Before Will became a bestselling author of The Happiness Animal, a guide to exercising the five muscles of happiness health, he was a Fiverr buyer, like many of you. But thanks to tons of research, a lot of determination, and oh yes, Fiverr, Will was able to go from self-publishing novice to bestselling author. Check out his Fiverr story, below.
Thanks to Fiverr, I’ve found self-publishing more profitable than problematic. Rather than looking like an amateur, I’ve been able to source a polished cover, professional formatting, editing, and marketing, which have all been key enablers to breaking into the top 50 nonfiction books in the USA with a bestseller that was four years in the writing. Let me break down how the right Fiverr service providers took me from word to paperback.
‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’ is a preach rarely practiced…
If you want to self-publish anything other than an academic paper or textbook, you need an eye-catching cover. I regularly get people telling me how much they love the animals on my book’s cover. But how did I get from idea to illustration? A graphic designer based in the the UK – vikncharlie. I found her by browsing reviews of the top rated Fiverr sellers from the literally thousands of service providers in book covers. Vikncharlie already knew what the paperback size requirements were for my self-publishing platform based on the number of pages in my book and she also knew how that would translate into a kindle e-book cover. All up vikncharlie delivered three covers for The Happiness Animal–—paperback, Kindle, and audiobook—- all to spec requirements, the first time. I was so impressed with her design work that I employed vikncharlie again when I needed covers for my two subsequent books.
One size does not fit all
Whereas it is possible to use a word document as the source file for uploading the manuscript for paperback publication, this format does not fly for Kindle. I had no knowledge of how to convert my word document into a Kindle file, so time to re-enter Fiverr.com into my browser. Within minutes I found Hajath – entrepreneurs in India who specialize in book-related publishing work with an average rating of 4.95 out of 5 and almost 3000 reviews. I ordered their Gig for Kindle formatting conversion, uploaded my word document and within two days they’d provided me with a Kindle file with a clickable table of contents.
Let the record correct
The beauty of Amazon Kindle is that readers can highlight mistakes in real time. Amazon then relays these errors back to the the author i.e. me. So far about 20,000 people have read The Happiness Animal on Kindle so that’s 20,000 part-time editors’ eyes I’m able to leverage. Of those 20,000 reads so far seven mistakes have been flagged to me. The problem I face is that I don’t have the skills to edit the Kindle file so I can give my readers a more polished read. Fiverr and Hajath to the rescue again.
Pimp my read
OK so my book’s live on Amazon.com but no product is going to sell until people who like reading know it exists. Enter Fiverr and JimsGotWeb. Jim pimps himself by the description: promotion help for Indie authors. I ordered his Gig to publicize the free Kindle giveaway I ran with Amazon just after publication. Yes, it may sound counterintuitive to give something away that I’m trying to sell but the best way for people to find out about a new product is through people who already have that product. And the best way for me to get that product to as many people as possible as quickly as possible was to tell as many people as possible that they could get it for free for five days. Enter Jim – who posted details of my Amazon giveaway on forty websites used by reading groups. On the second day of the giveaway 7000 people downloaded The Happiness Animal skyrocketing it to number thirty in the US kindle chart. Now that is getting the word out there. Thank you Fiverr, Hajath, Vikncharlie and Jimsgotweb!
Are you a Fiverr community member whose real estate, publishing, blogging, fitness training or law business has improved with the addition of Fiverr services? E-mail us at community@fiverr.com to share your story, or comment below!
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