Monday, September 13, 2010

Writing is the easy part...

Ok, as you all know I completed my first novel, Immortal back in May. Yeah :) I never thought that would be the easy part.  It took me nearly a year and a half to complete and I ended up with five major revisions as I went through. The final book showed little if any resemblance to the final product. 

It took the next month and revised and edited to get it ready to send out to agents and took about a week to write a query letter. From what I have read and looked into a week on a query letter isn't nearly enough. Most it would seem to take an average of 3 months to get their letter in order.

Flash forward- After two months of sending out letters and getting the dreaded thanks but no thanks, I stumbled on an article about Amanda Hocking on Writer's Digest. She self-published earlier this year and has done quite well. It was an idea to tempting not to look into.

Flash-forward two weeks. After much research I decided to follow her example and e-publish.
It took me several days of extensive formatting to get it ready for upload and another few days to find and format the cover (by far my favorite part of the process). I have since placed made my novel available on Smashwords and Kindle and this weekend managed to get it up on Lulu.com in paperback.

Considering all the time, effort and energy this process took it is nothing compared with marketing.  Let's face it that is what every author, writer, blogger, and YouTube addict is doing and dreaming about. Getting those clicks and viewers to their site.  How do we do this? There are books, sites, and videos about how to do all this. In the end though it takes time time and more time. Finding the right sites to post on, networking with those you want to reach, and most of all luck.

6 comments:

  1. A link in this post would have helped me to find it :)
    Good luck with the whole process.

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  2. Hi! Congrats on epublishing!

    I just wanted to say that you should check out Createspace for paperbacks. I went through Lulu at first (and my books are still listed that way through Amazon). But Createspace is MUCH cheaper. (Also, I'm pretty sure that Lulu wasn't paying me all the royalties for the books). With Createspace, if you buy a pro-plan, it REALLY makes things cheaper, plus you can get a bigger cut of the royalty.

    So I just thought I'd throw that out there, because I wish somebody had told me that sooner.

    So... congrats, and good luck! :)

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  3. Hurray for you. I'm published on smashwords too! (I also went through a gigantic ordeal to get my book to a place where I could circulate it ... editing can be PAINFUL.)

    HELPFUL MARKETING TIP: Can you post a link to your book on smashwords here on your blog? That way your followers can access it with greater ease. What genre is it? (I just now found you from Book Blogs.)

    Author: Tami Jackson
    Publisher: SunTigerMOJO
    Debut novel: Ravena & The Resurrected
    Book blog: VampireReview.blogspot.com
    Twitter: @Vamchoir
    Facebook: Facebook.com/Vamchoir
    Main Character's Blog: Vamchoir.blogspot.com

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  4. Oh ... and I'm now following you. Please RTF if you like dark fiction at all. http://VampireReview.blogspot.com

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  5. I just found you via Book Blogs. (I'm winding my way back through the recent blog posts links) I'm now a follower and I am adding your book to my wish list and ordering it with my other books on Thursday. As soon as it's read, I'll post a review on my blog. :D

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  6. AN amazing post in just a few words.... NIce blog, will be visiting frequently.... you could pay me a visit once in a while, and drop a comment or two. An AManda commented, wicked!!!!!! http://everyauthorsnightmare.blogspot.com

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