Written By Shelly Anne Claire

Word Count 2917

The following blog posts’ purpose is to share my experiences with becoming an Australian author outside of writing the actual book. This is relevant to first-time authors and is everything I wish I knew before publishing. This post is to shed light on information I was forced to research and learn about on my own, which was quite difficult. Its’ purpose is to provide readers of this post, up and coming authors included, with beginner information for them to look further into. The information in this post is specific to my own personal journey and not all steps and tasks will be relevant or required of every author. Remember, everyone’s journey is different, and this is what worked for me.

Disclaimer – All of the information provided in this blog post is a retelling of my own personal experiences. This information is relevant to Australian Self-published Authors. I am by no means professional or knowledgeable enough to know absolutely everything, but I do know what worked for me. The purpose of this blog post is to hopefully help other new authors self-publish by sharing my own journey. The opinions stated and mentioned in this blog post are by no means meant to sway you in any one direction and are simply my feelings. Everyone will have a different journey and thoughts, the information in these posts is to be informative and not necessary guidance.

All contents in the blog post are accurate at the time of posting.

In the beginning there was…an enormous amount of stress.

Towards the end, there was a little less stress. We don’t talk about the middle…

Facing the fear of a Mountain untouched

Self-publishing is easily the most daunting and anxiety inducing process I have ever experienced. I thought making a doctor’s appointment was crippling, but little did my anxious potato-self know, my journey of stress was only just beginning. I knew it was going to be stressful, and expensive, but I didn’t fully understand just how much it would take out of me.

By the time my first book was written, I gathered the idea that for my publishing journey, a lot of it was going to be done alone and independently. It was the sacrifice I had to make in order to become published on my own terms. I didn’t have support and I was truly alone, but it wasn’t an impossible challenge. It was just a very difficult one.

I never wanted to be traditionally published, and I think a small part of me still feels like that. Not for the sense that I don’t like traditional publishing, but more from the point of view I never thought I was good enough. I never felt like an author. I felt like a fake. Somedays I still feel that way. I now know that feeling is associated with something called ‘Imposter Syndrome’, and it’s something a lot of authors experience.

Learning that made me feel validated. Seen. Heard. This feeling wasn’t just in my head but was a real thing people experienced and struggled with. Both indie authors and traditional authors.

When I learned about self-publishing and what it was, it gave me hope. Like a lot of authors in the book community, especially the online one, (bookstagram, booktok), I learned a lot about publishing through other indie authors who were using Amazon KPD to publish their books. I thought it was the greatest thing ever because it meant someone like me, who doesn’t have the funds and an entire team behind me, could have the ability to publish and become an author.

And so, with the little knowledge I had from social media, I went ahead and published my first book, A VAULT OF NINE LIVES, to Amazon KPD.

Climbing a Mountain with a starless sky

Aside from my immediate family, and some friends I worked with, no one brought my book. And I made myself feel okay with that. It wasn’t the greatest book. It had a cover designed by a friend, using two-character portraits I created. It was nothing fancy and was reasonably appealing. The story itself hadn’t been edited. A co-worker who was in university had edited it, and I did a half-hearted proofread. The story was meh, and I found what I had in my head didn’t translate on paper.

Knowing all this meant I of course didn’t expect it to be popular. It wasn’t until two months later, when I was looking at my sales report, that things started to change for me. I was making from anywhere between $0.50 – $1.00 per book sale (physical books). eBooks I made an extra couple of dollars from and that was mostly because I priced it a little higher than normal. I had convinced myself I was being greedy. My expectations were too high, and I needed to be grateful that anyone had even brought my book.

So, I stepped away and forced myself to appreciate the few sales I had made because I had made it. I was a published author, but something was still missing. It didn’t feel how I imagined; it didn’t look how I hoped. I thought things would change when I had the option to do a hardcover. But then nothing changed, and I realised I was changing myself for industry. Not the other way around.

I wanted a hardcover that I felt proud of. I wanted a book that I felt proud of. I wanted to make the money I felt I deserved. I wanted to tell the story how I wanted.

Mostly, I wanted to make my child self-proud. I wanted to give her something to look forward to. Something that she could grasp onto when her days were long, and dark and miserable. Something that climbed into the water with her and kept her afloat. Kept her world alight.

January 2021, I made the decision to pull A VAULT OF NINE LIVES from Amazon completely. There were a few reasons, mostly internalised emotional reasons but I wasn’t making the money I felt I deserved. I couldn’t create a book as beautiful and as special as ones I had read my whole and still have copies of.

I wanted to be someone’s special author. Favourite author. Even if I was also the reader. But after removing the book, my dream shattered a little bit.

And I let it. I stopped writing. I stopped talking about my book. I stopped feeling like an author.

I stopped being me.

Finding a star inside the Mountain itself

I faced my fear of being an author. I became an author. And then, I was nothing. A VAULT OF NINE LIVES sat empty on my computer. The few physical copies I had left were hidden, tucked away in a box. My little secret.

A year passed and I was once again left to twiddle my thumbs, venturing through the world without a real purpose. I don’t remember much about that year. The year of 2021. It was a forgotten memory. I could no longer picture it clearly in my head, but I could feel the ghost of its presence. Its lingering touch that scraped the walls of my mind every few months. As if it tried to tell me something. To whisper in the darkness that my mind had become.

…remember me…remember us…remember her…

Her. I had never forgotten about her. How could I? She was me then, and I am her now. I could feel the disappointment of my child-self at my cowardness. The anger. The hatred. The depression. The hope that had been shattered at our feet like glass. I felt her pain on top of my own.

It was agony.

How could I have betrayed her like that? How could I have spent a year giving this child so much hope, so much belief when the world had already taken so much from her, just to become the very thing she dreaded most. Her own enemy.

I had realised then what I had done. I’d walked away from her. I had given up on myself. Myself. When I remembered the pain of all the people in my life who gave up on me. No. I wasn’t going to do that. I wasn’t going to become the one thing I hated most. I was going to change. I was going to try again.

And so, I did. So, she did.

I learned Amazon KPD didn’t pay their indie authors what they deserved, and the creative authority was as limited, in my opinion as traditional publishing was. I had an image in my head of my book and this time, I was going to get it.

I spent the rest of 2021 researching, learning, educating, and finding myself. I asked myself what was more important to me as an author? Money? Creative control? Popularity? What? I couldn’t answer it for a long time because the question was the answer itself.

I hadn’t realised I’d started referring to myself as an author again for the longest time. But when I did, I knew then what I wanted. I wanted to be real. I wanted to be authentic. I wanted to write the stories I wanted, and I wanted to create the books I wanted. I wanted to design the book I wanted and make the money I felt was right. I wanted to be paid for my work.

The bonus part…I then got to share them with the world. With readers. With my friends and family.

With you.

With her.

With a new mission, a new drive, and an entirely new mindset I was ready to try again. This time, I was going to do myself Justice.

I was no longer climbing the mountain.

I was the mountain.

I was the star. I was the sky. I was the entire world, and the world was me.  

The Mountain. The Star. The Dreamer.

Fast forward to 2022 and the cogs were turning, wheels rolling, lightbulbs changed, and snacks purchased. I was ready to go hard.  

The first thing I did was open my manuscript, in the exact format and way it had been published. Scrolled to about halfway and deleted the second half of the book.

It was cleansing. Like getting a new haircut. Or changing the furniture in your room around. Even ghosting your friends and family, quitting your job, and moving to the other side of the planet with no plans, money, or idea what you’re doing.

That’s what I did. And just like that my Duology became a trilogy. I didn’t know what the future looked like. I didn’t know what I would become and how this second attempt would go but I was determined to see it through to the end.

From there, I saved the second half because it would now become book two and began a thorough edit. This edit alone took me four months. In-between that time of editing, I looked into hiring a professional editor.

Now that I had a sense of identity and who I was as an author, I opted to work with freelances, small businesses and people and companies who believed in the indie author. Who believed anything was truly possible. Eventually I found a freelance editor right here in Australia who checked all the boxes and more. I got in contact and before I knew it, I had an editor lined up.

Once I had was happy with my own personal edit, I handed the manuscript over to her and let her work her magic little fingers and help shape Audrey’s story into a story worth telling.

While that was happening, I began investigating cover artists, and marketing and what else I needed to do to become an author. Even if it meant I wasn’t popular and would never transition into a full-time author like so many who I look up to did – I was determined to be okay with that and any decision I made. I was going to be confident in myself and be confident in doing things differently.

After a while, and during the second round of editing I found my marketing team. And my gosh, did I hit the jackpot with them. They were based right in my home city and were a small team but a damn good one. From the first meeting I knew there was going to be a forever relationship built. We went through game plans, action plans, goals, hopes, dreams – you name it, we did it.

They helped me set up my social media, and without knowing, helped me grow more into the author I wanted to be. I felt good. I felt hopeful again, after so long of all ever living in doubt. I wasn’t afraid of the sunlight anymore and found myself opening my blinds. I was okay with working during the day instead of sleeping away.

I was changing and I loved it.

The next step, how was I going to publish? I didn’t want to go through Amazon KPD again, I knew it in my heart. I started looking into printing companies. Was there a printer out there that would work with independent authors? Publishers work with printers all the time, it had to be the same thing…right?

It was. I found my printing company about halfway into 2022. By that time, I was still going through editing rounds, was still working with marketing, and doing a lot of behind-the-scenes business to ensure legally, I was an author. (I won’t touch too much on this because there was so much but will dedicate a separate blog post for this topic.) Then the next issue was the cover art. What book cover did I want? I knew I wanted Audrey and Nova on the front cover, but I wanted it to tell their story without words. I also knew, and one thing I couldn’t have with my first publisher, was a secret cover beneath the dust jacket.

 I eventually settled on my tattoo artist to design and create the cover for A VAULT OF NINE LIVES, and from day one she was on board with it. Things were progressing and the year was almost over.

By October/November, I took control of my social media content creation, had a website being built/launched, a printing company beginning to finalise design, an edited book and the business and legal aspects sorted. During that time, I also created a small micro publisher, who is in essence my publisher. I made the decision there not to distribute my book, knowing fully well it would limit my marketing and entire readership. But at that stage, I was confident I was doing the right thing. I made more profit by being my won author, publisher, and distributor. I still feel confident.

Before I knew it, it was December 2022 and time was escaping me. The cover design was finalised, the printing company had begun production, the website was live and doing well, my social media – while small – was something that made me feel proud. My online store was live and ready to have the stock updated and shipping calculated.

And then December ended.

And January started.

It’s now January 12 and in one week, 8 days, A VAULT OF NINE LIVES will be released. I don’t expect it to sell out. In fact, I expect to sell maybe 10 copies max. Despite how small that is, and despite how many thousands of dollars I’ve invested to get to this point – I am so damn excited. That is ten people who want to read my book. Who believe in me!

Self-publishing is hard. It’s expensive. It takes a lot out of you emotionally, physically, mentally, financially, and sometimes, spiritually. But sitting here writing this blog post, I know it was the best thing I ever could have done. I have full control. I wrote the story I wanted, knowing it might not sell and knowing there might be more people who don’t want to read it than do. I had the cover I wanted made, and I published it differently to how other indie authors I’ve come into contact with have.

It feels good. It feels hopeful.

There’s that word again. Hope.

I feel it every time I think about how far I’ve come. I feel it every time I remember how hard these last two years are. I feel it every time I hear her whisper and giggle with excitement. She has another decade left before she reaches my age now, but I know that fourteen-year-old me is strong and stubborn enough to keep going.

Just like twenty-four-year-old me will do the same.

As will thirty-four-year-old me.

And fourty-four.

Fifty- four.

I will keep going and I will never stop. There will always be a younger version of me who never thought they’d see the night sky again. There will always be a younger version of me who thought they were going to drown alone in the sea.

Now, there is an older version of me who knows she will never be alone. There is someone in that water with her, and if she goes, they go together.

Be afraid to climb the mountain. Be afraid to fall. Be afraid to try again.

Just don’t let the fear stop you.

Until next month, thank you for reading.

Shelly Anne Claire