Not Selling Pull Your Book Off the Shelf

Not Selling Pull Your Book Off the Shelf One of the great advantages of indie publishing is being in control of your book. Recently a reader contacted me, asking my opinion about publishers. He was republishing a book done in 2011 that had not done well, blaming it on the vanity press. As someone ever interested in deterring folks away from those entities, I took a look at the book in an effort to assist. The cover was the best part. Beautiful. But it declined from there. The writing was chock full of grammar issues. The writing wasnt fluid. It was a memoir of sorts and wrought with the word I. The blurb was minimal and likewise full of errors. The author had no website, but worse, had not taken advantage of the Author Central page on Amazon, a freebie that every author ought to have fleshed out. As much as I abhor vanity presses and their predatory nature, I saw where they had done just what was asked of them. This was all on the author. My suggestion? Pull the book. Take it down. It hadnt sold well, so there was about used book sales keeping it active in the BN and Amazon databases.   I told him: 1) Pull the book 2) Cancel dealings with that press 3) Rewrite the book 4) Get feedback from a critique group 5) Get feedback from an editor 6) Redesign the cover 7) Acquire new blurbs 8) Acquire testimonials from those who did like it 9) Study indie publishing 10) Hire someone to format the print and digital book (although I adore Joel Friedlanders book templates)   11) Get his own ISBNs, especially if he intends to write more books 12) Use CreateSpace for print on Amazon 13) Use IngramSpark for print on non-Amazon sites 14) Use Amazon KDP for ebook on Amazon 15) Use Draft2Digital for ebook on non-Amazon sites Dont worry, this author wont recognize himself here. I get a few of these every week, asking how to proceed after a vanity press deal has flopped. Im adamant about protecting peoples privacy, but I received enough questions on this topic to warrant this weeks editorial. If you think this is you, dont let it bug you. Trust me, you have ample companionship in this dilemma. Your job now is to learn from your failures and spin it into success. Thats why we fail in the first place: to take us a step closer to doing it well.