We’re very excited with our decision to self-publish, but because we didn’t know we had other options when we started this process, we thought we had to try and find any agent and go the traditional publishing route. Because of this, some could say that we’ve wasted time and lost money by not publishing our first book sooner. By the time we’ve completed everything and published our book, it’ll be over two years since we started this endeavor. And while we endured a lot of heartache and struggles, we wouldn’t trade our experience for an earlier publication date, because we have learned so much during this process. So, this is for all you aspiring authors out there.  Learn from our mistakes, so you don’t have to waste time trying to find an agent or publishing house and you can move on to self-publishing your book right away. This is just our advice to you. In no way do we know everything.

Wrapping up what we’ve learned, we only have two more pieces of advice for you. They are both very different from each other but important.

1. Start saving money right away.
Maybe you’re a saver, maybe you’re not, but our advice to you is to start saving ASAP. Self-publishing is not cheap. There’s your book cover, editing, blog tours, query services, writers associations, P.O. boxes, website domains, and all that other stuff I didn’t mention.  You have to pay for everything up front and don’t get paid until later. And with that, you don’t know how much you’re going to make, so any money saved can be helpful.
If you start early, you don’t have to save much either. Between the two of us, we put away $25 a week for about five months and saved over $500. Saving money isn’t something we learned from trying to find a literary agent, but if we had started saving way back in 2012 when we began this adventure, we would have saved almost $3000 by now!

Now there are two of us so we are able to save $25 a week, but even if you can save $25 every two weeks (on payday), it will still add up.

2. Rejection
As with any form of art, you’re in a subjective business, and it is statistically impossible for everyone to like your work. And there is nothing more heartbreaking than your first rejection. Even though you knows it’s going to come and you’ve prepared yourself mentally, it still hurts. And it’s not as if rejection ever gets easier, but you get used to it and learn to accept it. You also realize that it’s not personal. The more you hear “no,” the more you come to see that it honestly is not personal.
And the “nice” thing about trying to find an agent or publisher is, everyone gets rejected. Okay, almost everyone. If we were, let’s say, Miley Cyrus, and we wrote a book, it wouldn’t take us too long to find an agent or publisher, because regardless of what I wrote, it’s going to sell.  But if you’re an everyday average Jane, like us, you’re going to be rejected. And you’re going to be rejected multiple times.
So, will that first one star review hurt? Ohhhh yeah, of course! But getting our query letter rejected numerous times has definitely built up our armor some, and as long as all our reviews aren’t negative, we’ll be fine. Eventually…