Self Publishing Success Stories with Author Martin Crosbie

About this video

Dale interviews Martin Crosbie, born in the Highlands of Scotland and living outside Vancouver, whose debut My Temporary Life was called an Amazon success story and who wrote How I Sold 30,000 Ebooks on Amazon’s Kindle. Crosbie returned to writing in his 40s after courses and mentoring from Ed Griffin, collected 150 rejected query letters which he posted on his fridge and office walls, and got encouragement from early readers asking for more. Researching self-publishing in 2011, he found other authors unusually willing to share what worked; Facebook writers groups told him his content was good but his cover and synopsis needed work. After fixing his presentation, a KDP Select free promotion in early 2012, helped by timing and the algorithms of the day, pushed My Temporary Life to #4 overall in Amazon’s paid store. He explains Kindle Scout: submit to Kindle Press, campaign 30 days for reader nominations, editors then decide; winning brought a small advance and a publishing contract for his mystery The Dead List, with good first-year results and a weaker second year. He also describes founding Bookdoggy.com to offer cheaper book promotion than sites like BookBub and to surface undiscovered books, and trying many genres before settling on crime/mystery.

Key takeaways

• Do not publish on content alone: Crosbie credits his breakthrough to other authors bluntly telling him to fix a weak cover and unenticing synopsis before promoting.
• Find an inner circle of writers, primarily through Facebook writers/genre groups and resources like Indies Unlimited; he says he would not have succeeded without them.
• He endured 150 traditional-publishing query rejections, displayed them as motivation, and self-published in 2011; a 2012 KDP Select free promotion drove My Temporary Life to #4 overall paid on Amazon.
• Kindle Scout was a 30-day nomination campaign judged finally by Kindle Press editors; even an unsuccessful campaign could help because nominators were notified when the book later launched.
• His closing advice, quoting mentor Ed Griffin, is to keep writing — the best marketing is another great book — listen carefully to advice but discard what you disagree with, because nobody knows your story better than you.

Episode details: published November 3, 2017 · 36:54 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dale L. Roberts’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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