Month: March 2012

Shelfari; A Worthwhile Resource?

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If you publish with Amazon, which is highly advisable if you’re trying to reach the Kindle market, then they take great pains to mention Shelfari as an extra resource. Like Goodreads, this book group community offers a place to create libraries of your favourite books, rate and add details about novels, and meet with other readers. But I’m wondering, is it any good?

I’m not well versed in Goodreads and as Inside Evil doesn’t yet have an ISBN, I haven’t had the chance to discover whether this community can help build a book’s profile. Amazon’s Shelfari offers to be a promising tool, particularly because Amazon state that the extras which are tagged onto digital books in Shelfari can be made available to readers. This ultimately means that readers can access a custom built library of characters, book themes, places etc to either supplement a book that they’ve read or offer an added attraction to buy. But, does it actually work??

Like Goodreads, you need to build up followers and friends, so launching a book into Shelfari offers little initial help because your work falls in front of no one. If you’ve been using the site for a while, then it could promise a few sales as you’ll already have friends and followers. I’m also unsure as to whether this is actually a thriving community of readers, or a place which offers a few days of novelty before users drift away. Could the same be said for Goodreads? I’m not sure.

I’m determined to continue with Shelfari for a while, adding some character biographies and book extras to see whether any sales can be created. Once I get my ISBN I’ll also give Goodreads a shot and compare the two.

Do you use either website? Have you found it helpful as either a reader or a writer, or both? Let me know and we’ll see whether we can determine if each resource is worth the time and effort.

When to Write Again

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Finishing a book is a funny thing. First, there’s utter relief, a sense of pride, the feeling that you’ve finally made it – you’re an author. Then, you look to publish, and whether you go down traditional routes or start off as a self published e-novel author, there’s that desperate hope of hitting the jackpot and making sales. And then, a few days after your book has gone on sale, regardless of how many copies have been bought, there’s that instant need to write again.

Many say that being a writer is like having homework for the rest of your life. Whilst you may procrastinate and find it hard to actually sit down and write, once you’ve finished a story, you’re eager to start another. You can be walking down the street and a certain scene, smell or sound sparks something in your imagination and off you go. I’ve never found that I’ve had to actually sit and think, ‘I want to write, what shall it be about?’. There’s always some idea, some unfinished work, or the possibility of a novel sequel in the offing.

The best time to write again is immediately after you’ve finished your current WIP (Work in Progress). If you’ve been published by an agent, then you may be busy doing readings, looking at artwork or going to constant edit meetings. If you’re self published, then a vast amount of time will be taken up with your own marketing and advertising. But, amongst all of these extras, don’t forget to stop writing. Especially if you’re releasing your first book, then taking the plunge and working on the next novel will help you no end as you’ll be able to offer a catalogue of titles to readers throughout the years. You only need a reader to love one novel, to gain many more sales from your other titles.

So, though Inside Evil may only just be published, I’m already preparing to sit down and start writing again. Will it be to finish my other science fiction novel, or work on a sequel to my début book? Of that, I’m not quite sure yet. But, whilst the marketing process beings, one thing that will help keen me sane is beginning the writing process all over again.

Maximise Your Exposure With E-Novel Self Publishing

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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.

A Monumental Achievement

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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.

Breaking the ‘Writing-Place’ Myth

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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.