of money to get it published or on advertising. I paid an illustrator to illustrate my covers for me since I can’t draw to save my life. Other than that, I wrote, formatted, and edited my books all by myself. There are a few grammatical errors in my books, but for the most part, I don’t think it’s too bad. It could definitely be better. I should spend money on an editor, but they are very expensive! I have not paid for any advertisement and I honestly have no idea how I can consistently sell 50+ books a month. I follow many, many authors on Twitter. I try to retweet their tweets randomly. I try to interact with them to get ideas. I started participating in #indiechat a few weeks ago. Depending on how many books you are looking to sell, you may not have to spend hundreds of dollars on advertising. You can get the word out on Twitter. I highly recommend that you follow and interact with other authors. You can also send your books out to get reviewed by reviewers. They don’t ask for a fee. They just ask for a copy of your book. I also obsess about my books to anyone I can. I hope that when I tell people about my books that it doesn’t come across as bragging. I’m just incredibly proud of my hard work, as any author should be.
How to Get Your Book Out There for FREE
- Have a Twitter account
- Follow authors and randomly retweet their tweets about books.
- Online under the link to your book, check out the “customers who bought this item also bought…” section and discreetly mention your book while reviewing similar books.
- Tweet a link to your book, but not all of the time. I’d recommend maybe once every 20 tweets.
- Tweet your ideas for future books and ask for suggestions
- Tweet useful information for your fellow author and reader followers
- Start a blog, have a link to that blog in your Twitter.
- If your book is strictly on Amazon, join KDP select. You can offer your book to customers for free up to 5 days in a 90-day period. That will definitely bring some exposure to your book and help get the word out.
All of those tips are very time consuming, but FREE! Always remember that you worked very hard on your book. People work very hard for their money. My books are $7.99 for the hard copy and 99 cents for the kindle version. I don’t want my customers paying too much for my work. At this point, I’m selling my books to get exposure and to see if anything special can come of it. I’m not in this for money. At this point, I can’t make anywhere near a living off of my book sales. I’m quite content with where I am though. I hope you found at least some of the information useful. Thank you so much for reading this post. Remember to follow me on Twitter: @pacelli_shane. Feel free to email me with any comments, questions, or suggestions: spacelli36@gmail.com. Happy writing!
About the author:
Shane
Pacelli was born in Albany, New York on July 8, 1987. He is currently a
Computer Aide at an elementary school in hopes of becoming an
elementary school teacher. He graduated with his Bachelor’s degree from
SUNY Potsdam in May 2009 where he majored in Childhood Education. In
December 2010, Shane completed his Master’s program at The College of
Saint Rose. His first book, “The Teacher That Didn’t Teach”, is a
fictional account of what hopefully never happens in a school setting.
That novel has nothing to do with Shane’s personal teaching style. His
second novel is the opposite end of the spectrum, “The Teacher That
Taught Too Much”.
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