Spiderwize's Self Publishing Blog

Many writers, be they in the self publishing field or otherwise, can find writing fiction a great challenge.  Not that I’m suggesting non-fiction is a walk in the park, but to be out on your own and trying to create a story that will grip people is certainly no mean feat.  The thing to remember is that it is not just the story but also the characters that are important in keeping the reader interested.

After all, a TV show lasts about an hour while even the longest “Harry Potter” movie lasts 2 ½ hours at the most – a book, on the other hand, takes up to ten hours for the average reader to get through.  Ten hours is a very long time, so those characters – whether they’re good, evil or somewhere in between – had definitely better be seriously interesting in order to justify your reader’s investment.

Another tip is simply to write like you.  This simply means to develop your own style of writing and not to try to emulate someone else’s.  If you have a sense of humour (and if you don’t, you have bigger problems than trying to self-publish a book, let’s face it) that humour should bleed through into your characters and your work.  If there is a big idea in your work, make sure it’s an idea that you are taken with.  This isn’t just for your readers’ sake – it’s for your own.  Trying to write a novel about something you don’t care about in a style that isn’t your own is practically guaranteeing failure before you’ve even started.

p.s. In writing, as in life – be yourself.

Today I thought I’d continue my occasional look at the kinds of writing software that are out there today, whether free, expensive or somewhere in between, as there are rather a lot of them and choosing the wrong one can be a major pain in the you know what.

Open Office is one rather neat little piece of software. Essentially an easy alternative to Microsoft Office, with a word processing software together with the other things found in Microsoft Office, such as spreadsheets, databases, the ability to create presentations and so forth. Best of all, it is completely free to both download and use and is compatible with other software packages (including Microsoft Office).

AbiWord is another good and fairly well known word processor, likewise compatible with other software packages, available in different languages and again, perhaps most importantly, completely free of charge. Where would we be without glorious freebies, eh?

If you’re into writing fiction, be it for the purposes of your self publishing career or just as a hobby, there are also different software packages out there which aim to make the process of writing full novels that little bit easier. One of those is New Novelist, which helps writers with world building and keeps their pre-writing notes easily accessible. Be warned though – this one doesn’t come cheap, and is unlikely to be found for less than 30 pounds.

p.s. The correct writing software can help make a difficult job go a little smoother.

As writers, whether in the self publishing industry or not, we frequently come across both spelling and grammatical quandaries. Do you spell program as program or as programme? If you describe an event from history, do you describe it as a historic event or as an historic event? Moreover, does it actually matter which way you do it? Is there a right and wrong way, or is it all just down to individual taste or personal choice?

Taking the historic problem as the example, this of course comes from a fairly famous grammatical rule which you will, as a writer, certainly already be well aware of – that we should use “an” before words that start with a vowel– an eagle, an ambulance, an American, and so forth and so on. With words that do not start with a vowel, we always use just a – as in, a book, a wing, a whiny American, and so forth.

Things get slightly more confusing when it comes to word starting with “h”. This is because of the sound of those words as spoken as opposed to the spelling of the words makes it seem as though they begin with a vowel – the sentence may read like “he was an honourable man” but it sounds like “he was an onourable man”, which is why we tend to use the an instead of the a. That said, while this is definitely the most accepted way of doing things, a not insignificant minority will use “a honourable man”, believing that the sound is overridden by the spelling.

p.s. The choice belongs to you… or a honourable editor.

Being well versed in the correct use of punctuation is a vital tool in the trade of being a professional writer, whether you are in the self publishing field or otherwise. Using punctuation incorrectly – such as adding multiple exclamation or question marks to the end of a sentence when just the one will suffice – is a very bad habit. Why, I hear you ask?!!?? Because it is the clear indication of an amateur and one thing you do not want as a writer is to have anyone – be they other writers, editors, publishers or readers for that matter – to regard you as an amateur. Sometimes it is tempting to add an extra exclamation mark as you may feel that a particular sentence is in need of extra emphasis than one exclamation mark on its own seems to lack somehow, but not only is this very unlikely, but the fact is there are better ways to go about doing this. For instance, bold face, initial capitals, or even italics can be used to add extra emphasis to a sentence without the need for unnecessary additional punctuation. Do You See What I Did There?

Of course, using even one exclamation mark may not be necessary depending on what you are writing in the first place. If you are writing some kind of non-fiction “how to” business guide, it is highly unlikely that you are going to need such marks at all.

p.s. Using punctuation wrongly makes you look like a hack!?;:’”,.*

Self publishing is what we’re all about here, of course, so I thought I’d use today’s blog to add a few more tips as to how to give your book the best possible chance of success out there in the big wide world.

One good tip is to make sure that your book includes all the things that are vital to any professional publication, such as an ISBN number and so forth, as well as a barcode on the back of the cover. Speaking of the cover, this is something that is also very important and something that tends to trip many self publishers up. The cover is the public face of your work, and if it looks bland, boring and unprofessional, it doesn’t matter how good the contents are, because chances are no one will pick it up to find out. It may cost be a bit more, but getting a professional in cover design to create the cover for your work will give your book perhaps its biggest chance of gaining an audience.

Another tip is that, if you are self publishing in real rather than just electronic form, use a genuine book manufacturer to print your tome. Trying to use the local print shop to deliver a professional product is, trust me on this, only going to end in disaster and probably lots and lots of yelling.

p.s. Taking care of the little things is a big part of success.

Okay, let’s talk about structure. Writers, be they in the self publishing industry or otherwise, work in many different ways, and no way is right or wrong as it all depends on the individual concerned. For example, some writers prefer to plan before writing. They will have worked out every detail of the plot, every character’s journey, possibly even the length of each and every chapter in the book before they even so much as write the first word.

Other writers may find this approach uncomfortable and binding (as do I, to be honest – in my mind, if you’ve already worked out absolutely every beat of the story in your mind beforehand, the writing itself becomes little more than transcribing, and seems like such a dull process I often then abandon it altogether!). They prefer to write in a looser fashion, sometimes so loose that the more organised writer might well throw up their hands in horror at the very idea.

Some writers even begin a novel with little idea of where it is going and only discover what the story is really about en route during the writing process. Each approach is not for everyone and discovering which approach – or some kind of happy medium in between those extremes – is an important part of developing your own writing ‘voice’.

p.s. Discovering the best way to structure your writing is an important part of learning to be your own person as a writer.

Continuing on from yesterday’s blog post, I thought I’d add a few more tips for those of you into the whole self publishing game (hey, when you’re on a roll, it’s best just to go with it, after all).

Serious self publishers need to start thinking about the marketing of their book probably before they’ve even starting putting pen to paper (or “turning on Word” perhaps, the former makes me sound about 80 years old, doesn’t it?). You need to find the market for your potential book and then work out how exactly you are going to target them. Let’s face it, there may well be a potentially sizeable readership for your work, but if you can’t find a way for them to even realise your book actually exists, it’s not going to do you a great deal of good in the long term. Make a list of which associations, catalogues, newsletters, and magazines you could target in order to market your book to the right people. Look through your personal and professional contacts and see if you can identify anyone who could possibly help you with the process.

Another important tip is to find the right title for your book. It might sound simple and obvious, but you could have written the greatest book ever (self) published and yet if you call it something incredibly dull chances are no one will pick it up and find that out. The title needs to be snappy, to the point and interesting without being too clever.

p.s. When it comes to self publishing, it’s all about marketing.

Going the self publishing route is an appealing idea, especially in these days when self published books can actually end up on bestseller lists. That does not mean that it is an easy route to take, however, and if you really expect to become a success by going down that road, there are some vital tips to follow to avoid your work becoming just another self published book that no one reads.

The first thing you need when considering self publishing is knowledge. Self publishing is a business like any other, and needs to be approached as such. You need to do your research – read books, go to seminars and learn from those who already have experience in the field. Another good idea is to check out what kind of books have already been self published and what has worked and what hasn’t. It’s also important not to follow the crowd too much – if there are hundreds of books on a particular subject or topic, the last thing you want your work to be is just another on top of a very large pile – at least unless you are absolutely confident that you can really bring something sparkling and new to the genre.

One of the most important tips is to write a book that other people are actually going to want to read. If you’re just writing for your own vanity, so be it, but if you expect to be popular, your life story is unlikely to hold much appeal to the wider reading public.

p.s. Self publishing your book requires a lot of thought in order to be a success.

Recently I mentioned that working as a writer of forewords for other writer’s books can be quite a lucrative little sideline and promised to follow up on this train of thought. Since I am nothing but a man of my word, I thought I might as well just jump right to it today.

The first thing to know of course is exactly how to write a foreword, since they do have a format and a rhythm all of their own. Forewords generally last for at least one and rarely more than two pages (it’s not your book, after all) and like a story, has a beginning, middle, and end. The opening of the foreword should include a little personal touch or two, usually indicating how the foreword writer knows the author of the book. This gives both foreword and book a feeling of legitimacy, rather than making the reader think the writer of the foreword has done so solely for the cash (which may well be the case, but you don’t want them to think that!).

Anecdotes relating to the author and the theme of the book are advisable for inclusion in the middle section of the foreword, giving the reader a sense that the book is written by someone who knows what they’re talking about. Feel free to mention some of the book’s strong points too (without giving anything away of course). Then conclude by stating why you wanted to write the foreword (again, don’t say “for the cash”) and sign off with your name, credentials and location.

p.s. Don’t be backwards when writing a foreword.

It might be a bit forward of me, but today I’d like to talk about forewords. Namely, what are they, why are they there, and why should you care? (I’m a poet and I don’t know it). The foreword will be the first thing a reader encounters when they open your book, even preceding the introduction (providing they don’t just skip both, of course). The foreword is used to introduce the reader not just to the book that they are presumably about to read but also to you, the author of the work in question.

The foreword is therefore written by someone other than the author themselves, indeed these days it is common for a ‘big name’ author to write the foreword to a book by a lesser known writer and to even be credited on the cover of the book, sometimes in a bigger font than the name of the actual book author! (One instance that springs readily to mind is Stephen King, who I’ve seen gracing the foreword (and the cover) of some lesser-known horror writer to tell us all how brilliant this relative unknown is on a few occasions.

It might be more difficult for us to get a name author to introduce our work, especially if we have selected the self publishing route. However, you don’t need to have someone famous do the forward – in fact, being a “foreword” writer can be quite a lucrative sideline on its own, and I’ll talk about that in a later column.

p.s. Forewords are a way to obtain extra attention for your published work – and it’s not at all forward.