Mistakes I’ve Made as an Indie Author and How I Learned From Them

Find out what mistakes I made and how I learned to build my career, book award news, and see some more indie reads

As an Indie Author, it’s inevitable to make a mistake or two, because the route of self-publishing is multifaceted and takes time to learn.

I am positive that when most writers decide to go the route of self-publishing, they aren’t expecting that they’ll need to learn:

• How to conduct market research

• How to navigate social media as an author

• Where to find alpha, beta, and ARC readers

• How to publish the book to a platform like Amazon, Kobo Books, or Google Play Books

• Where to find affordable editing

• Knowing if they should try to make their own cover or hire an affordable cover designer

• Keyword research

• Target audience research

• Building an author website

• How to market their book

The list feels endless, but the truth is, this is what it takes to help make your book successful.

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If you are new to my work, here is a little background about me.

I started my writing career in 2014 and since then I’ve made a ton of mistakes. But the good thing is, I made the effort to learn from them and continue on. Because the truth is, learning self-publishing isn’t easy.

The publishing industry isn’t easy.

There are nearly 5,000 books alone that are published on Amazon each day. So imagine that number across all the platforms if you decide to publish to Draft2Digital or just any other platform. The competition is tough, especially when your book keeps getting shuffled down the list.

Now, I don’t mean to shout these numbers out to scare you. (Seriously, I’m not.)

I’m simply trying to make the point that so many writers want to publish their books. And for the ones who decide to self-publish, it’s inevitable that mistakes will be made. The point is to learn from them and move on.

Here are the major mistakes I made throughout my career and what I learned from them.

Overspending to publish

In the beginning, I knew nothing about publishing.

I had a book and I wanted to publish it. My husband found me a service called CreateSpace (now owned by Amazon KDP) and after paying $3,000, I had a book published on Amazon.

Now this $3,000 I spent paid for:

• Cover Design

• Grammatical and Developmental Editing

• Creating a book description

• Formatting

• Uploading it to Amazon

All in all, I got a good product and I was happy with it.

However, paying three grand for every book I published wasn’t sustainable.

So…what did I learn?

I learned quickly that just because you spend tons of money on services to publish your book doesn’t mean that it will bring you book sales.

If I was going to make a career for myself as an author I was either going to need to go the traditional publishing route or I needed to learn the self-publishing process and industry.

Now, thankfully I connected with other indie authors on X who showed me tools and ways I could publish a book at a low cost. And the best part was that I would still be publishing quality books.

Over time, I learned how to:

• Create my own covers

• How to find Alpha, Beta, and ARC readers

• How to upload my book to platforms like Amazon and more

• How to format my book for free using Reedsy.com

• How to find keywords and work them into a book description of 250 words or less

• How to find quality editors at an affordable price

All I needed to do was slow down and take the time to learn what I needed and I could have saved myself a ton of money.

Thankfully, so many people are self-publishing now that there is tons of information out there to teach you all this stuff.

Waited too long to build my author platform

At the beginning of my career, I made an author Facebook page, posted a few posts about my first book, and then shortly afterward published my first book.

What didn’t I have?

• A website

• Posts built up over time on social media

• A following

By some stroke of luck, I managed to have 250 copies of my book Kale Stone: An Outliers Tale go out by word of mouth. But then, I never sold another copy and I ended up with 11 reviews. Most of which were from friends.

So there I was wondering where I went wrong and unaware of how I could fix it.

So, what did I learn?

Building a platform for yourself is crucial to how well your book will do.

Why?

Because if you don’t take time to start building an audience for yourself and awareness for your work, no one will know that it’s there.

So what did I do?

• My husband built me a website kayla-hicks.com

• I began growing a following on social media and after four and half years I have- X 39.2k followers, Facebook 421, Instagram 606, Threads 1,020k followers, Medium 843

• I began talking about my book from the time I started writing it to build momentum

• I networked and collaborated with other authors

• I made a newsletter and now have 250 subscribers

• I have some of my books in schools and libraries

• I give back to my community as an author in any way I can (donating to schools, giveaways, and more)

• Established relationships with bloggers and book reviewers

Doing so made a huge difference for my platform and led me to start having a reader following, which is especially surprising given the fact that I am a multi-genre author.

If you haven’t started on your author platform, now is the time.

Thought that having book sales and gathering reviews would be easy

In the beginning, I was hopeful that friends and family would purchase my books and tell others about them. In turn, I would gather reviews and more people would buy my books.

This was not the case.

After I published my first book, I stalked it. Checked it several times a day for sales stats, and checked it weekly for any new reviews. And — let me tell you, it can be downright disappointing when nothing happens.

People I knew would ask how my book was doing and I would simply smile and say it was doing fine, when internally I was wondering what I was doing wrong.

So, what did I learn?

In order to get book sales and reviews, you need to put in the time and effort because your book will not magically become an overnight hit.

So, I began researching how to get reviews for your books. Why? When a book has reviews, it’s social proof that your book with worth the reader’s time and money. And once a book has fifty reviews, it has a better chance of being seen by readers and possibly purchased.

From the research I did, I learned:

• You need to research book bloggers and reviewers that pair with your book, follow them on social media, interact with their content months before your book release, and then follow their directions to submit it for review

• You need to make a marketing plan for at least six months before the release and follow it

• You need to do market and keyword research for your genre and target audience to help you craft marketing content and a book description that will help readers find you

• It’s important to have a small ask at the back of the book asking the reader to leave a review on Goodreads or wherever they bought the book, and if it’s in an eBook, provide a link to make it easier

• Each time you receive a book review, post it on social media (use the social proof to help yourself)

• Look for book clubs who may be interested in your book

• Put copies of your book in Free Little Libraries and ask them to post a photo on social media and tag you

• Make your book free a day after release and tell your alpha and beta readers about it so they can snag a copy and leave a validated book review on Amazon

There are tons of ways to get the word out there about your book. And while these ways aren’t guaranteed to get you reviews, they highly increase your chances of receiving one.

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Next Generation Indie Book Awards

A few months ago, I took a chance after O’Cyrus of The Indie Authors Lounge, and my husband urged me to enter some of my books into writing award contests.

I ended up entering two of my books in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards 2025 and lo and behold, Secrets They Never Told was named a finalist in the category of YOUNG NEW ADULT (FICTION) (17 YEARS AND UP).

I couldn’t be more honored to have received this. Secrets They Never Told is one of my books I feel carries such a strong message and story and I feel like it’s finally gotten the recognition it deserves.

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Indie Reads

Julia Brighton is twenty and fresh out of college when she pulls into the sleepy town of Heywood, New Hampshire. The locals soon learn that Julia’s the new Writing Center Administrator at the high school, a position she accepts with both relief and regret. After all, she turned down a prestigious graduate program at Harvard after a debilitating breakup, her mountain of student debt looms large on the horizon, and her parents still aren’t speaking to her after blaming her for her brother’s untimely death.
It’s easy for Julia to dive into the rhythms and routines at Heywood High. And then, amid those rhythms and routines comes eighteen-year-old Caden McCaffrey, a popular senior boy who proves distressingly adept at disrupting everything. Stunned by Caden’s intellect, maturity, and fierce protection of a bullied student in his class, Julia finds herself drawn to him in concerning ways. Caden is, after all, a student at her school. A chasm of ethical proportions separates them.
But as Julia tutors him throughout the semester, he slowly reveals himself to her. The fact that he also recently lost his brother. How he’s found solace in a strong yet simple faith. And “The Fabulous Miss B”, as the students call her, finds her romantic heart – raised on Katharine Hepburn and Jane Austen – fast approaching a cliff.
Caden could burn to ashes everything Julia has worked toward...or he could ignite a fiery confidence within her that lights her way to a life of significance.

Six months ago, Vince saved Sage’s life, then disappeared without a word. Today, he’s back, and all she can think about is how much she wants to kill him...until she walks into her office and finds an actual dead body.
Vince spent his career with the U.S. Marshals trying to stay off the radar. Then Sage stumbled into his safe house living room. Since then, everything he’s done is to protect her.
With the grand opening of Sage's spa just weeks away and her construction site now a crime scene, she's desperate to find answers. Unfortunately, the only one who can help is the man she swore she'd never let get close again.
Bonded by safe house nights they both wish they could forget, Sage and Vince struggle to ignore the past while searching for the killer. When a second body is found, they must decide who they’re more at risk from: the killer or each other.

The needle buzzed. The nightmare began.

Strapped to a gurney, Edsel watched in horror as they started to tattoo him bright red from the tips of his toes to the top of his head. No piece of skin would be left unmarked.

The Ink.

They were over-confident; he escaped. Only to be chased across the ravaged city as he tried to get home to Kathy before it was too late.

She was dead.

Kathy. Dear sweet Kathy. The only beautiful thing left in a world gone rogue after The Lethargy almost obliterated humanity. They’d taken her; taken everything away from him.

He would have his revenge.

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