So, you're all wondering, why did I decide to become an indie-publisher? Well have you ever tried getting a book published down the traditional route?
This is how it usually goes. You write a book, well maybe only 80% of it to start with, then you fire off the first three chapters or so to Literary Agents to see if there is any interest. Most new writers give up at this point because they become disheartened at the response, or lack of it.
You see Literary Agents are very prescious people. They say they will only read something if it is presented in exactly the format they want it, and if they say they want the first fifty pages they want exactly fifty pages. No more no less.
Well I did all of that, but still got rejection after rejection. Some rejections actually came seconds BEFORE the read reciept, so I knew they hadn't even read the manuscript. That's when I decided to have a go at publishing it myself. I read a blog by someone who had done just that and thought to myself "can't be that difficult can it?" Well, I was partially right. I decided to do exactly what the blogger had suggested and go down the Amazon route.
Before I go on, let's get one thing straight. This was no vanity publishing thing. The book was written by my wife and it took almost four years to get to the stage where she could say "that's it, finished!" We had high hopes for it, wanted it to be our passage to financial independance (still have those hopes). It was - IS - a bloody good read and we wanted the world to see it as that.
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This is how it usually goes. You write a book, well maybe only 80% of it to start with, then you fire off the first three chapters or so to Literary Agents to see if there is any interest. Most new writers give up at this point because they become disheartened at the response, or lack of it.
You see Literary Agents are very prescious people. They say they will only read something if it is presented in exactly the format they want it, and if they say they want the first fifty pages they want exactly fifty pages. No more no less.
Well I did all of that, but still got rejection after rejection. Some rejections actually came seconds BEFORE the read reciept, so I knew they hadn't even read the manuscript. That's when I decided to have a go at publishing it myself. I read a blog by someone who had done just that and thought to myself "can't be that difficult can it?" Well, I was partially right. I decided to do exactly what the blogger had suggested and go down the Amazon route.
Before I go on, let's get one thing straight. This was no vanity publishing thing. The book was written by my wife and it took almost four years to get to the stage where she could say "that's it, finished!" We had high hopes for it, wanted it to be our passage to financial independance (still have those hopes). It was - IS - a bloody good read and we wanted the world to see it as that.
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Amazon makes it fairly easy for new authors to get their work on line, provided you follow their rules on formatting. I went for the 90-day deal, which ties you in for 90 days (as you would expect) and gives you promotional deals like the “Five Free Days” deal, where the book is available free for five days to help boost downloads. More about this later.
So there it was. On October 6th 2012 the book was officially launched. The problem then began of getting it noticed. We had plenty of friends who knew about the book, some had already read parts of the rough draft and were keen to read the finished article, but once all of your friends have downloaded it, where do you go next?
To be continued . . .
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