Denis Ledoux's Blog, page 34

Best Ways to Promote Your Book

Once you have diligently followed the suggestions for publishing your book and your book is published, it’s time to enjoy being a “famous author” and start promoting your book.

Two ways to do that that come readily to mind are doing a book launch party and securing as many readings of your memoir as possible in a public setting.

Book Launch

In this video, Best Ways to Promote Your Book, I discuss how most of the people I work with are self-publishers. As independently published authors, the...

Write to the End: Complete Your Book Manuscript

A Suggestion on How to Complete Your Book Manuscript

May I present a surprise blocking solution to complete your book manuscript: don’t write just now.

Learn how to continue writing to the end.

Here is an example of what I mean: one summer when I was serious about gardening, I went away on a late June trip. It was a fun vacation with my family, but the trip fell at a time when the garden seriously needed daily weeding, hoeing, and watering. As you can imagine, when I returned home, I found...

Sending Your Self-Published Book Out Into the World

You’ve been writing for a long while. Your book has been edited professionally. You are ready to get your independently-published book into your readers’ hands. Let’s explore and execute options for packaging and printing your self-published memoir.

 

Since I have no experience with a commercial publishing house and almost none of the writers I have worked with since 1988 have gone to one, I do not include information here about publishing your memoir via a publishing house as an option—alt...

Sending Your Independently-Published Book Out Into the World

You’ve been writing for a long while. Your book has been edited professionally. You are ready to get your independently-published book into your readers’ hands. Let’s explore and execute options for packaging and printing your memoir. 

 

Since I have no experience with a commercial publishing house and almost none of the writers I have worked with since 1988 have gone to one, I do not include information here about publishing your memoir via a publishing house as an option—although much of...

How to Choose a Title for A Memoir

It’s time to choose a title for a memoir

Sometimes writers ask me to help them choose a title for a memoir. Because I have worked with them, usually as their coach or editor and know their story, I am in a position to brainstorm with them to come up with a decent —and even great—title.

There are many possibilities available to a writer, but one thing is certain: a writer must choose a title for a memoir strategically.  It is a marketing opportunity.

Here are some guidelines I use to generat...

You Need Formal Research

Interviewing family members and friends is clearly a form of research, but interviews alone are usually not enough to give your stories the depth they require. For that, you need formal research. 

Perhaps you already know enough about the period in which you or an ancestor ( a parent, grandparent) lived to write about it convincingly and fully. It is more likely, however, that you have only a sketchy knowledge of the context of your story.

Your awareness, for instance, may be based on a...

Memoir Writing Deadline: How To Set Yours

How to set a memoir writing deadline

As in most endeavors in life, when you write a memoir as an open-ended task without any end in sight, you are likely to procrastinate and extend the project. What happens when you do not set a memoir writing deadline is, next year or the year after that, you are still writing, revising, and polishing your lifestory. You know how it is: you want to get it right.

There’s a precept that states what gets dated, gets done—and it invariably gets done more quic...

Three Ways to Find Great Podcast Opportunities

Three Ways to Find Great Podcast Opportunities

If you’re in business, you need to market yourself. There’s no two ways about it.

If people don’t know you exist, they don’t know what products and services you offer.

Regardless of whether you sell books, coaching and/or consulting services, widgets or done for you programs, people have to hear about you.

Another reality is this; the more of an expert people see you as, the more you stand apart from the competition.

One of the best ways to do...

Distance Learning: A Precious Opportunity

Distance learning is an alternative

For most emerging writers, enrolling in a distance learning program is an exciting experience. At long last, for a period of time that is long enough to make a difference, you give yourself the opportunity to immerse yourself in learning the “best practices” of the writing craft that you has been so wanting to learn for a long time.

An adult-learning program which will help you to master writing might be a university course, a local workshop, a one-on-one...

Before Sending a Manuscript To An Editor Part 3–Time Sequencing and Flashbacks

Note from the Editor: This third installment of Before Sending a Manuscript to an Editor series offers basic editing tips around time sequencing and flashbacks. For Part 1: Self-Editing Techniques Click here. For Part 2: Use of Time  Click here.

A writer can effect these tips to bring a manuscript to a higher level of finish before sending the piece off to a professional editor. In this section, I write about use of time: specifically, cause and effect time sequencing and flashbacks.

Time S...