There are a lot of things you can do in your pyjamas. Sleep… write, read, make dinner, eat dinner, have a party with a bunch of eight year olds, take out the garbage, go to the local store for a snack, impersonate John Lennon, sleep… It had never occurred to me that you could sell things in your pyjamas (other than more pyjamas) let alone books. Ten years ago connecting with someone on the other side of the world, in […]
Read postWhen I ask the question, “What is publishing?” many people reply with the same three answers. 1) Publishing is the act of taking a well edited story and printing it to paper for people to read. 2) Publishing provides carefully crafted novels for the reader’s enjoyment. 3) Publishing is a vehicle for countless rejection letters and grey hairs. All these descriptions are soulless (and more than a little bitter…). Publishing has been streamlined in the past several decades making it […]
Read postThere has never been a greater time in history for people to personally connect with someone on the other side of the globe. Your readers could be at a cafe in a busy street, on a beach in the Caribbean, or sitting in front of the computer wearing their girlfriend underwear, it doesn’t matter, as long as they have an internet connection they can communicate with anyone in the world. Never before have authors been so accessible yet very few […]
Read postTwo things make writing exceptionally hard. One is beginnings. How in god’s name do you begin? You have the info, you have the idea, you want to entertain and instead you just stare at that blinking cursor frowning furiously. Each day of this blog I have frankly dreaded that cursor; I think it may be haunting my dreams. The seconding thing is pricing. How much are you worth? And how much is reasonable at the other end? We have tested […]
Read postWe all like to think we are special. It may not necessarily be the case, but we continue to be undeterred. We like to think we have something to bring to the table, something unique, our slightly off colour humour, our beehive hairdo, pulling off the underwear outside the pants look. But when every single person in your field is using the exact same mechanism as you, printed words, it is a lot more difficult to prove just how special […]
Read postIn ye olden days, writers hawked their tombs of bound paper, kept whole by glue and string, to the masses who gathered at ye olde book traders to hear them speak and sign their flowing prose. In this digital age if you are someone like Cecelia Ahern, backed by a large multinational publisher like HarperCollins, you can place a specialised glyph (or picture/character) within the pages of your book. When your reader goes to the publisher’s unique author website, they […]
Read postThe internet is like one large incestuous family. The amount of apparently separate companies owned by Google is just mammoth. There is a fair amount of monopolising going on; however, this is something savvy authors can take advantage of. Not only is the Blogger website owned by Google (and hence why I would choose it over WordPress any day) but YouTube, the world’s second largest search engine, is owned by Google as well. YouTube videos rank very highly on Google […]
Read postIt’s a surprise that we haven’t all turned into light hating golems after spending so much time on the internet. 1.9 billion of us online and over half of us perched on the edge of our seats throwing virtual cows at friends and poking random strangers. Social media is a phenomenon that has gripped an entire planet across an amazing breadth of ages and interests. If you haven’t yet seen the statistics on how many people are using social media, […]
Read postIf you don’t have a notebook, buy one. It doesn’t matter what it looks like, short, fat, large, thin, pretty, recycled, a couple of old envelopes stapled together, whatever. No I will not be getting you to write lines. Today we are delving into the world of blogs, forums, discussion boards and groups. Chances are that for every niche out there, for every genre you can think of, there is at least one community built around a love for that […]
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