March Featured Writer's Digest Article

5 Mistakes Writers Make (and How to Avoid Them) by Chuck Sambuchino

1. Thinking that your book will sell itself

I have five books published with Simon & Schuster and let me tell you: They do not walk off the shelves. I made the mistake of becoming complacent and thinking that because I had a huge publisher behind me that I didn't need to do much PR work to promote myself. In the words of Julia Roberts: “Big mistake. Huge.”

I watched my friend and author Becky Wicks work like a demon to promote her indie book Before He Was Famous and within 12 hours of it going live on Amazon it had sold nearly 500 copies. She worked her BUTT off for months prior building an audience, interacting on Twitter and Facebook and building a fan base from scratch. She rocks. It’s totally inspired me to do the same.

If you have written a book and put it on Amazon hoping for the best then good luck with that. If you’ve written a book for a major publisher and expected them to do the hard work for you — good luck with that. You need to act like an indie author — a determined one — if you want to make it in the world of publishing. 

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