Today’s self-publishing research shout out goes to JA Huss’s free marketing vlog course, THE PERFECT YEAR.

I don’t have any experience with self publishing, so I can’t yet vouch for the efficacy of her methods. But these videos were clear, organized, and user friendly. She takes a ton of information that might otherwise overwhelm a newb like myself, and breaks it down into easily digestible parts. Definitely a good place to start, especially when trying to get a hold of all the different avenues of promotion.

Also, she curses like a sailor and has plenty of attitude. Which? By the time I got to the video where she started calling people c*nty b*tches all over the place, I wanted to take her out for margaritas and become BFFs.

This course is free, informative, and she doles out real information, instead of those irritating-as-hell videos where the person is always about to tell you the key thing, and 50 seconds worth of information is buried in 45 minutes of bullshit.

A toast: Whoop-whoop, J.A!

One of my first stops for learning about self publishing was the k-boards (https://www.kboards.com/). They say the big draw of self publishing is being able to control all the aspects of publication — cover, formatting, hiring editors, promotion, etc.

HAHAHA, I am not a control freak, and this did not appeal. If memory serves, I think I slowly backed away, closed the browser, and didn’t go back until I had a strong drink in hand.

Likewise, Kboards is a smorgasbord of everyone talking about all these various aspects, and it can get pretty overwhelming to newbs like myself pretty quick.

*Never the less, she persisted* as the saying goes, and so will you. It’s worth it. There are some pretty big names who frequent the place. For example, here’s a HM Ward thread that’s cool and useful.

Also, if you are looking for me over there, I’m finally getting enough of a hold of things to start asking questions. Behold, my one thread to date.

Also, if you are reading this looking to self-publish yourself (and good God, Lemon, why would you bother reading if you weren’t?) Check this out: I was so excited by the HM Ward thread that I shouted out a Thank You on twitter.

Even though she’s a bestseller, she tweeted back less than 48 hours later AND had a perfect tie-in response promoting something she was working on. I was a little amazeballs to see her in action, hand selling stuff in tweet form, even to a dinky account like mine. Definitely putting her strategy in my back pocket when it comes time for me to (ugh!) self promote.

Here’s a link in which Jenny Lawson, AKA The Bloggess, talks about facebook reach, and how links within a post may decrease reach.

I’ve heard other people talking about FB reach as well, and general consensus seems to be it isn’t the powerhouse advertiser it used to be — at least not for free promotion.

Guess it makes sense if FB wants to squeeze a buck from you for advertising your thing (whatever your thing is) they don’t want you to be able to get as great a reach for free. Anyway, just another consideration as I gear up.

xo, T