indies forever. Our celebration on March 25th.

The Indie party is over. Another group of people have been informed about the ease, absence of expense, and sheer delight of being an Independent author. The hour rapidly became two, thanks to our local library's generous gift of a comfy space and the time to use it.

An interesting possibility of a book, art and photography, sprang up and everyone was keen to explore the multimedia aspects of digital printing.

Seems to me that there is new world out there for writers, musicians, artists and photographers and even technophobes like me can see ways to use it.

The New World of the 21stC Novelist.

Now isn't that a grand title? Alas, being a 21stC novelist means hours spent doing P.R.
It goes like this.

I am still a bemused technophobe so when Simon at Readersintheknow.com drops me an email telling me about a gadget I have to have and it's a Read Excerpt widget I have visions of a little robot that crawls around books finding extracts for me. I haven't signed up yet, need the money, but this is the sort of gadget I need for readers on my website. Then I am struck by an awful thought! Is that what it is?

I could waste hours of writing time finding out. But I won't. I am waiting for some clever reader or writer to tell me. I still prefer real word of mouth for information.

Just when I thought I had recovered some writing time by not doing that bit of research into my inbox comes an email from Indiesunlimited.com. I like Indiesunlimited for its useful articles and list of resources for Indies. It is real source of information for me. This time I have to sign up for BookLikes. Apparently it is different from Goodreads, is set up like a blog, and users of Tumblr will love it. More time is wasted as I look up Tumblr, and try to work out how to use a dashboard page that functions as a timeline.

But back to Booklikes, it seems I must trot round the site liking and following other peoples’ blogs. There’s also a discussion section, but having had some nasty experiences at Goodreads, I will probably avoid those unless I know some people from my kiwi reading groups are chatting there.

It has a section for authors and authors can giveaway e-books as well as print copies. This makes it better than Goodreads. You can also list your book release dates under Events.

I shall cogitate but probably join up as the more one's books are out there, being visible, the better the chance of a sale. But all this PR research eats into my writing.

This is the new world for this 21stC novelist.

It seems to me that I had better accept that once a month is my blogging time!

I must also blog an apology to all those keen readers who won a copy of or who ordered a copy of my novel, 'Jacob's Ladder'. As a POD book it has to be ordered and then we wait for the copies to arrive. I have had the most unbelievable problems getting copies. First the cover was printed incorrectly. Couldn't send those copies out. Next I had to download a new cover as the POD people said it was the cover's fault it was bad. My cover artist fumed, we checked the specs and the cover was fine. We downloaded again and again and again as the company kept saying the cover was not correct. We had now reached July. Finally I get the big boss to sort out the muddle. Seems someone wasn't pressing the right buttons! Then I was told the print download wasn't good enough! Sigh. Back to my formatting expert who looked at the so-called new specs and said "But that's what we have!" She checked everything and downloaded for me with a stern message to the big boss. Finally I have copies being printed. Next time I do a giveaway offer and pre-publishing orders I will make sure I have the books in my hot little hand.

We Writer's Choice authors are still floating on a cloud of 'Wow! We did it' euphoria. Gj's 1st prize, historical novels, at the San Diego Book Awards came in June. Sharon's zoom up the Amazon sales list came in July but they both gave us a shot of confidence. We claimed to have quality fiction and now readers are endorsing that. And we've only been going for less than one year.

Trouble is though, that I feel I will have to pull another success out of the hat with my novel and I can't see how to do that right now. I have a couple of competitions lined up to enter, getting on a short list would be good! Sigh!
Selling millions would be better.

My second novel is due for a launch in October and GJ's 2nd will be coming close after that. Writer's Choice is demanding of our time and commitment but is definitely working out for us. Now all we have to do is get people to understand that Writer's Choice is not a poor relation to Harper Collins or Penguin but a better choice for writers.