Awfully Big Adventures in Self-Publishing by Sheena Wilkinson

 It feels very odd to be posting on the 29th day of the month. Ever since I first blogged for ABBA – March 2014 if anyone’s interested, it’s been the 13th. Easy to remember (and as far as I know I’ve only forgotten twice in eleven years). Sometimes I got to blog on Friday 13th, and once a year it fell on St Lucy’s Day, which was always an invitation to write about light at a dark time of year. 

But here I am on the 29th! Out of my comfort zone. Because of the reshuffle of ABBA dates, I haven’t blogged for ages, there having been no 29th February this year. (Oooh, this means that three out of four years I’ll get a month off, and every fourth year I’ll get to blog about Leap Day. Yay!) And it doesn’t matter when I blog: the fact is, Awfully Big Blog Adventure gives me a real sense of community in an often fractured world. There are writers I’ve never met, who feel like friends because we read each other’s posts, writers whose books I will seek out because they are Scattered Authors. 

I am very much a creature of routine and habit, and though I love change and adventure to some extent, I do fear the unknown. I am especially pusillanimous about techy things: that’s probably why it took me until 2023 to get a website.

Another thing I’ve been scared of is self-publishing. No matter how many talks I have been to from really successful and savvy indie authors; no matter how many times other writers have waxed lyrical about having complete control over every aspect of the process; no matter how many self-published books I see with much better sales than I have had for ten traditionally published books, it’s always felt scary, and I’ve always thought I wouldn’t do it. Even when one of my good writing friends, Rachel Ward, self- published the excellent, beautifully produced Write Your Cozy Mystery: a practical, how-to guide, I still couldn’t imagine myself managing to actually make a book happen – writing, after all, is the easy bit!

one traditionally published, one self-published

But later this year I am going to self-publish a novel – a much scarier leap for me than changing my blogging day. And it’s mainly thanks to ABBA – or at least to the Scattered Authors. 

Here’s how.

As we all know, Scattered Authors get about a bit. One place where many of have scattered to over the years has been Charney, the annual, much-missed retreat in Oxfordshire. It was at Charney where I met Linda Newbery, Celia Rees and Adele Geras, who run the excellent, eclectic review blog Writers Review, which I’ve occasionally reviewed for, and was interviewed by in 2023: http://reviewsbywriters.blogspot.com/2023/04/special-feature-q-with-guest-sheena.html

A month or so ago I read in The Bookseller that Writers Review was branching out into publishing, bringing out three books this April: The One True Thing, a new adult novel from award-winning Linda Newbery, and reissues of two highly-acclaimed novels – The Poet’s Wife by Judith Allnatt, and David: The Unauthorised Autobiography by Mary Hoffmann. https://www.thebookseller.com/author-interviews/author-interviews/testing-the-waters-linda-newbery-makes-her-first-foray-into-self-publishing

All three authors are widely published, hugely experienced and highly respected. Reading about their decision to self-publish these novels as a Writers Review initiative made me think about a book of mine, finished this time last year but languishing on my hard drive ever since. If they could do it, maybe I could too? 

My first adult novel, Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau, a 1930s feminist feelgood story, was published in 2023 by HarperCollins Ireland and in UK paperback in 2024 – a year and a day ago, in fact. Readers loved it; reviewers called it ‘a gem’ (Irish Independent) and ‘briskly witty, reminiscent of the best inter-war fiction’ (Irish Times) and the majority of the two hundred Amazon reviews (mostly five star) hoped for a sequel. In fact, the acquiring editor, at our one and only meeting, waxed very enthusiastically about a sequel or even a series. 

But it was a one-book deal and that passionate editor moved on, as is the way in publishing, and though Mrs Hart had clearly struck a chord with readers, there simply weren't enough of them to justify HarperCollins offering for the sequel. So they didn’t. 

And yes, it might have been more sensible to wait for a contract before I wrote it, but the fact is, like readers, I wanted to know what happened next! And as I wrote Miss McVey Takes Charge, set in 1936, I was feeling optimistic and determined. This book would see the light of day. To anyone who enquired, I said blithely that if HarperCollins didn’t take it I would jolly well publish it myself. (I said it very fast, because to be honest I was terrified of the prospect.)

There seemed no point in sending the book elsewhere: publishers are unlikely to want the sequel to a book published by another company. I did look at reworking it to make it less like a sequel, but that was like trying to turn my dog into a cat. 

I hoped that, if I did nothing for a year, something amazing might happen to make HarperCollins change their minds – Mrs Hart might be optioned for TV or go viral for some reason. This didn’t happen, but when I read about the Writers’ Review initiative, it spurred me on to start thinking seriously about taking that kind of action myself. 

And then something lovely happened! Having engaged in a little chat on social media about the trend for respected, successful writers to self-publish, I admitted that I too was considering self-publishing and explained about Miss McVey takes Charge. The next day I had a message from Linda Newbery, inviting me to bring the book to Writers Review! I will still be self-publishing, but with the support and cooperation of writers I really like and trust. And I know that the Writers Review endorsement will give the book a stamp of approval and respectability, and that they will support my book, as I will support theirs. 

three splendid, and beautifully-produced novels from Writers' Review 

Miss McVey Takes Charge will publish late in 2025. I need to leave some breathing space around my forthcoming school story sequel, which publishes in September, and it gives me time to build up (I hope!) some interest in the book. I’ve invested in engaging a really first-class editor and cover illustrator, both of whom have worked on my traditionally published books. I don’t expect to sell thousands of copies or to make any money; it’s not about that. It’s about giving the readers who bought, loved and reviewed the first book the sequel they – and I – want. It’s about taking control in a world where writers’ words are blatantly stolen to train robots, as Claire Fayers blogged about on here only yesterday. https://awfullybigblogadventure.blogspot.com/

And – because without the invitation from Writers’ Review I might still be dithering about this – it’s about community and solidarity, and writers helping each other out. Because that’s what matters. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Limos Circle The Block, by Susan Price and Andrew Price

                Hi again!

     There's such an atmosphere here at the launch for Three Billy Goats Gruff!
     The limos are circling the blog and we'll soon be welcoming our first star!

     And wait!
     A limo is pulling up!

          I can't see who's getting out yet....
          It's sure to be someone exciting!
          It's - it's - 

 
                                         Ooh, I'm thrilled!

It's the Bridge!

I was another bridge, further down river, but the part was written out.

That's how it is in this business.  

I was the original bridge too far and one of the bridges of Toko-Ri.

You don't see me. I was behind a building.

Who is this arriving?

Can it be - ooh, can it be Great Big?

      Oh, girls, he's so dreamy. For a goat.

      Laters!

Click here for next episode. 

Art work: Andrew Price

Goodbye! - Susan Price and Andrew Price

It's been wonderful having you all join me here, folks - but there's been so much happening, it's been hard to keep up.
        Let's join our roaming camera for a round-up...

Inside the janitor's broom cupboard...

 At The Front Entrance...

Inside, At The Party...

Speeches - The Troll Thanks Everyone...

The Goats' 45 minute speech on why everyone should vote Green...

Back Outside, At The Door

Back Inside, On The Dance-Floor...

As the music ends...

That's all, folks!

           Goodbye!      Bye-bye, darlings!   Goodbye!    Bye-eeee!

Goodbye Everyone!

 Thank You For Joining Us! 

 

________________________________________________________________________________ 

The Goats, the Troll and assorted Prices would like to thank Joan Lennon, poet and author, for donating her usual ABBA day to this celebration.

Three Billy Goats Gruff Story Book

Three Billy Goats Gruff Colouring-In and Activity Book

US Edition

(Conforms to American spelling.)

The Runaway Chapatti
_________________________________________

Tinku Tries To Help

Being a Real Person Sheena Wilkinson

I’ve just become Ireland’s first Patron of Reading. Trinity Comprehensive School, Ballymun, is a north Dublin school in an area which was, in the past, a byword for deprivation. In recent years, Ballymun has been the subject of a huge regeneration programme, and it’s a place where I have been welcomed since I did my very first school visit there four years ago.

This was drawn by the principal, Ms Fran Neary.

where it all started 

In 2011, my first novel, Taking Flight, had just come out, and I’d only done a few local visits in Belfast schools. I was a fulltime teacher so I wasn’t nervous about talking to teenagers, but when the invitation from Trinity Comprehensive came in, it felt different. It was the first time I realised that readers outside Northern Ireland would connect with my characters. Joe Kelly, Trinity’s wonderful librarian, assured me that his pupils had liked Taking Flight ‘because it seemed so real to them.’

That was the first of many visits to the school. I’ve done lots of talks and workshops in the library which is, like all good school libraries, central to the school, promoting literacy in its widest sense. I think I kept being invited back because I’m unpretentious and realistic. Earlier this year Joe and I decided to formalise the relationship by designating me Trinity’s Patron of Reading. I’m sure readers of this blog are familiar with the PoR scheme. It’s an excellent way for schools to connect with writers, and for writers to connect with readers. When I attended a ceremony in Trinity last month to mark becoming its Patron, one of the things I promised to do was to use my December ABBA post to celebrate being Ireland’s first PoR.

me on a school visit -- unglamorous but real 

In the last week, however, my thoughts have also been exercised by the furore over ghost-writing, transparency, and celebrity culture. There’s been a lot of nonsense in the media, as well as a lot of good common sense – not least here on ABBA: thank you, Keren David.

How does this link with the PoR scheme, and with school visits in general? I think the most important thing about authors visiting schools is that they make things real for the pupils. As a child, I had little concept of my favourite writers as actual people. The books just sort of appeared in the library, as if by magic, though I gleaned every little snippet of biographical information I could from the dust flap. When I wrote to Antonia Forest and she wrote back it felt like the most exciting thing that had ever happened anyone – to have a letter written by the same hand that had written the Marlow novels. (And I should point out that I was 23 and a PhD student at the time.)

the book that drove me mad

What I always emphasise on school visits is that writing is a process, and often a fairly torturous one. I don’t pretend to write quickly and easily. I show the pupils the whole journey of a novel, from notebooks with rough planning, through printed-out and much scribbled over drafts, to the final book. I’m not precious – I tell them about the times when it’s been hard; I show them a six-page critique of an early draft of Taking Flight, and point out that there is a short paragraph of ‘Positives’ followed by five and half pages of ‘Issues to Consider’. I tell them about going to an editorial meeting to discuss Still Falling, and how my editors spent five minutes telling me what they liked about the novel and 55 minutes telling me what wasn’t working.

I’m not trying to put kids off. I always emphasise that making things up is magical, and seeing your ideas develop into actual stories that people read is the best thing in the world. But I do let them see that it involves a lot of hard work.

Nowadays I think that’s even more important. I once shared a platform with two children who had self-published. It was a ridiculous, uncomfortable event: there I was talking about hard work and rejection and editing and how hard it is to get published, and there were these two little pre-teen moppets with their shiny books. The primary school audience, who won’t have known the difference between self-publishing and commercial publishing, probably thought I was some kind of slow learner. But I least I told them the truth.

Honesty. I think we need more of it. I’m so proud to be Ireland’s first Patron of Reading, and I intend to keep on being honest about writing as a magical, but difficult craft.

Trinity Comprehensive School, Ballymun.

Why I don't want to self-publish again

(Kate Wilson of the wonderful Nosy Crow asked me to write a guest post for her on my experiences of self-publishing as a published author. For your info, she didn't know what those experiences were, so there was no direction or expectation. I have re-posted it here, with permission. Note that this is personal experience, not advice.)

Many writers, previously published or not, talk excitedly about why they enjoy self-publishing. Let me tell you why I don’t.

I’ve self-published (only as ebooks) three of my previously published YA novels and three adult non-fiction titles which hadn’t been published before. From these books I make a welcome income of around £250 a month – a figure that is remarkably constant. So, why have I not enjoyed it and why won’t I do it again?

It’s damned hard to sell fiction! (Over 90% of that £250 is from the non-fiction titles.) Publishers know this. They also know that high sales are not always about “quality”, which is precisely why very good novels can be rejected over and over. Non-fiction is easier because it’s easy to find your readers and for them to find your book. Take my book about writing a synopsis, for example; anyone looking for a book on writing a synopsis will Google “books on writing a synopsis” and, hey presto, Write a Great Synopsis appears. But if someone wants a novel, the chances of finding mine out of the available eleventy million are slim. This despite the fact that they had fab reviews and a few awards from their former lives.

But some novels do sell well. So why don’t mine? Because I do absolutely nothing to sell them. Why not? Well, this is the point. Several points.

First, time. I am too busy with other writing and public-speaking but, even if I weren’t, the necessary marketing takes far too long (for me) and goes on for too long after publication: the very time when I want to be writing another one. This is precisely why publishers tend only to work on publicity for a short while after publication: they have other books to work on. We may moan but it has to be like that – unless a book does phenomenally well at first, you have to keep working at selling it.

Second, I dislike the stuff I’d have to do to sell more books. Now, this is where you start leaping up and down saying, “But published authors have to do that, too!” Yes, and I do, but it’s different. When a publisher has invested money because they believe in your book, you obviously want to help them sell it. But when the only person who has actually committed any money is you, the selling part feels different. It’s a case of “I love my book so much that I published it – now you need to believe in me enough to buy it.” I can’t do it. Maybe I don’t believe in myself enough. Fine. I think books need more than the author believing in them. The author might be right and the book be fabulous, but I tend to be distrustful of strangers telling me they are wonderful so why should I expect others to believe me if I say I am? And I don’t want to spend time on forums just to sell more books.

Third, I love being part of a team. Yes, I’ve had my share of frustrating experiences in the course of 100 or so published books, but I enjoy the teamwork – even though I’m an introvert who loves working alone in a shed; I love the fact that other people put money and time and passion into selling my book. It gives me confidence and support. They won’t make money if they don’t sell my book and I still like and trust that model.

And I especially love that once I’ve written it and done my bit for the publicity machine and done the best I can for my book, I can let it go and write another.

See, I’m a writer, not a publisher. I may love control – the usual reason given for self-publishing – but I mostly want control over my words, not the rest. (That control, by the way, is never lost to a good editor, and I’ve been lucky with genius editors.) So, yes, I am pleased with the money I’ve earned from self-publishing and I love what I’ve learnt about the whole process, but now I’m going back to where I am happy to do battle for real control: my keyboard.

It’s all I want to do.

Nicola Morgan has written about 100 books, with half a dozen "traditional" publishers of various sizes from tiny to huge. She is a former chair of the Society of Authors in Scotland and advises hard-working writers on becoming and staying published, and on the marketing/publicity/events/behaviour that goes along with that.

She has also just created BRAIN STICKS™, an original and huuuuuuge set of teaching resources about the brain and mental health.

Trying to democratise publishing - David Thorpe

I used to look down on self-publishing, as most writers did. I did kind of self-publish a book in the 1980s, in that I was part of a workers' co-op which published the book, and, while it was a valuable experience, had no wish to repeat it because of the hard work involved -  and that was before the Internet!

As we all know, since then publishing has been transformed by the spread of print-on-demand and the ebook revolution, social media and the plethora of channels and platforms through which creative content can now be delivered.

It seems that there is now a distinction between self-publishing and procuring author services, a distinction that is common in the USA. One can procure the services of print-on-demand or e-book conversion, and then one's book can be published by a publisher.

The difference from traditional publishing is that the publisher still pays the author income derived from their sale of the books, but the author does not receive an advance at the start. Crucially, the author keeps far more rights.

If I was to be cynical I would say that it doesn't matter what you call it, it's self-publishing by proxy, but on the other hand anecdotal evidence suggests that most young readers don't really notice whether a book has been published by a well-known publisher or one they have hardly heard of, so in practice it makes far less difference than you would think.

I tested this out last year when a friend who runs a publishing company of this type offered to publish an updated e-version of my slim volume Doc Chaos: The Chernobyl Effect. They gave the book a page on their website, a Facebook page and some social marketing, and every now and again I get some money from sales, so it's almost like having a 'proper' publisher. Plus I keep all the rights.

It seemed ok. Once I had accepted this idea then there still remained in my mind the thorny issue of marketing. My friend -  Chris - and I talked over this issue and came up with the idea of starting a co-op that would include anybody who wanted to join it and offers services in the area of publishing. Especially the all-important function of profile raising.

We wanted particularly to attract trade members who would offer their services at a discount to members, who would also include authors. Members could be: any publishers, book and book cover designers, artists, illustrators, marketeers, publicists, social media marketing wizards, readers, proofreaders, editors, printers and any others who provide services that enable a publishing business to function effectively.

We identified that there is strength in numbers, so the more trade service providers and authors band together, then the higher the collective profile they would achieve.

We said that the co-op should be not-for-profit so that people could join it without the fear of being ripped off.

We managed to get some free advice from the local co-op advisory service who suggested the legal model we've adopted.

We persuaded a few people to join the start-up, including the most successful independent Welsh literary magazine, Cambria magazine, the University of Wales at Trinity St David's, and social media publishers Americymru and Denis Campbell's UK Independent channels.

Although both companies are based in Wales, as is the head office (at the University of Wales, Trinity St David's), membership of the Co-op is open to anyone, anywhere. The whole point of the publishing revolution is that it transcends geographical boundaries.

 All of this has taken the last year.

Now we are throwing the doors open to anybody else who wants to join. It's a bit of an experiment, none of us have any idea how successful it will be, but we do know that it's very important to network. So we're busy trying to form as many partnerships as we can.

I should add, I don't make any money out of this. I just want to see publishing adapt and thrive and independent opportunities for authors and artists to continue to exist.

Oh yes, it's called Cambria Publishing Co-op.

How I made my first e-book

Are you e-experienced? Until a week ago I wasn't. But, in the last three weeks I have made and published my first e-book.

It feels a bit like giving birth to, I don't know, some kind of strange mutant mongrel beast, some hybrid child whose destiny is unknown, who may grow up to mock me, betray me, give me glory (but only by leave of the wayward capriciousness of viral flukeiness) or, even worse, disappear completely without trace in the infinitely absorptive sponginess that is the e-thernet.

Anyway, for what it's worth, I thought I would share my experience. Some of you may be teetering on the edge of this mysterious pool of brave new publishing opportunities, debating whether to take the plunge. I expect many of you already are e-experienced swimmers with Olympian credits. If so, you can poke fun at my ineptitude.

I kindled thoughts of these waters for a long while. Some of my books had been converted into ebooks by my publishers, but they were like the offspring of alcohol-obscured one night stands; unknown and unclaimed. The publishers didn't even tell me they had been born, I only found out by accident, and I don't have a clue about sales figures.

In a tentative way, I had previously offered PDF downloads of one or two stories or chapters for sale through my websites, but they had languished as forlorn and undownloaded as an unfertilised dandelion in a meadow of opium poppies.

I own no e-reader; nothing I cannot read in a bath without fear. Every work of fact or fiction in my library looks dissimilar from every other, and I like it like that.

What persuaded me to dip my sceptical toe in these waters was partly the persistent encouragement of a local publisher, Cambria Books, whose manager, Chris Jones, is passionate about their new business model.

OK, I said. But I wasn't sure what content to offer first. Then, an old colleague and the series editor of some of my non-fiction, suggested that I republish an old novella of mine. (Thank you, Frank.) This seemed a perfect way of testing out the market, since I knew it would have an existing audience, and that there'd be a new one to which I wanted to introduce it. All I would have to do was find those readers. (The expected readership, by the way, is YA, most likely readers interested in humour, politics, science fiction, and comics/graphic novels.)

I still am sceptical, so I'm going to be watching sales with interest.

The whole process of preparing the content from start to finish took two weeks, which itself is very attractive: contrast this with the swimming-through-jelly tempo of traditional publishing - two years start to finish?

Here are the stages it went through:

One of the illustrations, by Rian Hughes

1. Scanning in the original book using OCR (optical character recognition) software. I used ABBYY. The software is remarkably accurate but does need a bit of an eagle eye for spotting 1s that should be Is and Os that should be 0s.
2. Scanning in the 12 illustrations, which different comics artists from Dave McKean to Simon Bisley had contributed to the original edition. This was the fun bit.
3. Designing the cover, which included colourising in Photoshop a black-and-white illustration that had been on the inside. That was fun too.
4. Adding a short story on the same theme to give extra value, that had been published elsewhere in another collection but not widely seen.
5. Writing a new afterword. This involved a nostalgic and enjoyable expedition into overgrown verges along the side of my personal memory lane. I took my butterfly net for effect (a butterfly effect) to catch those extra special chaotic moments.
6. Completing the whole thing in Word. Word, the software, is not my friend, although Word, the archetypal personification of language, is. But sometimes you have to dance with the Devil, since the e-book conversion process requires a Word file. How did Microsoft sew that one up?
7. Making sure all the prelims were hunky-dory and accurate. That included researching and writing up short biographies of all the artists, updating them from the previous edition, and making sure I thanked everyone.
8. Then I thought I ought to add some adverts for some of my other books at the back that readers might be interested in. Why not? 70-90 years ago, most books had adverts in the back - and the front, sometimes, just like magazines. Perhaps this is the way to go to finance this new form of publishing? Interactive ads for acne-banishing face creams in the back of YA novels, anyone?
9. Then I got carried away and added a real ad from the 1940s for a chemistry set for boys that included real uranium! Most people don't believe that I didn't make this up.

I sent the file to the publisher, who checked it over, made more corrections, added the ISBN and converted it into the .mobi format, which Amazon likes.

I chose to go with Cambria Books, but there are many other companies offering similar deals. It may be worth shopping around, but I didn't bother. Some of them offer print-on-demand as another option. This may be worth considering as well. If you want to get reviews you should have a few print copies to send to reviewers. Also, if you don't think you will sell more than 1000 print copies, print-on-demand is generally cheaper than a conventional print run. Over this number, you should go down the conventional printing route.

The publisher then sent the e-book file back to me to check. I was horrified. I had designed it in Gill Sans font, which I love, and it came back in a frankly disgusting, evil, serifed font. All my lovely formatting was strewn about like weatherboard in a hurricane, and my unique work was reduced to the same common denominator as everything else that you see on a Kindle.

I had to resign myself to the fact that there is little you can do about this, except to control where some page breaks go. It's a bit like designing for the web, except you have even less control. That's the nature of this homogenising beast.

Then, holding a stiff drink, I muttered: “Go!" The publisher uploaded the file to Amazon and it was live - for sale - in less than 24 hours! Wow.

However, I didn't just want to sell it through Amazon and merely contribute to their increasing domination of the market. I wanted people to be able to read it on something other than a Kindle.

So the nice publisher also gave me a version in the .epub format, which works with other e-readers.

Cambria Books also made a Facebook page and a webpage on their company website for the title, to promote it alongside all of their other titles. For all of this Cambria charged £200, which includes £50 for the ISBN. The book is for sale at £1.84. So, I need to sell, bearing in mind the cut that Amazon takes, just 125 copies to get my money back.

I could also have chosen to do all of this myself, but I'm lazy, and I figured that it's worth it, especially since this was my first time.

But I wasn't finished yet.

I then chose to make the files available on my own website. I already sell books on my website through PayPal. Selling e-books is slightly different, because there isn't a physical product to ship, and you need to create a place where buyers can download the file, after PayPal has checked that they have paid for it successfully.

This place has to be completely inaccessible to search engines, otherwise people will just grab the files for nothing.

Here's what I did:

• I made the webpages holding the downloads, one for each format, which just need to be very simple, and put them together with the files in a folder on the server. At the top of the web pages is this text: <meta name="robots" content="noindex" />.
• Just to be safe, I also uploaded a text file to the folder named robots.txt, which simply contains the following:
  
  User-agent: *
  Disallow: /
• Both of these little tricks should prevent search engines from indexing and making public the content of this folder.
• The next thing to do is to get an account with PayPal, if you haven't already got one, and, once logged in, go to the Buy Now Button-making page (if you can't find it just type those words into the search function), which allows you to create a button for a single item purchase.
• All you need to do here, is to put in the name of the e-book, a product code that you make up, and its price. There is, of course, no shipping cost. You probably want to check the button that says “Track profit and loss".
• Then you come to Step 3, subtitled “customise checkout pages". This is the important bit. Answer the questions the following way:

1. “Do you want to let your customer change order quantities?" No, because they won't order one more than one e-book.
    
2. "Can your customer at special instructions in a message to you?" No, there's no need for that.
    
3. "Do you need your customer's shipping address?" No, because messages will go to their PayPal e-mail address.
    
4. Check the box saying “take customer to a specific page after checkout cancellation" and type or paste in the full website address for your shop page.
    
5. Check the box saying “Take customer to a specific page after successful checkout". Here is the really, really important bit: type or paste in the full website address for the page they go to download your e-book. Make sure this is right! This is the complete address for the page that you made earlier and uploaded, the one at the otherwise secret place.

• All you have to do now is click “create button" (don't worry, you can go back and change things if you made a mistake, as I did), and, when happy, copy the code and paste it on your page exactly where you want the button to be.
• Save your page and upload it to your website.

That's it!

The things writers have to do these days.

But I still hadn't quite finished. I had to write a news item publicising the e-book for the front page of my website, in which I included a link not just to the page where people can buy my books, but to the exact part on the page where they can buy that e-book, to make it super-easy for them.

On that page, I include all the options for them to make the purchase: a link to the Amazon page, because most people will be comfortable doing that; and the two buttons for both formats that I made using PayPal.

You can see the news item on the front page of my website here.

I then wrote a post on my blog promoting the book, which you can read here.

Of course, I also had to promote it on Facebook, on both my own page and the page made for the book itself, and on my Twitter account.

And, I launched the e-book at what was billed as the UK's first festival for e-books, in Kidwelly last weekend. My publisher had a stand there.

Unfortunately, this event was poorly promoted and badly attended (having it in a more accessible place would have helped), but there were many excellent speakers, not to mention, for children, our own Anne Rooney, plus Simon Rees and Mary Hooper, Clive Pearce and Nicholas Allan.

Several speakers told their own experiences of publishing e-books. Notable for me was Polly Courtney, who confessed her lamentable experiences with HarperCollins that made her realise that self-publishing was a far better route than being with one of the big five, and Dougie Brimson, who has sold over one million self-published e-books, because he knows his audience really well.

Listening to the speakers gave me confidence that it really is okay to do it yourself and publish ebooks. It doesn't mean you have to give up working with mainstream publishers. You can do both. But given that we all nowadays have to spend at least 25% of our time marketing ourselves and our books, in practice it is not that much more work.

As one of the speakers said, most readers don't care who the publisher is, as long as the book is good.

Did I leave anything out? Is there a better way of doing this? Perhaps some of you will share your experience. After all, I'm just a beginner, but at least I'm no longer an e-book virgin.

Do you do too much promotion? - by Nicola Morgan

Recently, on my own blog, I was talking about "how much promotion is too much?" (There's no need to go and read that post, and it's not about the same thing as this one, but I'll put the link at the end in case you want to see the guidelines I was suggesting, as well as the useful comments.)

The question had arisen because, on Twitter, some writers have been bugging the pants off people by over-promoting. In fact, I've decided that the next in my series of writers' guides from Crabbit Publishing is going to be How to Promote Your Book Without Bugging the Pants Off People.

I think there are three main reasons why writers sometimes do too much jumping up and down about their books - bearing in mind that "too much" is going to be different depending on each beholder.

1. Our publishers don't really do it for us. Most of us are expected to do vastly more than we used to have to; publishers' budgets have been slashed; and the window during which our publisher may do some activity has shrunk. Many of us (myself included) don't actually mind, and many of our publishers are delighted to let us do it.
2. We can. Suddenly (and it really has been quite sudden) we have all the possible platforms of Facebook, Twitter, our own blogs, other people's blogs, etc, and they are free and easy. So it's easy to be a bit too free and easy with the opportunities. It's also easy for us to make connections with journalists and therefore easier for us to generate publicity opportunities in traditional media.
3. Sheer blind panic at the thought that our much-loved, long slaved-over book might sink without trace, and a burning passion that people should get to read it.

In the blog post I referred to, I was answering the "how much is too much?" question from the viewpoint of "how much will bug the pants off people?" But there's another way to look at the question: how much is more than is good for us? How much will actually be self-defeating because we won't have time to write?

I've read numerous pieces by highly successful self-publishers (including this piece by Joe Konrath and also a recent interview in the Guardian with Amanda Hocking) in which the value of tweeting etc in actually selling copies is regarded as over-rated. Joe Konrath has analysed sales movements in his ebooks (yes, we all get RSI from checking our figures!) and believes that it's not the tweeting or FBing or blogging or being interviewed anywhere that boosts his sales. He's not saying don't use Twitter or even that it's not useful - he's saying, and I agree, that it doesn't directly hugely affect sales, or not as much as we might think it would. What both writers do is write, and write lots. Amanda Hocking's sales rocketed because she put lots of books out there in quick succession, not because she found thousands of followers on Twitter.

So, is one conclusion that a better way of promoting ourselves is to promote ourselves less and write more?

I rather think it may be. I think that spending two hours a day on promotion (in whatever form) will not be four times as effective as spending half an hour a day on that, and an extra hour and a half writing something. In fact, I'm rather sure that spending more time writing and less time promoting would be a very good idea for many of us - myself definitely included - for lots of reasons.

What do you think? Do we all do too much promotion, even those of us trying to keep it at the non-bugging end of the scale? Do we do too much for our own good? How do you know when you've done enough? What do you dislike about it? Or possibly like about it? Do you like the idea of doing less and writing more?

I'd love to know!

(Here is the link to the post I mentioned.)

Ahem. If by any chance you'd like help with how to use Twitter like a sensible and unbugging person, you might be interested in Tweet Right - the Sensible Person's Guide to Twitter, currently at a crazy cheap price on Amazon. I'm cringing at that blatant plug and the irony of its appearance in this post. But what the hell: in for a cringe, in for a crossing the line - my newest ebook for writers is Write a Great Synopsis - An Expert Guide. 

*slinks off to do some writing*