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A recent study by the National Endowment for the Arts showed that fiction reading is on the rise, especially among 18- to 24-year-olds.
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I call Mondays my get myself together time.
I check what I’m planning for the week on my literary calendar and see what I can do to get some things out of the way before that day is to happen and what more can I put on my calendar.
I even tell myself what I would like to accomplish in my writing world
✅✍🏽📝What about you?
✅✍🏽📝Do you have Monday morning routines when it comes to your literary planning?
I’d love to know
Let me know and visit my blog at MotownWriters.com
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Self-publishing has fascinated me for years, and I’m fortunate to call many self-published authors my friends. Today is it is my pleasure to welcome my long-time writing friend Denise Covey to Daily (w)rite, as part of my guest post series, to give us an introduction to self-publishing, and a few solid bits of writing advice for someone who has recently started on this journey.
Take it away Denise!
—–
If you’re in the early stages of Self-publishing or diving in for the first time, read on. I’m travelling with you, and am happy to talk with you about my journey thus far.
Nowadays, books from self-publishing offer an excellent alternative to those traditionally published, because a self-published author is part of an ever-expanding tribe who offer services, some free, some paid to make your book sing. You have beta readers, critique partners, developmental editors, structural editors, line editors and so on; cover artists extraordinaire, blurbs/synopses help, book formatters. You are not alone!
From my perspective, there are 3 major steps to self-publishing:
1 – WRITE
2 – PUBLISH
3 – PROMOTE
All 3 stages of self-publishing are closely interlinked and carried out in order.
1 – FIRST STAGE OF THE SELF-PUBLISHING JOURNEY: WRITE
We write for different reasons – enjoyment, to tell a story, or hoping to change the world. With self-publishing, your writing is a business where you, the author, is in control.
When you’re in the middle of writing a book, it’s easy to get discouraged. You might not be sure what’s supposed to happen next. You certainly can’t remember what happened two chapters ago. The main characters you thought you knew so well seem wobbly, like you don’t know them at all.
This is when it gets tempting to avoid writing.
When everything inside you is screaming to do ANYTHING but write (hello, laundry! Why, yes, I need to scrub my stovetop right this minute…), extinguish those screams.
Sit down.
Write something.
Anything. Even if it’s ten words. Five.
When I’m writing a novel, I’m learning more about my characters as I draft the opening chapters. Then the things I thought were going to happen in the middle of the book sometimes change. I may have realized the heroine has a slightly different story goal than the one I initially pictured. Or her motivation to achieve this goal could be different.
Sometimes the scenes I’d envisioned no longer work when I have these insights. And it’s hard to figure out how to blend the new information with the upcoming plot points that need to happen.
Inevitably, if I stick with it, I figure it out. I’ve learned the hard way, though, the more I procrastinate, the longer it takes me to figure it out.
Which means it takes me much longer to write the book.
How do you take your writing ideas, write a book, and become a published author? This question typically is met with practical advice, tactical tasks, and skill-based tips.
There are other ways to help yourself become an author that have little to do with book structure, producing business and promotion plans, or even writing ability. However, they have a great deal to do with realizing your book idea and writing career.
My book, Creative Visualization for Writers, is divided into five sections. I believe these areas provide untraditional methods to help you make your writing dreams real. Let’s look at each one.
Personal development or growth lies at the heart of every writer’s ability to succeed. In fact, it’s the foundation upon which most successful people build their careers.
We all have unsupportive habits, negative thoughts, and limiting beliefs that hold us back. The best way to change these into supportive habits, positive thoughts, and unlimited beliefs is to explore our minds, emotions, and behavior for areas that need improvement.
If, for example, you want to become an author but you never write, you can explore why that is so. Are you afraid? Do you believe you are not good enough? Or is authorship an attractive idea but not your purpose or passion. Have lost interest in your current project?
byClayton Noblit
Getting a newly published eBook off to a good start is a great thing. It can teach retailer algorithms that the book is popular and can seed your title with reviews that help with future sales. So, how do you release an eBook with a bang? One great tactic is to use eBook pre-orders.
In this post we will detail different strategies for promoting an eBook pre-order and some common questions. Then, we will lay out the steps to set up pre-orders on different retailers and call out some differences between them.
How to promote an eBook pre-order
How long should a pre-order last?
How should an eBook pre-order be priced?
How to Set Up eBook Pre-Orders on Amazon
How to Set Up eBook Pre-Orders on Nook
How to Set Up eBook Pre-Orders on Apple Books
How to Set Up eBook Pre-Orders on Google Play
How to Set Up eBook Pre-Orders on Kobo
Ranking well on retailers like Amazon and Apple can have an outsize impact on your book sales. The higher your book is ranked, the more exposure you get.
Authors across all genres plan promo stacks to generate sales, which shoot their books up the charts. And, as their books climb the charts, they generate even more sales from the increase in exposure.
Think of pre-orders as a tool in your promo stack toolkit for new releases. They shouldn’t be the only marketing activity you undertake for a new release, but they certainly shouldn’t be overlooked.
By generating sales before your eBook’s release date, you are signaling the retailer that your book is in demand. This makes it easier for your book to get algorithmic momentum on release day.
Pre-orders may not be an effective strategy for every author. If you are publishing your first book, it may be difficult to generate enough pre-orders to have a significant impact. So your marketing dollars and time may be better spent after your book is released.
If you are an author with a mailing list and some dedicated fans, pre-orders are a great way to release your new title with a bang. Readers who know your work are much more likely to pre-order your next book. Especially if it’s the next book in a series.
Keep in mind that what works for one author may not work for another. Like everything with digital marketing, it’s important to test different methods to see what works for you.
Reading Time: 3 minutes
When it comes to how to sell books on Amazon, authors often forget to include the seasonal pivot in their book marketing plan. But there’s no time like the present to make a few tweaks and help get your book in front of new readers eager to add your title to their summer reading list.
With travel still up in the air for most of us, reading preferences have changed – a lot. In non-pandemic years, summer read books typically consisted of breezy books, or genre fiction. But with a lot of folks choosing staycations, many might be using their time off to finish up crafts they started when we were all at home, to work on home repairs, or to continue that garden project.
So, while our minds go to the fiction books we can escape into on a beach somewhere, other types of books warrant consideration this summer as well.
And these tweaks I’m suggesting aren’t exclusive to summer! I’ve known some savvy authors to change or modify the points below whenever they want to tie their book marketing plan into a particular season or holiday.
Using these updates to remind readers what your book aligns with is a great way to push more reader exposure and sell more books. Ready? Let’s explore these ideas!
Reading Time: 3 minutes
When it comes to how to sell books on Amazon, authors often forget to include the seasonal pivot in their book marketing plan. But there’s no time like the present to make a few tweaks and help get your book in front of new readers eager to add your title to their summer reading list.
With travel still up in the air for most of us, reading preferences have changed – a lot. In non-pandemic years, summer read books typically consisted of breezy books, or genre fiction. But with a lot of folks choosing staycations, many might be using their time off to finish up crafts they started when we were all at home, to work on home repairs, or to continue that garden project.
So, while our minds go to the fiction books we can escape into on a beach somewhere, other types of books warrant consideration this summer as well.
And these tweaks I’m suggesting aren’t exclusive to summer! I’ve known some savvy authors to change or modify the points below whenever they want to tie their book marketing plan into a particular season or holiday.
Using these updates to remind readers what your book aligns with is a great way to push more reader exposure and sell more books. Ready? Let’s explore these ideas!
https://www.amarketingexpert.com/2021/05/18/how-to-sell-books-on-amazon-promoting-your-summer-read/
read more about I Love To Write Day at http://ilovetowriteday.com/
Updated by David Gaughran 9 May 2021. Amazon, Publishing • 36 Comments.
Choosing the right Amazon categories for your book is such an important factor in your success. Being smart here can greatly increase your visibility, making your work more likely to be discovered, purchased, and recommended.
But if you make bad decisions here – or opt to do nothing at all – you can limit your book’s success. Sometimes you can even nudge Amazon towards recommend your book to all the wrong people! Which invariably fails, of course, and causes Amazon to think you have written a dud. Meaning Amazon is less likely to recommend your book at all. This is something you really want to avoid.
You should revisit your book’s categories on a regular basis. Not just to ensure you are maximizing visibility, but to check Amazon hasn’t placed you in a bad category. You need to know exactly which categories and sub-categories your book is in. (Amazon doesn’t make that part easy.) And then keep on top of changes to the category system as well.
The advice in this comprehensive guide draws from a book I wrote called Amazon Decoded. This book is the culmination of years of research. It breaks down exactly how the Kindle Store works, how you can design marketing plans which seduce the algorithms instead of fighting them, and the exact ways you need to tweak your metadata to get the biggest halo from every promotion you run.
I’m going to tap into that research today to explain exactly how you can get Amazon’s category system working for your book, instead of against it.
Here, you will learn why the Kindle Store is broken down into so many categories (and the massive opportunity this presents). How you only get access to a limited menu in KDP. The ways you can expand the number of categories for your book to 10 specific sub-categories – and more! Why it’s important to only place your book in relevant categories. And how you can remove your book from bad categories (and why that is important).
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Just when I thought I had moved on, was on solid ground, didn’t have anything to say, something else comes to mind. As a lot of us are, I am huge on family. My family is my world. Now that includes many people who are not blood related family. Family is the people that you love and that love you. You surround yourself with them and them with you.
November is a tough month for my family. We lost are family corner stone. My Mom. It was 2015 so for us the wound is still fresh. My Mom was my best friend, a great person and a loving giver. My Mom was also the ultimate horror fan. Oh my goodness how she loved the old black and white horror films. She devoured Stephen King, John Saul, Dean Knoontz, John Grisham and the likes. She came up with this awesome story…
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How to BookBub
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How to write from concept to outline
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A couple of years ago, a friend of mine was in a meeting to pitch his screenplay to a movie exec. My friend sold that plot with all the gusto he knew he needed in these rare moments. And he did well. He’d rehearsed that pitch till he could recite it backwards. On a tightrope. While juggling.
The exec was impressed. He picked up the screenplay from his desk and flicked through the pages. He turned to page 10. Not 8, 9, 11 or 12; 10. Then he turned to page 25. Again, not 24 or 26; 25. He put down the screenplay, the disappointment clear on his face.
“I don’t see the inciting incident or the shift to act two.” To this exec, the inciting incident comes 10% of the way into the story, and the main character crosses the threshold into act two at the 25% mark. No earlier, no later.
This is taking story structure to an extremely literal limit. It has to hit those beats, he reasoned, and it has to hit them at these exact times.
I wonder what this exec would have made of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. There, she sees the rabbit in paragraph two, by the fourth para, she’s down the rabbit hole. From inciting incident (seeing the rabbit) to crossing the threshold (going down the rabbit hole) in roughly the same amount of words as it’s taken me to get to this point in the article.
That’s how good a storyteller Lewis Carrol was.
But Carrol was writing at a time before there were whole libraries of books on story structure. The most popular among them being Story by Robert McKee, Save the Cat by Blake Snyder, my personal favorite, The Anatomy of Story by John Truby and The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler.
Reading Time: 3 minutes
This recap of “The Surprising Ways Book Reviews Can Help Launch Your Success” from the Book Marketing Tips & Author Success podcast is one of several episodes where we talk about how to market your book and, at the same time, make you a better writer.
Be sure to download and listen to the show for all the details, recommendations, and considerations!
How to market your book is something that most self-published authors must face. We’ve done several episodes about book reviews, how to generate them, and how to use blogger reviews and media, whether you are in the middle of a launch or not. These podcasts can be great refreshers. Check them out in the Resources and Downloads at the bottom of this page.
Book reviews obviously offer a lot of benefits. Digging into what consumers really want is ideally your goal for becoming the best writer you can be. While some reviewers’ feedback will be something you can’t do anything about, often there’ll be something you can use right away in your marketing strategies now or eventually down the road.
If you missed our 2nd saturday, please CLICK HERE TO view the replay
And then grab the meeting notes! CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE MEETING NOTES
LaShaunda Hoffman ROCKED!
Information about this presenter: https://lashaundahoffman.com
New Kindle Vella book – Building Your Readership
https://amzn.to/2Xg1JsK
Join The Social Butterfly Mastermind
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Canva Class with LaShaunda
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And don’t forget to join our live group on Facebook at
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See you next month on the 2nd Saturday
Still time to sign up for the #RochesterWriters Conference
http://www.RochesterWriters.com
I’ll be speaking about 21st Century Publishing Options and more!
If you missed our 2nd saturday, please CLICK HERE TO view the replay
And then grab the meeting notes! CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE MEETING NOTES
LaShaunda Hoffman ROCKED!
Information about this presenter: https://lashaundahoffman.com
New Kindle Vella book – Building Your Readership
https://amzn.to/2Xg1JsK
Join The Social Butterfly Mastermind
https://lashaunda.kartra.com/page/SBMM
Canva Class with LaShaunda
https://lashaunda.kartra.com/page/canva123
And don’t forget to join our live group on Facebook at
http://facebook.com/groups/motownwriters
See you next month on the 2nd Saturday
Michigan Literary News & Events
Founder’s Posts & Notes Detroit Book Club (Metro Detroit events) Michigan Lit Radio Show (Listen Live (646) 915-9177) MichLiterary Monthly Events (Contact us to add yrs) FaceBook Member Activitiy
Agents, Editors and You: The Insider's Guide to Getting Your Book Published (Writers Market Library)
Alan M. Schlein: Find it Online: The Complete Guide to Online Research, Third Edition
Jack Neff: Formatting & Submitting Your Manuscript (Writer's Market Library Series)
Kathy, Henderson: Market Guide for Young Writers: Where and How to Sell What You Write
Novel & Short Story Writer's Market 2007 (Novel and Short Story Writer's Market)
click here for details
Motown Writers Network . . . Michigan Literary Network 
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