So I’ve been pretty busy working on tidying up my trilogy and fixing the covers for the series as much as I can and practising writing fan fiction as of late but feel free to ask me any writing related questions you might have.
It’s took my several years to get the trilogy done, which I started in 1999 and self published only recently but here are a few things I’ve picked up through trial and error in self publishing my books.
1. Try to be patient. Create the cover, recheck editing and get the book description and details of the book right before making it available. It’a very easy to check and find another error that you missed.
2. You will never be fully happy with the cover and it’s expensive to purchase good book covers. Canva.com is a good free tool and you can also look on pixabay for images but it’s hard to get a professional cover without finances to spend.
3. Each site has it’s own formats. Expect to make multiple formats and learn how to use the bookmarking tool in your word processor. ebooks in particular often won’t accept files without a chapter list and bookmarks to each chapter in the text.
4. Don’t be afraid to fail. It’s trial and error. You will often submit your file for review and the site, be it Amazon or Smashwords or another site will come back with an error. I had to google what I did wrong and try again many times but each time it gets easier.
5. Take breaks and do some writing for fun to remind yourself what you love about it. It can become too easy to get caught up in the practical details of self publishing and forget to enjoy the actual writing part.
6. Read and learn but remember that it’s all just a learning process and no one person has all the answers.
7. It takes time. Don’t get disheartened if you don’t see progress right away or become an immediate bestseller. You are in a very competitive field and it’s very hard to get noticed. It takes courage to try.
8. Reflect on your achievements. Writing anything and completing any project is an achievement that many never reach. Trying in itself is an achievement let alone managing to self publish and life, bills, family stuff often throws a spanner in the works when you least expect it. Just try again but take breaks and rest when you need.
9. Backup your work. Cloud services are great for this and you will often need to have lots of different files just for the same book as you many need different files for ebook and paperback versions and different size cover files and different formats of the file for different platforms. This gets easier to manager over time but backing up your files will certainly help.
10. Have fun too. It bears repeating so I’m stressing this point twice. Take time out sometimes. Do other things that are just pure fun. Watch TV, play video games, spend time with your friends. We all need to switch off sometimes and it refreshes your creativity and helps inspire you.
Book 3 is already written and should be coming soon. If you usually buy on Amazon, please consider Smashwords. Not only do they treat their writers better, they distribute widely and are generally much more ethical and don’t try to force you to be exclusive to them or charge you for book visibility
bardicblogger 