I Am Creative. I Am An Author. From Affirmation To Reality.

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**Warning: personal post*

Back in 2007, I was very unhappy in my day job.

In fact, I’ve never been happy in my day job but it paid the bills, enabled me to travel and I met a lot of great people. It was a mixed blessing. I fell into it to repay my student loan and just never escaped. I worked for big companies on computer systems and the work killed any creativity I had in me.

 

yes, that’s really me! Great fun adventures…
 

In 2000, I resigned, left London for the Australian outback and swore never to do it again. My adventures were fantastic but eventually I ran out of money and went back. This cycle repeated itself a number of times… then in 2007, I was really, seriously over it. So I began investigating what else I could do with my life that would be helpful to other people and also enable me to escape the day job.

At the time, I read two books that made a huge impact on me. The Success Principles by Jack Canfield and The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. They talked about following your dreams and also using affirmations to set your intentions. The problem with changing your life is often knowing what you want instead of the status quo. When I looked at what I had always wanted, it was only ever to be a writer.

So I came up with my affirmation “I am creative. I am an author”.

At the time, I was not creative and I was not an author. Sure, I wrote diaries and letters but I couldn’t ever associate the word creative with me. I couldn’t even say this phrase out loud at first. I wrote it down and then started whispering it on the commute home (when no one was around!) I also moved to four days a week at the day job to give myself head-space to write my first book.

In April 2008, I self-published How To Enjoy Your Job…Or Find A New One. I was so happy and proud of myself. I thought I was going to change the world and free millions of IT consultants from their miserable lives. I spent money on printing physical books and did some old-style PR with press releases, radio and even national TV.

But I only sold a few books. Literally, a few. Even with national TV. I was devastated, but wasn’t intending to give up (as the affirmations were really kicking in now!) I also discovered that the book you write will change your life. It really did change mine as I understood what writing a book was like and I had found my purpose.

But I realized that I didn’t actually have a clue about marketing online. I had focused on traditional PR but what about the internet? So I started researching and buying online programs to learn about blogging and podcasting and other things.

 

 

After a couple of other attempts at blogging, I started this site in December 2008 in order to share what I had learned with the failure of my first book. For example, I had spent thousands of dollars on printing books and then discovered print on demand and selling on Amazon. I was determined that no one else would pay the price I did and I wanted to save people time, money and emotional energy on their own journey. I had also started feeling and becoming creative and the name ‘The Creative Penn’ came to me on the commute one day. I claimed the word for myself and have grown into it over time!

Since then, this site has grown and I have personally grown as a writer. Many of you have been here to see the changes over time. Thank you for sharing the journey with me so far. I have also continued to invest in my education as an online marketer and I absolutely love our online author community. In February this year, I published Pentecost, my first novel, which has now sold over 11,000 copies and remains an Amazon bestseller. The sequel, Prophecy is on its way.

So in August 2011, I decided that my affirmation has been fulfilled. I am creative and I am an author. I wanted to share this with you as encouragement as I know the fears that come with writing and the doubts that plague us. I’m an introvert too and have been crushed and hurt along the way. But I am also truly excited about the years to come as we are part of an incredible change in the industry.

So, all this background is to prepare you for my big news.

I have resigned my day job as an IT consultant in order to focus on my fiction writing and also on The Creative Penn community of writers and authors.

This is not a decision taken lightly (and yes, I have been saving for a while so there is a cushion). This has been coming since that day in 2007 when I just couldn’t take any more but it has taken this long to make a change that my risk-averse nature can bear. I can see the way forward as an indie author and also as someone who can contribute to the creative community. I’m ready to make the leap!

What does this mean for you?

This blog makes me happy :) I don’t mean to sound cheesy but I love to be useful and sharing what works (and what doesn’t), as well as lessons learned, is very satisfying. I love getting emails from you and I love the comments. I hope you continue to find the site useful.

So you will still be getting the same quality of free information in terms of articles, audios and videos – nothing changes with the baseline of what you already get on this site. I love sharing and interviewing people and this is a great community, so stick around.

But this change gives me 40-50 extra hours per week (wow!) and so the following will also become available:

  • More fiction. If you enjoyed Pentecost, you will love Prophecy and now I will have more time to write! I’m going to be spending every morning writing fiction and every afternoon on this business, so expect the fiction back-list to be growing. Yes, I still want to be a Kindle millionaire :) Also, I will be starting a new blog for my fiction readers who are a different audience to this one.
  • Webinars – I will be doing 1 free tele-seminar a month on a specific topic. It will relate to my Author 2.0 mini-courses and there will be offers at the end but the webinar itself will be free so you’ll get 60 mins quality info and get to ask your questions. Recordings will be available to those who sign up. The first one is on Blogging for Authors but it is now full-up so if you missed this one, be ready for next month which I notify to my email list first.

There will also be Paid webinars. 90 mins of outstanding content with the recording and material available afterwards as well as Q&A and writing critiques. These will be paid for events that you can attend live or receive the recordings later. The first one will be on Writing A Fight Scene with awesome martial artist and author Alan Baxter – You can listen to a 40 min audio & video with Alan here as a taster of what’s to come but the webinar will be so much more. Click here to register your interest and we’ll let you know when it is scheduled. The cost will be US$20 and places are limited.

  • Multi-media courses. You can already buy Blogging for Authors and Writers and Ebook Publishing as multi-media courses and I will be developing other offerings in this space. I will be bringing out How to launch your book online and also a product on writing your first book. I will also be revamping and re-releasing my full Author 2.0 program. (Anyone who has already bought it at the existing price will continue to get all the revamped modules and extra bonus material – it’s a lifetime membership but the price will be going up).
  • Services. Every day I am asked to recommend people for ebook formatting, cover design, editing, blog building or marketing. In order to expand The Creative Penn, I will be partnering with special people to offer packages that give you value with people I can personally vouch for. To kick-start this, you can now get Kindle formatting for your book packages – click here for more information.

I hope you can see The Creative Penn becoming a resource hub for writers and authors, a community where we can help each other and learn together.

I’m looking forward to the next step (which is just slightly outside my comfort zone!).

Please let me know your thoughts about these changes. Are there any other ways I can help you?

 

This is a reprint from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.

Writing a One-Page Business Plan: 5 Questions A Self-Publisher Must Ask

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Whether you are about to self-publish your first book, or start a micro-niche publishing company, you need to have a business plan in place. A business plan will give you a basic road map for your new business. An easy and quick way to do this is to create a one-page business plan. This will let you quickly clarify your own thinking about your new business. This short, one-page plan can also be used as an outline for a longer more in-depth plan. With some research, you should be able to complete this one-page plan in under one week. Here is a list of five questions that you must include in your simplified, one-page business plan.

1. WHY do you want to self-publish?
Your answer cannot be only about the money. It needs something more than that. It also needs to be short, very specific, and very personal.

Examples:
a. “I want to write a book that will help new nurses be more productive, more effective, and more marketable in today’s tight job market.”

b. “I want to write small-business management books so that I can share my knowledge and expertise with others that would like to start their own small-business. I gained this knowledge and experience over the last 35 years while starting and managing my own successful small-business.”

c. “I want to write and self-publish a book to give myself more credibility in the eyes of my peers.”

2. WHAT will you write about?
Explain it in one sentence, in very specific detail. You must understand what your writing niche, or specialty, will be.

Examples:
a. “I will write and publish books about all aspects of self-publishing for people who have not written a book before.”

b. “I will write a how-to book for experienced nurses who want to advance to become part of nursing management in a hospital.”

c. “I will write a how-to guide for new parents who are raising a deaf child.”

3. WHO is your market?
You must narrow this down to a very specific group of people. Your answer cannot be “everybody and anybody”. You must know exactly who buys your type of book. You only have a limited amount of time and money for marketing and promotion. You must target your best efforts at those who are most likely to buy your book. Keep your answer down to a few tight sentences.

a. “The market for my book is American nursing students that are in nursing school, or have just graduated as RN’s with an AS or BS degree in nursing and are searching for their first job. They are generally females between 20 and 26 years of age. Half of them like to read a hard-copy of a book; the other half like to read the ebook version. They are very worried about getting a job after graduation, because the nursing shortage has ended.”

4. HOW do you define success?
You might spend the next twelve months writing your first book. And then a year later you are selling less than 8 copies a month on Amazon. Therefore, you must come to terms with what success means to you. Does success mean seeing your name on the cover of a book? Does it mean being able to give each of your customers a copy of your book so that they will have more admiration and respect for you? Does success mean getting letters and emails from people who read your book – telling you that your book has helped them in some positive way? We all can agree that making a lot of money is great – and is possible as a self-publisher – but it cannot be your only motivation for writing a book. Therefore, you should write a paragraph here about how you define success for your book.

5. HOW hard are you willing to work at it?
How much time and hard work are you willing to put into your self-publishing venture? This is probably the step that you must put the most honest thinking and most thought into. Are you willing to spend most of your time marketing and selling your book? Your book might take 6 to 12 months to write. But you will spend the next several years marketing and promoting it. Are you willing to put yourself out there and market and promote yourself, your name, and your book, the for next several years?  Are you willing to keep writing and building your next book? The more time and effort that you put into your self-publishing venture, the more success you will have. It will be much easier to go the distance if you love your subject matter. And the more you love your subject matter, the more successful you will be at self-publishing. It is as simple as that.

This article was written by Joseph C. Kunz, Jr. and originally posted on KunzOnPublishing.com

A Theory Of The Hero: Agency, Voice, And Sincerity (part 1 of 3)

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This post, by Chris, King of Elfland’s 2nd Cousin, originally appeared on the The King of Elfland’s Second Cousin on 9/13/11.

For a while now I’ve been chewing on the concept of heroes/heroines, which at first glance looks simple. Say the word “hero” and everyone knows what we mean: we’re (stereotypically) talking about square-jawed men and kick-ass women who stab bad guys in the eyes with icicles, rescue intergalactic princesses, and Do The Right Thing. Heroes are “The Good Guys” that we root for in a story. But fiction – as life – tends to be more complex than that. For every Frodo Baggins we have an Elric of Melniboné. For every Peter Pevensie we have Steerpike. What then constitutes a hero? What makes one character or one story heroic and another not?

 

NOTE: This is the first in a three-part series of posts. This post is focused on what makes a given character heroic. On Saturday, I’ll post the next chapter, focusing on story archetypes for heroic characters, and the final post on Tuesday will focus on the difference between tragic and anti-tragic heroes.

Why do we need a Theory of the Hero?

If we want some sort of all-encompassing theory of the hero, we need to go beyond Campbell’s monomyth and Propp’s functional formalism. Regardless of how much I love both, a complete theory should be able to encompass both the classically-modeled Frodo Baggins and the monstrous Humbert Humbert.

In reading Ivan Morris’ excellent The Nobility of Failure: Tragic Heroes in the History of Japan over the weekend, something in my brain clicked. I think I might have figured out a secret ingredient that goes into the make-up of any hero, regardless of where they fall on a moral spectrum. Per Morris, heroes are defined at their core by the Japanese concept of makoto, which Morris translates as “sincerity” with connotations of self-contained philosophical sufficiency. In other words, a hero is a hero – regardless of their moral or immoral actions – if they act relative to a consistent moral code.

Hero vs Protagonist: Six of One, Half-Dozen of the Other

If you will forgive a brief moment of semantic pedantry, I think it is important to explain that I have never particularly liked the term “protagonist”. Since originating in Greek drama, I think the term has become incredibly muddled and imprecise. Etymologically, it means “chief actor” but a literal definition is too limiting to be functional. There are too many sweeping, epic novels like Hugo’s Les Miserables where identifying a particular chief actor becomes difficult (if not impossible).

Terms like protagonist and antagonist really describe the relationships between characters. The protagonist is opposed by the antagonist. This tells us nothing whatsoever about the characters in question, their value systems, moral codes, or courage. However, describing characters as either heroic or non-heroic does offer insights into their natures. Generally, for good drama in storytelling a hero needs to have an opposition: but a good hero can just as easily be opposed (antagonized) by another hero (the relationship between Hugo’s Jean Val Jean and Javert is a prime example of this type of opposition).

The Hero’s Function: Building Engagement through Agency and Voice

 

Read the rest of the post on The King of Elfland’s Second Cousin, and also see Part 2 and Part 3 in the series.

Are Amazon Just A Vanity Press Of The Worst Kind – Or Are They Being Paid Off?

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This post, by Ali Cooper, orignally appeared on her site on 9/20/11.

When Amazon launched the kindle, they offered a great new publishing opportunity to independent authors and publishers. Individual authors and small presses alike could publish their books to kindle and reach the growing audience of ebook readers.

Previously, only the biggest publishers with a high financial turnover were able to market their books to more than a handful of the book-buying public. It is no secret that they controlled the market by buying display space in shops and reviews in the national press, pushing a small selection of books under the noses of readers and tempting them with cheap deals. Small presses, by contrast, could only afford more costly short print runs, only to have their books consigned to the shadowy back shelves of bookshops – if they were stocked at all.

So the opportunity offered by Amazon levelled the playing field for small and individual publishers, allowing them to compete at a price equal to or lower than most mainstream books, along with online forums where authors or their representatives could, within reason, tell readers about their books. This was made available, first in US, then extended to authors and publishers in other countries, and, as each market developed, Amazon tempted small publishers with a larger share of the revenue.

By Easter of this year, many authors and small publishers – especially of the more mass market books – were enjoying a generous and regular income from ebooks. Almost all made their books available in a variety of formats, distributed by different retailers, but, due to the success of the kindle, combined with the opportunity to interact with readers on the Amazon forum, most found that this provided by far the biggest portion of their income. Many authors were giving up their day jobs to write full time, in order to satisfy the demand from their fans for more books. And new small presses – essential for nurturing new talent and launching new authors into the mainstream – were beginning to flourish.

Then, suddenly, without warning, Amazon called time. Forum posters were forbidden to post links to their books or to promote them on amazon.com’s site apart from in a newly-created jumbled author area. Where previously they had been on virtual shelves in a bookshop, sorted according to subject and genre, they were all thrown in a heap into one bargain bin out the back.

 

Read the rest of the post on Ali Cooper‘s site.

The 10 Reasons That Convinced Me To Become A Self-Publisher

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Here I share my favorite reasons for becoming a self-publisher. Some reasons are much more important to me than they might be to you. But I am certain that on this list you will find a reason that is important or intriguing to you. I hope that you find one that gets your internal capitalist into gear, and gets you onto a new path too.

1. Retain Ownership: As a self-publisher you retain complete control and ownership of the book – forever. I’m sure that for all of you reading this article, this is a very important reason – as it was for me.

2. Instant Credibility: The book will instantly give you credibility – and help boost your career or business. We all want this. The more professional your book is, the more credibility you will have with your audience. With self-publishing you can easily and quickly make improvements to your book – especially with an ebook.

3. Control Fate of My Book: As a self-publisher you control the fate of your book – not some publisher that has no interest in your book or subject other than how much money they can make from you. Self-publishers are writing and publishing books because we love our subject, and want to share our knowledge with others.

4. Speed to Market: Traditional publishers take way too long to bring your book to the market. A big publisher would think that you are a silly fool to believe that you could get your book into a world-wide audience within a few weeks. But of course, we now all know that we can – and do.

5. Plenty of Help Available: As a self-publisher you can choose to be involved with as much, or as little, of the creative process. Self-publishing is where you, the author, bypass all the intermediaries that are involved in traditional publishing. These intermediaries do the editing, designing, illustrating, marketing, promotion, etc., of your book. As a self-publisher these functions will typically be your job. Although, you can easily hire people to do these functions for you and still be considered a self-publisher. As a self-publisher you get to choose which functions you want to do, and which ones you need to hire someone to help you with.

6. Keep All Profits: As a self-publisher you keep all of the profits. A traditional publisher will keep almost all of the profits. Then, after several months, when your book sales start to slow down, they will dump you for someone else that is more profitable for them. Even if your book makes you just a few hundred dollars a year, these profits will come to you year, after year, after year. The more effort you put into making your book look professional, and into your marketing and sales, the more profit you will make. You have complete control as to how much success your book will have.

7. Low Entry Cost: It is much less costly to produce a book now than it has ever been before. You can get an ebook online with a big-name website for free within minutes. You can also get your book accepted by a big-name print-on-demand company that will distribute your book to the entire market for about $112. Additional expenses like ISBN fees, and CIP fees, will add about $100. Hiring a professional cover designer can be anywhere from $250 to $750.

8. My Knowledge of The Market: With some effort and study, you can do a much better job promoting your book than a traditional publisher can. This is especially true when your book is directly related to your career or business. You know your market, your audience, your customers, and your readers, much better than anyone else does. This intimate knowledge of their needs is what will help make your book and career a success.

9. Niche for Success: Your book’s subject might fit into a very small niche – one that is too small for a traditional publisher to even bother with. Filling a small, tight niche is where the money is for many self-publishers.

10. Creative Outlet: Self-publishing is a great way to satisfy your need to be creative – writing, designing, and illustrating – as well as being creative with marketing, advertising, and promotion. Self-publishing will force you to be creative in many areas.

This article was written by Joseph C. Kunz, Jr. and originally posted on KunzOnPublishing.com

The 10 Commandments To Becoming A Financially Successful Self-Publisher

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1. Publish Ebook First: Start with an ebook (pdf and epub) first. This is the easiest and fastest way to get started. Creating an ebook first will also allow you to get some feed-back from your readers, and make adjustments to your book accordingly. After you get your ebook online and get all the kinks worked out, then add a print-on-demand paperback edition.

 2. Stick To Your Niche: Your book should be directly aligned with your market niche. For many self-publishers, success comes from focusing their book, and their marketing, at their particular niche. Part of sticking to your niche is that you must learn about and understand the subject of branding.

3. Design A Great Cover: Spend a lot of time developing and designing a great cover. Design many sample covers for your book. Especially look at books that have a similar topic as your does. If you are not creative, and have the money, pay a professional to do the cover design for you.

4. Perfect the Contents: Spend a lot of time perfecting and editing the contents of your book. Make improvements and corrections even after it is published.

5. Get Testimonials: Make great efforts to get testimonials and endorsements. You must never stop asking other guru’s in your industry and celebrities to write them for you. Keep adding them to your book and to your book’s blog. Convince one of these guru’s or celebrities to write your book’s foreword.

6. Set-up Blog: Set-up a blog to support your book. This is not difficult or expensive. By far the best way to do this is to set up a blog with a big company like WordPress. These blogs are specifically designed to be user friendly.  They are also designed to work very well with search engines like Google.

7. Max-Out Third-Party Websites: Max-out your use of every website that lists your book. Many websites, such as Amazon, allow you to add a large amount of information about yourself and your book. Doing this will be like giving your book another website devoted to you and your book. Take advantage of everything Amazon has to offer.

8. Avoid Bookstores: Do not put your book into the bookstores by using a wholesaler or distributor. This step is for much more advance publishers, and self-publishers with big bank accounts. Bookstores sell very few books – especially by self-publishers that are not big-name celebrities.

9. Use All Major Online Retailers: Get your book into every major outlet such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble online, Scribd, etc. – just to mention the major ones. Using services like SmashWords, BookBaby, and Lightning Source, will get you into the big-name ebook outlets. Also, some professional organizations allow their members to list their book in the organization’s catalog.

10. Market, Market, Market: Getting your book online is the easy part. Making your book financially successful is the time-consuming part. But now, because of the internet, it is not difficult. The more effort you put into marketing and promotion, the more financial success your book will have. Even if you are not a business-minded person, you will find that marketing and promotion is a very interesting process.

This article was written by Joseph C. Kunz, Jr. and originally posted on KunzOnPublishing.com

Indie Author Guide Webinar Series Launches With Free, Monthly, Open Q&A Sessions

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I’ve been a guest speaker for numerous webinars and have found them to be an excellent way to deliver presentations. Now that my book, The Indie Author Guide: Self-Publishing Strategies Anyone Can Use, is coming up on its one year anniversary since release, many of you are hoping to get your books available for sale in Kindle format in time for the holidays, and thousands of folks will soon have completed NaNoWriMo manuscripts and will be looking for next steps, I’ve decided to launch a series of my own webinars.

The foundation of my new webinar series is a free, monthly, hourlong Q&A session.

This monthly webinar is intended to serve as a supplement to my book, and therefore questions based on specific content from the book will take precedence. However, anyone may attend to get answers to any questions they may have about self-publishing, ebooks, author platform and related topics. The first of these webinars is already scheduled for Sunday, October 2 from 6-7pm PST (9-10pm EST). Register for the free Oct. 2nd Q&A here.

I’m planning to continue this free, monthly Q&A webinar at the same time on the first Sunday of each month, and will promote each webinar in advance on Twitter, Facebook, on my Indie Author Blog and elsewhere. The webinars will be presented with a mix of presentation materials and live chat. No special equipment or phone-in will be required of attendees, and you don’t even have to download any software!

In addition to the free, monthly Q&A, I’ll be offering more in-depth, webinar training workshops on specific topics of interest to self-publishers.

First up, based on a high level of interest in the topic, will be a webinar workshop on Simplified Kindle Publishing: Step By Step. In this webinar you can get plain English instructions in: how to get your manuscript properly formatted to meet Amazon’s Kindle specifications, convert it to Kindle format using free conversion tools, preview the resulting Kindle book (with or without a Kindle) and what to do if there are problems in the file when you preview it.

NOTE: the instruction given in the Kindle Publishing webinar will be specific to Windows PC users, please do not register for it if you are a Mac or Linux user.

Additional, upcoming webinar workshop topics will include Leveraging Amazon, Getting Started With Author Platform, Getting Started With Social Media, and Low- and No-Cost Book Marketing Opportunites. Again, details to be posted in the locations listed above as they become available.

I’m very excited about this great opportunity to provide you with the tools and skills needed to self-publish and promote your books as effectively as possible, and hope to "meet" many of you in my webinars soon!


April L. Hamilton is the founder and Editor in Chief of Publetariat.

8 Reasons Self-Publishing is Entering a Golden Age

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Whenever a discussion about self-publishing gets heated, you can be sure someone will say, “If we let just anybody publish a book, soon we’ll be buried in bad, unedited books and all the good ones will be lost in a sea of crap!”

There were over 350,000 books published in the U.S. last year, more than ever. And that doesn’t include the hundreds of thousands of books moved to print-on-demand servers and assigned ISBNs, and therefore “published.”

I don’t feel buried, do you? Where are all those books? Apparently it’s not that easy to find them. You have to actually make an effort. You won’t get downed in some tsunami of badness, you have to go looking and jump in.

The Real Shame of It All

Writers who are waiting for the gatekeeper to come and open the gate may have a long wait ahead of them, and that’s too bad.

You know why? Because we’re about to enter a real golden age of self-publishing. There is no denying the fact that a whole lot of people have something to say and are busy writing their books. They want to publish, put their thoughts, their history, their research, their story into the arena, and why not?

It might seem overblown to call it a golden age, but I think it’s really happening, and here’s why:

8 Reasons We’re Entering a Golden Age of Self-Publishing

  1. The playing field is leveling—Net neutrality ensures the internet stays equally available to all. As far as online business is concerned, each book competes on its own. In this environment it’s your passion, persistence and pluck that will sell your book, and that’s within your power.
     
  2. There’s easy access to tools and professionals—In order to make top-quality books, you need people with top-quality skills. Part of the downsizing of the publishing industry has been the upsizing of the freelance marketplace, where every talent you need to build a superior book is available.
     
  3. Social media marketing—The person-to-person communication that typifies social media can be scaled through smart use of sites where your readers congregate. When you get involved in social media you can begin to build community based on your own personality and ability to communicate, not on huge advertising budgets. Social media, blogging, forums all drive traffic and can make your book a success outside normal promotional channels.
     
  4. Elimination of production risk—Digital printing and print-on-demand distribution have eliminated almost all of the production risk of publishing. Book printing, storage and fulfillment are the dominant costs in publishing and this new system makes it possible to get into print for almost nothing. It’s now cheaper to publish a book than to copy one at Kinko’s.
     
  5. Prejudices are starting to crack—More authors are moving to ebooks, and ebooks are even easier to self-publish than print books. The attraction of 70% royalties is strong, of course, but so is the ability to control your own publication, something that’s long been denied to authors. Publishers have given over more responsibility to authors to build their own platform, to do a lot of their own marketing. But this has also empowered authors to take the autonomy and exercise real choices over their own publications.
     
  6. The softening definition of books—We are in the beginning of a transition to ebooks, although print books look like they have plenty of life left in them. Book traditions of hundreds of years are still strong, and this may be one of the last times most people in the world will have learned to read from books printed on paper. Books are already beginning to stretch and change, and ebook markets are equally friendly to new forms and formats for textual content as they are to digital texts that are made to look like “books.” All kinds of writing and information products will find life in print that were simply uneconomical to produce before.
     
  7. The globalizing force of the internet—Ebooks and apps have opened the world market to books in electronic form without regard to national boundaries, an unprecedented development in publishing that will continue to have a greater and greater effect.
     
  8. Mobile technology—The spread of mobile computing technology has increased the amount of reading in the world. Now we read everywhere, and the digitization of books into ebooks and apps has opened the whole world of smart phones, tablets, MP3 players, and other devices to books, a phenomenon that has never existed before. The average smartphone user can now carry in her pocketbook a massive library that would have dwarfed entire home libraries just a few years ago. And there are over 50 million smartphones alone in use around the world.

Well, that’s my list. I think we’ve only seen the beginning of the curve, and it’s heading up.

What do you see in the future of self-publishing?

 

This is a reprint from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer.

Where do stories come from?

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GPS and high-speed computers can’t pinpoint where they originate.  Radar, sonar, Ouija board and ultrasound are all useless indicators. Yet stories come from somewhere and those of us who write feel it when a story quickens.  Heart trips over itself, breath pauses, and inspiration shatters preconceptions.  A story has arrived!

Do stories bubble up out of the shared jumble of archetypes from our cave days?  Do they come from an external Muse?  Do they leak like static from parallel universes?

I don’t know. Perhaps where a story comes from matters less than the fact that it comes at all.  Under the sheer improbability that any given story exists, the question of First Cause is almost trivial.

As a reader, a tale comes to me as an already revealed whole, but that is not the case when I write.  I hear of writers who come up with outlines, who know what a story is before the story has been written. That is not how it happens for me. I do not plan the stories I write to be as they are any more than a mother ‘plans’ her children to be as they are.  Each story is an act of nature, a noumenal birth.  Unlike mothers of flesh and blood, I am less creator than conduit; what is to be written passes through me, but is in some very basic sense not of me.

When a story chooses me, it comes from multiple avenues at once.  The universe conspires to bring me into contact with the inspirations that will prepare me for the story that is traveling from those unknowable elsewheres. When the right pair of contradictory ideas come together in one lucid moment, I become an open conduit for the expression of the story.

At that instant, I can’t see the entire plot arc or even begin to understand how to fit those contradictions together into some cohesive whole. Everything becomes a possible revelation of the story’s truth. Novels, movies, snippets of overheard conversation, dreams, music, even the moon and sun themselves can be oracles. Revelation and prophecy are anything except convenient. There’s an element of the trickster to stories. They like to play but, like any wild animal, stories can be dangerous. It is not an easy path to be a writer. I am not even certain it is a choice, or at least not the writer’s choice.

Even now, a story travels.  It will come unto us like religion, like grace, like the purest dharma.  It chooses us, and we are humbled.

 

This is a reprint from Aniko Carmean‘s blog.

Not Caring

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This post, by JA Konrath, originally appeared on his A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing blog on 9/3/11.

One of the greatest skills you can acquire as an author is a thick skin.

Once you unleash a story onto the world, it no longer belongs to you. When it was in your head, and on your computer during the writing/rewriting process, it was a personal, private thing. But the moment your words go out into the world, they are subject to the opinion of strangers. What was once personal is now public.

 
Do yourself a huge favor, and don’t listen to the public.
 
This goes for more than your literary endeavors. If you blog, or speak in public, or tweet on Twitter, you are a Public Figure.
 
That means some people aren’t going to like you.
 
And you shouldn’t care.
 
You shouldn’t care about people liking you, either. Praise is like candy. It tastes good, but it isn’t good for us.
 
The opinions of strangers, good or bad, should have no power over you.

 

Read the rest of the post on JA Konrath‘s blog.

Former Random House Author Self-Publishes Thriller that Views 9/11 from New Perspective

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This post, by Kristen Tsetsi, originally appeared on her blog on 9/10/11.

As self-publishing becomes an increasingly popular option for writers of all kinds (the good and the not so good, those who have tried the agent route and those who haven’t), there are those who continue to cling – and probably will for some time – to the idea that self-publishing is an avenue for the author whose work just isn’t good enough for traditional publishers. No matter how many times or by how many reputable reviewers a quality self-published work has been vetted, there are reviewers who simply won’t look at it if it’s self-published, and there are readers (who usually also happen to be writers) who will snub it because it’s self-published.

 

But that obviously doesn’t stop quality self-published work from entering the marketplace, and from quality authors. In fact, more and more established authors (for example, NYT bestselling author James C. Moore, who self-published his Sci-Fi/Mystery novel In the Time of Man using Kindle’s DTP service) seem to be joining the masses of lesser-known authors who couldn’t find a home with a publisher because their work either didn’t fit into a genre mold or would be difficult to market.

David Raterman, who has written books for National Geographic and Knopf/Random House (and who also worked two years for CARE in ex-Soviet Tajikistan), is yet another writer who decided to self-publish after trying to do it the old fashioned way. He recently released his debut thriller novel, The River Panj, in an e-version for Kindle, Nook, Smashwords, and the Sony e-reader, and as a trade paperback through CreateSpace.

Here are excerpts from a couple of rejections he received from editors before finally deciding to release it himself (he shares these rejections on his website):

The vividness of Raterman’s descriptions are stunning and I can certainly see what it is that has you so enthusiastic about his work. However, I am concerned that the book’s subject—while timely—has fiction readers a bit weary and unless it is covered by an established name in the marketplace, will have a hard time breaking out commercially.

It’s an exciting, adrenaline-fueled read, and interest in and awareness of the area of the world at the heart of this story have never been higher. But, ultimately, as intriguing as Central Asia is, I think it makes for a tough setting.

I’m always up for a page-turner, and not only can David deliver the fun, but his writing possesses a certain level of political sophistication that’s rare in these types of novels. As promising as it is, though, I am going to pass. For me it’s really a question of positioning—while it has its strengths, I’m just not convinced it will break out beyond its core audience. Alas, something we need for our select number of fiction titles here.

I learned about David Raterman when I received an email newsletter announcing the release of The River Panj. I thought, “Who is this man and how did he get my email address?” So I visited his website.

The first author who surprised me by self-publishing was James C. Moore. One would think an Emmy Award-winning former news correspondent and co-author of a book like Bush’s Brain would have no problem selling his exceptional fiction. I figured it was a fluke. Bad luck. Bad timing.

But then I visited David Raterman’s website and saw that it was clearly happening again, to yet another writer one would assume would have no problem selling his work to a publisher. There were three things I wanted to know about: David Raterman, The River Panj, and why on earth he would have to self-publish it. So, I emailed a reply to his newsletter and asked if he would be willing to be interviewed.

Read the rest of the post on Kristen Tsetsi‘s blog.

Email Service Roundup

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Maintaining an email newsletter list and sending out professional, attractive emails is critical for nearly anyone who likes to stay in contact with a group, whether it’s a book club or fan base. Many providers offer this service, and a few offer it either free or for pennies on the email, making it an affordable option even for Christmas newsletters.

Until recently I used Vertical Response, then realized I needed to change when I discovered it didn’t offer an autoresponder. When I signed up for the service years ago, I had never heard the term and didn’t know what I would be missing. As clarification: an autoresponder is an automatic email that goes out when someone signs up for the newsletter through a signup form, usually on a website. I’m also not impressed with VR’s signup form, which is small and funky. The signup form and autoresponder are not likely important to anyone sending out personal emails, but they are critical to writers or small businesses building an email list, so I’ve decided to switch providers.

Overall, most of the providers offer:

  •  a variety of nice design templates
  • list management tools and list segmentation
  • RSS ability to feed blogs directly into a newsletter
  • a sign-up function for your website
  • tracking and analytic information

One significant difference is that MailChimp and Vertical Response are the only two (in my survey) that offer a pay-as-you-go option; the others all charge a monthly service fee. Mail Chimp and YMLP (Your Mailing List Provider) also offer a free monthly plan, which could be great for anyone with a small list, but the free plans don’t usually include autoresponders.

Here’s a brief guide to six services and their distinctive features and prices:
MailChimp

  • Monthly plan or pay as you go
  • Free for up to 2000 subscribers and 1200 emails a month (but no autoresponder)
  • Monthly unlimited plans start at $10 for 500 or fewer
  • Phone support during the week
  • Signup forms for websites and autoresponders with paid accounts

AWeber

  • $19 a month for unlimited emails (first month is $1)
  • Great looking signup forms for websites and autoresponders
  •  Customer support
  • Performance tracking

Vertical Response

  • Monthly plan or pay as you go
  • Monthly: $10 per month for 500 or less
  • Free trial (first 100 emails free)
  • Offers surveys and direct-mail postcards
  • Signup forms but no autoresponders

YMLP

  • Free version available (maximum of 1000 emails per month)
  • Pro version starts at $3.75/month (for 2500 emails per month); Pro Plus starts at $5/month
  • Can include attachments
  • Social media integration
  • Google Analytics integration
  • Unlimited autoresponders

Constant Contact

  • Monthly plan: $15 for 500 or fewer
  • Free 60-day trial
  • Lots of customer support/phone, e-mail, library, videos
  • Event marketing
  • Connections with social media
  • Built-in autoresponder

iContact

  • $10 month for 500 or fewer
  • $29 for 2500 subscribers
  • 30-day free trial
  • Offers survey services/features
  • Integration with Google Analytics
  • Signup forms and autoresponders

I’ve decided to go with MailChimp because I need a pay-as-you-go option for my infrequent, but 1000+ mailings. I also need a good signup form with an autoresponder for my website. The free version of MailChimp is also a good option for book club leaders or anyone sending out a small monthly mailing. Even if you’re not running a business or building a list of readers/fans, these services offer a fun way to send attractive emails to any group of people.

What service do you use? Are you happy with it?

 

This is a reprint from L.J. Sellers‘ blog.

How I Sold 100 eBooks in 13 Days

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This post, by M.E. Patterson, originally appeared on his blog on 9/17/11.

On August 1st, I officially launched my debut supernatural thriller, Devil’s Hand, on Kindle, Nook, and in paperback. First month sales were consistent, but small, maybe 1 or 2 a day, sometimes 3 on a good day. That was before I really did any serious promoting outside of an email sent to my mailing list of friends and interested folk, and some Facebook-ing.

In the month of September, I have now sold well over 100 copies of the e-book this month alone. I crossed the 100 mark on the 13th. For the month of September, Devil’s Hand’s worst Amazon rank was #20,910 for one day…it’s been better than 20k for every other day, and it cracked #10,000 for 3 days, once reaching #38 in Horror/Occult. All with a book that’s less than 2 full months on the market.

I know a lot of you are probably asking, “How?”

I’m writing this because, two months ago, I was asking that question too (really, I still am, for months 3, 4, and beyond). But when I went Googling around for other people’s experiences, I was surprised that I couldn’t really find anyone sharing their early experiences.

Sure, you get the heavyweights like John Locke (who has a lot of great insights) and Amanda Hocking and Michael R. Hicks (who also has a great book on the subject). I highly encourage you to read their blogs and their books… they have a lot to teach. Also check out folks like Joanna Penn and Ania Ahlborn and numerous others who have been doing well and blogging about their findings. Reading their experiences is a great start.

In talking to other self-pubbed authors, I’m hearing that many people struggle to hit 100 books sold total. Some have had their books on sale for months and haven’t cracked 100. So I figured, for whatever it’s worth, I’ll share my early self-pubbing experiences because I like the idea of being open and contributing to the greater community of writers. And for the folks not having huge success, but would like to hear about how they might be able to bump 1 – 2 sales a day up to 5 – 6, maybe this will help.

Note that I’m not saying that doing any of this is guaranteed to work for you nor am I saying that it will continue to work for me, even. These are just my experiences in the first 2 months of selling Devil’s Hand, what has worked well and not so well, and what has gotten me to a pretty solid sales clip for a debut book by an unknown author.

So, here’s what I’ve found:

 

Read the rest of the post on M.E. Patterson’s blog.

Interview/Review: Be Still and Know That I Am

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 Interview/Review for my new novel "Be Still and Know That I Am" written and conducted by Garry Crystal :  

Has Amazon Declared War On The Indies?

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This post, by Dan Holloway, originally appeared on his The Man Who Painted Agnieszka’s Shoes blog on 6/15/11.

(And could that be the best thing that ever happened to us?)

So – hands up who calls themselves an indie? Hands up if you’ve enjoyed selling on Kindle? And hands up if you think you’ve got less lazy since you started selling on Kindle? I don’t mean time lazy, I mean idea lazy.

Still with me?

OK, I’ll start. Today sees the end of Amazon’s Sunshine Deals summer reading extravaganza, and for many indie authors it can’t come a day too soon. The effect on those of us tenuously in the top 100 has been devastating. Sales have tanked (from around 120 a day to 40 a day in my case) as ultra-cheap books by established authors have demonstrated that readers’ love of all things indie actually referred to price not content. And they’ll be with us for a while to come now they’ve worked into the recommendation algorithm.

But that’s not the most worrying development. The US forum moderators kicked all promotion threads into a “Meet Our Authors” forum, and today it seems at least two global changes have kicked in. The “insert product link” button no longer lists books, so you have to manually type in/paste a live link to a book, and the brackets many of us used after our book titles have all disappeared.

Those were two of the indies’ biggest marketing tools – the former offering readers simplicity, the latter being an attention grabber. These changes affect everyone in theory, but in practice impact the indies most.

So this is war on the indies, right? Well, quite possibly. Almost certainly Amazon is clearing the way for its own publishing programme.

But so what? I’m an indie. I’ve been saying for a whileI think we’ve seen a change in what that means as more and more people with mainstream genre books have “gone indie”, meaning they’ve self-published, usually through Kindle. Heck, I’ve had a genre book in the top 100 bestsellers for almost 3 weeks. But for me whilst that’s great, and it’s been a financial lifeline at an incredibly difficult time on a personal level, it has nothing to do with REALLY being indie. I argued in April that the real winners on Kindle would be prolific midlisters who built a fanbase and didn’t rely on market vagaries – they would successfully replace the modest-income-addition they’d lost as publishers dropped their modest-income-addition-generating midlist.

 

Read the rest of the post on Dan Holloway‘s The Man Who Painted Agnieszka’s Shoes blog.