How much should you spend on advertising your book? This question gets asked a lot, especially by beginning writers. They’ve heard that it is probably a good idea to advertise your book, and they like to be given some kind of clear guidelines as to how much they should spend….
The Secret Pen Name experiment that’s not so secret anymore. Some of you will be aware that I started a pen name in July. There were several reasons for this (in order of importance): All my books are widely distributed. I’d experimented with Kindle Unlimited with the Dragonspeaker books, but…
If you focus on the three Ps of selfpublishing you increase the likelihood of success. In the world of selfpublishing, it’s easy to lose track of what to do and what is a waste of time. You can fill up your entire day with busy work, but which things are…
In a recent post on his blog, David Gaughran suggested the solution to the tide of scamming is “honest authors lifting each other”. If you’ve been following David’s journey over the past few years, you will know that he is very vocal against black hat tactics employed by some to…
Here is a view from the trenches about the state of indie publishing in 2019. Recently, there was much ado about this post by Russell Blake which made the point, in short, you must hand over wads of cash to the various advertisers (mainly Amazon Advertising) or die. I think…
Exit Kindleboards. Those of you who know me or have read my self-publishing books will know that I’ve been a fan of the Kindleboards as a place where new writers find out about news and best practices. As of this week, I no longer recommend that anyone even goes to…
If you’re like me, you probably feel yourself a little besieged right now. Yes, I just went through my inbox, and deleted yet another handful of “GDPR-compliance” emails, exhorting me to tick a box in order to stay on a list. I delete them. The senders are nuts, uninformed lemmings…
This question comes up quite a bit amongst new writers. They have finished manuscript and I wondering what to do with it. They may feel discouraged by the long and arduous process of finding a publisher, and they’re wondering whether to just self-publish. One thing I should say. Whether or…
The book launch. How important is it for success? In some circles of writers, there is a lot of talk about book launches. Certainly in the traditionally published world, book launches can be a vehicle for promotion. A book’s launch period is the time where it sits in a prominent…
A lot of crystal ball gazing for this year made by various people has included the prediction that mailing lists will stop working. Everyone is complaining that people are getting too much email and the author mailing list will stop being so effective because readers have subscribed to too many…
