How to Sell Books
These days, no matter how your book is published—legacy, hybrid or self-published—authors have to know how to sell books. Unless you are famous already such that your book is guaranteed to sell well, you can’t even rely on a mainstream publisher to market your book for you, and if you want your book to sell well, you can’t leave learning how to sell books to when your book is finished. If you’ve been following this series on how to write a novel, you might wonder why I’m talking about this now, before I’ve even got to the technical details of writing and publishing. The answer is that if you want your book to sell well, you need to think about it right at the start. Who are you writing for? The first thing you need to be clear on for your writing is who you are writing for. Are you…
What’s most useful writing courses or mentors?
Have you considered looking at writing courses or a writing mentor or coach? When I started writing my first novel, Lethal Inheritance, I just wrote. As expected, my first draft wasn’t very good – actually it was terrible. At some point during the next draft I realized that I didn’t really know what made good writing. I knew it when I read it, but I hadn’t analyzed it since High School 35 years ago – eek, that’s showing my age! Writing Courses I looked into doing a writing course. What was I going to get for my (considerable) financial investment? Most course curriculums covered things like writing articles, newspaper reports, short stories and countless exercises to help you structure the perfect sentence, paragraph etc. Novel writing was just one part of these courses, often not a very big part, and how to get published was usually a little module tacked…
The Value of Your Book
Last week I read two awesome books, The Tuscan Child by Rhys Bowen and The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell by Robert Dugoni, (Both in Kindle Unlimited) and it made me realise that though not everyone can write books that are that good, we can all write a book that is good for us, and we can all be helped to make our books the best they can possibly be. Some of us, with the right kind of help, may even find that we can write a book that is every bit as good as these two and the many others like them. I’m publishing a couple I’d put in this category later this year – look out for A Thread so Fine and The Awakening of Russell Henderson. What’s great about awesome books isn’t just their story – which is every bit as interesting and exciting as the best genre fiction – but the…
7 Mistakes to Avoid When Self-publishing
If you’re thinking about self-publishing, you can avoid costly mistakes by learning what mistakes to avoid when self-publishing from those who’ve tread the path before you – people like me. The only good thing about mistakes is that we can learn from them, but that’s only if we realise we’ve made a mistake, examine what we did wrong and make sure we don’t repeat the mistake, but it’s less costly in time, money and embarrasment if we avoid the mistakes entirely. So this post is designed to help you avoid common traps in self-publishing. Writing a novel? Feeling overwhelmed? Get new insight and inspiration with my FREE Novel Revision Checklist. DOWNLOAD IT NOW. You’ll also get weekly articles on writing sent to your inbox. My self-publishing story in a nutshell My self-publishing journey began in 2010 with a short story that I published in ebook form while my agent was trying…
How much does it cost to publish a book?
There is no single answer to the question, “How much does it cost to publish a book?” This is not only because there are different options for publishing a book, but also because books need different amounts of work—and therefore time and money—to bring them to a publishable standard. Add to that you have varying degrees of quality in the finished product. Unfortunately paying more does not guarantee better quality. Writing a novel? Feeling overwhelmed? Get new insight and inspiration with my FREE Novel Revision Checklist. DOWNLOAD IT NOW. You’ll also get weekly articles on writing sent to your inbox. Publishing options Legacy publishing Mainstream or legacy publishing is selective. It requires you to submit your manuscript to literary agents and publishers, then they pay the costs of publishing and give you royalties from the sales. It doesn’t cost you anything to publish this way, not even for any further…
What Does Book Editing Involve?
You may know that your book needs editing before publishing – I certainly hope so – but do you know the answer to the question, ‘What does book editing involve?’ You may not know what having your book edited actually means. I’ve seen books by authors who swear that they have had their books edited, but all they’ve had done is a proofread! A PROOFREAD IS NOT AN EDIT Having your book edited isn’t just finding someone to check that there aren’t mistakes in grammar and punctuation. The story, characterisation, dialogue, world building and so on has to be checked as well to make sure there are no plot holes and continuity problems. And (unless you’re an experienced author who writes excellent prose) the prose needs to be worked on to make sure that it reads well – to make sure your book doesn’t look like something a teenager might…
OMG! My Book is Terrible!
Writing a novel? Feeling overwhelmed? Get new insight and inspiration with my FREE Novel Revision Checklist. DOWNLOAD IT NOW. You’ll also get weekly articles on writing sent to your inbox. I remember the moment I handed the manuscript of my first book over to my husband for his feedback. I asked him to give me the truth while hoping he’d like it and only say nice things. But that would have been too easy! I hovered as he read it, watching his face for any expression. My heart leapt when he laughed and plummeted when he frowned. I kept wanting to ask him what he thought of it, but I was scared to because he said nothing – not a single thing as he read through. I knew then that the feedback wouldn’t be good. I was right. The best thing he said was, “Well, I finished it.” ‘OMG,’ I…
How to Deal with Criticism of Your Book
Last week I did a post on the necessity of getting feedback on your book from beta readers and/or professional editors in a developmental edit, but what if you get negative feedback or criticism? How to deal with criticism of your book? Feedback you take as criticism can make you very disappointed, depressed, even devastated. I totally understand this because I’ve written a couple of books that I’ve archived, and probably will never finish, because the feedback from my beta readers indicated that the books had serious flaws, ones I couldn’t fix easily, ones that would take more time to fix than I was prepared to put in on the project. Getting that kind of feedback is always disappointing, but we need to be prepared for it because the aim of having it read by a beta reader or developmental editor is that they point out the flaws in our…
What is a Beta Reader? And Why You Need One
Have you heard the term “beta reader”? If so, you might be wondering: what is a beta reader? Answer: Every author needs feedback from people who read their book BEFORE it’s published, and those people are called beta readers. (I guess the author is the alpha reader.) Why do you need beta readers? When you write a book mostly you know what you’re trying to say, but that doesn’t mean that you’ve actually said it, or that you’ve said it in a way that someone else can understand. When you read it back, you know what it means, because you wrote it, and you can never read it the way someone who doesn’t already know what it’s saying will read it. It’s quite possible that what you’ve written does not come across to your readers the way you thought it would. There is only one way to find out if…
Identifying and Deepening Themes in Fiction Writing
In his book On Writing, Stephen King mentions identifying your themes as part of the author’s tasks at the second-draft stage of fiction writing. “I’m asking myself, What’s it all about, Stevie … what can I do to make those underlying concerns even clearer? What I want most is resonance, something that will linger a little while. ” I highly recommend this book to anyone writing novels. I read it early in my writing career and found it a big help. His analogy of writing a story as akin to an archaeologist uncovering bones rang true to me as far as my own process goes, so I always remember that as well as this advice on the importance of identifying and drawing out your themes. Deep and meaningful, or not? Not all books are deep and meaningful. We don’t all want to read War and Peace and their like. Sometimes…