Nothing Is Finished Until Everything Is Finished - guest post by @JoelGoldman1 #marketing

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THANKS TO THE Masquerade Crew for inviting me to share some thoughts on indie marketing. This is a great time to be a writer, especially an indie writer. Self-publishing gives us the chance to live the writer’s dream but if you don’t know how to market your books the dream may turn into a nightmare.

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Joel Goldman




Joel Goldman's Amazon Author Page

Between 2002 and 2010, Kensington Publishing Co. published eight of my books. Early in 2011, Kensington reverted the rights to me for seven of them. I wanted to “go indie” but I didn’t know anything about self-publishing except that Joe Konrath claimed he was making a crap load of money doing it. To get ready, I spent six months learning as much as I could from experts in the field before I began self-publishing my backlist in June 2011.

Since then, I’ve sold over 125,000 copies of my backlist, had several Amazon #1 bestsellers, recouped all of my start up costs and made enough money to fund my self-publishing business operations without investing any additional capital. I released my first self-published original, Stone Cold, on November 20, 2012 and have sold over 1200 copies in less than a month. I don’t say this to brag (well, maybe a little). I say it so that you can have confidence in what I’m about to tell you.

Success in this marketplace requires the same commitment and perseverance required for success in any other endeavor. There are no shortcuts. Just because you can self-publish doesn’t mean that you should or that you’ll become a bestselling author. If you’re not willing to give it all you’ve got, this isn’t for you.

This [series] is a reflection on one of my basic rules of life. Know what you don’t know and if you need to know it, learn it from people who do. That’s what I did. It’s not the last word or the best word on the subject. It’s what’s worked for me.

Nothing Is Finished Until Everything Is Finished


Being a successful commercial writer, i.e., someone who earns more selling their books than they do buying other people’s books (okay, there are other definitions but I like this one), requires that you treat your writing career like a business. If you want to be a profitable self-publisher, you have to do the same things a traditional publisher does:

  • Vet your manuscript to make it the best it can be
  • Package it like a pro
  • Develop and execute a business plan for marketing your book


Stay tuned for the above topics in the following posts of this series.