A-Z of Self Publishing and Writing tips - H - J

In today's instalment, I will be providing more tips for indie authors and there is some useful information for readers of indie books about how they can help their favourite authors.


H

Honesty

This is a hot topic at the moment. Everyone knows that reviews can influence readers when choosing a book to read. Recently, an indie author was accused of writing reviews for his own books under a pseudonym, and he owned up to it http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/artic...

I am sure that many writers do this and I can see why they would be tempted to do so, but I would advise against it. Not only for the reason that you can get caught, but because I believe that honesty is important, in life, and in how we promote ourselves and our work.
There are some authors who are so keen to get great reviews for their own books that they do something similar to the above in that they write glowing reviews for other authors' books in the hopes of getting a great review in return. This again is dishonest and not something I would recommend.
I believe that you should be honest in your approach to your own writing and promotion, and in your approach to reviewing other authors' books. That is the only way that the indie book industry can prosper. There are many trashy, badly edited, and frankly, rubbish books produced by indie authors because of the ease of publishing these days. It does no one any good if we go around giving 5 star reviews to such books. It will only bring down the standards in the industry and lead to critics finding more ways to find fault with us as a group.
In the same way, if an author gives his or her own book 5 stars and a glowing review, using a pseudonym, when in fact the book is full of typos, how does that help promote the indie book industry as a whole? If you are so sure that your book is great, you should be willing to send it out to others for reviews. There is no need to review your own book in this way.
Having said that, I have nothing against an author reviewing their own book under their own name. This is a nice idea, because it gives the reader something extra from the author, and these days, with all the social networking sites, readers are interested in getting to know the authors as well as the product.
Honest reviews are great, even when they are not glowing reviews. Most authors will admit, sometimes reluctantly, that they learnt something from an honest critical review that helped them improve their writing. I take into account every criticism in reviews of my books and see how I can approach my next book in a way that could maybe avoid this criticism. I'm talking about reviews by normal people here, not the ones by the trolls whose only mission appears to be to upset people with nasty one star reviews. Authors can safely ignore those types of reviews.

Okay, I'm off the point here, so to conclude, I do believe that when it comes to promoting your writing as an indie author honesty is the best policy. It will reflect well on you and on the industry as a whole. It will help the books that deserve recognition to find that and it will help those authors who may need assistance in fine-tuning their work to be able to do so.


Helping others

I truly believe that the best way to promote yourself as an author is to help other authors. For example, you could do reviews, if you have time, or you could host the authors on your blog, interview them, etc. By doing this you can build up a following of readers who are looking for new reads and because you are an author they may also consider reading your books.
On my blog, I have been promoting my favourite authors and books for a while now, and I do find that it helps to build up a following for the blog. It also keeps the blog interesting and varied. You don't want to be talking about yourself and your books all the time, after all.

Here are a few tips for authors and readers as to how you can help indie authors:

Review books that you've enjoyed reading. This is perhaps the most important and best way you can help your favourite authors. Amazon is the biggest retailer for eBooks these days, so an Amazon review would be fantastic. You don't have to be a professional reviewer to review a book. You can just write a couple of lines saying why you liked the book. All and any positive reviews are always gratefully received by an author. I cannot stress this enough. So, if you've read a great indie book recently but haven't reviewed it on Amazon, go there now... come back here and read the rest of this post later! Go!

Amazon is not the only place to leave reviews. As we all know, you can leave reviews here on Goodreads and as there is a large population of readers here, that is a fabulous way to help an author. You can also join sites such as Shelfari and LibraryThing where you can list all the books you've read, and leave reviews.

Barnes and Noble is also a big bookseller, so leave a review there too.

I suppose to cut a long story short, I am saying you should review your favourite books wherever and whenever you can.

Tag and Like the books on Amazon

You will see under the title of every book on Amazon there is a 'Like' button. So, please go there now and make sure you click that button for every great book you've read recently. This helps enormously because Amazon takes account of how many 'Likes' a book has when it decides which books to promote.

Similarly, on the book page, after the reviews, there is a list of 'Tags' associated with the book. The more times a book has been tagged the more visible it will be on Amazon. Usually there are already tags listed for the book, but where you find no tags, you should add your own. These are just words that are associated with a book that help readers to discover it. So, for example, if you've just read a mystery book, you could add the tag 'mystery', and when customers are looking for mystery books the book will show up in the list if it has enough tags to make it prominent.

Amazon Author Pages
While we are on the subject of Amazon, most authors have their own author page there. This page has a 'Like' button on the top right hand corner. Make sure you go there and Like all your favourite author pages.

Tell your friends

If you've read a good book, tell your friends. Word of mouth helps to promote books. Amazon has links on each book page allowing you to post to Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. Make use of these.


I

Indie writer

What does it mean to be an indie author? Readers may be confused, so I will take a bit of time to explain it. I know that before I started publishing my own books I had no idea of what was involved in the self-publishing process. I mainly bought books that I found on the bookshelves in my local bookshop. None of those were indie books. Most of the bookshops you'll find on your high street (unless they are independent bookshops who make an effort to stock books by independent authors) will only stock bestsellers or books that are published by traditional publishing houses. There is a reason behind this which is logical. They are a business and they want to sell books. Books that are being hyped with big advertisements posted everywhere are more likely to sell. So, if you want to help your local independent author, you need to go to independent, smaller bookshops, the kind of places that are open to stocking books by local authors that are trying to make a name for themselves. Indie books are also easy to find on most Internet stores like Amazon and Barnes and Noble these days.

Being an indie author means that you are self-publishing your books, so you are independent of a publishing house. The tools used to publish books these days are readily available on the Internet and this has led to a surge in people publishing their own books. Is this a good thing?

Readers may be told that the reason a writer will publish their own work is because they cannot find a traditional publisher willing to publish them. This is often far from the truth.

Many authors (and I'm one of them) like the freedom that comes with self-publishing. It would take a lot to entice me to agree to have my books published by a publishing house. For one, publishing house like books to fit within a certain word count, they like their books to easily fit into a category/genre, they don't like things that are outside of the norm. And, most importantly, they take a big slice of the royalties. Many big name authors are turning indie these days. For artists, the ability to keep control over our work makes self-publishing an attractive alternative. It's a choice that a writer makes these days rather than being forced into it because they can't find a publisher.

Readers should bear in mind that when you buy indie books you are supporting the artist. The work is independently produced by the writer. They are typically people who are driven by a passion for writing, and determined to get their books published because they have a story to tell, or they like to tell stories. By buying indie books, you can be sure that the money you spend is going to the artist and not to a publishing company. It's very much like supporting a small business rather than going to a large superstore.

The quality of the books produced by indie authors will vary, which is why there has been a lot of hoo-hah about people being able to publish their own works. The fuddy-duddies will tell you that an independent book can never be up to the standards of large and established publishing houses. However, I see no reason why indie books cannot be just as polished and just as good as those published in the traditional way.

I have read many indie books over the past 3-4 years and have found that many are well written and well edited. There are those that fall below the standards you would expect. It's important to have a way to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. People should not turn against indie books just because they've read one that doesn't quite come up to scratch.

There are reasons some of the books are not very well edited. For example, it may be that this is the debut novel or first book written by the author and they were so keen to see their masterpiece in the shops that they didn't take the type to polish the manuscript before publishing. It's very exciting when you finish writing your book and you want the world to see it, but as I have said before in this series, you cannot cut corners if you are serious about your writing.

A great way to discover new indie authors and make sure that the author is someone who cares about his or her art, is to download the free books from Amazon. There are always freebies available, and you can look on them as samples of the author's work.

Indie authors (those who take pride in their work) work very hard to make sure their books are the best they can be, and this means hours of labour. Being an indie author often means doing your own editing, designing your own cover, and taking care of all the promotion. It's a full time job, but most of us also have day jobs. You can show your support for indie authors by trying the freebies and buying one of that author's other books.

There are also blogs all over the Internet that review indie books and you can look for recommended books from those sites to make sure you are getting a good quality book. I recently launched a blog with authors Darcia Helle and J. Michael Radcliffe , which features reviews of Indie books that we have read and enjoyed. You can keep up with the blog to find new books to read, here: Bestsellerbound Recommends. We also have an Amazon carousel across the top and bottom of the blog showcasing books that we recommend. Take a look, there's something for every taste.

At least where someone else has read the book, you know whether it is worth reading, that's the idea behind BestsellerBound Recommends because we also got to the stage where we wanted to be able to tell whether a book we are going to read is worth it or whether it would be riddled with typos.

It's important, if you intend to be an indie author long-term, that you take pride in the work you produce and make sure you are not giving other indies a bad name.

Happily, most of the indie authors I have met over the years have been really professional in their approach to their writing and publishing, and are willing to work as hard as they can to produce books they can be proud of.


J

Journey

Self-publishing should be looked upon by the author as a journey. All along your journey, you will keep learning. When you publish your book, you haven't reached a destination, you are still travelling. You have to keep going with the marketing and promotion, and with writing the next book. It's not an easy journey. The writing and editing itself will take many hours each day, as will the publishing, formatting, and promotion. You should not expect to get results straight away as most writers don't see any rewards for years, and some are still waiting to see a reward for their hard work even after many years. Just as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Life is a journey, not a destination." This also applies to your writing life. You should learn to enjoy the journey rather than focusing on what you expect the destination will be. Many authors become very frustrated early on because they have unrealistic expectations. Remember that not every author that publishes a book will become as successful as J.K. Rowling. Yes, it happens but it's rare. So, try to enjoy your journey.

You can find my previous blogs in this series, here:

A-C: http://nutsandcrisps.wordpress.com/20...
D-F: http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_...
G: http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_...