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Indie Life – Be encouraged!

By on May 8, 2013 in publishing industry

Indie Life was started and is hosted by the Indelibles. This is a chance to talk about any aspect of publishing or writing you want: to encourage, share news, offer tips. It takes place the second Wednesday of every month. Feel free to join us!

Indie Life

I want to talk about the hedges in the front of my house because they take some major abuse over the winter.

The hedges lie not only underneath my roof but next to the driveway where my hubbie snow blows. These hedges are piled with heaping mounds of snow every year.

Plus, these hedges are shielded from the sun by a small screened in porch, so quite often, the snow turns hard and icy.

Company often comments that these hedges are just going to shrivel up and die one of these years…and I wouldn’t be surprised.

But they don’t. Year after year, they spring back to form, the perfectly trimmed square hedges they should be (almost always perfectly trimmed.)

Right now, gazing out my window, they look great. It didn’t happen right away, but it happened.

Never let the ups and downs of the publishing industry keep you down for long. Be patient. Give yourself time. Just like my hedges.

On a side note, this Saturday I’ll be at the Cape May Author Fest from 2-5 p.m. selling and signing A Spy Like Me and Heart of an Assassin! If you live in the area come by and visit! There will be close to thirty fantastic authors of picture books, middle grade, and young adult.

Visit the Indelibles blog for another Indie Life post and the list of links! A great chance to meet new people!

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Ups and Downs of Publishing.

By on May 1, 2013 in publishing industry

As most of you know I published a middle grade novel with Pugalicious Press last November. I barely got to marketing. I have a companion novella written and edited, ready to self publish.

It’s called How To Survive Pirate Curses and Tainted Treasure. I hadn’t written these characters in a couple years, so I loved returning to them. Especially as a writer with more experience. I had a blast.

Sadly, Pugalicious Press recently closed with my novel barely even out.

I’m not as disappointed as I thought I’d be. Self-publishing definitely has taught me that in this industry, as with life, stuff happens. We can’t control what works, what doesn’t work, what sells and what doesn’t sell.

So I shouldered this news with a shrug. From what I can tell this kind of thing happens all the time in the traditional industry. Books are orphaned, never picked up, or go out of print.

The good thing is that I know I can re-release them in the future. But I’m going to wait. There’s too much on my plate right now, but I loved these stories, so I see it happening at some point.

As with any news: good or bad, it’s important to MOVE FORWARD, even changing course at times if needed.

Do you have good news? In what ways have you had to adapt to the industry?

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Indie Life – publishing will look different, possibly forever.

By on April 10, 2013 in publishing industry, Writing

 

Though I’d share a couple links for Indie Life today.

In the future, will everyone be a publisher? by Nathan Bransford

Go ahead and read it.

Interesting, huh?

This quote jumped out at me.

 For now, publishers can still rely on those services and their print distribution to attract authors. In the future, they won’t have that. And as those services become the central differentiator, you have to wonder if the adversarial approach publishers occasionally take with authors (slow payments, lack of transparency) will give way to a true service-oriented approach.

What about you? Can you already see the industry changing and not being quite what it used to be? I look at all the digitals imprint and contracts being offered that are ebook only until the sales warrant a print version.

I hope big publishing, self publishing and everything in between sticks around for a while. But there’s no arguing the publishing world will look different, possibly forever.

For further reading, here’s a Hugh Howey post that should be a must read for any writer. (If you haven’t already read it.)

Click back to the Indelibles blog for a list of all the links!

 

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Social media strategies and decisions.

By on March 25, 2013 in publishing industry, social media

Starting a small business (self publishing) is like any other business. We have to be smart. Make wise decisions: Where to spend money? How to spend our work time? What products are we going to offer?

I’d like to say I wrote a business plan, a production plan, and marketing plan and never wavered. But it seems like some of those plans are in a constant state of flux. Yes, I have them. Not as detailed as some I’ve seen but they work for me.

Why am I restrategizing?

I’ll be honest. I’m in the middle of a social media crisis. I’m completely rethinking my strategies and feeling the desire to streamline and be more effective. Not just in blogging.

A few things kind of hit me over the head as to why I decided this.

First, recently, I did a cover reveal for a friend, but at the top of it I added a bit of a writing tip that I’d stumbled upon. I just wanted to add something personal to the post. You can probably guess what happened. That post skyrocketed and got a zillion more hits and retweets than usual.

Second, lately on Twitter, all I see are links or rants. No conversation. It’s changed. I’ll admit it. I do enjoy the #chats because people are interacting for real. More of my conversations happen in DMing and email.

Third, I jumped on my Google Reader to catch up on blogs and comment. I do this once a week. This time it was later in the week and I expected to have a ton of blogs to go through.

Guess what? My feed, which at one point would be out of control if I waited a few hours into the day–I made it through in about ten minutes. And hardly any of the posts were personal. Business. Cover reveals. Promotion. That’s fine. I’m contributing. But I miss the personal connection. I read all of them, but I only comment on ones where I have something to say.

Or maybe it’s always been this way and it’s me that’s changing, wanting something different from social media.

So I’m going past the marketing plan and truly writing a social media plan. For me, that’s different than marketing, especially for authors of fiction.

Have you changed your strategies at all? Or rethought them?

Hop on over to the Indelible blog where I’m posting about satisfaction and keeping your eyes on your own paper.

 

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Indie Life – my biggest hurdle so far.

By on March 13, 2013 in publishing industry

 

I’m going to be honest today.

And I find it so ironic/amusing/strange that this one aspect of self-publishing has thrown me off since the beginning. Looking at all we have to learn and put into action to publish a book, I’d think ebook formatting would be the one to cause a ripple in my calm exterior surface. But no.

It’s putting a book into print.

That’s right.

I’ve justified for over a year why my books aren’t in print. The fact that print is just a fraction of sales is my top reason, and a rather good one too. Nothing wrong with just digital.

I’d read posts about getting books into as many venues as possible for exposure…etc. And I’d still justify. One huge factor led me to this strange hurdle that only now I’m mustering up the gusto to leap over.

I had a powerful program (Indesign) and I haven’t been able to get past the learning curve. Yet. I will eventually. And when I do? I know creating the print PDF will be a snap. But I don’t have the time to invest right now.

So why am I playing with print now?

I’m attending an author festival in Maine. I have my middle grade to sell but I can also bring my YA books to sell on my own. I’m using this opportunity to force myself over this hurdle.

And then I found this video by India Drummond. She explains the process of transforming your word doc. into a print-ready PDF. Step by step.

I watched it and realized. I. Can. Do. This.

Head over to the Indelible blog and visit everyone participating in Indie Life this month!

 

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