The New Author: A beginner's self-help guide to novel writing, publishing as an independent ebook author and promoting your brand using social networks - Softcover

Barnes, Ruby

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1908943076 ISBN 13: 9781908943071

Publisher: Marble City Publishing, 2012

Synopsis

A self-help guide to novel writing, publishing as an independent ebook author and promoting your brand using social networks.
With foreword by Jim Williams, author of ten internationally published novels including the Booker Prize nominated Scherzo.

The New Author is an excellent piece of writing, combining deceptive simplicity, lucidity and charm: a trick which in practice is very difficult to pull off. The book is also informed by considerable intelligence and analysis founded on firsthand experience.

Barnes explicitly warns against the trap that engagement at the required level can become obsessive and time consuming, and in a couple of nice vignettes he makes his point with wit and style. The New Author is a terrific companion for independent e-publishing and I recommend it.

Jim Williams


Ruby's top ten tips for ebook publishing
 
1. You're going to need a good book, one you believe in, one that has your author's voice. That unique voice communicates your individual talent as a writer.

2. Test your book on honest people before you consider releasing it. Make it the absolute best you can. Don't regret, be proud.

3. Ready to publish? Forget about it until you've considered the following marketing steps 4 and 5. You can ignore them and still be successful. That will make you into a folklore hero whose name is on everybody's lips, but they're few and far between (and I'm not one of them).

4. You need a social networking platform. Ebook readers are internet users. That's where you need to focus (and make sure you start that ball rolling before launching your ebook).

5. Brand is to an author what location is to real estate. Make your name your brand. Everything you do needs to enhance that brand. Exert caution at this point because, if you do it wrong, retracing your steps is difficult.

6. Now let's publish. A cover, title and description that tells a potential reader what's inside is worth reading. A digital manuscript that won't cause that reader to trip over systemic errors in prose, grammar or format. If you baulk at any of this then pay someone who can do the uncomfortable parts for you (it's less expensive than you might think).

7. Aim to build a readership that will provide reviews, recommendations and support. Don't be precious about initial pricing.

8. Leverage your social networking platform to gradually increase exposure of your book. Use subliminal marketing and influence strategies when you enter into the mêlée of the marketplace.

9. Build your brand team. Remember at every step that each virtual friend, follower and reader is your team. Never alienate, even when in receipt of negativity. Radiate positivity and calm confidence. People don't just read your ebook, they also digest your blog posts, forum comments, tweets, facebook updates, everything that you write on the internet. Those readers read, enjoy and recommend. Word of mouth sells ebooks. This is the key.

10. Are you writing the next book? Never stop writing creatively. Always have a project in the first draft or edit stages. Blogging, tweeting, chatting and whatever is new, all good but you are an author and you must write. Allocate time for making friends and marketing. Ring-fence time for creative writing. Do both, in parallel, with an element of self-discipline. A satisfied reader asks for more. The reader market is effectively infinite and so is their appetite for good books.


Read on. You'll find useful and proven content in this book to help you with all of these ten tips.

About this title

About the Author

I've pedalled the pushbike of life through the Shires' rolling hills, along the folded rocks of Scotland's lochs and out west to the fractured reaches of North Wales. Love found me in the MacGillycuddy's Reeks of Ireland. The Swiss Alps cured me of obsessive compulsion and yielded progeny. Misfits, rogues and psychopaths take form in PERIL, THE BAPTIST and other works. Their voices, they speak to me. I plead with them, but the demons are real. I've carried them on my back across Scandinavia, through the Mid-West, Eastern Seaboard and Deep South of the USA and to the borders of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. We teetered together on the brink of the Iguassu Falls and came back. My writing is dedicated to the memory of my late grandfather Robert 'Ruby' Barnes.

Edition details

• Publisher: Marble City Publishing
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1908943076
• ISBN 13: 9781908943071
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 200