Geoffrey Wakeling's Blog, page 19

Maximise Your Exposure With E-Novel Self Publishing

One of the things I've very quickly come to discover with releasing an e-novel is that you need maximum exposure. Gone are the days when the niche was in its infancy and a new book appeared on the 'recently published' screen for days. Now, with the ease of publishing, you will find that your book very quickly disappears off that first page and is lost amongst a sea of other authors also trying have the words noticed. If you're waiting to sit back and see the book sales come in, then don't have high expectations, because the chance of readers actually finding your novel are slim.

One of the best ways to maximise your novel in the first few days of publishing is by spreading across many platforms. Amazon's Kindle is obviously a leading device in the area of e-novels, and you should look to use it as a number one resource. You should create author pages so that customers can more easily browse your work. Annoyingly,  you'll need to create an author page for each of Kindle's markets including .com, .co.uk, .de etc, but it's well worth the effort. Amazon also have their Kindle Library which offers you the chance the lend your book, for free, to customers whilst taking a cut of a sizeable authors fund. However, if you're looking for maximum exposure as quickly as possible, I'd suggest not taking this route.

The Amazon Kindle Library (KDP Select) requires you to make your novel exclusive to Amazon for 90 days. In return, you'll get a cut of the $600,000 author fund in relation to how many times your book is borrowed. However, if you're not expecting to make a splash with your publication, you very unlikely to get a large cut of the fund.

Instead, it's worthwhile heading to Smashwords, a website very similar to Amazon in that you can publish your novel there. From here, Smashwords allows you to spread your e-novel to iBooks, the Nook, Sony Reader and multiple other platforms. Royalty rates are high and the spread of your novel is vast. Formatting, whilst slightly different to Amazon, is very easy, especially if you've already gone through the process with Amazon, and you can be completed in mere hours.

Rather than publishing only on Amazon and thinking as Smashwords as an additional option, you should look to both platforms as having equal pegging on the priority ladder. And, though you may miss out on KDP Select payments, the opportunity to maximise sales on other platforms is well worth it.

Tagged: amazon kindle, Amazon Kindle Library, self publishing, Smashwords

A Monumental Achievement

I can't quite believe that I've finally managed to release an e-novel. I've been a writer for as long as I can remember; even as a child I used to create fantasy stories about families of frogs and invading toads, or little communities of insects living in the garden. I was fascinated with nature, and telling tales of their lives, and this storytelling has stayed with me as an adult. However, writing a full length novel is as monumentally different from a few scraps of paper as a boy as it gets, and it can take an extraordinary time to actually complete such works when trying to fit writing alongside every day life.

I started work on Inside Evil many, many years ago. I felt great pride and relief when I finished it but, upon reading it, realised that I had many errors to fix and stories to change. The edit process became time consuming and I had another spark in my head for an alternate novel. So, off I went writing a science fiction tale, leaving poor Inside Evil languishing in my computer files.

That was, until January 2012 when I suddenly realised that there was an entire e-book market open to me. I dusted Inside Evil off, took the time to rewrite, change, indulge and once again, get into the writing flow. Finally, I've completed the process and waded my way through the reams of formatting guidelines laid out by Smashwords and Amazon to upload Inside Evil for the Kindle, Sony Reader, iBook and many other platforms.

Having actually finished the novel in itself is a huge achievement. However, with marketing and sales now to come, the end is far from over.

Tagged: literature, telling tales, writing

Breaking the 'Writing-Place' Myth

When it comes to finding the perfect writing place, I'm the king of procrastination. 'I'm not ready to write', 'I need to work in a clean environment', 'I only write late at night' are all excuses I've used. There's often a romance that surrounds writing and many people, including myself, have become caught into the idea that an idyllic setting is needed for writing. Sitting in a park on a warm summers day. Sat by the cracking fire and wrapped in a rug. Taking a week off to go to a secluded country cottage simply to write. However, I hate to break this misconception but it's simply not true.

I remember seeing a documentary with J.K. Rowling. She was putting the last finishing touches to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in a sparse, dull hotel room. No, I kid you not, she wrote the Harry Potter novels not in some ancient Scottish castle with dancing fire and romanticised candles, but in plain old ordinary settings.

Really, the key to writing is to just sit down and do it. That's easy for me to say, but as a HUGE procrastinator myself, it really is the only way you'll ever get anything done. Ok, so having an evening writing after a long soak, cleaning the house, and lighting some candles did get some chapters done. But, most of the time I was either in front of my old PC or in bed with a laptop and dribbling cat next to me. Not the perfect writing scene you may have imagined.

So, instead of waiting for the right moment to write, or the best environment to start tapping away, simply get scribbling. Setting aside some set personal writing time and not getting caught in the writers environment trap could make the difference to finishing your novel and not.

Tagged: how to write, places to write