David Gaughran's Blog, page 18

If You Don’t Enjoy Marketing, You’re Doing It Wrong

I can already feel the heat from approaching pitchforks!

But if you hear me out, I think I can convert at least some of you to the idea that if you don’t enjoy marketing, you’re doing it wrong. Let me explain.

Sometimes marketing can seem like a Sisyphean task. There’s always something you could do to promote your work, and there’s never enough hours in the day. Many writers are already hard-pressed with demands from the rest of their lives and have to battle hard to carve out writing time. Th...

Using Story Beats To Increase Writing Speed

You may be familiar with the Self-Publishing Podcast – hosted by Johnny B. Truant, Sean Platt, and David Wright – which has featured all sorts of people doing interesting things in the world of self-publishing. Well, now the SPP guys have released a book – Write. Publish. Repeat -and it’s fantastic.

Long-time readers of this blog might remember Dave guest-posting here way back in October 2011 about a serial fiction experiment he was conducting with Sean. The experiment was a huge success and S...

Greetings from Prague!

There’s news of a monster sale and competition at the bottom of this post, but, first of all: I’m still alive!

Apologies for the prolonged radio silence, but finding an apartment in Prague proved trickier than expected.We thought we had a place twice before, only for the deal to collapse – either from the terms changing at the last moment, or other related shadiness.

But we have a place now and that’s the main thing.Internet connection should be hooked up this week, and then I can re-commence t...

Publishing Is Easy

There are three primary tasks a writer must undertake to get her work into the hands of readers: writing, publishing, and marketing.

Out of those three, I respectfully submit, publishing is by far the easiest.

Writing

Writing a book is hard, and writing a good book is even harder – at least from the perspective of the inexperienced writer. Most people who think about writing a book never start one. Most people who start one never finish it. And most people who finish a book never polish it to th...

Amazon Makes Life Easier For Authors of Historical & Literary Fiction

There are lots of reasons why self-publishing success stories tend to concentrate around writers of “genre” fiction, but it’s a mistake to assume that success is impossible if you write literary fiction or historical fiction (which tends to get lumped in with literary fiction, even though it’s just another genre… like literary fiction!).

The first is demographics: romance and erotica readers were the first to switch to digital, followed by mystery and thriller fans, leading to the success stor...

Kobo Cull Self-Published Titles In Knee-jerk Response To Tabloid Clickbait

A media firestorm erupted in the UK on Sunday after a tabloid story about WH Smith selling “filth” alongside books aimed at children, which has resulted in Kobo culling huge numbers of self-published titles – most of which have no erotic content whatsoever.

It’s hard to know exactly how many titles Kobo has pulled. What we do know is that Kobo has removed all 7,883 self-published titles distributed to their store via Draft2Digital, as confirmed in an email from D2D’s CEO to affected authors.

Ho...

Bloomsbury Seeks Deal With Author Solutions

The publishing world has been turned upside down by ebooks and self-publishing.

All the old middlemen – agents, publishers, distributors, retailers – are scrambling to reinvent themselves, trying to remain relevant in a digital world.

Self-publishing is big business. By my estimates, self-publishers have captured 30% of the US e-book market. And everyone wants a slice. Unfortunately, many organizations are prepared to do pretty much anything to make sure they get theirs.

Author Solutions is the...

Ted Oswald Signs With Amazon Publishing, Haiti NGOs To Benefit

Okay, this might be my favorite ever blog post. Remember that guy who wrote that book set in Haiti, the one I was raving about, the one where he was giving all the profits to charity? Well, I have him back with some big news. Here’s Ted Oswald:

* * *

I’m a first-time author. I’m a self-taught writer. I crafted the best book I could, tried to follow the best self-publishing advice I could find. And last week, I concluded a book deal with Thomas & Mercer, Amazon Publishing’s mystery and thriller...

The Craft of Writing: Interview with Michael Wallace (Part II)

Today I have Part II of my interview with Michael Wallace – an author who has sold over 400,000 e-books since he started self-publishing in January 2011.

If you missed Part I yesterday, that’s here and make sure to read that first.

In this second installment, Michael talks about the kind of marketing that has worked for him, his advice for newer self-publishers, and his take on the 10,000 hours theory as it applies to the craft of writing.

We talked about author platform, but that’s only one asp...

The 20 Year Overnight Success: Interview with Michael Wallace

I have an interview today with Michael Wallace, an author who has sold over 400,000 e-books since he started self-publishing back in January 2011.

Michael patiently took the time over several days to answer my questions about writing, marketing, the craft, and the business.Given the length of the interview, and because I didn’t want to cut any of the great answers he gave, I’m posting this over two days.

The second part will go live at the same time tomorrow: 5pm GMT/Noon Eastern.

When I started...