Pimping Indie Guide

Introduction

If you're serious about earning a living as a writer, you need to build an author platform. There are no two ways about it: the Internet is filled with the carcasses of the dreams of would-be writers and wannabe publishing millionaires.

These people started out really excited about the prospect of writing books and publishing them on the Amazon Kindle marketplace. They read all sorts of stories of housewives who became overnight millionaires because of a book they published.

These writers then put in the time, effort, and energy to put together a great book. They polished the book. They spent a lot of time editing it and getting feedback from friends and family. They looked for the best cover.

Once everything is perfect, they uploaded it to their Amazon account and published it on the Amazon Kindle marketplace, and then they waited and waited, and waited.

Nothing happened. No sales. Absolutely no love from the Internet.

What went wrong?

These authors committed the most common mistake that rookie writers make: they published and they prayed.

I'm sorry to be the one to break this to you, but the "publish and pray" strategy doesn't work. In fact, it's not even a strategy.

If you want to earn a living as a professional independent writer, you have to start viewing writing for money as a profession, not a hobby. Accordingly, you have to be both systematic and methodical in promoting yourself as a brand.

This is where lots of writers get it wrong. Most don't even think of book promotions. The ones that do think they have to promote their book specifically.

Wrong.

The right answer? You have to promote yourself as the author. Promote yourself as a brand.

Once you get a fan base going, then you would have a steady base of people who would almost instinctively buy your book the moment you publish them online. This is how the game works. Sadly, most people are clueless to this. This is the reason why the vast majority of the books on Amazon Kindle are simply lying there. They're not selling. They're just filling up digital space.

If you want to be a successful indie writer, you need to pimp yourself right. You need to build a powerful author platform.

An author platform is simply your brand. It tells people what to expect. It projects a certain level of authority and credibility. If you do this right, people will seek you out and not the other way around.