The best advice I got when starting to write after I retired is from the Stephen King book on writing (On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft: King, Stephen: 8580001040363: Amazon.com: Books). In it he says, “Write every day”. I’ll expand that a bit and say, “Work on the book every day.” Most days that means writing. Other days it’s working with the publisher on various conference calls to decide artwork, cover wording (front flap and back), website descriptions, blogs/vlogs, and more. Sometimes it’s speaking at a book club or doing a book signing. In closing, I’m enjoying the entire process!
Aspiring Authors #2
Little did I know after writing my first fiction that it would take so much of my future time to support. There are blogs, newsletters, interviews, book club visits (either online or in person) and social media posts.
Self-publishing is daunting. Most of the self-publishing work gets you to the place where your book is posted online, either Amazon or AppleBooks or a myriad of other sites. But how does everyone discover it’s there? That’s where the marketing comes in. A few of the book sites offer marketing assistance, some for free, some for a small cost. It’s up to you to do most of the work.
Editing and finding good reviewers is key during the writing process. Family, friends and neighbors say they will do a review, but it’s rarely a quality review or timely. You can get online editors who are quite good for a variety of prices. Or you can turn to a website like CritiqueCircle.com to get this type of assistance. You write a few critiques for other book snippets, and you can post a few thousand words from your story to get reviews and critiques. It’s hit or miss on the quality of the reviews, but you can, over time, build your own list of favorite reviewers. They are mostly good, but after achieving the word count to get credit for a review, they tend to stop. A few keep going throughout your entire snippet to give a complete review.
My recommendation is to get a good publishing company so they can do some of the work for you. This allows you to achieve your goal of writing every day, or at least most days. You still have to put in the time yourself for many of the duties like interviews or book club visits. This route can seem somewhat expensive – $5,000 is a typical cost for a first book, but I found that the editing was supurb and their marketing effort has let me concentrate more on the next book.
To close, even though I’m discovering the extra work that needs to be done to support a book, I’m enjoying the entire process!