Ryan Casey's Blog, page 13

Draft2Digital: Why I’m Leaving Smashwords

I love Smashwords and I’ve got nothing but respect for the service. Enabling authors to upload our books to the likes of Apple’s iBookstore and Barnes & Noble all from the comfort of one portal is very handy, particularly to those of us based in the UK who can’t upload directly through those stores.

However, Smashwords is also a bit of a nightmare.

The user interface is slow, the epubcreator leaves much to be desired, and although the best of intentions are in place with the ‘meatgrinder’, it o...

Diary of a Novel: Day Five

New readers: start here. If you’ve been following the novel diary, feel free to skip ahead beyond the italics for day four.

I’ve always fancied chronicling the writing of a novel in a ‘diary of a novel’ format and sharing it, but it’s always one of those things that I’ve never quite got round to.

However, inspired by a recent series offantastic postsby Dean Wesley Smith, I’ve decided to actually go and do it.

The project is a 30,000 word novella I started a while back but put on hold due to othe...

Diary of a Novel: Day Four

New readers: start here. If you’ve been following the novel diary, feel free to skip ahead beyond the italics for day four.

I’ve always fancied chronicling the writing of a novel in a ‘diary of a novel’ format and sharing it, but it’s always one of those things that I’ve never quite got round to.

However, inspired by a recent series offantastic postsby Dean Wesley Smith, I’ve decided to actually go and do it.

The project is a 30,000 word novella I started a while back but put on hold due to othe...

Diary of a Novel: Day Three

New readers: start here. If you’ve been following the novel diary, feel free to skip ahead beyond the italics for day three.

I’ve always fancied chronicling the writing of a novel in a ‘diary of a novel’ format and sharing it, but it’s always one of those things that I’ve never quite got round to.

However, inspired by a recent series offantastic postsby Dean Wesley Smith, I’ve decided to actually go and do it.

The project is a 30,000 word novella I started a while back but put on hold due to oth...

Diary of a Novel: Day One & Two

I’ve always fancied chronicling the writing of a novel in a ‘diary of a novel’ format and sharing it, but it’s always one of those things that I’ve never quite got round to.

However, inspired by a recent series of fantastic posts by Dean Wesley Smith, I’ve decided to actually go and do it. I’ve alsowanted something to accompanymy own claimsthat it really does only require a small amount of time out of the everyday schedule to focus on the writing.

The project is a 30,000 word novella I started...

The Secret to Becoming a Prolific Writer

A lot of people ask me how I manage to write so much.

‘You wrote a novel while studying at university?! That’s crazy! I couldn’t write a novel in my life.’

I hear those words a lot. Of course, I take it as a compliment; a friendly way of saying ‘well done!’ but it does kind of frustrate me, particularly the second part, ‘I couldn’t write a novel.’ As a writer, I feel it’s partly my responsibility to encourage all budding storytellers to get something written, but 9.9 times out of ten, people ju...

Ebook Marketing: What Works and What Doesn’t? Part 1

Despite blogging on at least a weekly basis, one of the most common questions I’m asked by new and experienced authors alike is ‘how the [expletive] do I sell my [expletive] book?’ Ebook marketing is an absolute minefield. Do authors need to blog? Do we need to tweet, Facebook and Google+, while at the same time committing to a healthy amount of writing time?

If you’re short on time, here’s the simple answer to which ebook marketing methods work and which don’t: it’s impossible to say. Okay, t...

Five Writing Myths that Lead to Eternal Dissatisfaction

I’ve been writing professionally for a while now, and writing unprofessionally for a lot longer.

What’s the difference? Of course, being published helps. Having work out there for people to praise/destroy is part of what it is to be a ‘professional writer’, but there’s much more to it than simply having a book out there. In fact, the most successful of writers become professional writers long before that first release.

Professional writing is about attitude. It’s about grafting and persevering...

Waterstones Spotify for Books: Is This Really the Future of Reading?

If you’re a long-term follower of this blog, you’ll remember I posted a hypothesis last summer about how a ‘Spotify for Books’ style platform would likely emerge in the coming months and years, offering readers a means to pay a flat fee and gain access to an on-demand library of digital books.

Yesterday evening, I stumbled upon a Telegraph article with the news that Tim Waterstone, founder of the UK’s biggest book retailer Waterstones, is gearing up for the launch of a platform called Read Pet...

KDP Select Part 3: BookBub & How to Top the Amazon Charts

This post is a spiritual successor of sorts toKDP Select: The Secret to Hitting the Top 100andKDP Select: Is it Still Worth it? Thoughts for 2013.You might want to read those first, you might not — it’s your call.

Yes, another KDP Select post.

A couple of weeks back, I told you I’d be sampling a BookBub advertisement to coincide with my latest free promotion forWhat We Saw. I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about BookBub lately, mainly from J.A. Konrath, who took a u-turn on his ‘no advert...