Myth #1
There’s “oomph” in professional publishing that doesn’t exist when you self-publish”
Fact: The oomph isn’t for people like us.
Myth #2
Publishing Houses have tremendous PR and Marketing arms, and they’ll all be working for you.
Fact: No, they 100% totally won’t.
99% of the publicity I got for Faster Than Normal came from two actions: I hired a PR firm for the launch, and paid them out of my own pocket, and I reached out to media I knew personally. While publishing houses do have super-large PR and Marketing arms, they’re primarily reserved for major authors. President Obama’s memoirs? Every PR and advertising person will be on that. Peter Shankman’s book on ADHD? I’ll get one over-the-phone meeting with an outsourced PR person who’s also handling five other books at the same time. If you’re going to hire a PR firm to handle the outreach for your latest book, why shouldn’t you be reaping all the financial gain that comes when the book sells, instead of a small percentage of it?
Afraid to do your own PR? Check out Help a Reporter Out for potential PR leads, and hey, I even built a course to help you master the media on your own.
Myth #3
You can't do your own marketing for you book, you're not powerful enough.
Fact: You totally can because you totally are!
Every single piece of marketing for my latest book was done and paid for by me, and in the end, it was years of carefully cultivating my audience that allowed me to reach #1 in across all the Amazon categories in which I was listed. I’d worked for several months before the book launched, teasing it, promoting it, building the website for it, offering freebies if it was pre-ordered, and laser focusing on my audience to promote my book in such a way that it would blow up on launch day. The publisher didn’t do any of that for me.
Additionally, with email marketing services such as ConvertKit, and services like SmarterQueue and re-follow, there’s absolutely nothing stopping you from becoming a pure marketing machine. Again: Every single piece of marketing, from the press sheet to the email alerts to the behind the scenes bonus content, was all created by myself and the PR firm I hired for the launch.
Myth #4
Publishing Houses have the distribution capabilities, you don’t.
Fact: They do. But so do you.
My friend Hal Elrod created a literal movement with the publication of his