How to publish a book: The most important thing

Don’t screw this part up!

Photo by Maria Ionova on Unsplash

This is the preface to my revised book marketing guide, you can find the whole series on Medium or download the free PDF.

Publish a book with recognizable value…

When authors ask me about innovative ways to market their books, I usually tell them to focus on the basics: make sure their book is good, and it’s something people want to read. Make sure it’s got a nice cover, has been edited and formatted. Make sure the sales page has a killer description that hooks attention and creates desire to read the book, and make sure there are about a dozen reviews on it (positive or negative doesn’t matter so much as long as it’s balanced).

And most authors ignore me and start marketing anyway.

There’s a one-star review of this book on Amazon, and it basically says the author didn’t like my book because I suggest investing some money into making a good product — and because she hasn’t made any money with her books, she feels that’s bad advice. She’s right: if you spend money making your book into a nice product, you aren’t guaranteed to be successful.

But here’s the other thing: if you don’t spend money making your book into a nice product, your chances of failure will be much…