To be honest, my self-publishing history doesn't start in 2019. When I turned eighteen I decided to publish one of my manuscript online. Et voilà, people started buying my book and rating it quite good. However, eighteen-year-old me decided to take it down. I knew I just wanted to write stories when I was a child, maybe six or seven years old. I wrote a story about a haunted house and found out there are plenty of stories out there about haunted houses. I then became more creative with what I was writing. So what happened when I was eighteen and stopped selling my book because it sold so well? I was afraid. I was young, I just started studying and I felt like I can't handle the attention and tax stuff and so on. Now those things aren't a problem anymore. 

1) The Cover

The cover might be more important than your actual manuscript. Why? Because I've seen many people buy books because of the cover and I've seen many people reject (really good) books because of  their shitty cover. Of course, it depends on taste, but try to design an individual and appealing cover that makes sense for your genre. It should catch the reader's attention. 

2) Editing and Proofreading

Take your time to edit and proofread your manuscript. Of course, it can always happen that spelling errors remain. That even happens with books edited by publishing houses. But it shouldn't be the standard to have errors everywhere. Yes, in the beginning you don't have the money to invest in an editor but you can let friends help you (in case you told them you're writing. I haven't told many people  do).

3) Marketing

You can have an awesomely interesting story and a stunning cover but you still need readers. And the most important thing you have to do besides writing is marketing. Get your books out there and let people know you've published a few. You can ask bloggers to review them or promote them on social media. It sounds easy but it's really hard if you're not already famous on any platform...