Self Publishing Your Books

Here are some marketing tips to get you ahead of the game when you're promoting yourself as a published author. I've left the juiciest tip until the end. Read on. Pick a style. Do you use primary colours or do you use secondary or tertiary colours? Are your graphics dark, are they light? Are they faded or are they harsh? Are you modern or rustic? Have a look at my Instagram feed for an example: The answers for me are: tertiary colours, light graphics, faded, and rustic. Partially because that's my natural style, and doing something forced long-term isn't ideal. But partially because my books are set in a medieval setting, and old wood, rusty nails, and faded photos speak of the past. Edit these graphics from your phone. Get good at lowering and increasing your black point: it's what makes your images more harsh vs. more faded. Toggle the contrast and brightness to, again, make the image more harsh vs. more faded. Play with the shadows to add depth and int...

Well, here I am, one year after publishing my first book. What's changed? I'm going throw you the candy and then the broccoli in the next two paragraphs; hold onto your seatbelt. What makes me feel qualified for writing this blog is that, since publishing my book, I've gotten a full-time job in marketing. I've been getting on-on-one, customised advice from my colleagues. Since publishing my first book, Elemental Links, I've read dozens of blogs on how to market my book. In this blog, I'm putting that information together for you. As for the broccoli, my book hasn't taken off yet. The reviews are promising. One professional reviewer loved my sequel so much that she asked if she could let her thirteen-year-old son read it. Out of all the books she's read, she wanted to pass along mine. It was very flattering. However, publishing your book is a three-year haul. At least. Be prepared. I've given out hundreds of free copies of my books. Some blo...

I don't believe in blog posts that bash one company or another: they're biased and not particularly trustworthy. While looking into signing up and publishing with ACX, I've done my research, checked other blogs, checked forums, and looked at Reddit. Not one source had a collection of all the resources and information that I'm throwing together in this blog. So, have a read! What is ACX? ACX is the one and only platform that you can directly  use to get your audiobook into Audible and Amazon. I use the word "directly" on purpose. Read on. It's owned by Amazon, and so too is Audible. Just like KDP, Amazon's book publishing platform, ACX is pretty basic. It doesn't have Kobo's crisp UI and doesn't have a whole lot of options for promos. ACX will publish your audiobook to Amazon, Audible, and "iTunes" (which is now Apple Books, but they don't seem to have bothered updating that). Here's the catch. If you sign on to p...