More gruelling than a month-long marathon across a hundred deserts, with nought to drink but flat, hot Fanta. That's what National Novel Writing Month feels like at times. Once the first day's excitement is over, the reality of the challenge hits home. 2,000-plus words a day is a lot to get down, and come the end of the month you'll likely have wrists like soggy twiglets. However, if you've done your job you'll also have a rough first draft that's ready to be polished into the Next Big Novel.
But how to make sure you finish on time? Well, pretty much every blog out there will give you a 'top ten tips', but it's actually rather simple. Here's what you do.
PLAN Most blogs will tell you, don't make alternative plans to go out - give yourself maybe one evening a week to get bladdered with your mates, but stick to your program the rest of the time. Well, that's one school of thinking, but I find my best work flows when I'm pissed up. So I say go out and enjoy yourself, then down some coffee and get ready for five hours of action! When you wake up the next morning, drooling into your keyboard, you'll probably have 15,000 words of absolute genius that Tolstoy would be proud of.
NO DISTRACTIONS Switch off your modem and hide in a room with no other distractions - no phone, no TV, no wife/husband, certainly no bloody cats. Make a hot drink and grab a bottle of water, and plough your way through it. If your mind starts to wander, try stabbing yourself in the thigh with a biro. Your brain will associate daydreaming with pain and stay fully focused at all times.
REWARDS Have a YumYum or something when you're done each evening, but only if you reach your target word count. Otherwise, spank yourself with a piece of 2x4, while screaming "I'm a bad girl/boy!"
If you follow this advice, you might just make it. Congratulations! Time to settle in for some rewriting!
Monday, 31 October 2011
Tuesday, 18 October 2011
Publish your Kindle Store ebook Part Seven: Social Networking and promotion
Well, the first major hurdle has been passed and Crack is now available to buy on Amazon UK. Of course, I didn't realise that VAT is added onto the price yu set, so Crack actually costs £1.09 instead of 95p. Buggeration. Still, you can change the price through the Amazon Dashboard at any time, so no worries.
Now it's time to sit back and chortle as the millions roll in. Which sadly might take a while as I sold an incredible two copies on the first day. This is the biggest problem with self-publishing: you're responsible for all your own marketing, and if you don't promote your book, you'll barely afford a Greggs pastie with your earnings.
First Step: Pester friends into buying
This is the easiest bit of marketing. Get on your Facebook, Twitter etc. accounts and let your friends know that your book's out, and they should bloody well buy a copy. Right now. Not only that, they should tell all of their friends (or at least the ones that own Kindles), retweet or post on their own Facebook pages, and generally help to spread the good word.
Whether you ask politely or threaten them with nipple-twists, make sure you get as many people as possible to post up links and a quick bit of blurb.
The more sales you get, the higher you rise up Amazon's ranking and the more likely you are to enter the site's advertising - you know, the 'people who checked this out also looked at this' stuff. That's the real gold right there. Once you start attracting serious clicks, you'll find your sales gather momentum and your job is done.
Go forth my little birds!
If you're reading this, you must be a smart, cool and handsome/gorgeous person. If you decide to check out Crack and you like it, please tell your friends about it - I will love you forever.
See, I asked nicely - no nipple tweaks here...
Now it's time to sit back and chortle as the millions roll in. Which sadly might take a while as I sold an incredible two copies on the first day. This is the biggest problem with self-publishing: you're responsible for all your own marketing, and if you don't promote your book, you'll barely afford a Greggs pastie with your earnings.
First Step: Pester friends into buying
This is the easiest bit of marketing. Get on your Facebook, Twitter etc. accounts and let your friends know that your book's out, and they should bloody well buy a copy. Right now. Not only that, they should tell all of their friends (or at least the ones that own Kindles), retweet or post on their own Facebook pages, and generally help to spread the good word.
Whether you ask politely or threaten them with nipple-twists, make sure you get as many people as possible to post up links and a quick bit of blurb.
The more sales you get, the higher you rise up Amazon's ranking and the more likely you are to enter the site's advertising - you know, the 'people who checked this out also looked at this' stuff. That's the real gold right there. Once you start attracting serious clicks, you'll find your sales gather momentum and your job is done.
Go forth my little birds!
If you're reading this, you must be a smart, cool and handsome/gorgeous person. If you decide to check out Crack and you like it, please tell your friends about it - I will love you forever.
See, I asked nicely - no nipple tweaks here...
Sunday, 16 October 2011
Publish your Kindle Store ebook: Published!
Well, it's been emotional. Right now I'm logged into the Kindle Direct Publishing site (using my normal Amazon logon deets), about to submit Crack to the fountain of untold wealth that is the Kindle Store.
Let's get it up there
If this is your first time publishing on the Kindle store, you'll need to click a 'user details incomplete' message in the top right corner and fill in your address and how you want to gets your cash moneys - you can be paid by cheque (not 'check' as the Yanks would have it) every time you make $100, or EFT when you raise $10 - you'll need your IBAN and BIC numbers for this, which can be found on your statements.
Once that's done, go to the dashboard and hit 'add a new book' on the bookshelf. Wahhhh, exciting!
More forms??
Okaaaay, after waiting bloody ages for the page to load, I see it's another big ol' form. Shocker.
Right, name is easy, but then comes the description. This is the bit you need to think long and hard about, as it'll play a huge part in swaying potential readers to buy your book. Make it juicy, keep it succinct, and big up your book without sounding like an egotistical mentalist.
Also, I've included some bonus content at the back of Crack (that sounds wrong somehow), as an extra incentive to buy - a making of article, interview, sneak peek of my first book etc. I've made a quick note of this in the description.
The rest is fairly obvious - choose two best categories to help fans of your genre to find the book, etc. You can also upload your cover, and then the book itself!
You should then (hopefully) get a message saying 'Upload and conversion successful'.
It'll cost ya
Not time for a beer just yet though, cos you've still got to set the price.
If you want 70% royalties you'll have to price the book between $2.99 and $200. If you want to charge less, you can only get 35% royalties. However, there are loads of stories out there of authors who sold very few books at $2.99, lowered their price to 99 cents, then sold thousands every month. If people are even vaguely interested in your chosen genre, they're likely to pick up a book for less than a quid.
I'm selling Crack for $1.50, or 95p, because that's how I roll y'all.
Done and done
That's it! Amazon will publish your book within 24 hours, and then you can enter the murky world of marketing (i.e. begging people to buy your book).
See you next time kiddies, time for that beer...
UPDATE: Crack can now be purchased at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com
Let's get it up there
If this is your first time publishing on the Kindle store, you'll need to click a 'user details incomplete' message in the top right corner and fill in your address and how you want to gets your cash moneys - you can be paid by cheque (not 'check' as the Yanks would have it) every time you make $100, or EFT when you raise $10 - you'll need your IBAN and BIC numbers for this, which can be found on your statements.
Once that's done, go to the dashboard and hit 'add a new book' on the bookshelf. Wahhhh, exciting!
More forms??
Okaaaay, after waiting bloody ages for the page to load, I see it's another big ol' form. Shocker.
Right, name is easy, but then comes the description. This is the bit you need to think long and hard about, as it'll play a huge part in swaying potential readers to buy your book. Make it juicy, keep it succinct, and big up your book without sounding like an egotistical mentalist.
Also, I've included some bonus content at the back of Crack (that sounds wrong somehow), as an extra incentive to buy - a making of article, interview, sneak peek of my first book etc. I've made a quick note of this in the description.
The rest is fairly obvious - choose two best categories to help fans of your genre to find the book, etc. You can also upload your cover, and then the book itself!
You should then (hopefully) get a message saying 'Upload and conversion successful'.
It'll cost ya
Not time for a beer just yet though, cos you've still got to set the price.
If you want 70% royalties you'll have to price the book between $2.99 and $200. If you want to charge less, you can only get 35% royalties. However, there are loads of stories out there of authors who sold very few books at $2.99, lowered their price to 99 cents, then sold thousands every month. If people are even vaguely interested in your chosen genre, they're likely to pick up a book for less than a quid.
I'm selling Crack for $1.50, or 95p, because that's how I roll y'all.
Done and done
That's it! Amazon will publish your book within 24 hours, and then you can enter the murky world of marketing (i.e. begging people to buy your book).
See you next time kiddies, time for that beer...
UPDATE: Crack can now be purchased at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com
Saturday, 10 September 2011
Marketing your book with no cash, contacts or help
Since Bat Boy was published a couple of months back, I've been wracking my brains on how to promote the damn thing. I seem to be stuck in a marketing limbo. Bat Boy was published by an independent publishing house which doesn't have a budget for promoting their titles, so the responsibility lies squarely on my own shoulders. Unfortunately my own marketing budget consists of a plastic container full of 5p pieces.
Browse the web and there are tons of websites that are happy to review and promote indie ebooks, but Bat Boy is paperback only - sending out review copies is bloody expensive, so I have to be really selective. But the big boys (regional newspapers and national mags) almost exclusively review the 'big name' paperbacks, sent in by the major publishers. Short of stalking Richard and Judy, I'm a bit stumped on how to get decent coverage. I've tried all the same, but have experienced Torres levels of success so far.
I've contacted and done interviews with local papers, but need more coverage to start selling copies. Even my charity appeal, donating 25% of my royalties to the RNIB, doesn't seem to be helping. So, has anyone out there had a paperback published and managed to successfully promote it, on a tiny budget?
Browse the web and there are tons of websites that are happy to review and promote indie ebooks, but Bat Boy is paperback only - sending out review copies is bloody expensive, so I have to be really selective. But the big boys (regional newspapers and national mags) almost exclusively review the 'big name' paperbacks, sent in by the major publishers. Short of stalking Richard and Judy, I'm a bit stumped on how to get decent coverage. I've tried all the same, but have experienced Torres levels of success so far.
I've contacted and done interviews with local papers, but need more coverage to start selling copies. Even my charity appeal, donating 25% of my royalties to the RNIB, doesn't seem to be helping. So, has anyone out there had a paperback published and managed to successfully promote it, on a tiny budget?
Wednesday, 22 June 2011
Good Bookshops, R.I.P.
Once upon a time, I used to love going to bookshops. To a geek child like me, they were better than any sweet shop - a million different adventures, all fresh and new and featuring that great 'new book' smell.
But when I walked into my local chain store yesterday, that feeling was long gone. What greeted me could be summed up by the following categories:
> Inane crime 'thrillers', where a bland serial killer murders people for no real reason and has some random callsign, like leaving a packet of Skips on each body. The killer is tracked down in an inept fashion by a grizzled detective who drinks, smokes, takes drugs and beats small dogs with a cane.
> Autobiographies of 17-year-old footballers, celebrities I've never heard of, and people who should have died decades ago.
> Cook books. Millions of sodding cook books.
> Chicklit. I've admittedly never fully read a chicklit book, and have read some highly entertaining chapters from writers on sites such as Authonomy, but the ones that line the bestsellers shelves just look eye-gougingly awful.
Now I get my books from the library, where titles from lesser-known authors can often be found. The only problem is, sniff them all you want, they don't have that new book smell any more...
But when I walked into my local chain store yesterday, that feeling was long gone. What greeted me could be summed up by the following categories:
> Inane crime 'thrillers', where a bland serial killer murders people for no real reason and has some random callsign, like leaving a packet of Skips on each body. The killer is tracked down in an inept fashion by a grizzled detective who drinks, smokes, takes drugs and beats small dogs with a cane.
> Autobiographies of 17-year-old footballers, celebrities I've never heard of, and people who should have died decades ago.
> Cook books. Millions of sodding cook books.
> Chicklit. I've admittedly never fully read a chicklit book, and have read some highly entertaining chapters from writers on sites such as Authonomy, but the ones that line the bestsellers shelves just look eye-gougingly awful.
Now I get my books from the library, where titles from lesser-known authors can often be found. The only problem is, sniff them all you want, they don't have that new book smell any more...
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