This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
Last year, 18 million self-published titles were bought by readers, to a value of £300 million. In 2014, self-publishing has continued to boom with the DIY approach to books gaining more writers and readers than ever before. We know that many of you are amongst the writers who have or are hoping to self-publish so, at your request, we’ve invited Bibliocrunch CEO Miral Sattar to share her expertise in this brand new and very educational self-publishing series.
Have a subject you’re especially keen to see Miral cover? Leave your suggestions in the comments!
by Miral Sattar 
Congratulations, you crossed that finish line! You wrote a book! Your manuscript is ready and you’ve made the decision to self-publish. Hooray! Because the book publishing industry is one of the last industries to go digital, it’s going through a quick transition. As a result of this shift, authors have access to the resources to publish high-quality books through self-publishing. Launching a book is like launching a startup. It’s your baby. Putting together a quality book involves not just writing it, but getting it edited, then formatted, designing a cover, and having a marketing strategy and business plan around it.
However, before you get into the mechanics, the first thing you probably want to do as an author is define your GOALS. Sure, everyone wants his or her book on Oprah, but it helps to sit down and think about how you will measure your book success and ask yourself the following questions. Are you looking to get more readers? Or are you looking to sell tons and tons of books? Do you want to use the book as a giveaway to supplement a business product? Are you looking for positive reviews from Kirkus or Publishers Weekly?
You should probably think about whether you want a print book, ebook, or both. With the various tools (to come in a future post in this series) it’s pretty straightforward to do both with print-on-demand services and digital book platforms. 
If you’re looking to just get readers you can get 10s of thousands of readers to read your book if you participate in various free book promotions. If you’re looking make money you would implement a different strategy to sell your book. If you run a business and are an expert in particular topic like programming, or design, you can give the book away for free to anyone who purchases your services. If you’re looking for prestige then a positive review from Kirkus or Publisher’s Weekly will help you accomplish that.
I had an author who originally wanted to just publish her family story and just wanted to print copies for her relatives. Later, she got excited and was upset that her book wasn’t selling even though that wasn’t an expectation.
Remember, getting someone to read your book, whether it’s traditional or self-published is hard. I attended a book summit at the Library of Congress in 2012 and it was mentioned that the average traditional book sells 250 copies a year and the average self-published book sells 150 copies a year.
Setting your goals helps you define your success and manage your expectations. It’s really important to define your goals ahead of time and stick to them.
ABOUT MIRAL SATTAR:
Miral Sattar is CEO of Bibliocrunch, a platform that matches writers with trusted, vetted book publishing professionals. Miral loves books and loves helping authors fulfill their publishing dream. Her company Bibliocrunch has helped numerous authors hit the Amazon best-seller list.