Ross Young's Blog, page 49

Not Second Book Syndrome

It’s probably about time I stared into the eyes of the elephant in the room, took its trunk in hand, and said, “Okay Helga, you win.”

This is not a post about “second book syndrome” where readers feel the second book in a series lacks the same power as the first. (Incidentally I believe the reader is largely responsible for the feelings associated with second book syndrome – but that’s for a different time.)

The previously unobtrusive pachyderm seems to have finally reached such staggering prop...

Make it free?

I recently posted this on a forum I have never visited before…yup that’s me being proactive again…so I thought I’d share with you-

I used the KDP program when I first published. I gave away about 2000 copies of my book and got 1 review on the UK Amazon page and 2 on the Amazon.com site. Was it worth it? Well as it’s not exactly setting the world on fire I was happy to have people read it- I didn’t write it for financial gain. It’s now free again – you can make it free on Amazon if you make it...

So…mistakes have been made.

So I’ve been away for a while, why and what I’ve been up to aren’t that important but suffice to say I’ve been making more mistakes for other people to learn from.

Firstly, I was interviewed by Niamh at Leeds Book Club, that was a strange but lovely experience, I gibbered on for quite a while about nothing particularly clever. It was a lot of fun if quite nerve-wracking but fortunately Niamh made it easy for me to be an egotistical maglomaniac who has delusions of adequacy. You can find the po...

Editing Hurts.

I’ve said it, let’s all stop pretending editing doesn’t hurt. It hurts because I’m someone who writes and writes and writes and then has to tear chunks of story, plot-line and characterisation out. Wow it hurts, like chopping away at yourself bit by bit with a potato peeler.

Stephen King says he’s a “putter-inner” as in he always has more to add. I wish I was, I’m a taker-outer. I’m also someone who is self critical and paranoid so I’ll write something one day and a few weeks later when readin...

A growing industry

The ebook and indie publishing industry has seen a phenomenal change in the last few years. It’s possible to get your work out there without the help of publishers, which is great, there are downsides too but the majority of these stem from the fact that the process has become so accessible to so many. My biggest issue is getting readers to engage with my book, you’ll notice that despite 5 star reviews and being free on most platforms (except amazon who still haven’t changed the price of Dead...

Leaving KDP select

So I spent my 90 days with KDP select, the 5 days offering my novel for free did boost rankings and sales, etc. etc. in fact I gave up nearly a thousand copies for free…This did not translate into paid sales anywhere.

I’m going to be straight, anyone who has read any of my previous posts (few and far between though they are) will be aware that I jumped into this expecting to completely sink my chances of literary success. So far I’ve met those expectations, my biggest problem, marketing, and...

Pantsers vs. Planners

The age old argument between pantser and planner goes on and on and on. I’m neither, I’m a pantsing planner, or a planning pantser. For Dead Heads I wrote the book and spent so long chopping and changing sections and in the end rewrote the whole thing four times, and I mean rewrote without using any of the previous work. So it took a long time.

One of the things I learnt, and I should have realised from my previous writing efforts, was that you can’t plan after you’ve written it. What? I know...

Writer Beware

I published Dead Heads on Amazon Kindle at the start of the year. At the time I thought I had a reasonable grasp of what I was doing. I didn’t but that’s a story for another time. What really interested me, as I began to desperately ask, “how do I get people to read it!!” was the industry surrounding ebooks.

Let’s start with prior to publication. There are organisations that offer to format your work for kindle – I don’t mean to sound like a prick here, I probably will, but it’s not that hard...

Woefully Unprepared

I’m writing this on the second day of releasing my first novel on Amazon and I’m already regretting jumping in too early. The thing is, I, like many others out there, avidly read a number of blogs by more experienced self-published authors and believe that this helps to prepare me. Thing is…it would help me if I did more than just read what is being said and actually acted upon it. I should know better, but apparently, I don’t.

So I thought I’d write this in the hope that others, more intellig...