You don't have to be great to get started, but you have to get started to be great.
Les Brown
I have just come across this quote and I really like it, it is true- it gives me hope. Anyway... I have had a bit of a revelation thanks to Mary Cavanagh. I have just finished reading her book "A seriously Useful Authors guide to Marketing and Publicising Books" - she carries with her a wealth of information as she has pretty much done it all - been traditionally published and self published. If you are thinking of self publishing or have already done it- the book is brilliant and I finished it in one sitting. It has given me much to think about in regards to marketing- It also gave me some valuable pieces of information. One is that only 5% of published authors sell over 3000 copies! Wow it just shows you what todays writer faces if you are not a huge JK Rowling type- which is probably the majority of us! In my opinion is it more luck at some TV book club recommending your book or some publishing house thinking you are the next big thing- The rest- the so called mid-list authors need to go out there and plug themselves.
Another great term that I have now proceeded to share with Mary is the way she calls herself a "Kitchen Table Author" - It is so apt, that is what we are- we do write because we have it in us- the money - yes it would be lovely to make money and live our dream of writing for a living - but for now we juts have to do it for love!
Armed with my new book, I have compiled a very useful list of websites to tackle and register with- plug my book a bit more and apparently Waterstones have a managers discretion policy on ordering in books, so today i am off to that very store with a copy of Goa Traffic! I'll let you know how it goes- oh and another thing my copy of English Grammar for beginners has arrived so when I get some time to start reading it I will be practicing on this blog!
Some other tips for you to consider, if you haven't already:
ReplyDeleteConsider coming out with an ebook version of your book. There's a huge market for ebooks and it shouldn't be ignored
Start your own website. You may not want to do this just yet, especially since funds may be low and you already have a blog, but if you start to gain a large audience it'll be something to consider creating
Start a twitter account. As much as the prospect of being on twitter may annoy you, it's still a social networking site which means a greater opportunity to put your voice out there and network
And lastly, try your best to publish your book in the United States. I've noticed books by non-Americans are quite popular here and you may want to throw your hat in
Congrats on your first book and hopefully you'll continue writing, regardless of success :)