Today I visited my friend at the Novotel hotel, York. He had come up with his parents from Grimsby. He has written some books but not delved into self publishing with Amazon yet. I was giving him some advice based on what I have picked up in the last couple of years because he is coming towards the end of his WIP.
1) Get professional editing (even though I have not for myself, this is the currently accepted wisdom.)
2) Get a Twitter account and garner a following. ReTweet authors so that they will reTweet you.
3) Plan your book, or at least the pieces you want to write before you write them.
4) When you are planning, what makes you want to write it or at least read it? If you do not want to read it or write it then what makes you think somebody else will want to read it?
5) Get a Wattpad account and serialise your current book on it. Make sure you Tweet it on Twitter.
6) Get a Goodreads account and add friends and authors.
7) Increase you Facebook friends by adding authors. Also, share their stuff so, hopefully, they will share yours.
8) Look at reading and writing articles on other peoples blogs. Or, at least buy a 'How to...' book from Amazon to figure out how this indie publishing thing should work.
9) Blog tours. Authors invite you to do an interview on their blog and then you do the same.
Even after all this, even if you have a perfect book you will still need a break to make it in the indie self publishing world. (You could have a name that is the same as somebody famous, be a taxi driver and hope a publisher/film producer gets in your cab or get people to read your serialised Twilight fanfic then change the character's names and disposition so that they are sadists instead of vampires.)
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