By: J.E.B. Mungall

As a self-published author, promoting my new novel Antiphon: Fire and Stone has been a challenging experience. I wanted to share some of the struggles I’m facing and how I’m attempting to deal with them.

1. Reaching the Right Audience—or an audience at all: One of the biggest challenges I’m facing is finding the right audience for my novel. With millions of books available on Amazon, it’s difficult to get Antiphon noticed by potential readers. I’m trying to use social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram to promote my book to specific groups of people who were interested in my genre. But it also seems like that’s what everybody else is doing.
2. Lack of Professional Reviews: Another challenge is the lack of professional book reviews. Many reviewers only review books that are traditionally published, making it difficult for self-published authors like myself to get their work reviewed. To overcome this, I reached out to book bloggers and asked them to review my book. Of course, there are some who seem almost predatory, eager to make a buck off of you. That’s fine, every worker is worth their wages and all. But when you’re desperate to have readers, you wonder if people are just trying to get justly compensated for time and effort, or if they’re taking advantage.
3. Marketing Budget: When you self-publish, you must fund your own marketing efforts. As a teacher, this means I have a meager budget to promote my book, which makes it difficult to reach a large audience. Amazon does offer cost-effective marketing strategies, but I’m not sure how well they work yet… There are other options I’ve yet to throw myself into like word-of-mouth marketing and collaborating with other authors to cross-promote each other’s books. I’m not particularly well-networked with authors. Most of my modest networking is in the realm of education.
4. Overcoming Stigma: Though more popular than ever, there is still a stigma surrounding self-published books. Many believe that self-published books are of lower quality than traditionally published books—and in some cases, they wouldn’t be wrong. Though, I believe I produced a high-quality book, with a professional cover design and well-edited content, I’m not sure how to project that confidence to sell Antiphon.

Self-publishing has been a challenging journey so far, but the rewards of having control over my book’s production and marketing will hopefully have made it all worth it. I look forward to writing the sequel and doing that which I love: telling stories!

If you like fantasy stories that are set in a realistic world where magic exists, but is rare and exceptional, try Antiphon: Fire and Stone!