4 years ago, I self-published a book called “Behind the Smile: Insecurities, Doubts, Growth and Finding Inner Peace”.
This is how I described the book when I published it:
Ages 18–22 are a very formative time period in our human lives. As I experienced them, I wrote down my thoughts in the form of poems. I touch on many topics such as college, trust, depression, love and finding inner mental peace.
By being honest, raw and detailing my own battle with fighting depression and low self esteem, I hope that my book can be a good, informative read and can also serve as an inspiration to anyone who is going through a low-point/tough period in their life to to find inspiration from my story and realize no matter how hard of a time you’re going through, never give up on yourself.
Basically, it was a collection of poems on the ups and downs of my journey 18–22.
What I learned:
1) Self-publishing is not that hard
Amazon has a service called “Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing” which is honestly is very easy to follow the steps of and self-publish a book.
For most new things in life, you might need to go to Google or YouTube and watch/read many videos/articles to understand the process. I really didn’t have to do those things because it was Amazon’s self-publishing platform is pretty easy to follow in terms of creating a book cover, submitting your book for review, etc.
2) Understand why you’re doing it
For me, I published the book for several reasons.
1) Help guide any current college student on the ups and downs of life there with my experience (i.e. I would’ve loved to have this book when I was starting college to know there are ups and downs and I’m not alone in that).
2) I was in a relationship and I wanted my girlfriend at the time to understand this part of my past because she had only met me with when my mental health was largely in a lot better of a place. This is an interesting point for people that have dealt with mental health issues — especially when you meet someone new or get into a relationship with someone new where they don’t know your past, it’s hard to explain to them all the things you’ve been through. For me, this was kind of my way of explaining to her that I had this mental health past so she knew more about my past.
3) I was thinking about legacy and death. A cousin of mine had passed away from a brain tumor at 13 and I was in a tough place. I thought about his legacy and what we all learned from him and I thought about myself. I was in a mental state where I was thinking to myself, if for some reason, I die tomorrow, what will people have to remember me? For me, publishing this book gave me peace, if some freak accident were to happen and I died, people would have this book to remember me by.
These were my main motivating factors.
If you’re main motivating factor is to sell books, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend the self-publishing route, unless you have a big community/following. I didn’t have a huge following (I think a lot of people were surprised I even dealt with mental health issues). My following was really just my friends and personal network.
I think a publisher could probably do a lot better job of marketing and selling more copies. Obviously, that route is tougher in terms of you need to submit your book to publishers and hope one of them says yes, but if that’s your motivating factor, I wouldn’t necessarily, in my experience, recommend the self-publishing route.
3) Price your book smartly
So, I priced my book at $9.99 and made $3.84 a book based on fees Amazon makes.
For me, this was fine, like I said, I wasn’t trying to become a millionaire of this book, this book was more for personal legacy.
However, understand the royalty structure so you’re not surprised.
4) You Never Know Who You’ll Impact
One of the coolest things that happened as a result of publishing this was 2 individuals who started college after I graduated learned of the book from friends of mine, read it, and thanked me for helping them with creating perspective on the college experience.
They said that they had struggled socially too, and they found comfort that they weren’t alone in struggling.
Never in my wildest dreams could I imagine 2 people who went to college after I did who I never interacted in my time in college with would grab a copy of the book and let me know it helped them with their journey.
That’s the power of going after your dreams. You never know what can happen.
5) Doing something entrepreneurial in your young age is against the norm and you will face judgment (good and bad)
I think big thing to understand with moves like this, is you will get judgment.
I had plenty of people be like, are you thinking this through? You’re 22, you’re young in your professional business career. Is this the best idea to admit to the world — you’ve dealt with depression?
At the end of the day, for me, it is what it is. I didn’t apply to jobs during that time period, but I’m sure if someone looked me up and did some digging on my Instagram account, they would’ve found the post of me putting it up.
If someone’s going to hate me for trying to destigmatize and help people that deal with mental health problems, they’ve got more problems of their own that they probably need to work on. I understand that’s a privileged perspective to have since I had a job, but that’s really my feeling.
I hope this helps provide perspective from my self-publishing experience, if there are any aspects you’d want me to further talk about or address, let me know!
Also, realize you’ll get a ton of respect and support. Many of my friends were inspired by me and respected me putting myself out there in order to help destigmatize.