I made a lot of mistakes when I decided to self-publish Tempest. Mostly because rather than researching the heck out of how to do it first (like I do with most things), I just decided to jump in with both feet and pick it up as I go. I didn't do too badly, but there are still some things that would have gone much more smoothly had I thought them out ahead of time.

Don't set a public release date until you have finished revising/editing your work. My reason for doing this was to set a very public deadline and force myself to get the work done. It worked great to motivate me, and if I'd only done an ebook as originally planned, it would have been fine. Unfortunately, deciding to add a print copy set my delivery time line back – which leads to the next thing I should have done early...

Decide early what formats you're going to publish in. I originally planned to release Tempest only in ebook format. Then I discovered that the majority of my regular readers still prefer print books. Because those are the people most likely to help me get the word out, I impulsively decided to release print copies as well. It turns out that print takes a lot longer to format and get approved/ordered – so if you want to do a print release, plan well in advance. Give yourself a month to six weeks to format, upload, fix any issues, and order proof and sales copies when dealing with print publishing. Ebook publishing goes far more quickly – you can format and upload an ebook in less than a week.

Double-check your formatting and proofreading. My biggest mistake was switching the order of two chapters when I formatted Tempest for print, and then copying that error across all of my ebook formats. I caught it before the final print copy, but not before several e-copies had already sold. My plan for next time is to format and order a proof of the print copy first, read that carefully to mark and fix any mistakes, and then use that file as the basis for my ebook copies. I'm confident that will catch the majority of mistakes and make for a much cleaner release next time.

Order any print copies you plan to sell from your home at least one week ahead of the release date. My readers have been very patient in waiting for print copies to get here for signatures, but it's been a long wait.

Don't forget the small stuff. I really dropped the ball on this one. The print copy has a dedication in it, but I forgot to add it into the ebook copies altogether until I had to redo them because of the chapter switch. I'm still not entirely sure it made it into all copies. I completely dropped the ball on acknowledgments, though I did remember to give credit to my editor and cover artist. These are things that will be far better thought out and included as a matter of course in later works.

Be proactive getting review copies out. I offered 20 ebooks free for review, and had only one person accept it. Later, I heard that a lot of people simply hadn't been aware of the offer – it was listed on my web site and I mentioned it a few times, but I should have made a bigger point of getting the word out. I think doing that would have been very helpful in getting more initial reviews, so I'll be doing more of that next time, for sure.

I think those were my biggest mistakes for my first self-publishing experience, and hopefully my sharing them will help someone else not to make the same ones.

If you're self-published, please share with us the number one mistake you made with your first book, and if not, share the biggest mistake you've come across in a self-published book (no titles, please, and be nice about it).

Next week, I'll discuss my process for creating a print copy of a book.