THE DOS AND DON’TS OF PUBLISHING YOUR OWN MYSTERY NOVEL
Having written and published three cozy mystery books in the last year, I’ve had the good fortune of receiving a lot of feedback from readers. My latest book is Running from Arrows: A Running Store Mystery. Although it can be read as a stand-alone, it’s the follow-up to summer’s Running from Scissors. This last November also saw the release of Slay Bells, the successful first entry in my Christmas Village Mystery series. The feedback I’ve received from these titles, combined with my own research and a modicum of common sense, has provided me with a set of golden rules that every self-publishing and small press author should follow.
1. DO: Use professional editing software to help improve all elements of your manuscript, such as flow, syntax, and word choice. I use Autocrit. DO: Utilize the service of a professional editor. It can be a local English professor or someone who proofreads/edits for a living. Your best friend will not cut it. DON’T: Assume you know everything about everything and think that just because you’ve read your manuscript through three or even five times that you’ve caught everything you need to catch. You won’t, but your readers will, and they’ll mention it in reviews. I know this from experience. Even Stephen King still uses a proofreader/editor who eliminates about 10% of every manuscript he writes. I’m not suggesting anything so radical for your own book, but if you’re putting your work in the marketplace to compete against King, or James Patterson, or (insert name of well-known author in same genre you write in), then you need to do your best to compete at their level. The readers you share deserve as much.
2. DON’T: Assume you’re a wiz with Canva or Photoshop and cobble together your own cover. You might be impressed with the result but readers will not be. DO: Seek out a professional cover artist. There are some wonderful services available that offer professional artists experienced in creating breathtaking covers. I recommend EbookLaunch, 99Designs, Damonza, or any sort of smaller companies that offer great designs. If you’re not planning a series then you might check out SelfPubBookCovers dot com for great deals on premade standalone covers.
3. DO: Enjoy marketing your book and letting people know it exists. Participate in blog tours, engage in social media, submit for BookBub Deals (but don’t be too disappointed when they tell you no; they say no a lot more than they say yes), and spend whatever amount you’re comfortable with on Amazon and BookBub ads (you control the budget). DON’T: Spam every page you’re on (including your own social media pages) with posts about your book. If you look desperate or pushy, you and your book will be seen as amateurish.
4. DON’T: Spend enormous amounts of money on book marketing sites that promise the world. If you don’t see them recommended by authors more successful than you, they probably don’t deliver on their promises. I’m speaking from experience when I say that services that promise to tweet or e-mail an ad of your book to thousands of people sound better than they are. They are not cons, per se, but the ads do not result in heavy sales or reviews. I suspect this is because most of those thousands of people receiving the ad are authors themselves also trying to market their books. DO: Ask yourself where YOU go to learn about or purchase books. That will tell you where you need to focus your advertising efforts. If you are not a BookBub member, join now. Not only will you get great e-book deals sent to you daily, but you can’t lose money on a featured deal with them, or a featured New Release e-mail. You CAN lose money running ads with them if you’re not smart about it.
5. DON’T: Blow your budget on marketing just one book. DO: The best marketing you can do is to put more books out. If one takes off readers will find the others and purchase them. If you want to write a series, you’ll notice sales picking up as more books come out in the series. When you have a handful of books, pick one (the first in a series, or the one that’s most marketable if they’re all stand-alones) and reduce the price on it, run free or 99 cent deals on it, and focus a large part of your marketing on THAT book. You might also put that book on all ebook platforms (not just Amazon) to find new readers. Right now, all my books are Amazon-exclusive so I can benefit from the 70% royalty structure. But when I have more books out in a given series, I’ll discount the first book, put it on the 35% royalty structure, and place it up on Kobo, Smashwords, etc., in the hopes that those readers will dribble over to the other Amazon-only books.
I hope you’ve found these tips helpful. Research is never a bad thing, so keep an eye out for what is working for other authors. And don’t be afraid to be innovative and come up with new ways to let the world know you’re there. Above all else, keep writing. The more you write the better you will get, the more product you’ll have and the more readers you’ll gain. That is the best can’t-miss strategy of them all!
My Favorite Supporting Characters
Coco is the older of the two poodles. She is feisty, expressive and the brains behind any poodle hijinks that occur in my home. While we had white toy poodles when I was growing up, Coco was the first dog I owned as an adult and she was a dark chocolate when I first got her. However, over time her coat has lightened as she’s aged. She isn’t the most beautiful dog when it comes down to comparing her against the breed standard listed by the American Kennel Club (AKC). Her coat is soft and fine, rather than thick and curly. 
The breeder docked her tail a little too short, so she has a short stubby tail, rather than the longer tails which are often seen on the breed. Coco would never win a beauty contest, but she has a certain…something that makes her stand out from the crowd. She loves to cuddle and I firmly believe that Coco thinks humans were put on this earth to scratch her belly. She will prostrate herself at your feet and boldly use her paws to maneuver your hand to the area which will give her the greatest pleasure. Visitors beware, Coco, like Snickers in the series, has the uncanny habit of being able to stick her tongue in your mouth, if you’re not careful. Over the years, I’ve learned to keep my mouth firmly closed around her.
Cash is the younger of the two poodles. I got him to keep Coco company while I was at work. At first, Coco didn’t seem to like Cash very much. Twice, I would have sworn she deliberately led him into traffic, and she absolutely refused to make eye contact with him for the first two months we had him. However, after a while he grew on her and they became good friends (as long as he remembers who’s the boss).
Cash is eager to please and has a real zeal for life that makes me laugh. He isn’t afraid to leap before looking, even if that means leaping into a bush full of painful burrs (yeah, that took hours for me to remove with tweezers). Cash isn’t a cuddler, but he is willing to endure public humiliation without complaint.
The Perfect Town for a Cozy Mystery
At the beginning of this century, I became a regular visitor and got to know the town a bit better when my mother went to live in the local nursing home. I discovered the townspeople’s sense of community: a sense of responsibility and caring towards each other that I hadn’t known in the huge city where I grew up. When I visited, I pushed my mother’s wheelchair along the peaceful banks of the Grand River, greeting other walkers we passed, and at a nearby diner where we ate lunch, the waitress always remembered my mother’s order.
Bigfoot Believers
If my teenagers were YouTube stars living on a mountain, the idea of teenagers having a Bigfoot tracking show made total sense (to me). Thus the hit YouTube channel, Bigfoot Trackers, was born. And because of the popularity of this channel (in NC-17), these teens were big stars, including their twenty-something leader. He taught them the ins and outs of living off the grid while using the grid via the internet to become famous trekkers. (And they have parents pushing them into the big money world of endorsements — from outfitter equipment to power bars to cameras — but that’s another part of the story).
How I Write (aka Where my books hang out before they come to me)
Jokes, Dad Jokes, Puns, and Lyrics as Humor. These make me laugh as I’m writing the book. All my humor is spontaneous. Sometimes that spontaneity happened months ago and I wrote it down and sometimes it comes to me as I’m writing. Typically, the use, or misuse, of parts of music lyrics as dialogue hits me on the spot. Same for most of the puns. Fortunately for the readers, my editor is awesome and she removes the humor attempts that don’t make it across the finish line.
Recently, someone asked me what I liked to do in my spare time. I almost snorted coffee through my nose. Spare time? What’s that?
Then they sold the property and I had to find a new home. My mother, who lives in Florida, “gave” me the old family farm which she’d recently inherited. Believe me, it wasn’t much of a gift. To say the house is something of a “handyman special” would be a drastic understatement. Last winter, we fixed up the barn well enough to keep my horse and three other former boarders from the Krolls’ place. The house? Working on it. In the meantime, I’m staying in town with Pete Adams, who happens to be the chief of police…and the man I’m in love with.