Indie authors, what aspect of self-publishing were you totally unprepared for? The more niche the better.

Mine was having to figure out the US tax forms on KDP and Google Play. Especially the latter - I've just ticked boxes by best guess and hoped for the best. I may get hauled off to San Quentin in future, who knows.

I'd dealt with publishing a book for someone else, so I was quite prepared. I didn't know that Amazon reviews are divided according to marketplace, so at the moment I've got one on amazon.co.uk, one on amazon.com and two on amazon.it. It would have been nice to have them all together.....

I was surprised that people actually bought my books. My research suggested that it was unlikely.

Also, although I wasn't expecting much, it still surprised me just how badly giveaways preformed.

Also, the absolutely unfair wording on the release form that Ingram Star wanted me to sign before it would let me release a book with the same ISBN as had been used by a different pod publishing platform surprised me. Making me responsible for any copyright issues that arose seems reasonable. Forcing me to take responsibility for ANY issue of any kind with the book is blatantly unreasonable. What if the issue was a printing error? Why do I have to take responsibility for that?

I didn't sign.

I didn't think that marketing would be so difficult (and expensive).

>2 JLCrellin: It's pretty ridiculous. For one of my books it looks like I have no reviews, but on the US market I have 22.

I have suggested an amalgamation in many emails.

The learning curve to the marketing side of things. When I published my first nonfiction book, I followed a ton of terrible advice that was (in hindsight) very geared towards fiction marketing.

>6 SkateGuard: I feel your pain

I didn't expect that everyone would assume my book was YA and romance/romantasy just because I'm a woman, but that's apparently a thing.

I also didn't realize that if you have a man and woman on the cover, even if the man is a non-human monster, people will assume it's a romance.

I've found that even when I say "dark adult fantasy" directly to people's faces, they nod and don't really hear. Like one woman who wanted my book for her preteen granddaughter (assuming it's because of the pretty cover) and then was later confused at why there were adult things in it like torture and graphic violence.

I didn't realize that there would be so many cost issues with a chonkier book. 491 pages is expensive to print, ship, edit etc. Putting it on sale is kind of a joke, because I've already got to keep it at just above the minimum allowed price to be competitive with other books in the genre.

Oh the strange thing I discovered after switching to Ingram Spark from Kindle was that I have no control over the price of my books on Amazon. Arg. Still trying to figure out how to run ebook promotions when I can't change the price!

>4 LeonStevens: +1

Totally unprepared for marketing and how to do it, or how hard it was going to be.

>4 LeonStevens: I absolutely despise the marketing process.

>8 LyonsPen: YES TO ALL OF THIS. People assume the same of my book, despite me explaining that it is a DARK fantasy. I'm not quite sure people understand what "dark" means. So refreshing to hear I'm not alone in this.

Absolute 100% agree on the problems and pitfalls of marketing. eBook giveaway has netted exactly ONE "currently reading" and (so far) ZERO reviews of any kind. Thank goodness it didn't cost me any actual money!

To the good- learning how to create and format my own covers. I am not artistic, other than having a good "color sense" and concept of consistency (as my books are a series, I want them to be easy to "relate" to one another visually).

>10 BryanCole: Absolutely true! I feel the same. I am a writer, not a marketing specialist.
But I need to learn everything about marketing strategies, otherwise I would remain the only one reader of all my books.