Spiderwize's Self Publishing Blog

Here’s something that should interest writers everywhere – Penguin Group in the United States of America are stepping up to the plate by launching a brand new writing community aimed at writers of genre fiction. In what sounds like a pretty cool idea to me, those who join the community – known as Book Country – can not only get to know other members of the community and post reviews of books that they have read, but even post their own writing to the site as well (though you have to review at least three pieces of other people’s work before they’ll let you do that).

That’s not all this snazzy new community has to offer, though – there are also articles to read, written by professionals in the publishing industry that should be of interest to anyone in the writing game.

p.s. It’s still early days, but Book Country sounds like it should be worth checking out.

More info at: http://www.bookcountry.com

Most people will probably have heard of blogger.com, the online blog publishing service, and it could be a good idea to start using it. Yes, I know what you’re thinking – I’m not a blogger, I’m an author – and besides, what the heck would I even write about?

Well, the clever thing about blogger is that you can write about absolutely anything you like and while some may take the opportunity to write film reviews or give a fascinating and in depth account of their morning toenail cutting activities, there is actually no reason at all why you couldn’t use the service to help your ‘real’ writing. You could be using it as a marketing service to help promote your latest tome, particularly helpful if you’re going down the self publishing route.

It is free to join blogger, and it is an excellent way to connect with people such as potential readers and maybe even fellow authors as well. You can use it as a means of promoting both your work and your personal activities in general. It is important to keep it constantly updated, though – the whole point of a blog is that it has new content on a regular basis, and the more you post, the greater the chances of being noticed.

The system also comes with easy to use editing features to give your blog the ‘look’ that is most appropriate for the content and there is even the chance of making some money – presuming you can draw enough of an audience – via the Google AdSense program.

p.s. Make money, promote yourself and your work – and all at no cost? Perhaps the question should be, “Why wouldn’t you join?”