Mark O'Neill's Blog, page 6

Writing under a pseudonym

Many of the great writers in history wrote under a pseudonym, either to protect their privacy or to conceal the fact they were female (at a time when female authors were heavily frowned upon). Pseudonyms have also meant the difference between life and death for writers and bloggers in oppressed countries. One of my favourite […]

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Starting self-employment? Get a business bank account

I’m starting with all the very unsexy stuff if you want to be self-employed and working from home, but it is also the most important stuff. If you get all the basics wrong from the get-go, then you’re going to end up with a hell of a mess. And that’s not a good way to […]

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Social media for authors – is it worth it?

When you publish a book for the first time, you will want to shout it from the rooftops. That’s only natural. You’ve done something that others only ever dream of. Writing a book is no small thing.  So you will instinctively turn to Facebook, Twitter, or other social media network of choice, and announce your […]

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Find a translator for foreign book markets

When you publish your book, you need to quickly start thinking about foreign translations. Obviously English is the dominant language in the world. But other countries have big book-buying populations too, and the eBook market is booming worldwide. So you need to find a translator for all the top languages. Tolino German market Germany, for […]

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Starting self-employment? Get a good accountant

You must recruit certain people right off the bat if you’re planning to be your own boss and work from home. I’m not talking about employees — I’m talking about essential key people who will make the day to day running of the business easier. The most important one is an accountant. I can’t stress this highly […]

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Building a brand out of a book series

With the number of fiction novels hitting online stores on a daily basis, it is becoming harder and harder to make your books stand out from the rest. To do so, you need to start building a brand and get a reader hooked on the first book and make them emotionally invested in your characters. […]

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The future is the home office

When I first started as a self-employed home office entrepreneur in 2004, I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would ever see that day. Until then, the idea of working for myself terrified me. I hated (and still hate to a certain extent) instability and uncertainty. I craved the idea of a steady […]

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Kindle Unlimited versus going wide

You can go one of two ways in eBook self-publishing. Go all-in with Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited, or “go wide”, selling on as many platforms as possible. Each have their pros and cons, and self-published writers agonise over this all the time. Kindle Unlimited is when the customer pays a flat monthly fee to Amazon, and […]

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“So how I download and read this eBook file?”

When you have multiple eBook formats you want to publish with, how do you ensure everybody is able to download and read your file without any technical snafus? I’m not talking about sales in online stores – they handle all the downloading and transferring to eBook devices. I’m talking about if you want to give […]

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Writers block? There’s no such thing

Writers block is a myth – period. Instead, let’s see it for what it really is. It’s when you are putting yourself in circumstances that do not help your brain to focus on the work. My current book manuscript has been worked on for the past two years. The fact it isn’t finished yet isn’t […]

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