1. To have your work read, and read by as many readers as possible. Self-publishing is the best way to achieve this.
2. You can publish a book that looks professional and compares well with a traditionally published book. So do it!
3. You can update, correct and add to your books very quickly.
4. You earn more of the money. 40% -70% is a lot more than trad publishers offer.
5. You can privately, and definitely behind closed doors, cock a snook at the agents and trad publishers who 'loved' your book but couldn't sell it, especially when it is selling nicely in both e-book and print forms.
Gloat privately, but just sometimes it does feel good to see that 5 star review and know some kind reader admires your writing skills and story telling ability.
Showing posts with label readers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label readers. Show all posts
Saturday, 14 March 2015
Sunday, 12 January 2014
New Zealand Indie Writers' Month
March, all stops are out for March. March 27th for me actually but the whole month has been taken over by the Indies writers. It used to be New Zealand Book Month but the organisers suddenly changed it to August, leaving quite a few writers' groups and libraries with plans already underway for March. I'm launching my novel, 'Tizzie', promoting my Writer's Choice colleagues' newest novels and selling our already published books at a launch in the library. It will be fun as I'm being supported by the friends of the library to help with food and service and we will enjoy a party atmosphere. I hope! Roll on March 27th.
It seems to me that sales only come if you put in the work, not on social media, but with people. I hate getting tweets about buying someone's books. I'd rather chat. I hate my LinkedIn messages to buy a book. I hate blog tours and bloggers where it's all about 'My Wonderful Book'! I've been talking about Writer's Choice a lot and people are interested in the group and why we are doing what we do as Indie publishers. It's easier to do that than push my novels. This way people don't feel pressured and I also have my colleagues' books with mine and am delighted to chat about them too as a reader, so it's gains all round. I've sold quite a few for them.
And the KiwiReads group grows. We are behind the NZ Indie Writers' Month and are pushing our books into public notice in a good way. So far the website is our main weapon. Tui Allen is working hard to get a perfect site for readers to finds New Zealand books.
We are still stuck on the quality bit. How do you choose without becoming like the agents and traditional publishers? It seem unsolvable.
Too many writers, too many readers and not enough ways to link the two in a sympathetic way. Or is it that there are enough readers for all the writers but we have yet to learn how to connect to the readers who will like our particular books?
I'm working on it!
It seems to me that sales only come if you put in the work, not on social media, but with people. I hate getting tweets about buying someone's books. I'd rather chat. I hate my LinkedIn messages to buy a book. I hate blog tours and bloggers where it's all about 'My Wonderful Book'! I've been talking about Writer's Choice a lot and people are interested in the group and why we are doing what we do as Indie publishers. It's easier to do that than push my novels. This way people don't feel pressured and I also have my colleagues' books with mine and am delighted to chat about them too as a reader, so it's gains all round. I've sold quite a few for them.
And the KiwiReads group grows. We are behind the NZ Indie Writers' Month and are pushing our books into public notice in a good way. So far the website is our main weapon. Tui Allen is working hard to get a perfect site for readers to finds New Zealand books.
We are still stuck on the quality bit. How do you choose without becoming like the agents and traditional publishers? It seem unsolvable.
Too many writers, too many readers and not enough ways to link the two in a sympathetic way. Or is it that there are enough readers for all the writers but we have yet to learn how to connect to the readers who will like our particular books?
I'm working on it!
Tuesday, 8 January 2013
January 2013 and a resolution.
Heavens, I keep saying I must blog weekly but then I slip up. Life is too busy to waste time woffling a load of words with little meaning. if I can't blog with sense why blog at all?
So pick a topic and go for it. That's the advice my blogging friend are giving. A new one found for each week, scan the newspapers or keep on blogging about your favourite things, they say. There isn't the time. However the PR work for Writer's Choice has led me to Goodreads.com. This is mainly a place for readers to brag about how many books they've read, discuss what they are currently reading and review and chat.
I've not spent time at Amazon - I have ethical problems dealing with a company which is trying to set itself up without competition - but I have heard the complaints about reviews. Not just about the 'sock puppets' giving themselves lovely reviews and booing and jeering other writers' novels, but about shoddy reviews which are hurtful to sales. Those reviews where either it is all important for the reviewer to be seen airing opinions or the reader shows little or no grasp of what s/he's read.
Many of the reviewers are readers only and not writers. They have no idea what has gone into getting that story onto paper and into book form. I'm still very new to Goodreads so I don't know if they have a suggested format for reviews and comments. But a little polite consideration would go a long way to stopping some of the vapid, mouthy or just plain rude reviews. Some reviewers seem to have found books in genres they hate and then written bad reviews. I dislike intensely the trend for vampire/werewolf novels so I don't read and review them. My dislike is my personal opinion and it should not be shouted across the internet in a review which I have not been asked to do or paid to do it. There is nothing wrong with a review in which the reviewer explains why they didn't like a book, but it had better be good honest criticism backed up with examples from the book and not just someone shouting disparaging comments because they can.
So pick a topic and go for it. That's the advice my blogging friend are giving. A new one found for each week, scan the newspapers or keep on blogging about your favourite things, they say. There isn't the time. However the PR work for Writer's Choice has led me to Goodreads.com. This is mainly a place for readers to brag about how many books they've read, discuss what they are currently reading and review and chat.
I've not spent time at Amazon - I have ethical problems dealing with a company which is trying to set itself up without competition - but I have heard the complaints about reviews. Not just about the 'sock puppets' giving themselves lovely reviews and booing and jeering other writers' novels, but about shoddy reviews which are hurtful to sales. Those reviews where either it is all important for the reviewer to be seen airing opinions or the reader shows little or no grasp of what s/he's read.
Many of the reviewers are readers only and not writers. They have no idea what has gone into getting that story onto paper and into book form. I'm still very new to Goodreads so I don't know if they have a suggested format for reviews and comments. But a little polite consideration would go a long way to stopping some of the vapid, mouthy or just plain rude reviews. Some reviewers seem to have found books in genres they hate and then written bad reviews. I dislike intensely the trend for vampire/werewolf novels so I don't read and review them. My dislike is my personal opinion and it should not be shouted across the internet in a review which I have not been asked to do or paid to do it. There is nothing wrong with a review in which the reviewer explains why they didn't like a book, but it had better be good honest criticism backed up with examples from the book and not just someone shouting disparaging comments because they can.
Tuesday, 16 October 2012
The Launch.
Well, we've done it. We're off. The books are published - epublished - and available. We are Writer's Choice and now we need readers' words to sell our books.
The great experiment has provoked a great deal of comment in New Zealand since I've had PR articles in writers' magazines, online and in newspapers and on the radio.
Several people asked me I didn't wait for a 'real' publisher. Indeed there are people who said I should wait however long it takes. Having had cancer and coming very close to death I know how short life can be and how little time I have left. I know my work is publishable and marketable. My short stories have all been print published. My novel has been assessed and critiqued and agent/editor checked. It was short listed in three unpublished/first novel competitions. What more can I do?
Learn to write a selling query letter, someone else suggested. But why? Why do I have to beg an agent to take me on? Why do I have to wait on their whims and moods before I can reach a publisher?
Go with a Small Press, another person told me. But the marketing work is as much as if I had self published, and the ones I liked had long waiting lists.
Writer's Choice will support us in our ups and downs. We'll learn and perhaps, it seems to me, we'll do better financially. This, for one who is an overqualified, out of work, near starving and frustrated with the lack of employment person, is important. The government unemployment allowance is not even a bare minimum and any boost to near nothing will be gratefully welcomed.
The great experiment has provoked a great deal of comment in New Zealand since I've had PR articles in writers' magazines, online and in newspapers and on the radio.
Several people asked me I didn't wait for a 'real' publisher. Indeed there are people who said I should wait however long it takes. Having had cancer and coming very close to death I know how short life can be and how little time I have left. I know my work is publishable and marketable. My short stories have all been print published. My novel has been assessed and critiqued and agent/editor checked. It was short listed in three unpublished/first novel competitions. What more can I do?
Learn to write a selling query letter, someone else suggested. But why? Why do I have to beg an agent to take me on? Why do I have to wait on their whims and moods before I can reach a publisher?
Go with a Small Press, another person told me. But the marketing work is as much as if I had self published, and the ones I liked had long waiting lists.
Writer's Choice will support us in our ups and downs. We'll learn and perhaps, it seems to me, we'll do better financially. This, for one who is an overqualified, out of work, near starving and frustrated with the lack of employment person, is important. The government unemployment allowance is not even a bare minimum and any boost to near nothing will be gratefully welcomed.
Friday, 2 March 2012
Obsessions.
My neighbour from hell is obsessed. He, (and now his wife,) whose 12 acres border mine, is frantic that I should not plant trees. Their house is roughly 25 metres from our mutual boundary fence. They claim that my hazel, almond and fruit trees will damage their house. They claim that my windbreak of coppicing bushes and shrubs will damage their house, and prevent it being sold. Daily I endure abuse, am spied on, cannot walk down my drive without being stalked, yet when I complain they say they must protect their property and they are not doing anything wrong. Attempts to get a mediator in failed. They don't need one! A solicitor's letter warning them of the inevitable consequences of their actions is ignored and laughed at. They drag the local Council officials into their campaign of harassment and I have to waste more time reminding the Council that they have a large file about my neighbour and they should read it before threatening me. I am writing this with my neighbour's binoculars trained on me as I sit on my verandah about one kilometre away from his house and land. He is dangerously obsessed.
And as I wonder how high a fence I can build along that boundary to block out my neighbour I have to chuckle. One of the poets I studied for my O levels was Robert Frost. I can still quote 'Mending Wall' - 'Good fences make good neighbours' He will not go behind his father's saying and he likes to have thought of it so well.' Exactly!
Agents and Publishers' editors are obsessed too. With marketability and money. But I wonder if they really know what readers want. I have included a few mentions of book titles and quotes from poetry in my latest novel. There are school room scenes and the schoolmaster is an important character so I have not foisted these quotes and titles in isolation. However the expert advice I have received from agents and publishers' editors is to remove these as modern readers won't know what they are and don't like quotations. The readers and writers I work with, to test my writing by reading and critiquing, snort in indignation. They like quotes and titles. 'Tells me more about the character.' most of them have said. A quick check round the library, talking to the readers there, came up with the same answer. One person said they had found some interesting poems to read that way.
So who is right? Does an obsession with earning lots of money by getting a 'popular' marketable novel make these experts right? Or do the wide range of ebooks being downloaded by the new techy readers say something quite different. Something about reasonable prices allowing readers to try different types of books? Something about the fact that people cannot all be boxed into the same square?
And as I wonder how high a fence I can build along that boundary to block out my neighbour I have to chuckle. One of the poets I studied for my O levels was Robert Frost. I can still quote 'Mending Wall' - 'Good fences make good neighbours' He will not go behind his father's saying and he likes to have thought of it so well.' Exactly!
Agents and Publishers' editors are obsessed too. With marketability and money. But I wonder if they really know what readers want. I have included a few mentions of book titles and quotes from poetry in my latest novel. There are school room scenes and the schoolmaster is an important character so I have not foisted these quotes and titles in isolation. However the expert advice I have received from agents and publishers' editors is to remove these as modern readers won't know what they are and don't like quotations. The readers and writers I work with, to test my writing by reading and critiquing, snort in indignation. They like quotes and titles. 'Tells me more about the character.' most of them have said. A quick check round the library, talking to the readers there, came up with the same answer. One person said they had found some interesting poems to read that way.
So who is right? Does an obsession with earning lots of money by getting a 'popular' marketable novel make these experts right? Or do the wide range of ebooks being downloaded by the new techy readers say something quite different. Something about reasonable prices allowing readers to try different types of books? Something about the fact that people cannot all be boxed into the same square?
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