Ryan Casey's Blog, page 18

October Progress Report: Slow Month for Sales, Great Month for Everything Else

So, as October draws to a close and Winter really begins to take a hold, bringing out the bulky coats everywhere, it’s that time of month where I deliver a good ol’ fashioned progress report.

This month, I’ll focus in particular on an October sales slump, a few little updates on the progress of my debut novelWhat We Saw, and the beauty of crowdfunding.

October Sales

October has been a slow month for sales all round. Like, really slow.

BothSilhouetteandSomething in the Cellar have had pretty disma...

What We Saw: Ultra-Limited Edition Pre-Order Run!

I’ve decided to partner with Melbourne based website Pozible to open up a special sort of ultra-limited pre-order for my debut novel What We Saw.

To go straight to the pre-order page, click here. Otherwise, read on for info…

Basically, it’s called pledging. Pledging is where you (the reader) pledge an amount (say, £5) and receive a special exclusive reward for doing so if we hit £150 in pledges.

I’ve got a target of £150 that needs to be reached in order for this whole thing to be funded. If it...

Building Your Author Platform – Part 3: A Guide to Blogging

Right, so if you followed the steps in week one, you’ll have the nice skeleton of an author website in place. Week two gave you the opportunity to start adding a little flesh to that skeleton, by choosing a subtle but effective layout and setting up the necessary pages.

I said last week that I’d talk about social media expansion, and growing the reach of your author platform in week three. However, there is a key factor that I seem to have overlooked, and one which deserves a week to itself: b...

Physical Books: Are They Still Relevant?

Not a week goes by without another article about the death of physical books, and parallel rise of the ebook.

August saw eBook sales overtake print sales on Amazon, with something like 114 ebooks sold for every 100 paperbacks. Just this week, Digital Book World reported that digital sales were up by 34%, with paperback sales slumping by 20%. Traditionalists worldwide began to cry tears of mourning, whilst digital commentators sat smug-faced, with ‘I told you so’smiles.

But what does the suppose...

Silhouette Sunday – Short Story FREE Tomorrow

To celebrate the one-month anniversary of the launch of my sophomore release,Silhouette,the short story will be absolutely FREE to download from Amazon on Sunday 14th October.

Scientist Brian Dawlish has made a staggering discovery. He is on the brink of answering one of life’s greatest questions: can humans travel through time?

But, as he tests the formula and revisits earlier moments from his own life, he becomes haunted by a suspicious silhouette at each and every one of these key events. Wh...

Building Your Author Platform – Part 2: Layout and Pages

This is the second part of a four-part weekly series on how to set up your author platform from scratch. If you missed the first stage, then click here to read it, and head back to part two when you’ve finished.

So, congratulations! If you followed last week’s steps, you’ll have the infrastructure of your website in place, as well as a great domain name that every reader will remember. Your author platform is well and truly on its way to becoming a thriving hub of interaction. But what now?

Whe...

Writing Confidence: Three Thoughts That Breed Failure

Confidence is a big thing in writing. Without some self-belief, the whole thing will fall apart, and you’ll find yourself never completing your work. I’ve talked about the importance of writing confidence in the past, and how ability and enjoyment both contribute towards eventual success.

But how can one be confident? There’s a difference between confidence and arrogance. Arrogance is a blind belief based on an inflated sense of self-importance. Confidence, on the other hand, is a belief in th...

Building Your Author Platform – Part 1: Getting Everything in Place

This is the first of a four part series, to be published every Friday. This week will focus on the technicalities of setting up an author platform, from choosing a good name to hosting options.

So, you’ve made the decision – you’ve researched your favourite authors and seen what they all have in common: a website, or a ‘platform’ as it is more suitably dubbed. Joanna Penn has one, David Gaughran has one. But where do you start? What’s all this technical rubbish about domain names, self-hosting...

Scrap All Your Social Media Accounts: An Experiment

I’m going to put a rather controversial sounding proposal out there. It may seem mad, but bear with me until the end, and hopefully you’ll see my logic.

Ready? Okay.

You should deactivate all of your social media accounts.

I know, I know – crazy proposal, right? I’ve been singing the praises of social media advice for months, so why the sudden u-turn? I know what you’re thinking: ‘Ryan’s finally lost it.’ Perhaps, but hear me out and you’ll see where I’m coming from.

Hopefully.

The Logic Behind My...

Twitter Dilemma: To Follow or Not to Follow?

Twitter can be a nightmare of etiquette. I’m sure we’ve all experienced the moment where someone follows us and we aren’t quite sure whether or not to return it, right? To follow or not to follow on Twitter? That is the question.

But forgetting the clichés (and the fact that I revisited Hamlet as part of my studies this week), there are some serious implications behind the decision to follow somebody on Twitter. Follow everybody, and you’ll end up with an incomprehensible update feed, but foll...